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| What Was Waiting for Me Outside the Garage Door This Morning |
I arrived home planning on
putting the snow blower on but my wife took one look at me and absolutely
forbid me from working in the cold garage.
Since it was only going to be a couple inches which probably wouldn’t
even stick on the streets I figured I was okay.
I promptly fell asleep on the couch and slept for a couple hours around
Buddy’s forced wake up calls.
I woke up to find the
driveway and front yard covered but still, no problem. By the time I went to bed around mid-night we
had over seven inches on the ground with more falling. The winds were also screeching, as they are
wont to do on our hilltop. I woke up
this morning, still feeling terrible, with over eight inches of snow and the prospect
of shoveling it all.
Buddy was in seventh heaven
because he loves snow almost as much as he loves chasing squirrels. I went out to assess the driveway, now with
freezing rain coming down as Buddy charged around burrowing into the snow. I decided since the driveway is all down hill
that I would only attack the spots where the snow drifted higher than two feet
and the snow bank at the bottom left by the street plowing. This turned out to be plenty of work in
itself but I cleared a path where I could get a running start with the car to
get out to the street. Shoveling heavy
snow in freezing rain with a severe cold is not the recommended course of
action for getting healthy. As I was
gasping for breath, I kept flashing back to the news stories of all the stubborn
middle age men found dead of heart attacks in their driveways trying to shovel the
first snow storm of the year (as I said, I wasn’t in a good place – morale wise).
My escape from the driveway worked
out fine and driving into to work was actually easier today than most days
because there wasn’t a lot of traffic.
That is one thing I love about New England . We know what to do with snow. We got an unexpected eight inches of snow but
all the roads were plowed and passable.
This never happened in Northern Virginia ,
even with a predicted snow storm which always paralyzes the place for days on
end.
Now as to the health news,
full disclosure here or my sister gets angry.
I wrote a couple days ago about my annual visit to the dermatologist who
did his usual strip mining of various places on my neck and shoulders. He called me yesterday at the office and told
me that the stuff he sent in for biopsy came back as cancer.
Not the kind of thing one
wants to hear when he’s already feeling bad.
Turns out its not real serious, I have a basal cell carcinoma which will
have to be removed by microsurgery (scheduled for December 17). He had biopsied the same site last year and
it had come back as scar tissue. I
initially thought the thing was a wart and had tried various chemicals to burn
it off. When it came back again, the doctor
said he was going to go a little deeper and that’s where they found the cancer.
He said I had to get the surgery because
this could be invasive if left untreated.
This is what I found online about what I have:
Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is the most common skin
cancer in humans, yet it accounts for less than 0.1% of patient deaths due to
cancer. Basal cell skin cancer tumors typically appear on sun-exposed skin, are
slow growing, and rarely metastasize (0.028-0.55%). BCC usually appears as a
flat, firm, pale area that is small, raised, pink or red, translucent, shiny,
and waxy, and the area may bleed following minor injury. Tumor size can vary
from a few millimeters to several centimeters in diameter.
For some reason, this scared
the hell out of me; not something I would ordinarily even admit to myself. I think I was just in a bad place spirit-wise
because of the cold but I was feeling really mortal. I also knew I would have to find a way to
assuage the fears of my wife – who automatically assumes the worst and thinks I’m
trying to hide things from her health-wise (well, yeah, I guess I’ve done that
before). After I told her the news, I
marched her over to the computer so she could read up on it – gotta love Google. I’ll be fine, as long as I don’t run into one
of those G.D. weathermen.
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| Front Yard Yesterday Just Before Sunset - Not Too Bad |
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| This Morning - That's A Little Bit More than a Dusting! |
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| And Buddy Can't Get Enough of It! |
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