Well, THAT's A Relief

Let's just say that I've learned a lesson: when you have a neurology-related concern, you should ask a neurologist.  My family doc scared me half to death for no damned reason but the good news is that all is well.  Happy Easter to me!

I love Easter eve...we always make a big deal out of hiding the baskets so the kids have a 'treasure hunt' of sorts on Easter morning.  As they get older, the hunt gets more complicated--for both us and them--but that's half the fun.  This year, Petunia has riddles in her eggs (each one leads her to the next egg, and eventually to her basket, which is in the dryer this year.)  Thing Two's eggs are in code for the first time...a simple substitution cipher.  His basket is in the linen closet.  Thing One, who is really getting a bit too old for this, gets a slightly different approach.  He only has one egg, but it contains a puzzle that is a doozy, which he must solve to get to his basket!  I had serious fun coming up with the puzzle...considering how much time I spend solving puzzles to get coordinates for geocaching, I had a lot of raw material from which to choose.  Since he's an accomplished musician, I wrote him a music puzzle, in which notes substitute for letters.  We'll see how he does with it!  His basket is in the trunk of Himself's car.

Can't wait for the morning.  We're as excited as the kids.  Come on, bunny!!

Because We Don't Have Enough Going On Already...

The martial arts school where we study taekwondo has recently started offering judo and aikido classes for children.  (Previously these styles were only offered to adults.)  Both of my sons started judo about a month ago and Petunia starts aikido next week--all in addition to the taekwondo, not as a replacement.  The boys absolutely love the physicality of judo, all the flips and rolls and falls, and if Petunia becomes reasonably competent at both taekwondo and aikido she'll be able to handle just about anything she might ever need to handle, so I'm all for her studying both.   Three styles is a lot for one family at one time, especially with all the other stuff we have going on, but the nice thing about martial arts is that it is not a race.  If you have a busy period, you can focus on other things and it will still be there when you have more time to get back to it.  And thank all the gods for that, too, since this spring is going to be a scheduling nightmare of epic proportions!  Travel soccer.  Rec soccer.  Baseball.  Martial arts.  Piano.  Yikes, yikes and double yikes.

Oh, and because I've apparently completely taken leave of my senses, I think I may try aikido as well.    It's supposed to be great for balance and focus, and it looks really badass.  Love the idea of using an attacker's weight and momentum against them with minimal effort, too.  We'll see how it goes!

To Be Filed Under "Be Careful What You Wish For"

Three being the proverbial crowd, one might expect that in houses (like mine) containing three children, one might often be left out of the play shared by the other two.  This is in fact the case at my house, but the identity of the odd child out might surprise you.  Despite the fact that I have two boys and one girl, in that order and all precisely 25 months apart, the two that have bonded most closely are my two youngest (Thing Two and Petunia) not my two sons.  Thing One does his own thing, while Petunia almost single-handedly dragged Thing Two out of the self-isolation that resulted from his social and language difficulties by effectively forcing him to play with her!  He legitimately enjoys it now, and they spend a lot of time together...over an hour just this afternoon in an imaginary world they've jointly created in my living room that somehow involves both Minecraft blocks and Angry Birds figurines who have different jobs and operate factories.  I've said it before, but we might not have had a third child if we'd had any idea how severe the second child's language deficits were at the time, and that third child turned out to be the second child's saving grace in many ways.  The universe is a funny place.

At any rate, Himself has always wished that the boys interacted more.  Not that they had issues with each other or anything; their orbits just didn't overlap much.  I was more of the opinion that as long as we were continuing to see social and imaginative improvement in Thing Two as a consequence of interactions with a sibling, I could care less which one it was as long as the boys didn't actively hate each other.  Either way, Himself got his wish.  About six weeks ago, for whatever reason, the boys started getting on each other's nerves.  Blame is pretty much 49/51 you pick 'em most of the time, as far as I can tell.  Who started the shoving, who's standing too close to whom, who is blocking whose view of the television or taking up more than his fair share of the sofa...it is never ending and all I want for Mother's Day is a good set of noise-canceling headphones!  I'm sure they will eventually work through whatever is currently ailing them, but in the meantime I am doing a lot of refereeing.  I actually had to break up fisticuffs in the family room today, which was a new one...the fight is relatively fair at least, but there is a lot of glass in that room.  Next time I send them outside in their padded taekwondo sparring gear!  BOYS.

Seems I Neglected To Mention A Few Things

It's been a busy couple of weeks, so I've been somewhat hit or miss here on the blog.  We have had a few happenings worth recognizing, though, even if it is sadly belated.    

First and foremost, my beloved father turned 70 in good health and good spirits, feted by a large number of close friends and family members.  In his honor, a joke.  :)

An elderly man visits the doctor for a checkup. "Mr. Smith, you’re in great shape," says the doctor afterward. "How do you do it?" "Well," says Mr. Smith, "I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, and the good Lord looks out for me. For weeks now, every time I go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, he turns the light on for me." Concerned, the doctor finds Mrs. Smith in the waiting room and tells her what her husband said. "I don’t think that’s anything to worry about," she says. "And on the bright side, it does explain who’s been peeing in the fridge."

I'd also be remiss if I failed to mention that a few days after Dad's birthday, Himself and I celebrated our lucky 13th wedding anniversary.  Doesn't seem like we could possibly have been married that long, but the dates don't lie!  Happy that I can honestly say that I wouldn't change a thing if I had it to do over.  In our honor, another joke:

Tom and Susan's 25th Wedding Anniversary

At the banquet of Tom and Susan’s 25th wedding anniversary, Tom was asked to give his friends a brief account of the benefits of a marriage of such long duration.

“Tell us, Tom, just what is it you have learned from all those wonderful years with your wife?”

Tom responded, “Well, I’ve learned that marriage is the best teacher of all. It teaches you loyalty, forbearance, meekness, self-restraint, forgiveness and a great many other qualities you wouldn’t have needed if you’d stayed single.” 

And last, but most certainly not least, my sweet Thing One just competed in our STATE's National Geographic Bee this past Friday!  This competition is open to 4th-8th graders nationally.  Students who win the Geography Bee held at their individual school (as he did a month or so ago) are administered a written test.  The 100 students in each state who do best on that test progress to the state-level competition, and he made the cut!!  I couldn't be prouder, especially since the vast majority of the competitors in our state's bee were eighth graders and he is an 11 year-old (aka young) sixth grader.  He didn't make it to the elimination round, but the students who did correctly answered all eight of the first-round questions and he got seven out of the eight correct...I was really impressed.  He's already talking about next year, too!  Have to say, though, I think the best part of the day for him was lunch in the host college's dining hall afterward...once he wrapped his head around the concept that his entry fee allowed him to go to any station in the room and get whatever food he wanted and as much of it as he wanted, he was gone.   The ice cream station took a solid hit, but he deserved it.  :)

No-Brainer

I'd be the first to tell you that Angelina Jolie is just that little bit (or a lot, sometimes--that whole vial of blood necklace thing) too weird for me.  Staggeringly beautiful woman and all (although she desperately needs to eat a hamburger or twenty) but about as relatable to me as an alien.  That said, I've been taken aback by the criticism she's received for her decisions to prophylactically remove her breasts (two years ago) and ovaries (recently) because of her discovery that she carries a mutation in the BRCA1 gene.

Breast cancer research was my professional field for years.  The BRCA1 gene (a massive one, by the way) is considered a tumor suppressor gene and its protein product helps to repair damaged DNA or trigger self-destruct pathways in cells with DNA that cannot be repaired.  Hundreds of distinct DNA mutations in this gene have been identified, many of which are associated with an increased risk of cancer.  Logical: some DNA damage is inevitable, and failures in any part of the repair/cell death pathways are never a good thing.   A mutated BRCA1 gene generally results in a protein that is either abnormally truncated (shortened) or full-length but non- or only partially-functional.  It's worth noting that there is another similar gene called BRCA2, the protein product of which performs a similar function and is often also associated with failures in DNA repair and therefore cancer development.  Certain variations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene sequences are associated with absolutely staggering risk increases for breast and ovarian cancer in particular: depending on the mutations in question, over 80% risk of developing breast cancer and 55% risk of developing ovarian cancer.  These mutations are typically hereditary, which is why doctors ask about family history for these cancers (and other cancers in general) and why people with strong family histories of breast and ovarian cancer should strongly consider being tested for the presence of these mutations.

Ms. Jolie's mother, aunt and grandmother were all lost to ovarian cancer.  She had herself tested for BRCA1 mutations, and the test came back positive.  That put her at a huge risk for developing one or both of these cancers, and probably at a relatively young age (her mother died of ovarian cancer at 56) but at least she knew that.  Information is power.  Breasts are relatively easy to monitor through imaging, and they are conveniently located on the exterior of the chest wall, where they can be palpated.  Ovaries, on the other hand, are not conveniently located.  What's more, there are currently no truly reliable markers for ovarian cancer in blood testing.  CA-125, the most commonly used one, is especially poor at identifying the presence of early-stage ovarian cancers, which are the only kind that are really curable or even treatable.  Ovarian cancers generally are asymptomatic until very advanced, so watching for symptoms is pretty much useless and that blood test isn't much better.

Nobody wants to have to make decisions to have what appear to be normal, functional body parts removed.  I can't even begin to imagine all the body image and sexuality and gender associations there would have to be with choosing to have a good chunk of your female reproductive system removed, never mind all the practical aftereffects (hormone replacement, etc) that come into play post-surgery, since ovariectomy catapults you into menopause.

That said??  If it were me, I'd have those suckers off/out in a heartbeat.  I'd be on the phone scheduling the surgery the day the DNA test results came in.  And I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have waited the two years between the mastectomies and the ovariectomies if I were her, either, knowing that my mom had died of ovarian cancer and that ovarian cancer is both terrible and hard to detect.  Why live with the knowledge that there is a ticking time bomb inside you with a high-percentage chance of explosion when you don't have to?  She made some tough decisions, but I'd have done the same damn thing, and I applaud her courage and also her decision to make the surgeries public information.

I am, in general, notoriously ANTI-celebrities delivering any kind of health message whatsoever (see e.g. that dipshit Jenny McCarthy and all the damage she has done to legitimate autism research and vaccination percentages) but in this case, I think her message is measured, scientifically legitimate, and a genuine public service.  If so much as a single person read one of her NY Times articles and said, "You know, there have been a lot of breast and ovarian cancer deaths in my family: maybe I should go get screened," that's a victory regardless of what decisions they make after they receive the DNA test results.  In the end, health information is power, and sometimes what you don't know can have devastating consequences.




    

On How To Measure Fitness

The sempai (instructor), another classmate and I were discussing our fitness goals while we stretched to warm up for taekwondo class this morning.  I told them that mine is very simple: it has nothing whatsoever to do with numbers on scales or garment labels and everything to do with not embarrassing myself at belt tests!  They thought I was kidding, but I was deadly serious.

Two belt tests ago, I was testing for my Senior Blue belt.  It wasn't even one of the big long Saturday tests, still one of the more abbreviated Tuesday night ones for lower belts, but I wasn't in good enough shape (I actually fell doing a jump spin kick at one point, which was really embarrassing) and it showed.  They gave me the new belt, but I walked out of the dojo feeling like shit, like I'd let the program down but more importantly, let myself down as well.  That was my "go big or go home" epiphany moment...it was clear to me that I was going to either have to make some changes or quit martial arts sooner rather than later.

Between that test and the next, for my Red belt (which WAS one of the big Saturday tests), I lost about 25 pounds and went down a gi (uniform) size, but those weren't the important measures.  That test was two and a half hours long.  I went through two liter bottles of water and sweated completely through two towels during that time, but at the end, I still had gas in the tank.  If the head sempai had told me to do fifty push-ups after everything else was over, I could have knocked them out with a smile on my face, and that feeling was just the best feeling in the world.

This past Monday night, I earned the eighth stripe for my Red belt.  One more (representing the final check that I still remember all my stuff) and I'm up for the Senior Red test: the head sempai told me to expect to test within the next few weeks.  In our system, where White is the first belt and Black the 12th, Senior Red is 9th, so I'm getting up there.  Tests aren't going to get shorter or easier from this point on, quite the reverse.  I've kept the weight off, I've been working hard on cardio and upper body muscles (cursed push-up requirement!) and I feel pretty strong.  Time will tell how the test goes, but I feel like I've put myself in a position to succeed by virtue of a hell of a lot of hard work, and that means a lot more than any number.

Well, What Do You Know??

I have not one, not two, but THREE children with perfect pitch.  Go figure.  The piano teacher tested Petunia today, and her musical ear is apparently just as good as both of her brothers.'  Clearly there is something genetic going on, but I still wouldn't have called three for three, especially since Himself has never had any musical training (or interest) at all and I have decent relative pitch myself, but not perfect pitch.  Pretty cool regardless.

In other news, it rained here today.  Petunia was happy because that means it's spring.  (As in, it's finally warm enough to be raining and not snowing.)  She's right, and I'll take it!