Sunday, January 9, 2004
CONFIDENCE
Some have noticed that its
been a while since I wrote. If I said that I had “writers Block” I’d be
flattering myself because I don’t consider myself a writer. To put it
simply, I just haven’t felt like writing and I don’t want this journal to
become a chore or obligation. I make entries when the mood is right and if I
have to force myself, it stops being fun.
I’ll just hit some of the highlights and bring everyone up to date.
Because I spent a lot of my younger years outside in the sun, I’ve
occasionally had to be treated for sun induced skin cancer. This is the
least serious form of basal cell carcinoma and it’s common with fair skinned
people. It’s not the form that metastasizes easily and it’s effortlessly
treated with a trip to a dermatologist every six months or so.
George Carlin does a comedy bit about how after a certain age, people find
odd things growing on their bodies. He likes to go into lengthily detail and
describe all the peculiar aberrations he discovered on his own body after he
turned 50. They’re the kind of things that make people uncomfortable so
naturally he goes on for 10 minutes and describes them in grand detail. I
can get into that too and on my last trip to the dermatologist, I pointed
out a lump I had noticed on my upper thigh. I always have things to point
out to the doctor and he usually makes me feel like a hypochondriac by
shrugging them off as inconsequential. This time he surprised me and said,
“I have no idea what that is but we should get it out of there”.
I don’t like having a doctor say he has no idea what something is. In my
mind he was really saying, “This is serious but I’d better not let on and
just tell him I don’t know what it is”. He referred me to a surgeon and I
was scheduled to have it removed in 10 days. Of course he tried to reassure
me that it was probably nothing but dang, if he had no idea what it was, how
could he tell me it was nothing. I spent the next ten days on the internet
researching all I could about cancerous tumors. Before I was done I had
myself worked into a sweat and was mulling over how I would spend my final
days.
On the day of my appointment the surgeon walked in and displayed something
that my dermatologist lacked. Confidence. Funny I hadn’t noticed it before
but compared to this surgeon, my dermatologist really lacked self-assurance.
Anyway, she looked at the lump and with a quizzical expression asked why I
was bothering to have it removed. I described my dermatologist's fuzzy
diagnosis.
She sighed and said it was a benign neoplasm (cyst) and said they are quit
common. She went on to explain how to tell the difference between a benign
and malignant growth and said removal wasn’t really necessary. She would do
it if I was loosing sleep but that would be the only reason.
I gratefully declined and headed for the door as soon as I could get my
pants on.
________
Actual construction on our new
house won’t begin till March. At that time the contractor comes in,
bulldozes the pad, widens the road, installs a new culvert and begins the
foundation. He will also be the one who supervises the placement and takes
care of all the details involved with tying a manufactured home together.
Expensive.
Of course we have special circumstances that have brought the price up. We
wanted a foundation that was above and beyond what is typically done on a
manufacture home. We don’t want it looking like a mobile home, Catherine is
very concerned about earthquakes (she works for the SDSU geology dept.), and
the home is being placed on a hill where the wind has been known to reach 80
MPH or more. Preparing for all those issues adds to the construction
expense. I’ll be doing the electrical, sewer and water tie-ins myself.
I can honestly say I’m not excited about getting a new house. All I can
think about are the little details I have to take care of first.
