Last week, I reached a minor milestone…. When I signed into blogger to write a new post, I realized that it was my 200th post since the birth of my blog. I wondered how I would celebrate this feat because as many of you know blog beginnings are shaky at best. I thought an art give-away would be in order and offered a special fabric ACEO to the first person to comment. As fate would have it, Jafabrit was the first to comment. I have been reading her blog for awhile now and have been charmed by both her art work and the “Geordie Lass” phrases she sprinkles about on occassion. One in particular stands out: “I’m chuffed” is frequently used by Jafabrit when she’s really excited and/or pleased about something. I just knew I had to incorporate this word into my gift to her.
She asked me why I had chosen this particular image for her. To tell you the truth, my daughter just did a unit in school on chameleons and I thought this would be perfect for an ACEO. Chuff the Chameleon just seemed to be the right fit!
In other news, I had a little bit of a medical scare the past year. I haven’t shared it and really debated whether or not to do so at all. But, here it goes. Last summer my doctor suggested that I have my first mammogram since I had turned 40 in 2006. 40 seems to be a magic number in the medical community. I went last August and then got a call a day later saying, “Well, we found something, we’d like to do another mammogram and in addition, an ultrasound.” Nervous, I scheduled the appointment and wouldn’t you know, the sonographer and radiologist were speaking quietly to each other looking at the screen, asking me to submit to another mammogram. Then the radiologist gave me some options…he didn’t think that the spot they were seeing looked like cancer but if I wanted to, I could have a biopsy or I could wait 6 months and do it all over again. I asked him, if it was his daughter, wife, mother, etc. what would he recommend? He felt confident that I could wait. I decided to do so after reading the literature on biopsies and also the fact that it was small enough that my treatment options wouldn’t change in 6 months time.
Yesterday, I had my follow up mammogram and ultrasound. I had sort of blocked the whole thing until about 2 weeks ago, when I started to get nervous and played out all the possibilities in my head. The results: There is still something there, but it hasn’t changed/grown etc. and the doctor thinks it’s just a fatty cyst lodged deep in the muscle tissue of my breast. So, relief washed over me and we’ll do another follow up in 6 months time. Why am I sharing? I think it behooves every woman to go in for her annual mammogram. What if it had been something? I never would have known until it had progressed and required more invasive treatment. Needless to say, I’m chuffed!
The photos below are my ceramic ufo from last summer with a coat of celadon glaze on top. It should be out of the kiln by now and I’ll post a photo when I go to the league early next week.
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