saturday afternoon....

Trey and Aunt Jaime

Trey, hitting the bottle

Maybe I'm biased, but is this not the cutest picture EVER? 

I just wanted to thank everyone who wished my grandmother and my family good luck, and kept us in their thoughts and prayers - she did wonderfully with the surgery. She hasn't even taken any pain medicine since the day of! She is quite the fighter. She was discharged Wednesday, is glad to be home, and is doing well. We got the wonderful news yesterday that her lymph nodes were free of cancer, and we should know the full pathology report on Tuesday, when she gets the drains out. Needless to say, we are all relieved and pleased with the outcome so far. 

In a little while I will be heading out to a birthday party.....at Gymboree. For 17 three year olds. Yeah. I love kids, but if I ever want to have kids after a birthday party like this, it will be a miracle! I went to Babies R Us and Baby Gap earlier, for a present for my old roommate's baby, and for gift wrap for L's bday. You know it's bad when you DON'T have kids and yet you STILL have a Babies R Us rewards card on your key ring. I managed to get my nephew a really cute rugby shirt on sale at Baby Gap. It's only been a week, but I miss him so much. It's still a novel thing, having this little kid in my family. I love being an aunt. And to think that one day, he will be a cousin to my kids....that blows my mind.  

white coat envy

So.....yesterday at the hospital, when we were in the cafeteria, I kept looking around at all the med students and residents and doctors, and I admit, I was jealous as hell. Jealous because I want to be one of them. I want it so bad I can taste it. And it must have showed on my face, because my mother asked me what was wrong, and I told her. She replied with, "We've been through this - by the time you'd be done your residency, you'd be in your 40s...." And she's right. She reminded me about the conversation Jonel and I had that solidified my choice to go into public health. But daily, I wish I had gone ahead and pursued medicine. I wish that I had never given up my interest in science and oncology 10 years ago. I applied to college pre-med -- who knows where I would be if I had continued on that path? But, things happen for a reason, and I am on this path now for many many reasons. Compared to psychology, this is much more true to who I am. And I guess I just have to realize that I will still be in oncology, just not how I maybe originally imagined. 

faith and hope

Love her or hate her, Sarah Palin does make some good points. I was watching a clip of her this morning talking with Greta Van Susteren, and she said something about faith, in response to Greta asking her about whether she's running in 2012. And she said that faith is important to her, and when she prays, she asks G-d to help her see open doors, even if they're open just a crack. She said that she might plow through the door, or go through it prematurely, but she just doesn't want to miss the door. That really resonated with me. She might make mistakes, but she doesn't want to miss any opportunities. That makes a ton of sense. 

In other news, my grandmother is recovering very well from her mastectomy. The surgeon did find some hard lymph nodes, which he removed, but we won't know the pathology until friday. Overall, I am pretty satisfied with the surgeon. At first, I thought he was a pompous ass, but after the surgery, when he sat down with us and spoke with us, I liked him. You'd be surprised at how differently doctors treat you when they know you've worked at MSKCC. And that you actually know something about cancer. 

Thank you everyone for your thoughts and prayers, my family and I really appreciate it. 

I miss NY.

I miss New York. I miss it in that way that you can only miss something you simultaneously love and hate. I miss walking to Pinkberry on a muggy summer night. I miss the surprise of little kids selling lemonade on the sidewalks of the Upper East Side. I miss the cupcake selection. I miss my morning Dunkin' Donuts - wheat bagel with light cream cheese, iced coconut coffee. I miss the chaotic energy of the city. I miss being inspired everyday at work, and having my oncology idols be mere feet from me. I miss waking up and loving my job. I miss overpriced candy at Dylan's Candy Bar, and pizza at Patsy's, and Jamba Juice. I miss walking along Fifth Ave on  my lunch break. 

Some days I can't wait until I get back there in December. 

playing dress-up

Has anyone else read about Elizabeth Edwards not wearing her wedding ring and the rumors that John has moved out and they're separated? My thought is, good for her!! You go, girl. 

October is coming to a close, and just in time, because I don't think I can take much more pink. I can honestly say I am over all the pink-ness and hollow promises of funding breast cancer research......and then when the month is over, it's all forgotten. Or not, but most other cancers are ignored. 

I was going to be a Stepford Wife for Halloween, dressed in tennis whites, a headband, tennis shoes, and an obnoxious engagement/wedding band combo. But tonight, I was like, do I really want to be in a tennis skirt in the cold weather? And now I'm contemplating being.........a doctor. Original, right? I have Carolina blue scrubs, and I can wear my MSKCC shirt, my stethoscope from work, and my MSKCC ID chain with my old HUP ID card. At least I'd be comfortable! 

But this brings me to another thought.....and I know I should really stop thinking about this. I made a choice, and I can't go back. In many ways, I'm sick of playing dress-up with medicine. I just want to be a damn doctor. An oncologist. A pediatric oncologist. This drive doesn't ever seem to go away, no matter how unrealistic it might be. I know it's not a reality - the cost would be prohibitive and I'd be nearly 40 - if not in my early 40s - by the time I'd be done residency/fellowship. But I made a choice 2 years ago to go into public health instead of medicine, and I did so for a reason, after a discussion with Jonel while preparing dinner together. It's just really hard to keep quieting that little voice, especially now, with my grandmother - yeah, it knocked me on my butt and stunned the heck out of me, but one of the first things I did was go to the library and get books on breast cancer, to hopefully learn more info, and help my family in the ways that I could. And if I were up North, I'd be talking to her surgeon myself. I feel useful when I do stuff like that - my instinct is to fix things, make everything okay - and while I know I can make a difference in oncology through public health, there's that background noise that wonders about being an oncologist. 

Nalgenes and Nordstrom

Walking through the School of Public Health's atrium this morning, I remembered one of the things I loved about UNC - everyone was so different from up North in the sense that they just seemed more relaxed, more....outdoorsy. And for the most part, that's true. In undergrad, no one wore sweats to class unless they were Abercrombie - and even then, it was usually on a friday, after a night of partying at the frats. It wasn't unusual for people to get dressed for class. And I mean, DRESSED. I never really thought anything of it. But here, it's Patagonia instead of Prada, North Face instead of Neiman Marcus, and Chacos instead of Jimmy Choos. And it's so refreshing. I'm aware that many people's undergrad experiences aren't like mine. I went to a very small, private, homogenous Northeastern college.....but I loved every minute of it. So while I love wearing jeans, a hoodie, and sneakers to class, I do sometimes wish my classmates loved fashion and shopping as much as I do. I get excited about sales at Nordstrom, they get excited about sales at REI. And I love REI, don't get me wrong - but I wish people knew who I was talking about when I mention Luella Bartley and Marc Jacobs. 

I'm usually a casual girl - I never wear heels, and my usual uniform involves jeans. But I do love my bags and shoes. I love reading fashion magazines and getting ideas for outfits, etc. So it's interesting that sometimes I wish NC were more like NY in that way. 

close to home

I haven't blogged in the past week partly from shock, exhaustion, and general malaise and busyness. My grandmother was nice enough to allow me to write about this, so here goes. On Tuesday, my grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had gone for a fine needle aspiration on Friday, and from how she described it, I pretty much knew then that the results wouldn't be so good. But it's a whole other experience actually hearing the words, "It's cancerous." And as someone who works in the field, whose life centers around cancer, I didn't think I'd have the stunned reaction that I did, but life is funny like that. It still doesn't seem quite real to me, but she's handling it very well, as is my grandfather. (In fact, they even read this blog!). She's going for a metastatic workup on Tuesday to see if it's spread anywhere else, and then meeting with her doctor tuesday afternoon to go from there. Right now we're in that grey area of not really knowing anything definitive that will guide treatment or give a prognosis. Funny, though I know all the statistics, for some reason I never actually thought they'd apply to my family - as if working in oncology gave me a certain protection or something.  

my NC state fair experience

Free tobacco samples at the NC state fair. Good times. 

So, I went to the NC state fair today with the family I nanny for, and had a pretty fun (if not amusing) time. I didn't go last year, so I wasn't sure what to expect. Chapel Hill is definitely not representative of the rest of the state. I went on a kid's ride with L, the little boy, which was fun. He was so excited - it made me remember when my family used to go to Hershey Park, King's Dominion, etc - kids find pleasure in the simplest of things, it's so refreshing. I saw some real live bears (behind glass). Some kids came in behind us, all dressed up in their hunting camoflage jackets, they couldn't have been more than 9 or 10, maybe 11. And one goes, "Look at the bears! I'm gonna get me some good eatin' right there!" And then proceeded to walk down the line, talking about how he wants to hunt the bears and eat them. Most little kids wave to the bears or say hi to them - this kid was telling them he wanted to eat them because they taste so good. Needless to say, I was horrified. Bears? To eat? ummm....I'm definitely not in Manhattan anymore. And then, of course, the tobacco stand, where people could get free tobacco samples to pack in their mouths. I wanted to get a fried twinkie, but the line was unbelievable. Yes, you read that right - there are things at the fair that are fried that should NEVER be fried. Like fried snickers bars and fried peanut butter cups. Fried Oreos. Fried apples. Fried dough. So I had a soft pretzel and a vanilla milkshake. Yum. And, of course, there was my brother's favorite, chicken on a stick (that huge turkey/chicken drumstick thing that people carry around like they're barbarians). The twins had a good time, L had a good time, and overall it was a really good day. I'm exhausted, though.

You don't know Jack.

When I went to the LiveStrong Summit this past summer, one of my facilitators was a woman who had a child with cancer, and she told us about this YouTube video they had made of her son Jack. They had shirts made that said "I know Jack", and so forth. I just watched the video today....and thought I'd post it. He is adorable, and this message is so important to hear. 

aiming high

These logos have been part of my life for months now. I wanted to be finished with the applications by now, but no such luck. It gets expensive, getting official copies of GRE scores, transcripts, application fees......the programs are all funded programs, which is great....but that also makes them that much more competitive. I know which programs are my top programs, but I also don't want to jinx this. All of them have amazing programs that I love....which makes it hard. Hopefully I will get in somewhere.