I'm tired of winter.  Every March is the same.  The days are longer now, the sun is higher in the sky every day and it is slowly working it's way north in the western sky but still it is winter.  The temperature is finally rising this weekend.  The snow is melting, the windows are open.  I can hear the birds outside as I type but still there is snow everywhere and where the snow has melted, it is brown. 

I miss colors.  There are no leaves and there won't be for two more months.  Green is my favorite color and it is missing in the winter.  The spruce don't count because come spring, even they change color, their tips turn a lovely, vibrant, new green. 

I'm tired of hot flashes that make life one big, hot sweaty mess.  At work I often wear lead and a sterile gown complete with hair net, mask and sterile gloves, and then I have a hot flash.  The sweat runs down my back, soaks my underwear and leaves me feeling stinky.  I can smell myself.  At night the hot flashes disrupt my sleep so I'm tired all the time.  My brain is foggy.  I'm grumpy, sleepy and stinky, three of the seven menopause dwarfs.

I'm also take an oncology course at work.  I no longer have spare time.  I love the learning but I'm not young anymore.  It takes longer for things to sink into my poor addled brain.  The one thing I do find helps though is my thirty years of nursing experience.  I'm the oldest in the class and experience does help.  I'm giving the young ones a run for their money.

Katie has a scary looking mole on her thigh.  She was born with this mole and in the last couple of years it has started to change.  It meets all the criteria for malignant melanoma.

 

 

The dermatologist we saw on Friday was a giant dick.  He said that although it meets the criteria, not to worry.  He muttered under his breath that he often doesn't understand what people are talking about.  He talked to my ex-husband and mostly ignored me.  He said that he thought Katie would be just fine with some local freezing if she needed the mole removed.  He didn't listen.  He didn't fucking listen.  I wanted to yell at him to shut the fuck up and try listening.  Another year of menopause and I imagine I will yell.  I want the mole removed, under a general anesthetic.  She is going in for dental work in a week and a half and will have a general anesthetic then.  But he didn't think that was necessary. 

 

I work in a cancer hospital.  We have a doctor who runs clinical trials for metastatic malignant melanoma.  Patients came from all over to see him and those patients come through our department.  Malignant melanoma is the leading cause of cancer death in woman aged 25-30.  I talk to my patients and I listen to them, unlike some fucking dermatologists.  I know that doctors get things wrong, that patient's concerns can be brushed aside.  I see those patients.  I start their IVs and I know that they probably won't live five years. 

 

I'm scared.  Katie's mole is probably fine but I'm still scared.  Scared takes up a lot of space inside my brain, it feels heavy to carry around and scared squeezes tears out of my eyes at inappropriate times.