Chicken Bones At Any Moment

I glanced to my left and noticed a diagram depicting an upside-down fetus in an ear. Let the Witchdoctoring commence, I thought. This illustration was not exactly allaying any fears I might have had about volunteering to be treated as a pin cushion. My acupuncturist's name, I noted, was White Eagle. Nicknames seemed out of the question on that one. He is, by the way, genuinely Native American/First Nation so at least I wasn't confronted by the alarming prospect of some dude from Cincinnati struggling with a protracted issue of a contrived persona.

So where have I been? Being perforated, among other things, how are you all?

My son's long saga with his funky moles continues as more are removed and the people doing the biopsies, aware that they are examining tissue from something of a medical oddity, are being extra cautious. A twenty-year-old with one instance of malignant melanoma caught before it could spread is the proverbial hen's tooth in the medical world. So as patches of skin surrounding the three traitorous moles are removed, they are examined with a thoroughness that is both awesome and terrifying. One came back with "severely atypical" cells and was sent to yet another university for study.

This plunged two universities' medical schools into a pitched debate, the University of Colorado and the University of Southern California's had themselves a bit of a dogfight over what needed to be done. CU decided that enough skin had been removed, USC begged to differ and my son's doctor threw the decision into the lap of my twenty-year-old son, claiming it was up to him to decide.

This is the same kid who frequently has trouble figuring out how to make the microwave achieve the setting he desires. Unsurprisingly, I made the call on that and since he now goes in for four skin checks a year, I decided to err on the side of "Watch that area." The patch in question is between his shoulder blades and due to repeated movements, is a bit hairy to take more away from anyway. I actually do trust the doctor in question and if there was any question in his mind that it needed to be removed, he have said so. Saying that it was up to Flint was the same as saying he thought USC had eaten their paranoia flakes that morning.

Besides, he still has one on his head to go, on the top of his head, actually. I try to spend as little time thinking about that one as I can, as it hangs out rather too close to his brain for me to contemplate it all that comfortably. Its puncture biopsy also indicated that it is severely atypical.

Severely Atypical. Perhaps a good band name, certainly a decent enough explanation for some of his behaviors but not a thing I like to dwell on too much. Because my son is a Type 1 diabetic, he heals slowly and so we take these choppings in stages. We have that luxury as severely atypical means only that it was contemplating being something bad, but had yet to make up its cellular mind.

Let's hear it for bad cells that dither long enough to be discovered before enacting any nefarious plans. So good fortune, but a goodly dose of stress. This is probably a good description of nearly all of our lives, isn't it? At least I keep good company in all of you.

However, I managed to aggravate most of my old injuries by doing moronic things like clambering up and down ladders, while working out too hard in a bid for endorphins. Insomnia came to visit and then moved the heck in. The malady was one we can all relate to at times in our lives: Generalized Yuck. Migraines, my old foe, were becoming a daily occurrence and as is my way, I finally got ticked off enough by a body in rebellion to do something about it.

Die, stress, die! I declared. I've seen too many people fall to unintentional dependency when it comes to pain pills to trust the suckers, so alternative methods it was.

That's how I ended up staring at the diagram and feeling as if it was, perhaps, full of dung or at the very least, misinformation. That was a given, really. I clean my ears regularly and no fetuses lurk there. I sincerely hope, that is, because I shudder to contemplate the delivery process if I'm currently cooking one up.

After talking to White Eagle, I did ask, "So, are you gonna start rolling chicken bones in a moment?" "Yes, with smoke signals too. Would you prefer that I spit rum or vodka in your face?" "Rum, you can never be sure what vodka's been derived from, so you have to be careful."

A fellow smartass, as you can see. We were going to get along splendidly and have.

By the way, it's helped tremendously. So has the acupressure I had performed all over my darned body to help heal my Qi. This literally left me bruised from head to foot, with small fingertip bruises. I looked a bit like a leopard.

I also promised my 6'4" husband I would do my best not to croak under mysterious circumstances until such time as they healed, as he'd likely be a main (and large) suspect, considering that I had a bunch of bruises on my neck and at the base of my skull. They've since turned a very attractive sulfur yellow.

Boy, do I feel pretty. You likely won't be seeing this look on the runways of Paris anytime soon. It's made me look like cream cheese that has just gone over. Woo and hoo.

I've always had a bad habit of going to ground, choosing to not really talk much about things going wrong. I retreat into escapism like TV or films. It's a hold over from an iffy sort of childhood, where when things went wrong, I'd simply hide with a book and my dog.

Cricket from Cricket and Porcupine is a friend of mine and emailed me, hoping all was well and it was only as I was attempting to hide behind him, saying (basically) "Hey, could you maybe mention that I'm not dead, just hiding for a variety of reasons?" that I realized I'd be giving White Feather a reason to name mw Stands While Clucking.

"You have to learn how to redirect your energy, shut your mind down. Relieve the stress," White Feather told me.

"Dude, if I could do that on my own, what are the chances I'd have a needle sticking out of my forehead?"

His prognosis? "I think you might be Alien."

Told you he was a smartass. At least, I think he was being a smartass. I hope.

I try to show up around these parts when I'm up to being helpful or funny. Be well, good people of the internet!

May the chicken bones have no need to be with you.

I searched the internet for that ear diagram, but I only found this:



Anyone want a Qtip?