This is a story about a couple who had been happily married for years. The only friction in their marriage was the husband's habit of farting loudly every morning when he awoke. The noise would wake his wife and the smell would make her eyes water and make her gasp for air.  Every morning she would plead with him to stop ripping them off because it was making her sick.  He told her he couldn't stop it and that it was perfectly natural.  She told him to see a doctor; she was concerned that one day he would blow his guts out. The years went by and he continued to rip them out. 

Then one Thanksgiving morning as she was preparing the turkey for dinner and he was upstairs sound asleep, she looked at the bowl where she had put the turkey innards and neck, gizzard, liver and all the spare parts, and a malicious thought came to her.  She took the bowl and went upstairs where her husband
was sound asleep and, gently pulling back the bed covers, she pulled back the elastic waistband of his underpants and emptied the bowl of turkey guts into his shorts. 

Some time later she heard her husband waken with his usual trumpeting which was followed by a blood curdling scream and the sound of frantic footsteps as he ran into the bathroom. The wife could hardly control herself as she rolled on the floor laughing, tears in her eyes! After years of torture she reckoned she had got him back pretty good. About twenty minutes later, her husband came downstairs in his bloodstained underpants with a look of horror on his face. She bit her lip as she asked him what was the matter. He said, "Honey, you were right. All these years you have warned me and I didn't listen to you."  "What do you mean?" asked his wife. "Well, you always told me that one day I would end up farting my guts out, and today it finally happened.  But by the grace of God, some Vaseline, and these two fingers, I think I got most of them back in.

How to Prepare for a Mammogram

Many women are afraid of their first mammogram, but there is no need to worry.  By taking a few minutes each day for a week preceding the exam and doing the following exercises, you will be totally prepared for the test.  And best of all, you can do these simple exercises right in your home. 

EXERCISE ONE:
Open your refrigerator door and insert one breast in door.  Shut as hard as possible and lean on the door for good measure. Hold that position for five seconds.  Repeat again in case the first time wasn't effective enough. 
EXERCISE TWO: 
Visit your garage at 3 AM when the temperature of the cement floor is just perfect. Take off all your clothes and lie comfortably on the floor with one breast wedged under the rear tire of the car.  Ask a friend to slowly back the car up until your breast is sufficiently flattened and chilled. Turn over and repeat with the other breast. 
EXERCISE THREE:
Freeze two metal bookends over night. Strip to the waist. Invite a stranger into the room. Press the bookends against one of your breasts.  Smash the bookends together as hard as you can.  Set up an appointment with the stranger to meet next year and do it again. 

HOW TO HAVE CANCER by Jacky 12/21/02 to Tammie, a "Newbie"

I read all your posts, with tears and a big smile. 

On tears.  You will cry more than you ever did, to the point of dehydration - drink water. You may wake up crying. You will walk around in a black cloud that screams CANCER in your ear every waking and most sleeping moments. You will get through that, I absolutely promise. The cloud will lift, for me it was after my surgery when the pathology came in. I had a vision of a chinook (a weather pattern where I live, it is a hot wind that blows over the mountains, emptying the air of moisture, pushing a cloud overhead, but showing a big stripe of beautiful blue over the white crowned mountains to the west) and knew all I had to do was walk to the sunshine, one step at a time. I knew it wouldn't be easy, but I knew it was the objective.

On apologising. You never need to apologise to us. Never. There are no offensive questions, no fears of grossing us out, there is nothing that we won't deal with, with you, somehow, someone will answer. You don't need to apologise to anyone for your foggyness. Your surgeon and your entire team that you will get around you knows that you will not hear everything in one go. Trust your body - that deafness is part of flight or fight, as is sleeplessness. Your body is literally preparing, and entering, the flight phase, until you convince it to fight, which requires the same focus anyhow. The focus is on what YOU need, what works for YOU, and the technical stuff is useful, but at this exact moment, trust yourself... the rest will follow.

On sleeplessness. Being the number one stubborn person in the world (yes, Teddy, even more than you) I elected not to take drugs. I felt that my mind was racing for the very good reason that it had lots to think about, and I wasn't going to get in its way. In retrospect I don't think this was the smartest way to go LOL. I went 7 weeks without sleep aids and without more than 3 hours sleep in a 24 hour period. I wrote in my journal (filled two up in those weeks) a lot, trying to help my mind sort it out. I think I could have done what I did, come to the places I came to, had the thoughts and issues I had, just as well in say 18 hours a day rather than 21. The fatigue nurse eventually talked me into sleeping pills, but once I was through a chemo cycle and knew what was going to happen, I started to sleep anyhow. You have children, you need to keep physically as well as you can, and sleep is going to become a big part of your future. Might as well start soon.

On questions. You are NOT stupid to not know. I didn't know jack about this stuff, none of us do at your stage. You will learn what you want to and need to, and you will decide what to let go. That's all. Teddy is right though - since your memory is now officially shot, it is a good idea to write down all the questions and take them and your hubby/family member/friend who is a nurse to the meetings, and have the answers written down. My question list for my oncologist the first time was 6 pages. He answered them all. 

On husbands and other caregivers. If you pretend strength and joy when you don't feel it, it isn't really a gift to him. He cannot know how to respond if he doesn't know what is happening. Some don't want to know - they go to the river (de Nial) and stay there, but lots and lots of caregivers want to care for your spirit, and walking on eggshells is not a great way to do it. Tell him that you are devastated, and you will cry and you will NOT get over it fast and that you need him to hold you - and that you don't need him to 'fix' it or to even try to 'fix' it, and see how he does. He needs the chance to respond to YOU, not to himself, and he will succeed sometimes and fail others, but it is up to him, not you, to try. 

On looking at your breast. I can only tell you what my experience was. By the time I had surgery I was in love with my breast again, diseased though it was, because it bundled up all the bad stuff into a nice tumour which I could see, and feel, and which the surgeon could get rid of like the garbage man, and felt that it was a lot nicer than tumours that one can't see or feel, which occur and maybe are found in time or not, but which can't seem as real as this one. Because I'm a goof in a lot of ways, I sat in the tub with candles and lavendar the day before surgery and thanked my breast for carrying my pain in this way. It really helped calm me. 

On chemo. It's ick. As far as they know it saves lives. It doesn't kill you (that's about the best that I can say for it), and its a few months out of your life, not much of a price to pay to commute what could be a life sentence. Not everyone does chemo for a lot of reasons, even when recommended, and that option won't be fought with here either as you work this out. Most of us are mainstream, but not offended by alternatives. 

On guilt - you haven't mentioned this one yet. Just thought I'd leap to it. Since nobody knows where this bloody thing comes from, really, and since you've had it in your body for years, there is no way of knowing that you 'gave' it to yourself, so you did NOT do anything to GET it. There are people out there who are so afraid of cancer that they need to dissociate from it by blaming YOU for getting it - it has nothing to do with you, understand that, it is their fear. When they tell you it is god getting even, or because of your diet, or the way you had children, or unresolved childhood issues, or the microwave tower, you need to (at least internally) ask to see their Nobel prize, cuz if any of those things were probably true, someone would have won it. One in 8 women get breast cancer in their lifetime. That's too many for any rational blame - that is definitely 'sh*t happens' is all. 
Well that's enough. I write long ones too LOL