Thyroid Cancer. I googled it because I've been terrified all week about my biopsy. I have Hashimoto's disease, which means my thyroid is pretty much inactive and I have all of these little nodules in my neck. One of them is troubling because it's pretty sizable and my endocrinologist ordered a fine needle aspiration to retrieve cells from the thyroid to make sure they're benign. I waited in his office today for an hour. How can you make someone wait on pins and needles for an hour? Whatever words that would come out of his mouth would greatly affect me. He came in and reported that the cells that they retrieved were not thyroid cells, just blood cells, etc. They didn't have what they needed. WHAT?!
I did not compose myself at that point. I was so wired emotionally and I had just sat there to find out nothing. I could have received that lack of information over the phone and I thought he should know. I fussed at my doctor. I had never done that before. His response was to re-explain my condition and mine was to tell him I understood the condition, just not his protocol. I told him that I didn't appreciate waiting and paying $35 and writing sub plans for my students and using one of my sick days and not having enough money for the parking garage and having to scrounge for pennies in my car and arriving at 7:50 to be seen at 9:05! I was miffed. I still am.
My options are to have another FNA done in the same exact spot, which, by the way, is still bruised a week later, or to monitor it over time with sonograms. It's all just something that I wish would go away.

When I left the doctor's office, I drove through downtown and spotted a legless man wheeling himself along the sidewalk with a huge smile on his face. I'm going to be fine.

Cisneros.
Kane shared one of her poems with me today. I love that I can be in the midst of menial, everyday tasks and Boom! poetry is in my hands and it moves me and I swim in the words and I want to reread it.

Sandra Cisneros is also quite real.

Kane's assignment was to use her piece as a model to write a similar poem of his own history, interests, qualities. In his typical teenage reaction, he asked me to google it since he didn't feel like digging it out of his backpack again. The poem is You Bring Out the Mexican in Me.
Anyway, here's my inspired poem:

You bring out the yat in me.
When the bile in my gut brews
and words from my mouth spew
The yat in me can he heard
No g for my -ing endin'
I hear Kimberle curse Louie
and David's pretendin'
You bring out the yat in me
Now that I'm here, awol, overboard
Slashed the umbilical cord
You bring out the yat in me
When we eat at a franchise or
the same ol' chinese buffet,
I want fried oysters, boiled crabs,
shrimp po-boys and etouffee
You bring out the yat in
this suburban straight-lace
Dancing at the screen door
Look into her tired face
A dancer no more
You bring it out of me
The yat in me
right below the surface, 

seeping through each pore
My city, not just location, not just lore
It's in me! It's alive
Oft I wish to abort it, but it's mine.
Life would be easier without the yat in me.
There's labor in living with memory.

Painting by Pablo Picasso