3/21/11 – Today we are dealing with the important/tough questions – To cry or not to cry over spilt milk? Why would someone cry over spilt milk is the real question.
I don’t know why this is an important thing, but I remember growing up hearing the phrase “don’t cry over spilt milk”. Why not? Maybe you really wanted that milk and now you don’t have any more. I know I would cry if I had a stack of Oreo’s all ready to be dunked in milk and I split my last glass on the counter.
The reason I proposed this question was because I had a milk incident yesterday that made me contemplate whether to cry or not to cry. Todd left the house early yesterday to golf and I was alone to wake myself up in time to get ready for church. As I mentioned in my blog yesterday I had not slept well and mornings are just not my thing. I dragged myself out of bed in just enough time to shower and get dressed. I am a true believer in the power of breakfast (I don’t understand how people can skip it). I prepared a nice bowl of cereal and grabbed the milk. When I raise the milk carton I noticed a nice puddle of milk on my refrigerator shelf – gross. My milk was leaking! I poured some milk into my cereal bowl and placed the carton in the sink. I then mopped up the milk on the refrigerator shelf and started to think about what I could do to solve the problem. This is where the question to cry or not to cry came into play. I suffer from an acute case of chemo brain, also known as slow brain syndrome. I ran through the most outrageous things to do with this milk – place a paper towel under the carton to soak up the drippage (new word alert – drippage – the excess amount of fluid resulting from a drip)? Now that was just a silly idea. I would be causing more harm than good and not really solving the problem. Think. Think. Think. There had to be a left over milk carton in the recycle bin! Of course! I dumped out the recycling and found one milk carton. You would think that a milk carton would maintain its original shape because recycling is pretty light, except for the glass items. Nope. It was smushed. Idea! I would use a wooden spoon to pop out the dented pieces of the plastic carton. I did that and then thoroughly cleaned the carton. I have a fear of sour milk and I wanted to make sure that this carton had been cleaned properly before pouring my fresh milk in. After my dent repair and cleaning I poured my fresh milk into the old carton. Disaster averted. No crying necessary. Now if you looked in my fridge you would see a milk carton that says March 13, but don’t fear it is perfectly safe to drink!
So, where did the phrase “don’t cry over spilt milk” come from in the first place? Well, let me tell you. The phrase came about during the Great Depression because the price of milk had fallen so much because there was more available in the market than the demand. Dairy farmers were subsidized by the state to throw out their surplus to bring the prices back to a profitable level. The article I found on this said that practice in any system other than a capitalist enterprise would be “utterly absurd” and so that created the need for propaganda and a cute phrase like “don’t cry over spilt milk”! I hope you enjoyed our history lesson of the day.
Now on to our colon cancer fact of the day. www.cancer.org
What is Staging?
Staging is the process of finding out how far the cancer has spread. This is very important because your treatment and the outlook for your recovery depend on the stage of your cancer. For early cancer, surgery may be all that is needed. For more advanced cancer, other treatments like chemotherapy or radiation therapy may be used.
There is more than one system for staging colorectal cancer. Some use numbers and others use letters. But all systems describe the spread of the cancer through the layers of the wall of the colon or rectum. They also take into account whether the cancer has spread to nearby organs or to organs farther away.
Stages are often labeled using Roman numerals I through IV (1-4). As a rule, the lower the number, the less the cancer has spread. A higher number, such as stage IV (4), means a more advanced cancer.
In case any of you were wondering. I was stage IIIC. This means the tumor had attached to my colon wall and was in my lymph nodes; however, it had not spread to any of my other organs. Since it was stage III that is why I need to have chemo to knock out any lingering cancer cells. Based on my PET scan before starting chemo I have no other tumors in my body – which is awesome! I’m basically doing preventative measures to make sure nothing smaller is spreading since a PET scan cannot pick up individual cancer cells – only tumors. The chemo raises my chances of not getting cancer again another 20% from just surgery alone.
If I could have anything to eat I would like a Snickers and a Coke – make that Dr. Pepper! My song of the day is “Hey Sister Pretty” by Hootie and The Blowfish.
Night y’all!
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