TRIGGER WARNING: GROSS STUFF

Today I had one of the more bizarre experiences of my life: the stereotactic biopsy.

It was ordered after a routine mammogram revealed microscopic calcifications that were not there last year. Women over 40 should have a mammogram every year for this reason, even though it is about as fun as the first level of hell to have your girls squished between two glass plates, especially when your girls are as small and difficult to squish as mine.

Do it anyway, ladies.

So today I took the day off work and went in. I'm going to describe it because hell, someone might benefit.

You lay down on this table. They told me the table can only be lifted if you weigh less than 300 pounds, and boy, would you be surprised at how many people these days are more than 300 pounds, and then since the table can't be lifted, the doctors have to work on their knees. I'm going to assume a doctor doing a biopsy on his or her knees is a cranky doctor, and you want anyone shooting needles into your lady bits to be in a GOOD MOOD, so note to everyone, make it to 299 before the biopsy.

The situation is in a stereotactic biopsy they raise the table and drop the offending area through it and smash it between two glass plates and pump it full of a numbing device that also contains some sort of ephedrine. As I lay there in a really uncomfortable position, the breast care consultant or whatever her title was put a warming blanket over me, put her arm on my back in a most comforting way and led me through a series of questions clearly designed to get me to not concentrate on the fact the doctor was extracting six tissue samples from my breast by the means of a hollow needle.

This woman was very good at her job.

I was pretty much okay until I saw the tray of the tissue samples, which they ran through the X-ray. I saw the calcifications (if that's what they are) that had been removed. And I realized I had a hole roughly the size of a pinhead that went down to the chest wall of my breast.

They congratulated themselves for getting most of the calcifications on the tissue samples and gave me some band-aids. I was feeling really weird at this point, which they attributed to the pain medication and my fairly young age (I don't get that except maybe psychosomatic feelings of immortality). We went into the mammogram room again, where the mammogram machine was LED-equipped and gave off a trippy range of LED colors while I was being smashed again and worried the bandage would not seal the hole in me.

I asked to see the metal clip they left behind to identify the area. It is really small, but it is another piece of metal in me, just like the plate on my leg, adding to my cyborg-ness.

I had a panic attack after the last mammogram. The nice lady said that wasn't so uncommon, to freak out at the end.

Then I went home. I forgot there was a hole in me and pulled in the cat cage and ended up needing a butterfly bandage to rectify the situation.

And tomorrow I go to work. Like everything is normal, except maybe with an Ace bandage wrapped around my chest.

I hope I don't bleed there. God.

I hope this is the end of it, but I'll take whatever comes next. What happened today was the most bizarre thing outside childbirth I've ever experienced. At least everyone around me at the time was willing to say, yeah, this is cray, we hear you. Because sometimes that's all you need, like, OMG, this is happening now, right? Right. Oh, well.

Onward.

I'm reading this book about willpower. Dan Wegner had read that a Russian writer bet his younger brother that he couldn't go five minutes without thinking about a white bear. The brother lost the bet.

Trying not to think about something is exhausting. Riding the ridiculous adrenaline roller coaster of anxiety disorder is exhausting. Having a good reason makes the temptation to ruminate harder to resist.

What I'm trying to use, this time, are positive role models.

At my last mammogram, the doctor told me I have a cluster of something that needs to be biopsied. The consult is on Monday. I have no idea how long I'll have to wait to actually do the biopsy and get the results.

I'm trying not to think about white bears, or as they're otherwise known, breast cancer. I think about them approximately five times an hour when I'm awake and once a dream when I'm asleep.

I've been out of the financial/job woods fewer than 90 days.

Back to the book: I have willpower fatigue. It is not in my nature to be upbeat and resilient. These are learned behaviors I am working on. Whenever you watch the show about the natural disaster, there's always the zen guy and the freaking out guy, and they're in the exact same situation.

I'm trying to learn to be the zen guy, because if I do have cancer, freaking out will be totally counter-productive.

I look to my two dear friends and one SIL who have successfully navigated this path to prop myself up against the fear. If it is, it is. I'll work my hardest to be the zen guy.

I'm grateful this didn't happen when I was unemployed, because it took all my energy to just buoy myself from morning to night then. A medicine I needed got denied at that time so I went without, and my Vitamin D fell to dangerous levels. Even now, I'm low, and the struggle is real. The thought of working with a husband traveling and adding on any other health energy drains is sort of terrifying, I'll admit.

It's exhausting to listen to myself talk, really.

So I thank you, role models, strong women who batted away breast cancer in a matter of months due to early detection, who make me think even if it's bad news I can knock it out with minimal collateral damage. You made it look good, ladies. You gave me hope.

My prayer is not that I don't have breast cancer, but that I possess the resilience to deal with whatever comes my way.

I'm trying to become the zen guy. But yes, I would also like a rest break, do you hear me, God? It's me, Rita.

Don't think about white bears, He says.

Today I ate my lunch from a Tupperware-like-thing branded The Pioneer Woman. As I ate soup from this vessel, I mentioned to my new co- workers that I know Ree Drummond, have met her on a number of occasions and she is modest enough to introduce herself as someone who writes about cows, which is what I remember from the day when I sat beside her at BlogHer speaker training years ago, before the cookware line and TV show.

It is so weird trying to reconcile those days to now.

Trying to explain blogging in its heyday to nonbloggers who don't still get pitches for things I have no platform nor professional reason to cover. To explain that PR people still have me in some Guy Kawasaki list when I haven't covered Mother's Day in years.

I hit unsubscribe and feel weird that this is no longer my beat after spending a decade covering just that.

To read the MediaBistro headlines of another series of journalistic layoffs.

To realize that time has passed.

But it's okay. That was fun. It's time now to embrace AI, VR, a new generation of influence. I'm not primarily concerned with the bleeding edge now. I have a biopsy to schedule and a new job and a new career to manage. I'm not really your girl for Boppy technology. I'm more into YA novels and parenting a teenager. Please update your lists.

I look now to the female leaders in their third act, as I approach it. Show me Sheryl With the Rich Hair. Show me how to be mentored and to mentor. Show me what is next, now.

I'm only 43. I have a lot of career left. What do I focus on now?

I'm beta shopping my next novel. ritajarens@gmail.com if you want to weigh in. Onward.

There are so many conversations that have transpired since I've taken a "normal" job that I'd like to process here. But my girl ... she is 13. She gets to curate her online self. There are lines as parents we should not cross.

Perhaps it'll work its way into a novel someday, as so many of my existential thoughts do.

Suffice it to say, I always thought I'd use her real name at 13. Let her own her identity. But now I wonder if the world has moved on to the extent that who I am matters zero percent to who she is. My identity is different now. It's just not that important to make any sort of statement.

I'm kind of glad.

The world has moved on. I listen to short stories on my commute and I don't read Facebook because for some reason it always makes me sad and I have realized that my girl is her own person who has only by birth to do with me and that is a cause for celebration, not remorse.

I'm changing, again. Not sure what happens next, but I know two things: I am her mother. I am a writer. I will find a way to safely reconcile those things.

Earlier this week, my publisher at Chicago Review Press called me. Hearing her voice reminded me of the thrill I felt ten years ago, standing in a conference room at H&R Block corporate HQ hearing my first book had just been bought. And I sold it all by myself.

She was calling to say it was time. There were three boxes left, total. Did I want to buy them?

I reveal this with the intention of giving aspiring authors a gift. Sometimes you hit the five reprint lottery, and sometimes you are lucky to help start a category but don't own it. Hey, them's the breaks.

I can safely say I'm in a good mental health place because being asked if I want to buy the final physical copies of SIFTW didn't make me cry. I just bought them. I'm going to do a workshop on publishing of which they'll be part, but mostly I hold them to treasure the memory of the excitement and wonder and pride I felt in 2008 because I told myself when I was 12 I'd publish a book, and now I've done it twice. And I gave a copy of SIFTW to my new co-worker with twins and he said his first book had come out goddamn never.

SIFTW lives on now only digitally. But it still happened. OMG, you guys, that was the best. I'm not even embarrassed to admit how excited I was at this thing blogging that would give normal
people a platform from which to jump beyond themselves.

Those were lovely days. I was lucky to participate.

So I have 64 pounds of books in my library and my husband and daughter are rolling their eyes, but I've given up Rita the blogger and Rita the speaker. I don't care if my books go out of print. I remain Rita the author.

Goddamnit. It is glorious. And it is not yet over. I will it so. Onward.