Fragile Industries

Happy Birthday, Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation

Courtesy of Wikipedia:

"The first working laser was demonstrated on May 16, 1960 by Theodore Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories."

There was major scientific ferment in my childhood about lasers.  Lots of it at Bell Labs, which engaged in a prolonged patent fight over the focused light beam.  Of course there was lots of nerd energy expended before and after on its demonstration and application.  Wiki "laser" and you can read it all.  For some reason, I was fascinated by lasers as a kid.  I remember watching "Goldfinger" and wincing as James Bond nearly lost his dangly bits to the latest ray gun, a laser.  Details here.  Maybe that was the first time it popped into my consciousness.  Maybe I had heard of it before.  But somewhere in the early-mid-60's, the science of light was big on my baby-nerd radar screen.

Some of the first lasers were dependent on crystal amplification with a ruby.  Ruby is my birth stone.  I had a Junior Rock Hound Kit at home -- I don't know what the educational purpose was, but there were samples of feldspar and quartz and jasper and so on, each neatly contained in its own precisely labeled square on a cardboard grid.  There was a sample of some stone with tiny, non-gem quality ruby inclusions.  That might have captured my attention.  I remember holding up the ruby to sunlight and standing back warily.  Or maybe it was the advance-placement geek-certified science summer school class before 5th grade taught by a Bell Labs nerd.  We both wore coke-bottle thick glasses, he had a crew cut and the first pocket protector I'd ever seen -- I immediately wanted one.  There I first saw fiber optics (this was maybe 1965) -- wow, those little plastic fibers glowed in the dark.  Cool.  I asked him why a succession of mirrors couldn't work to save light forever.  He glowed with pleasure at his superiority, then explained why not.  Turns out mirrors are terribly inefficient, and the speed of light is too fast.  So much for my ideas on secret weapons.  But mirrors were key to laser technology, and he complimented my grasp of the subject.  I had no idea what the hell he was talking about.

Then he treated us, in the elementary school auditorium, to a boffo showcase of the latest Bell Labs neat stuff.  First he demonstrated a -- hold on to your hats -- push button phone.  He challenged poor little Susan Campell to a race.  He gave her the phone we all knew and had at home.  (We didn't have a cell in our backpacks.  This was the dark ages, kiddies.  We were still waiting for our wrist-radio like Dick Tracy.)  In case you weren't born yet, our phone looked like this:

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The Bell guy had buttons.  Poor Susan had to dial while he pushed buttons.  Fixed race.  Of course he won.  I'm sitting there thinking, "Brave new world, saving 30 seconds on phoning home.  Big woop.  He beat a 10-year-old kid.  This is a totally useless invention."

But then he brought out the big guns, literally.  He had an actual laser in his bag of tricks.  He set up a device the size of a sewing machine.  We all shifted uneasily in our seats.  This madman could blow us all up.  That thing for sure would suck the oxygen out of the air, burn down the school, hey, maybe that isn't such a bad idea.  He actually proposed to fire it at the wall.  I waited for Armageddon to let loose, a mushroom cloud over R.D. White Elementary.  With many wizardly flourishes, he fiddled with the controls and pressed buttons and we heard a mild "whoomp."  Right below the school clock a 2-inch diameter pale patch appeared, all the dust and muck of the ages was blown off the institutional green.  We all "ooooohed" appreciatively.  Every school assembly thereafter, my eyes were drawn to that patch.  It faded, new dust and muck adhering over time, but I could still see it years later.

OK, so I didn't grow up to be a scientist, I never developed any application for my fascination, this isn't one of those magic turning point stories.  But still.  At about the same age, I used to quiz my mother's mother (born in 1892) about her encounters with new technologies.  She told me about the first time she saw an automobile, about her first movie (and then she went on to be a silent film actress), and how scared she had been of technological marvels I accepted so casually.

By 1969, lasers were first being used medically.  My aunt, who came to live with our family due to failing health from life-long diabetes, had the broken blood vessels in her eyes experimentally treated with a laser at UCLA.  I expected her to come home with gory dead eye sockets like "Night Of The Living Dead."  Instead, her vision improved marginally for a while.  Ooooooh.  It was still early days.

Now, of course, we all have many lasers in our homes, in DVD and CD players and lots else.  A few years ago, I gave away my coke-bottle glasses after Lasik surgery.  I should have done it years ago.  I had little skin cancers and age spots blown off last year by laser at my dermatologist's office. Lasers are now tame helpers, not the herald of the End of Days.

I don't really have a point here, it's not one of those stories.  I just wanted to mark the 48th birthday of something that was as memorable as my granny's first automobile.  Oooooh.  Brave new world.

Tending My Knitting

Home again, home again, jiggity jog.

As tacky as it is to admit, Vegas was the PERFECT anodyne to all that ailed me.  I billed my trip as "The No Compromise Tour."  I invented a fictional persona and inhabited it for the entire time.  I denied myself nothing.  I had one of the All-Time-Greatest-Meals of my life at Bouchon, Thomas "French Laundry" Keller's bistro at the Venetian.  I lucked into a lavish room at Planet Hollywood.  The bathroom was bigger than my first apartment, literally, and I looked over the Bellagio fountains.  I was alone when, and as much as, I wanted to be, which was most of the time, and the remainder of the time, I flirted shamelessly and -- even better -- got flirted back.  Saw great shows -- Penn and Teller are certifiable, and very entertaining.  I spent 4 hours the first day at the Planet Hollywood spa, three hours the next at Caesar's, and it really did unlock the chi.  Crashed a private nightclub, the lead singer handed me the tambourine and I busted a few spastic white-girl moves on the floor.  I probably danced like Elaine on "Seinfeld", but I felt like, uh, whoever is the cool girl pop tart of the moment.  Pretty much remembered the night before in the morning, so no shame, no regrets.  I'm just on the cusp of being too old for Vegas, and this was the perfect swan song.

When I got home, Mom was alive and well-cared for in my absence, and she remarked on my glowing skin.  "Something tells me that isn't all due to glycolic peels," she said meaningfully, wagging her eyebrows.  I would have wagged them back, but Botox prevented it.  I did, however, smile mysteriously the rest of the day.

Since my return, my mood has been good.  One of the first times I've gone on vacay and not come home to crashing depression -- one of those fun artifacts of bipolar disorder.  Have a good time, then do penance.  Maybe it was all that time in the spa.  Reflexology.  Good food.  Donno, but I'm grateful.

Also have had plenty of energy, so I finished my knitting project du jour, the 40" x 52" baby blanket to go with the baby hats I'm sending to Afghans for Afghans.  I cannot claim credit for all or even most of this great work.  My pal Ade had, years ago, completed dozens of perfect 6" squares in earth tones for a blanket she never finished when the room's color scheme changed.  I remember her knocking them out two or three at a time during Book Club meetings.  All wool, so when she heard of my new wool projects, she graciously sent me the squares and I assembled them with a tedious, row by row blanket stitch in a variegated yarn that almost matched, with pom-pom bits at the intersections.  It's now boxed up and ready to send in tomorrow's post.  I think it's rather nice, but Mom, who goes for a more vivid palette, curled her lip and pronounced it "ethnic" and "perfect for a refugee camp."  I don't think that's a compliment.  What do you think?  The hats, in progress, are here, below are views of the blanket:

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Hey, at least it doesn't show dirt.

While I was otherwise distracted ...

I've been a somewhat abstracted correspondent to the Fragile Industries Chronicles for the past month or so.  The occasional knitting report notwithstanding, I've been not entirely, what, engaged in my ego-driven monologue here.  The thing is, I had a bad mammogram.  After three years of ignoring my duty towards my annual exams.  My bad.  So I waited until I had the whole story.

This health care ignorance was not the result of cheerful denial, but rather due to insurance nonexistence.  Due to my co-insured's decision to not pick up his half of the bills, I decided that $453 a month for both of us was too much to pay by myself so fuck him.  And, unfortunately, fuck myself because, once not under a general health policy, I turned out to be uninsurable on an individual policy, even a catastrophic health policy with a $5,000 deductible.  I had, under the prior joint coverage, the bad taste to go to a loony bin, and future insurers therefore viewed me as a bad risk.  "But I'm not seeking mental health coverage," I said to the various insurers who turned me down.  "Under California law,." said the oh-so-reasonable insurers, "we are required to provide mental health coverage, and we must factor that in.  The lower rates are only available to those who do not present a bad risk for any of these coverages."  What that meant was that I could not obtain individual catastrophic coverage for less than $500 a month.  At those prices, it was cheaper, so I thought, to pay cash and take my chances.  Thanks to whoever decided that mental health coverage was mandatory, therefore an automatic denial was meted out to anyone who had any need not only for mental health coverage, but also more pedestrian health concerns.

So, since 2005, I pretended I did not have breasts or a cervix or uterus.  The annual women's exam was a high-priced exercise in "no news is good news."  Then my dear friend of decades past, my law school study partner, the bride to whom I was bridesmaid and vice versa, got her own bad news about her hooter health and had to face a malignancy.  "What can I do for you?" I asked.  She replied, "Go get a mammogram."  So I faced the out-of-pocket nether zone of "cash patient," found a doctor willing to risk a bad check and went for my annual. This included a blood panel.  My Pap turned out to be the expected non-news event, all clear, but the blood work revealed that my thyroid had dropped to barely perceptible levels.  Much lower and all metabolic function ceases entirely, i.e., death.  Turns out that at least one-third of post-menopausal women have low thyroid.  This would explain a whole lot of things, such as my ebbing energy levels and semi-chronic depression, and the 30-pound weight gain and 30 point cholesterol jump.  Take heed, all women over 50 who read these tales: it could be you.  Within 10 days of one very cheap prescription later, I felt oodles of energy, a lift in spirits, and my skin and hair improved to tameable levels.  I mean, this is a beauty boost, never mind the endrocrinological benefits.  I don't need to look for more and better plastic surgery.  Just take the thyroid pills.

So nothing but good news until my mammogram results.  I had reported to the imaging center and had watched with some amusement as my hooters were compressed to the diameter of tractor tires, and held my breath while some sadist tickled odd, distorted images of my tissues.  A few days later, I got a callback.

Why, when I had the brief illusion that I was an actress, had I never had a callback?  My tits garnered more interest than my 1970's audition monologue from "Waiting for Godot."  So I reported back for more boob compression.  My right tit was deemed unremarkable, but my left garnered me an immediate appointment with the ultrasound room.  There, in a more magisterial gloom and hush than the mammogram room, I was swabbed with cold gel and poked and prodded with a device that resembled a staple gun, and watched as images appeared on the screen that looked like every photo of the Loch Ness Monster ever recorded.  The technician pulled a long face and went to hobnob with her fellow wizards. Then a male radiologist manned the helm, or staple gun, and after much fussing about, pronounced my left titty to be worthy of a biopsy.  I told him that I couldn't tell what the hell was causing the furor, and he was very helpful.  As the first male to have touched me in such regions in two years, he had my attention.  He prodded my fatty tissue about with the gizmo, then pointed to the screen and showed me what looked like a jellybean.  "This," he announced, "is questionable."  It was novel since my 3 year old images.  "It could just be a fibroplasmia something something, but it could be something else."

OK, let's find out, I said.  Well, that took a special needle, on back order, and would be at least three weeks, but don't worry.

Right.

So I had an ultrasound-guided vacuum-needle biopsy scheduled for the 21st of April.  Fine.  I made the appointment, went home in good spirits, then I realized that all these professionals were getting their knickers in a twist about the possibility of CANCER.  The big C.  Let's call it what it might just be.  No more denial.  And I'm uninsured.  I am in an enviable position among the uninsured.  I have family with resources.  Should I need really expensive care, there are bank accounts, not my own, into which I could tap, so I wouldn't be completely without options.  But that pissed me off.  I don't want to bankrupt parents who did nothing more than conceive me and have good moral sense.  And I'm not some feckless will o' the wisp, relying on the kindness of blood kin to bail me out of some malignancy.  I'd tried to do the responsible thing for health care, and had been shown the door marked "bad risk."

I went to my best friend, the internet, and found a plan within Medi-Cal called "Every Woman Counts."  Based on income only, not assets, it guarantees every woman whose income is below a certain level to annual exams and coverage for female bad news, like cervical or breast cancer.  Over the phone, I was qualified and was then sent a package of information and lists of appropriate folks with whom I could consult.  I brought them my reports, mammo and ultrasound screens, and they agreed that the biopsy was the logical next step.

I let slip my uncertain cellular status to a select few angels, and asked for good thoughts on the day of the biopsy.  I was, to a humbling degree, rewarded with email, phone, snail mail and other support, and promises of prayer and other sacrifices to my heavenly credit.

It's hard to pick out the most blatant demonstration of love, but bragging rights probably go to my dear pal who shall remain nameless.  He's been witness to much bad behavior, my compradre, and partner in crime since 1990.  He performed the wedding ceremony for my most recent ex-husband and myself in 1995.  When I told him of my situation and that I was uninsured, he drawled, "Well, I married you once already, sugar."  My dear darling big gay brother would  share his excellent health benefits with me in the only way recognized by the legal system, as that system would deny him those benefits and rights should he have a spouse of the same gender.  "We've always been outlaws, honey," he purred.  I have never been so grateful for a proposal, and this was not my first.  I have never, also, been the recipient of such a gesture of absolute love and generosity.  After a few hours to mull it over, I accepted, provisionally, the proposal.   If the results of the biopsy were positive, with all that might entail, I would become his wife.

My mother (my roommate, here in Bakersfield-by-the Sea, at Casa de Gray Gardens) was over the moon, of course, and was having fun planning a beach wedding.  Mom would be best man or bridesmaid, depending on her whim, and she would finance a white linen Armani suit for the groom.  My groom's mother, another Dorothy, aged 82 or so, could be flower girl, and maybe, just for symmetry, we could talk my most recent ex-husband into pronouncing the vows.  It all escalated into wonderful heights of silliness while we avoided thinking about what might bring it all about.

The morning (mind you, this was an EARLY morning) of my exam, just as I'd fished my keys out of the black hole I call my purse and I was heading my newly bathed and shaved bodily parts towards the door, I got a call from the imaging center.  The radiologist would be out that day.  I would have to wait a week.  I rescheduled, as that was my only option, but I warned the other end of the line that if I heard the radiologist had merely been improving his golf game, there would be blood on the walls.  I never got an explanation or excuse, but I'm willing to cut him some slack.  I alerted the prayer circle of the delay and joked that the saved-up prayers, good intentions and incense would not only spare me bad news on the biopsy, my jellybean would have disappeared entirely when I reported to the hushed enclave of the ultrasound room.

This last Monday, I underwent the biopsy, which also included 1) the complete removal of as much of the jellybean by means of a gigantic needle and heroic suction as was visible by ultrasound, 2) the implantation of a titanium chip at the jellybean's former location should that become relevant for further surgical or radiological procedures, 3) a final compression and mammogram of my left hooter from several angles to document removal of jellybean and location of bionic woman titanium chip.  The biopsy procedure included administration of painkillers at various tissue depths with needles of increasing circumference, and a secondary administration of a needle as wide as a #2 pencil with vacuum assist, which emitted a noise far less reassuring than a dentist's drill.  I found new applications for my lessons in self hypnosis and monitored the tension in my knees and jaw and toes, willing them to relax while I slipped into a lovely beta state of stupidity.

The personnel attendant on the procedure were fabulous, gave me all appropriate warnings, cautions for future after care, and assurances that I would receive the results within 48 hours.  I went home and conducted a phone barrage of messages to ensure that I would be informed of the results by anyone able to read and speak at the other end of the fax-machine payout.  I then retreated into a quivering mass under the covers with an ice pack over the bruised, sore and swollen left hooter and was hateful to one and all.  For the continued health of my mother, who is dependent on me for the mail, morning coffee, and basic nutrition, I had frozen dinners perched in the microwave and told her to have at them.  In the meantime, I alternately froze my swollen, hot left hooter and scratched at the adhesive on the compression bandage.

Within 24 hours, the radiologist gave me the good news: benign.  And no threat of the jellybean's revenge, as it was, to all intents, completely gone, sucked away in the needle.  My joke had come true: it was not only a negative test, the blob was gone.  Prayers work. 

So I've sent a swift global email to the prayer circle, including the jilted bridegroom.  All recipients have been stellar support, and I've been staggered by the warm response.  In the meantime, I wanted to go to a spa next week for R'nR.  Turns out there ain't a hot springs hotel, mud bath vendor, etc. in California that will permit drinking and smoking and bad behavior on the premises.  We must all take our Purification and Detoxification very seriously.

Fuck that.

I'm going to Vegas, where drinking and smoking are almost required by statute.  I'm not a gambler, I don't get throwing money away like that, but I can have a massage and facial in my room while surrounded with bottles of Crystal.  I don't plan on putting that to the test, but I like the idea that I can go raise hell and sign up for the Hangover Special Reflexology the next morning.  Wish me luck.  I've got a lot of living to do, and the wedding's off.

On the other hand, I'm still knitting like a fiend.  Hope to God I find a better use of my time in Sin City.  I'd promise an on-the-road report, but remember, What happens in Vegas ...