Perspectives!

When I went back to my office after teaching yesterday afternoon, the message lights were on on my cell and on my office phone - call the Breast Care team.  There were two messages from my husband letting me know that they'd called home, too.  I was pretty nervous, and the fact that it took the nurse five minutes to pull up my record while I sat there shaking didn't help.

But the results were good!  Just will probably have to go in for more frequent and regular mammograms, but I'll take that over a worse outcome!

It made me think about perspectives.  This was a perspective-changing week for me - even knowing that many, many women go through this all the time.  I have a lot of friends - even though most of them are not on my island - who will listen to me and support me.  I really need to be more proactive about my health - I kept thinking if I did have cancer, and if I did die from it, I would pretty ticked that it was three years between mammograms and it was all my fault for ignoring all those helpful reminding emails that it was that time again....  And finally, just because I hate videotaping or recording myself in any way, being afraid of that should not stop me from applying for National Board Certification.  I even spoke up (on a microphone - also on list of least favorite things to do) in front of the whole faculty (scary) about something I considered wrong. 

I told myself that if this diagnosis was good, I would apply.  It means taking a lot of tests (I am okay with tests), videotaping two lessons and writing no more than 13 pages of analysis on both, and collecting samples of student work, commenting on them, and writing oodles of pages reflecting on my practice as a teacher.  Having that certificate would allow me to teach anywhere in the country with a minimum of fuss (teacher licensing is a bear, let me tell you), give me a raise for the duration of the license, and give me a few more letters to add after my name, if I should be so inclined.  I would rather have a doctorate, but that's not even in the realm of affordability - and would not actually lead to a raise, since I have 3 degrees and oodles of post-bac credits (I like school, what can I say?). 

So, I am grateful for this scary week - it feels like that a phone call that took away the fear of a bad diagnosis also took away some of the other fears that I have - like taking blinders off.  I appreciate the comments, prayers, positive thoughts from everyone.

Now, we can get back to our regularly scheduled programming.....