Sleepless night

So last night I awoke to the sound of snoring. I got really mad, sat up, looked at Chris to wake him up and yell at him, and then I realized they were coming from Athena! :-P

One step from squamous cell carcinoma

So let me preface this by saying that since this was caught early, everything's fine. I've been going back and forth about whether to write about this because it's pretty personal, but it's something fairly prominent in my life, fresh on my mind (I got the results this morning), kind of scary, and a good lesson to all my peeps to double X chromosomes.

Two heart thumpers:

#1 When you get called to see the doctor to get your results, generally not a good sign.
#2 When the doctor gives you a copy of your test results and "STAT RESULTS!" is written in the upper corner, generally not a good sign.

So here's the different cervical cell abnormalities:

Epithelial cell abnormality
SQUAMOUS CELL
Atypical squamous cells
atypical squamous cell changes of undetermined significance ASC-US
cannot exclude high grade intraepithelial lesion ASC-H
LSIL - low-grade squamous intraepithelial dysplasia
encompassing: HPV/mild dysplasia/CIN1
HSIL - high-grade squamous intraepithelial dysplasia
encompassing: moderate or severe dysplasia, CIS/CIN-2,CIN-3
-with features suspicious for invasion (if invasion suspected)
Squamous cell carcinoma

I started off at ascus, had a colposcopy with biopsies done (results fine), then went to low-grade, had another colposcopy with biopsies done (results fine), and the news this morning is that the cells have progressed to high-grade. GREAT. With the old guidelines, I would have gotten the leep procedure done right away with the first sign of abnormal cells, but those guidelines have changed and that's why I had colpos done instead. I won't go into what the leep is...you can google it if you're curious.

My doctor was sure to tell me that my cells are still not cancerous (yay), but it's sobering looking at the information above and seeing I'm one line away from 'carcinoma'. In reality a lot of things occur between HSIL & SCC, but on paper, it's quite scary.

I also found the following information:

Abnormal Class	Regression to Normal	Progression to higher grade over 24 Months	Progression to invasive cancer over 24 Months
ASCUS	68%	7%	0.25%
LGSIL	47%	21%	0.15%
HGSIL	35%	23%	1.44%

How accurate this is, I don't know. I see both good and bad in this table.

The next step is to talk to the doctor that did the colpos and see what she recommends. My other doctor (the one I spoke to this morning) is recommending the leep procedure, but he hasn't seen the pathology results.

The moral of this story: get yearly paps done. Even if you're a dude. Just kidding! And if they say come back in 4-6 months for another one, DO IT. Don't assume abnormal cells will automatically regress. I shudder to think what might have transpired had I not sucked it up and scheduled these appointments. Because let's face it, these are not the most enjoyable appointments in the world.

I was about to say I'd rather get another kidney stone than have a pap, but that's not true. Haha! Having a kidney stone is a pretty miserable experience.

Hug your refrigerator day

Refrigerators are like muscles, you take them for granted until you don't have the use of them. Wait. Huh??

Anyway, if you've been following my blog religiously, you probably know I've had some refrigerator problems. It started back in September when the repair guy put a new relay switch in and supposedly fixed it. It died again on Super Bowl Sunday and then acted weird (aka started working again) when the repair guy came out to fix it.

Well, it died again last night. I called the same repair dude this morning and he said he wouldn't be able to get here today. So I yelled, "Screw it!" (not really, but I thought it really loud) and called other repair people until I found a guy that could make it out today. Long story short: the compressor is dead. $500-$600 to fix it (labor included in that price). I might as well buy a new refrigerator! This last statement was backed up by my dad to whom I called to vent.

EXCEPT, I don't have a job to pay for a new refrigerator. My oh so wonderful fiance offered to use his savings to get a new one, but we ultimately decided to be thrifty and move the crappy refrigerator from the closet under the carport into the house. It works fine I guess. It's really old, rusty, and the ice maker is kind of funky. We didn't ever use ice anyway...but that was because we had one of those refrigerator water spouts. I'm wishing now that I hadn't gotten rid of my Brita pitcher. DARN IT!

A funny aside: while my fiance was moving the refrigerator into the house the refrigerator door opened and everything came flying out, including a jar of pasta sauce that broke and splattered sauce everywhere! Mmmmm...yummy.

Maybe we could register for a new refrigerator? Perhaps the better choice is a Brita pitcher. ;o)

Scrapblog to the rescue

So I decided to take this invitation thing into my own hands and played around with Scrapblog for a while today. I came up with something I really like and I'm still deciding whether I want to post the pictures here or not. I don't want to ruin the surprise. Haha...whatever, I'll probably end up posting them.

Shout out to El Pinto!

Ah, the hidden benefits of Facebook.

There's an awesome mexican restaurant in Albuquerque called El Pinto.

They created a Facebook profile and requested my friendship.

I got to thinking about the restaurant and put as my status: Nicole misses El Pinto.

They saw my status and sent me a message that they're going to send me some salsa!

How nice of them! SWEET!

Those hellions!

This is what I stumbled upon the other day...





My guess it that there was a vole or something living in that hole and one of the dogs sniffed it out. They then dug up the flower bed trying to get a hold of it. Dogs. Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.