Summer 2018 - Maddy addition

I've got a summer update coming. I started it today for lack of something to discuss but as I wrote I realized I have a lot to say. Surprise! Not really though. When have I not had anything to say? Don't answer that. For those that have found this website and who have stayed for the excellent writing and wit let them continue along in their ignorant bliss...

Summer used to mean the kids at home 24/7 and some traveling. Okay, sometimes lots of traveling. I loved it. I loved, and still do, having my kids home all the time. I can remember though worrying about how they weren't going to learn responsibility without jobs since I had a summer job since the age of 14. Jeez. Now I look back on that thought and wish I'd stopped worrying long enough to enjoy what I did have because once they started working, well, I lost my summer buds. But that is the story of my life currently, worrying instead of enjoying. I'm working on that this summer.

Summer now is different just like my life. Today's entry is regarding Kid #1. Madison opted to stay behind at school to take a couple of summer classes she somehow decided she needed for her future. Maybe she just needed independence but she stayed in NC. Luckily, she was able to summer RA and continue that job in the room she lived in for the past school year. In August she will have to move to the building next door because apparently, her boss believes in switching things up, but she has assured us she will enlist the help of able-bodied college suckers friends to aid her in that project. It will be the first August I haven't moved her, and while that is just another fact for me to bemoan, part of me is relieved not to have to do that work in the miserable heat.

Before school ended she mentioned something about her left ear. I vaguely remember thinking that it was in her earlobe, a bump, and brushed it off to heavy earrings. When Tom and I were in NC to visit her she had me feel it, and truthfully, I vaguely remember doing so. My response was that she needed to have that looked at and when I got home I researched a dermatologist in that area, sent her the information, and gave her money to do that. Then I promptly forgot. Out of sight, out of mind. Sometimes I remembered when we were Facetiming, but it wasn't until she brought it up during one of those times and said something along the lines of the lump getting bigger and being sore that I decided to pay better attention.

The dermatologist couldn't see her until the following week but all was good, blah, blah, blah. Then she turned the phone around so that I could see it. Holy, Jumpin' Jupiters! I don't know what I had been thinking all of this time, but it wasn't what I saw. The lump, the size of superball, was behind her earlobe on her head and it was purple, swollen, and red around the edges. Or so I thought, but after I'd calmed down from my freak out and had taken another look I decided it wasn't infected, but I wasn't willing to take that chance. I sent her to the campus doctor.

Where he cut into what was a cyst, drained it, stitched it and sent her on her way. It wasn't infected so she didn't have to take medication but she did have to leave the bandage on for several days. When she returned for a follow-up he was happy with everything. She asked if she could stop with the bandaging and he told her no worries as long as she wasn't heading into the woods. Which she was actually planning on doing that very weekend. So, she had to keep the bandage on for her weekend of hiking in the mountains.

The dermatologist agreed with the procedure when she got a look at it but the cyst was already starting to fill again and she recommend that Madison come back to her for surgery to remove it. The campus doctor saw her to remove the stitches, remarked on the re-filling of the cyst, and recommended she come to him for the surgery to remove it. Seriously? Someone take the damn thing out! She's coming home for a quick three-day visit in July so if it doesn't look good then maybe I'll make her see her home dermatologist. Have a third opinion. What the hell?

All of this wasn't without incidence, mind you. She missed the bus that would take her to the dermatologist's office so she walked. It was a 35-minute walk and she had no water and no sunscreen. She walked through neighborhoods to avoid the highway and an elderly man pulled alongside her concerned that she needed a ride due to her pale, ghostly skin in the sun. She refused that, thank goodness, and since I didn't hear about it until after the fact, my freak-out was minimal. I think.

So, daughter #1 is handling life like the adult she is without Mommy's help. Well, mostly without my help. I'm dealing without her here for the summer, working hard at not reminiscing on the summers of yesteryear. Such is our new life. Such is the summer of 2018.