If Animals Could Talk, What Might They Say?

Have you ever looked at your pet and wondered what they might say if they could talk? I do. I assume that Lotta, the wonder cat (pictured) would ask why I don't feed her more often, complain that I leave her alone all day, and explain how I am a terrible, terrible mum.  Mostly she would think I'm terrible because I leave her alone all day, don't feed her all the time, and bug her when she wants to sleep.  Such a terrible mum.

BBC One's Funny Talking Animals - Walk On The Wild Side created a bunch of clips of animals "talking". Okay, animals talking is funny enough, but add a British accent and it's just hilarious!  Yes, this video is silly and ridiculous, but it is one of the funniest videos I've ever seen.  If you have about 10 minutes to spare, take a look. I dare you not to laugh!

The Three Month Checkup... (A Cancer Update)

Here's the latest on the cancer front:

As I mentioned a couple of weeks back, I needed to get an MRI to check to see if there were brain metastases because of a never-ending headache. In addition to the MRI, it was time for my 3 month cancer check and another CT to see what was going on with the lung nodules.  Saturday, February 22nd, I had an MRI of the brain and the following Tuesday, on the 25th, I had the CT of the chest and abdomen. Today, I met with the oncologist and got the results.

Good news all around.  The lung nodules are currently stable and have not grown. The MRI shows that there are no metastases in the brain. The only problem remaining is that I have no idea what is causing my now 37-day persistent headache.

Next steps:  Go to the eye doctor for a checkup. Perhaps the headache is eye strain because my prescription has changed. If that's not the problem, then it's on to a neurologist to see what might be causing the headaches. Of course, my brother thinks he knows the solution to my headache: "I think I know what the headaches are from. Students. It's my non-professional opinion and belief that you are allergic to stupid students. I know I have a similar reaction to children, stupid people and commitment. I break out in the punching of faces. It's a muscular tick."  He may be onto something, except I don't really have any stupid students.

As for the cancer portion of my medical issues, it's another three month wait until the next check on the lung nodules.

Random Fun Facts!

Here are some fun facts to brighten your day:

• If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.  [Did someone actually do this or is this a math thing?]
• The strongest muscle in proportion to its size in the human body is the tongue. [Yes, men - the tongue!]
• Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour. [Oh, good. I don't have to go to the gym!]
• A person cannot taste food unless it is mixed with saliva. For example, if strong-tasting substance like salt is placed on a dry tongue, the taste buds will not be able to taste it. As soon as a drop of saliva is added and the salt is dissolved, however, a definite taste sensation results. This is true for all foods. [Try it! It's weird.]
• Humans are the only primates that don't have pigment in the palms of their hands.
• Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married. [This does not surprise me.]
• Starfish don't have brains.  [Neither do politicians.]
• The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds (over 300 feet). [Guess the chickens in Chicken Run didn't need a plane.]
• The fingerprints of koala are virtually indistinguishable from those of humans, so much so that they could be confused at a crime scene.  [Next time, blame your crime on a koala.]
• Snails can sleep for 3 years without eating.  [I do not want to be a snail.]
• Armadillos are the only animal besides humans that can get leprosy and can pass it onto humans.  [Don't pick up roadkill!!]
• Porcupines float in water. 
• A male emperor moth can smell a female emperor moth up to 7 miles away. [Guess they don't need a dating site.]
• A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue!  [Perhaps Q-Tips doesn't make big enough cotton swabs.]
• Ten percent of the Russian government's income comes from the sale of vodka.  [Don't buy Russian vodka.]
• The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.  [They were looking to sleep in a comfortable bed.]
• Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history. Spades - King David; Clubs - Alexander the Great; Hearts - Charlemange; and Diamonds - Julius Caesar.
• Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.  [Would it make a murder undetectable?]
• It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up. The frog throws up its stomach first, so the stomach is dangling out of its mouth.Then the frog uses its forearms to dig out all of the stomach's contents and then swallows the stomach back down again.  [That's just nasty.]
• Studies show that if a cat falls off the seventh floor of a building, it has about thirty percent less chance of surviving than a cat that falls off the twentieth floor. It supposedly takes about eight floors for the cat to realize what is occurring, relax and correct itself.  [From a 1987 study of actual cats who fell from high buildings in NYC.]
• Certain frogs can be frozen solid, then thawed, and survive.  [Then cooked up for dinner.]
• A rat can last longer without water than a camel. 
• To escape the grip of a crocodile's jaws, push your thumbs into its eyeballs - it will let you go instantly. [Noted]
• Every person has a unique tongue print. 
• Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time.  [Wow, I can barely walk and chew gum at the same time.]
• Sherlock Holmes never said "Elementary, my dear Watson" in the novels.
• In Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart never said "Play it again, Sam".
• In the TV series I Love Lucy, Ricki Ricardo never actually said "Lucy you have some 'splaining to do".
• The mask used by Michael Myers in the original film Halloween was actually a Captain Kirk mask painted white. [I will never be able to watch Star Trek again.]
• Percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28% Percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38%
• The US Interstate road system was designed so that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.
• The dot over the letter 'i' and "j" is called a tittle.
• Most lipstick contains fish scales.
• Ketchup was sold in the 1830s as medicine.  [To cure...???]
• The State with the highest percentage of people who walk to work: Alaska.  [Brrrrrrr]

The Realist's Rant!

I am continually being accused by many of my friends of being a pessimist to which I take offense.  I am not a pessimist. Neither am I an optimist. 

I AM A REALIST!  

What's the difference? See that glass of water (pictured). The optimist says, "The glass is half full."  The pessimist says, "The glass is half empty." The realist says, "The glass contains half the required amount of liquid for it to overflow."  

If you require another example, let's take my now 32 day straight persistent headache, which I mentioned in a previous post. The optimist says, "I don't have brain tumors."  The pessimist says, "I have brain tumors."  The realist says, "Considering my recent medical issues, I may or may not have brain tumors." There's a significant difference between these three sentences. If you read carefully my Never-Ending Headache posting, I say specifically: "I am not saying that's what I have [brain tumors]. I'm saying that among other things, it could be brain metastases." That is the realistic stance on my headache. Do I know for sure what is going on with my headache? No, I am awaiting the test results.

As long as we are talking reality, here are my realities of three important facets of life: 

1. Health: My cancer has a 15-20% 5-year survival rate, which means there's an 80-85% chance that I will be pushing up daisies before I'm 52.  That's statistics (facts).
2. Love: I will most likely live out the remainder of my days alone, because I refuse to run the risk of letting my heart to be broken again. (Particularly as it's still shattered into a million little pieces.)  Choice.
3. Career: Due to my abysmal 45% passing rate, there is a chance that I will be searching for a new position this summer. More statistics (facts).

While these statements might seem to be sad and negative, they are not. They are simply my reality. I admit that I will never be someone who sees the glass as half full. That's just not in my nature, but never accuse me of being a pessimist.

Ha! This made me laugh!

The Overachiever Mentality...

What is it about some people (myself included) that makes them be an overachiever with everything? I know several people who fit into the slacker mentality (sadly, some of my students), but I know many more overachievers. What are the components of being an overachiever?

Overachievers will spend 50 hours to put together a 10 minute presentation for the PTA. They feel like they are losers if they have less than a 4.0 GPA. Generally, overachievers are the first to arrive at work and the last to leave and rarely take breaks or lunch.  Sound familiar? It does to me.

Today I realized that I might have a problem with being an overachiever. You see I was desperate to make sure that I didn't move a muscle for the 30 minutes as I was getting my MRI. After all I had to be the best of the best patients. I'm like that all the time. Anything I do, I have the need to make sure that I'm the best at what I'm doing. Failure is an option, but it's an option that I detest.

Apparently that's not exactly a healthy way to live, as there is a downside to being an overachiever. According to The Field Guide to the Overachiever by Psychology Today, "People driven to overachieve are motivated by an unhealthy compulsion to show they are worthy. 'Overachievers have an underlying fear of failure or a self-worth contingent upon competence,' says University of Rochester psychologist Andrew Elliot. 'Rather than setting and striving for goals based on a pure desire to achieve, their underlying motivation impels them out into the world to avoid failure.'" We are perfectionists in an imperfect world. <gasp>

How do you avoid the pitfalls of being an overachiever? Here are a few things I've learned over the years:

1. Say "no" occasionally. Do you find yourself constantly saying "yes" to every request and find yourself overbooked. Just say "no".
2. Stop criticizing yourself. Accept that you're not perfect and that things are out of your control.
3. Prioritize! Stop trying to do it all at once.
4. Run your own race! Don’t get caught up in comparing your successes to your siblings, friends, co-workers, etc.
5. Take vacations. Making sure that you take the time to relax and rejuvenate is important.

This advice is definitely in the "physician heal thyself" category as I struggle with each of these issues on a daily basis. I actually had to force myself to take time to read for pleasure this past week. Otherwise, I would have spent the entire week reading essays, lesson planning, and doing grad work. Of course, I had to do some of that this week, but I also managed to read about 5 books just for fun. But now I'm struggling not to feel guilty because I didn't complete the work that I had to do. <sigh> It's a vicious circle.

Where do you fit in on the achievement scale? Take the "Are You an Overachiever or Underachiever" Quiz. It's not hard to figure out which category I fell into.

The Never-Ending Headache! A Cancer Update...

I didn't think I would be posting a cancer update this soon as it is not quite 3 months since my last update, but...

On Monday, January 27, I woke up with a headache and it has been with me ever since! I fall asleep and it's there. I wake up and it's there. It's like carrying a permanent piece of luggage around. At first, I didn't think much of it. While it is not a debilitating headache, it is annoying to have this constant pain. On a pain scale of 1-10, it's usually around a 4. It's a tension-type headache - meaning that it creates a band of pain around my head.

I thought perhaps that it was a sinus infection, but the symptoms are all wrong for sinusitis.  Then after a day or two, I thought it might be a water enhancer I was using, which was sweetened with sucralose. Side effects of sucralose for some people are headaches. I cut that out of my diet and still the headache remained. After day 11, I started getting concerned, mostly because the headache is not the only problem that I have been having. Adding to the painful head are dizzy/vertigo spells, phonophobia, neck pain, and mild depression. Joy! All of which are side effects to brain tumors. Now, I am not saying that's what I have. I'm saying that among other things, it could be brain metastases.

The three places that endometrial cancer most often spreads to are liver, lung, and brain. As we know, my cancer has already spread to my lungs, but my brain had never been scanned. Naturally, I start thinking the worst. After a couple of days of playing telephone tag with my oncologist, I finally just made an appointment to see her. Today, I met with her and she decided that it would be wise to schedule an MRI to rule out brain mets. Unfortunately, the hospital was unable to get me an appointment for a brain scan until Saturday. I will have a further update after the scan.

Until then, think happy thoughts and hope that it's not the worst case scenario.

Are You a Psychopath?

According to Oxford psychologist Kevin Dutton, author of The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success, lawyers, CEOs, and media personalities top the list for professions chosen by psychopaths. Conversely, care aides, nurses, and therapists are the least psychopathic professions. Check out the list below for the top 10 for each category:

The word "psychopath" generally conjures up thoughts of Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, or fictional character Hannibal Lecter, but actually, as Dutton explores in his book, being psychopathic doesn’t necessarily make you a serial killer. “A psychopath is someone with a distinct cluster of personality traits, including narcissism, persuasiveness and a lack of conscience,” he says. Perhaps unsurprisingly these traits can often be found in successful business figures. A 2011 study suggested one in 25 CEOs make it to the top because of their inherent ‘psychopathic’ traits, such as an ability to manipulate any situation. Having supported enough CEOs and attorneys in my 25 years in the business world, I can concur that these traits fit many of them to a T, particularly the CEOs.

“Psychopathy lies on a spectrum,” adds Dutton. “Some of us may score higher on some traits than on others.” But accordingly, unless you score high on all of them (and are naturally inclined to be violent), you’re not likely to find yourself the subject of Quentin Tarantino's next movie.

The natural question that comes up when viewing this list is: Why these specific professions? The obvious answer is that for the most part the careers on the left offer up much more of a feeling of power than the ones on the right do. In addition, while some of the jobs on the left certainly provide the potential for human connections, the jobs in the right-hand column stress empathy on a day-to-day basis. Indeed, a requirement for being a good nurse or therapist is the capacity to empathize with one's fellow human beings. Of course, there are outliers with everything, like serial killing nurses and compassionate caring CEOs (i.e., Australia's Ken Grenda, CEO and Owner of Grenda Corp.).

It's interesting that surgeons are considered psychopaths and doctors are not. Maybe it's the whole "I'm a god when doing surgery" thought process that makes the difference. Also strangely, chefs are on the psychopath list. So perhaps anyone who wields a knife has the capacity to be a psychopath. What's that say about my favorite television chef, Gordon Ramsay, or my brother who has been a chef for 30+ years? Hmmmm...

If you're wondering where you fit on the list, you can take Dutton's Psychopath Challenge on his website. Thankfully I scored low on the psychopath scale -- a mere 12 out of 33. I guess I'm safe... or rather others are safe from me.