White Blood Cells at Helms Deep

Since I was diagnosed with cancer, I've done a great amount of thinking.  Maybe that's part of the process, or maybe it's just that I live mostly in my head.  A couple of weeks ago, while I was sitting in my office at Germ Central Elementary School, I started thinking about white blood cells.  For those who forgot to read that chapter in Biology, white blood cells are the body's way of defending us against the many microscopic organisms that we encounter over our lifetimes.

When I explained the immune system to my son, I used an analogy from the Lord of the Rings movies.   I explained that the Orcs were bacteria and the Uruk-Hai are viruses, and that these creatures would randomly show up and attack the wall at Helms Deep/our bodies.  Most of the time, the wall would stand and the Orcs would go home.  Other times, those darn armies would figure out a way to blow up the wall and the Orcs would get in, and  that's when we get sick.  Our white blood cells are engaging in combat with the Orcs in a battle to get us well again, I told my son.  Eomer and the White Blood Cell brigade charge over the hill with Gandalf,  drive the Orcs into Fangborn Forest, the trees eat them, and my child will be really confused when he actually takes Biology.  

But what if all of the soldiers at Helms Deep were killed off by the Orcs instead?  That's essentially what is about to happen when I start chemo in January.  This depressed me for some reason.  If all of my white blood cells were going to be annihilated by the chemo, would that mean that I would lose all of my acquired immunity?  I've been exposed to a huge variety of random illnesses in my lifetime.  Would I have to go through every single awful virus and random bacterial infection all over again, just to regain the level of immunity that I have now?

I wasn't trying to psych myself out, to make myself hysterical.  I have cancer,  and knowledge is power as far as I am concerned. Part of the treatment for cancer, however, involves killing off the very things that keep me protected from all of the other microscopic creatures out there.  Intellectually I know that this is how it just has to be, but this particular question on this particular day bothered me.  I started obsessing.

Normally I don't ask doctors these sorts of questions.  Mostly I just stew in my own anxieties until I get distracted by a shiny object.  On this particular day, however, I found myself blurting my freak outs about my poor white blood cells during a post surgical visit.   My doctor did not laugh, to his credit.  I imagine he gets lots of freaked out patients on a regular basis.

He explained that white blood cells, however many there happen to be, where ever they happen to be, seem to remember what they've encountered before.  That memory is passed on to new white blood cells as they are formed.  As long as my bone marrow isn't affected, those memories will be passed on.  I felt much better after that.  The cells that make up my body remember, a collective unconscious at the cellular level.  I start chemotherapy tomorrow, and I'm a little terrified.  It's strangely comforting, however, the idea that we retain at least some of the memories of a lifetime within the very cells that make up who we are.

Even if some of those memories involve barfing and other nastiness.  

Holiday Traditions

I decided to work for a school district instead of somewhere else because of the idea that I could have not one, but TWO, weeks off every winter.   Two whole weeks of no work!  No waking up at an ungodly hour!  No obnoxious phone calls!  And most importantly, no long and boring meetings! 

When I was single, I spent most of this time sleeping in and being incredibly unproductive.  Now that I am married and a parent, I don't sleep as much, but our inviolate rule of what has come to be called Winter Break(as opposed to the former "guaranteed to start a big, useless, argument" Christmas Vacation) is that we do what we feel like doing, as much as possible.  If this means hanging out in our jammies and playing video games all day long, eating junk food and ignoring our vegetables, so be it.

Oh, we don't ignore the important things, like attending services on Christmas Eve, or spending time with our families.  Although my family is not what you call "touchy-feely", we do try to spend time together.  We usually exchange gifts with my parents, my mother-in-law and my brother's family on Christmas Eve, right after church.  We also gather together at some point on Christmas day, to feast and laugh and watch some form of sports.

The three of us, however, have created our own traditions.  Kids make it impossible not to have traditions, since they demand that everything be done just like it was last year, and the year before that, and the year before that.  We want to avoid the meltdowns, so Larry and I tend to give in to our little one at this time of the year, in the name of tradition.  Besides, we like them as well.

One of our traditions over the holiday break is to watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy each year.  The extended cuts, not the silly ones that were shown in the theater are viewed, because we are hardcore about our movie watching.  This year we also included The Hobbit movies, and we wandered down to our local theater to see the last installment.  Our movie viewing is immediately followed by the "Obscure questions about Tolkien's works that only my husband can answer" portion of the evening.  My son peppers his father with questions about the characters, and my husband loves it.  I pepper Larry with questions regarding Tolkien's issues with women, and my husband doesn't love it as much, but he is at least patient. 

Another tradition?  After my son has gone to bed on Christmas Eve, Larry and I watch Die Hard together while we finish setting things up for the morning.  We share some wine as John McClane smacks some terrorists around and trades one liners with Hans Gruber.  It is a defense mechanism; by the time Christmas Eve rolls around, we are extremely tired of the whole commercialized aspect of Christmas.  We need a break, and Die Hard provides such, with explosions and bullets and bad guys getting their comeuppance. 

A third tradition is breakfast on Christmas morning.   The heavenly scent of cinnamon rolls wafts through the house at the crack of dawn, soon after we wake up.  The frenzy of opening gifts builds up an appetite, but we certainly do not want to ruin Christmas dinner by filling our bellies too early.  Cinnamon rolls seem to fit the bill, and I usually make plenty, so that there's a couple of rolls left over for snacking in between breakfast and lunch. 

What sort of holiday traditions do you and your family have?  And while I'm at it, I would like to wish you and your families a wonderful holiday filled with love and laughter and lots of goodness, whatever your traditions may be. 

What a Mother Will Do...

Zane had entered an "I don't want to brush my teeth" phase. No amount of coaxing, bribery, or threats has worked. Horrible, rank breath was the result. Zane would even occasionally smell his own breath and insist that someone "passed gas", but he still would not brush his teeth. Short of holding him down and brushing them for him, Larry and I resigned ourselves to exorbitant dental bills.

Zane is also very into The Lord of the Rings movies, particularly The Return of the King, which has elephants in it. As card-carrying geek/nerd parents, we have the extended versions of the movie. Last night, as we were watching the Mouth of Sauron yakking with Aragorn and Gandalf, inspiration struck.

"Hey Zane, see that guy's teeth?" I ask.

"Yes," Zane replies, looking intently at the TV.

"That guy doesn't brush his teeth," I continue. "See how black and yucky his teeth are? Do you want your teeth to look like that?"

My child brushed his teeth last night. And this morning.

I should feel guilty, using a scary movie guy to get Zane to brush his teeth. But this house is breathing a bit less stinky now, so I think that in this case the ends justify the means.

Where Does He Get This Stuff?

Zane has been on a Lord of the Rings kick, so that is what we have been watching, and reading, and talking about. Of course, we have to watch the extended version, because my husband is a purist about such things. We've been watching all of the movies from start to finish, over the past two weeks, because Zane is rather single minded about his movie watching.

So it wasn't that big a deal for me to come downstairs to find my son watching Return of the King with his father. What WAS a surprise was that when Zane saw the Mouth of Sauron, he said, very clearly, "Oh, that's Steve."

Yes, folks, you heard it here first! The REAL name of the Mouth of Sauron is...Steve.