Friday, November 26, 2010

Where are the Socks??!!

I've been distracted by other things and other knitting the past few weeks and my sock knitting has temporarily been put aside.

The breast-biopsy-with-pathology-reports-with-various-opinions problem has finally been resolved. There was never a question that the biopsy showed cancer, but rather that I had a something (atypia) which indicated that the biopsy, which is only a sample, had missed picking up cancer. The usual way of dealing with that is surgery--sometimes called an excisional biopsy and sometimes a lumpectomy. I didn't want to have surgery unnecessarily and researched this topic extensively. Some researchers insisted that it was always necessary to have surgery and others, more and more of them in papers published in 2010, said if the biopsy had removed all of the microcalcifications (which mine had) close follow up would be all right. I wasn't thrilled about having diagnostic mammograms every six months for two to three years either. Two things helped resolve the problem. The first and most important was yet another pathology opinion, this one from Dr. David L. Page, a breast pathologist at Vanderbilt, who is considered to be one of the world's expert on the subject. His report said there was no atypia and that "routine mammographic surveillance is appropriate". I also had a diagnostic mammogram and the radiologist report came back "Benign. Recommend routine mammographic follow up". So that's over. Yay for that!

Now to knitting. I taught a class at my local yarn shop --Fiber Nooks and Crannys-- earlier this month. It was on learning how to knit cables by knitting a cable hat. I had four students and it was a lot of fun. Now, of course, I want to teach more classes--one making lace and cable fingerless mitts, one making a lace cowl, one making a hat with lace and cables which look like hearts, and another on mittens with bobbles. I am busily making models for these and writing a description of the classes for the shop owner.

Add to that working two days a week at the library and going to the gym three times a week plus reading, quilting (not much, but a little), and just living my life and the upcoming holidays, plus my birthday and wedding anniversary, and my days are full.

Yes, I will go back to sock knitting. I just don't know quite when that'll be. My best guess is the end of December.