Medical woes

At the moment I have so many different meds in me I rattle when I walk.  I'm almost at the stage of opening up my own pharmacy.
Wrongdiagnosis,com should pay me.  I could be rich my now.
On the 7th January I had lipofilling injected into my left breast.  That should be where the story ends.  One week back in Tanzania I had a large abscess and very swollen lymph nodes in my left armpit.  I dutifully went to see the GP down the road.  This was his last chance after cocking up so badly the previous year, that I ended up going into septic shock and lost my breast implant.  He said it wasn't an abscess but folliculitis and that I should squeeze it morning and night to get the gunk out.  He also said I didn't need antibiotics for folliculitis.  I asked him if he was sure as my lipofilling surgery had just been three weeks previously.  He said definitely no antibiotics needed.  He's the doctor, what do I know?
My left breast began to feel hot and had a faint red rash on it.  It seemed to be getting harder, but I was so busy at work I had no time to take notice of what was happening with my breast.
Then one night acute pain in my breast made me think I'd pulled a muscle or something while trying to swim a couple of lengths of breaststroke.  Frantically swallowing painkillers turned me into a zombie for a day and a half.  I blamed it on over-exercising while trying to strengthen my right shoulder.
How wrong I was.
The breast grew slowly, sneakily, trying to avoid being noticed.  Then I got large boils on the side of the breast.

Typical, by the time I realised how big, hot and hard it was, was when I was camping in the middle of the bush with 27 children.  The pain was intense.  I was uncomfortable, could hardly move.  The campsite managers took pity on me and let me sleep in a new luxury tent overlooking the lake.
A friend phoned my surgeon in Cape Town, he prescribed a seriously strong antibiotic, I managed to get the school driver to pick it up from a pharmacy and bring it to the campsite.
Nausea.
This was not good.
I decided to go back to the local GP when I got back from the camp.  He took one look at my breast and said, "Classic case of chronic mastitis."
Seriously?  Are you kidding me?  I had a mastectomy 2 years ago.  I have no breast tissue, I can't get mastitis.  Even my healthy right breast doesn't have breast tissue.  Two bouts with breast cancer, two mastectomies.
"Then it must be a large breast abscess," he continued undeterred.  "I'm going to send you to a radiology friend of mine.  If there's fluid I'm going to get a local surgeon to cut open the breast and drain the fluid."
"Do you think this is related to the abscess I had a month ago?"
"Definitely not," he said trying to convince himself.  "It's just a coincidence."
The radiologist had a small office down a dark alley.  He felt my breast without washing his hands or wearing gloves.  This did not sit well with my soul.
He was amazed at the amount of fluid.  My heart sank.  That meant a local surgeon would have to cut my breast open like a can of baked beans.  "Oh my God!" he shouted nearly falling over with excitement.  I strained my neck to try and get a closer look at the computer monitor to see if there was a large tumor or something.  "I have no more paper!  I can't print the pictures!"
Seriously?  You have to be kidding me.
But at least he was a creative thinker.  He got his receptionist to dig through the waste bins to find a small piece of paper that could take three pictures.
There was no way I was going to let a local surgeon touch my breast.  That was settled when the local radiologist printed the pictures on paper from the waste bin.
My friend managed to stalk my surgeon in Cape Town and get his mobile number.  He called me at 11pm last Friday night and told me to get on the next flight to Cape Town.
I did.
They aspirated 300ml of fluid and gave me more antibiotics.  The breast is still not right, more doctors' visits next week.  Apparently, both surgeons who saw me stated that they were 110% sure my breast went bad because I wasn't put on antibiotics for the abscess.
What can you do?  You trust medical professionals, but they are human just like us.  They make mistakes.  Nobody is perfect.
Cindy Vine, a breast cancer survivor, is the author of Not Telling, Defective and C U @ 8.

Coping with an Empty Nest

It suddenly dawned on me the other day, that when Siobhan graduates in May I'll be all alone for the very first time in my life. 
This was mind-blowing.
I've been alone obviously for the odd weekend and short trip, but generally since the day I was born I've always lived with somebody.  As a child growing up it was my grandmother and my parents, my college years I was in a residence until I fell pregnant and had Kerri.  Since then it has been my children and a husband who survived 10 years of being with me before he got booted.  Life has always been full of people, I've never been on my own.  What a daunting prospect?
Who do you talk to when you watch a movie and want to discuss what's happening?
How do you cook for only one person?

Who do you ask about their day and tell about yours?
How silent will the apartment be?
Who do you share your travel experiences with?
How fun can it be chasing after the 7 wonders by yourself?
It's enough to make a person depressed, being all alone in solitary confinement.  Maybe I'll take to singing that song "All by myself..."
But then again...
I can watch what I want on TV without fighting anybody for the TV remote.  I can watch my crime channels and sports games.  I might never have to watch Disney or Nickelodeon again.  What a pleasure!
I can eat beans on toast for dinner if I wish, oh yes and seafood.  I can eat fish, make Tom Yum Goong and not feel guilty as I am the only one in the house that eats seafood.
I can cry during Extreme Makeover or other movies or shows without being laughed at.
I can go out with friends and not feel guilty about leaving a teenager at home.
I can feel quite liberated.  There are some benefits after all.
But the thought of being all by myself, of no interactions when I walk through my front door, nobody telling me they love me and wishing me good night, no tantrums to contend with, nobody to tell me how delicious the meal I made was.  I'm not sure if I am going to be ready for it but how does one prepare oneself?
I guess there's always Skype.
Cindy Vine is the author of Not Telling, Defective and CU@8, all available on Amazon.com as a Kindle ebook or paperback.

Encounter with elephants

One minute they were driving amongst sand dunes, then the next as they crested a sand dune, Fenella saw a large area of green in front of them, with a small waterhole to one side. In the distance, Fenella could make out sand dunes again. The green floodplain was ringed by large sand dunes.
“You’re lucky, no tourists are allowed to come here,” said Katerina, carefully driving down the sand dune to get onto the grass below.
“Wow,” was all Fenella could say, momentarily at a loss for words.
“If you do see elephants, don’t panic, just try and blend into the surroundings. They don’t know people, and they are very dangerous,” Katerina warned. “It’s just us woman and children out here, no men to protect us.”
After a meal of boiled rice with weevils in it, which Katerina had called the protein part of the meal, the exhausted children were put into their tent which faced out onto the tall swaying grass of the flood plain. “Mommy-time,” said Katerina with a smile as she made two mugs of coffee and liberally added brandy into the hot brown liquid. “No milk, so we’ll use the brandy as milk.”
“Fine by me,” said Fenella as she opened up the scrabble board by candlelight.

Fenella was leading Katerina by about 50 points in the scrabble game, when both women started when they heard a loud, “Humpf,” noise.
Katerina’s eyes were big with fear, “Elephants,” she hissed, looking ghostlike with the light from the candle giving her face an eerie glow.
Fenella wasn’t sure what she should feel. They were in the cooking tent, so she didn’t know what a big deal having elephants nearby might be.
“Don’t panic on me,” hissed Katerina, blowing out the candle.
Shit, thought Fenella, it was so dark they couldn’t see a thing. Katerina peeped out the cooking tent’s open doorway. “I can see about five, six big ones, in the long grass. Don’t move, otherwise they’ll hear us and charge.”
Katerina’s stage whisper was creeping out Fenella more than the thought of wild elephants a couple of metres away. Then she had a thought, a very frightening thought. “Katerina,” Fenella whispered back, “The kids’ tent opens up into the grassy area. Samantha wakes up at 9pm to go for a wee. What’s the time now?”
“Holy fuck,” muttered Katerina, “What are we going to do?”
So, much for Katerina telling Fenella not to panic. Fenella thought that Katerina was going to burst into tears.
“We have to save the children,” said Fenella calmly.
“How?” Katerina was starting to tremble, she was so scared.
“Here’s the plan,” said Fenella, making it up as she went along, “We’ll get down and leopard-crawl to their

tent, and wake them up quietly, and get them to crawl to our tent.” Fenella bit her tongue as she felt an urgent need to pee. Why did her bladder have to come alive at such a time?
Katerina led the way, with Fenella behind also on her stomach, using her elbows to pull herself forward. They could hear the elephants moving in the long grass on their left. The elephants were so close, they could even hear their tummies rumble. Silently, but surely, the two mothers inched their way forward, not noticing the thorns that pierced their flesh, or the stones that scratched and bruised them.
Suddenly, there was silence. Katerina lifted her head and looked out onto the long grass, “They’re going over the dune; they’re leaving the flood plain!” Katerina’s voice sounded loud in the still of the night.
Fenella was just about to speak, when she heard the ugly sound of Katerina vomiting up her boiled-rice-with-weevil dinner. “Might as well have a quick pee myself,” muttered Fenella now that the immediate danger had passed.
After waking the children and virtually sleep-walking them to their tent, Fenella and Katerina went back to the cooking tent to resume their game of scrabble. “Shit, coffee’s cold,” said Fenella taking a sip from her mug.
“Throw it out,” said Katerina putting on more water to boil on the gas burner. “Think we need something stronger anyway,” she said, pouring the mug three-quarters full of brandy and topping it up with a spoon of coffee and boiling water.

The next day, Fenella was lying on her sleeping bag in the tent, writing a letter to Brendan, listening to Katerina sing, ‘I’m a little Noddy man,” with the children in the cooking tent, when she suddenly became aware of an unnatural silence that made her feel uneasy. Fenella looked up from her writing, to see a huge elephant standing about 5 metres away from the front of her tent. Too scared to move in case she alerted the elephant to her presence in the tent, Fenella held her breath, watching the elephant all the time. The elephant was obviously alarmed by Fenella’s tent flap which was blowing in the breeze, as it started to shake its head and then sway it from side to side, before kicking up dirt with its front foot and expanding its ears until they were perpendicular to its head. Fenella felt herself start to go dizzy from lack of oxygen as she continued to hold her breath. Then, flapping its ears, the elephant started to take a step back, then another, then another, until it turned around and walked away. With the elephant out of her sight, Fenella started to hyperventilate, taking a good few minutes to calm down again. When she was breathing normally again, Fenella peered out of the tent to make sure that the elephant was no longer in charging distance, before hurrying out to see what had happened to Katerina and the kids.
Fenella reached the cooking tent, still a little light–headed from her frightening experience, only to find that Katerina and the kids had vanished into thin air. Something caught the corner of Fenella’s eye, and she looked at the parked Landrover, to see Katerina sitting behind the driver’s wheel.

“What are you doing?” asked Fenella, as she saw Katerina sitting frozen in shock, with one hand on the steering wheel, and the other hand clutching a .38 Special hand gun.
Katerina turned around to stare at Fenella, with eyes huge with fear, “I was coming to save you,” said Katerina in a low voice, “If the elephant attacked, I was going to charge the elephant with the Landy and then fire shots in the air.”
“That’s a wonderful rescue plan,” lied Fenella, wondering if both Katerina and her would have been killed if the elephant had charged. “Where’re the kids?”
“I sent them behind the dune for safety,” said Katerina, “They’re hiding in a ditch.”

Excerpt from Stop the world, I need to pee! Available on Amazon as Kindle and Paperback

The Story behind the Story - Defective

There are writers who can create a whole story in their heads from nothing.  There are others of us who are sparked by an interesting snippet of conversation , a news item, something we've seen.  Anything which ignited the creative juices.  Whatever initiated the story is the story behind the story.
The Spark
As a teenager I heard about a murder case - The Scissors Murder.  It was in all the newspapers, everybody was talking about it.  This story sank into the murky depths of my subconscious and lay buried there until a few years ago.  I'd just finished a novel and wanted to start a new one.  But what to write about?  Where to find a story?  I have always been interested in the dark side of human nature and what motivates them to do what they do.  In a flash The Scissors Murder came into my mind and I researched it on the internet to refresh my memory about what happened all those years ago.
The Scissors Murder
On the 4th November 1974, 46 year old wife and mother Susanna van der Linde was stabbed to death in her home in Cape Town South Africa, with a pair of scissors.  The perpetrators of the crime were 19 year old Marlene Lehnberg and 33 year old Marthinus Choegoe.
Marlene Lehnberg worked with the victim's 47 year old husband, and soon after she started working with him began a 2 year affair.  He told her he'd never leave his wife for her, but was prepared to continue with the affair.  Marlene had had a very conservative upbringing with an abusive father.  Marlene was convinced that the only obstacle between her and marriage to Christiaan van der Linde was his wife.  You can read more about the murder through this link
The Plot and Characters

I was fascinated with the story, what motivated a young girl to embark on an affair with a married man so much older than her?  What drove her to murder his wife?  What role did the husband play in the murder?  There didn't seem to be answers to these questions.  So I thought, what happens if I use the basic plot, create my own characters with their own life stories, and try and figure out what the motivations could be.  I used The Scissors Murder as the spark, the starting point and then let my imagination take over.  That is how my novel Defective came about.
You can purchase Defective as a paperback or on Kindle from Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble and the Apple iStore.


Reviewed by Bob MacKenzie for Readers Favorite
"Defective" is the sort of story that sneaks up on you like those elusive shadows that give you shivers in the night. There's something about 17 year old Kara Butler. Though it would be easy to feel sorry for her, it's as easy to cheer her on. With an abusive father and a mother who mostly ignores her but will help in a crunch, Kara leaves home for the big city of Capetown. Innocent in the ways of the world, Kara nonetheless gets an apartment and finds a job. It all seems quite heroic. There is something else about Kara, something not quite right, something that her new-found freedom has set loose in her world. As her story seamlessly moves into darker and darker places, Kara's world slowly unravels. Drawn into Kara's journey of discovery are a promiscuous medical doctor, the doctor's emotionally abused wife, a boy who believes he is a secret agent, an Abbott and Costello team of detectives, and a cast of other quirky characters. The effect of this story is both surreal and chilling.

"Defective" is not a thriller in the truest sense. Neither is it a mystery or a police procedural. The genre is hard to pin down, shifting as it does while the story progresses. In some ways, the television series 'Dexter' comes to mind, in other ways Hitchcock's Psycho. It is tempting to call "Defective" a psychological-thriller. It is certainly psychological, though perhaps more in the way an update of the old-fashioned Gothic novel might be psychological. Quirky and intriguing, this story is clean and tightly written, drawing the reader inexorably to its inevitable conclusion without ever revealing that climax until it arrives. For readers who prefer their books to be intelligent, thought-provoking, and challenging, "Defective" will be an ideal choice.

Meeting up with Menopause

Eve was a domineering bitch who wore the pants in her relationship.  Oops, no pants not even a fig leaf at that time.  Adam was a weak-willed lily-livered simpering idiot.  If he had stood up to Eve and said, “No, put that damn apple back we are not supposed to eat it,” the world would be a very different place today.  For a start it would be one large nudist colony.  But more importantly, women would not be experiencing pain in childbirth.  Hand in hand with that we would not be having a monthly period.

Hormones, moodiness, irritability, and the worry that this month’s flow might be heavy and leak out are definitely a curse that Adam should have been afflicted with rather than Eve who just made a small suggestion.  She didn’t really expect him to grab that apple and take a bite.  He should have been principled and followed the rules.  Look what his lack of character caused!

Since the age of twelve I’ve been cursed every 28 days.  The only times I’ve missed on the 28 day cycle were the times I was pregnant.  Regular and like clockwork the dreaded lurgy arrives every month without fail.  When I turned 50 I thought I’ve done my time paying for Adam’s sins, it was time for menopause.  I eagerly awaited the onset, looking forward to the first signs of a hot flush, jealous when friends and colleagues started menopause.  No such luck.  Every 28 days it arrived.  It.  The thing that shouldn’t be mentioned out loud.

This month it didn’t arrive on schedule and I have to say I feel a little sad.  It’s like when you wish like mad for something and it happens it’s a bit of a let-down.  It’s not even an anti-climax, it’s just that it’s a realization that I have started on the next chapter of my life – old age.  I’d never previously equated menopause with old age, just the relief that it would be no more monthly periods.  But the fact is, it does mean the end of a chapter of your life and the start of the very last chapter of your life.  There is something so final when you put it like that.  I’m not sure that I’m psychologically ready for that.

This past holiday season I have had two operations and experienced more pain than I could ever have imagined.  Continuous chronic pain 24 hours a day now heading into week 5.  The remarkable thing, is that the trauma from the pain turned my hair grey basically overnight.  The pain aged me and I wonder if that’s what caused the onset of menopause, or if the good Lord upstairs decided that I’m going through enough on the pain front, He’ll just make me miss the 28 day cycle this month.  We’ll only know next month. But after years of wishing for this day, there is a part of me that wishes it will arrive again like clockwork next month so I can delay old age just a little longer.

Cindy Vine is the author of C U @ 8, Not Telling and Defective, all available on Amazon as kindle books and paperbacks.

Life in the Pain Lane

Doctors are not 100% truthful.  Well it's not as if they actually lie, they just negate to tell you or warn you about how exactly painful their op is going to be.  This of course leaves you unprepared psychologically.  You think it's going to be a quick and easy procedure.  But 5 weeks later and you still have plenty pain and limited movement.  Pain sucks.

As you can see, pain does not bring out the best in you.  It saps your energy, causes discomfort and kills all creative thoughts you might possess.  In short, pain kills your ability to think and write.  So no I have not been on holiday rejoicing on the extra time available to work on my book Hush Baby.  For the most part I have been laid up in bed knocked out on painkillers.
Why I thought an arthroscopy in the shoulder would be only slightly painful, I don't know.  It's like when the doctor explains the procedure to you, he makes a tiny hole and inserts a camera, that doesn't sound very painful does it?  Unfortunately that silly camera picked up 5 different problems that needed to be rectified immediately.  This meant 5 holes in the shoulder, 5 times the pain and the procedures included shaving off pieces of bone, fixing a frozen shoulder and repairing a torn tendon.
As if this wasn't enough, 2 weeks later I was back in hospital for a breast reconstruction.  This was a very new technique that sounded painless when the plastic surgeon described it to me.  Haha is all I can say.  After that op I felt like I'd been trampled on by 30 men at the bottom of a rugby scrum.  They took 500g of fat from my sides, shook and stirred it like a martini, converted it to 250ml of stem cell rich lipo-filling and injected it into my breast where they had to remove the implant after I went into septic shock last year.  And the plastic surgeon says we'll have round two of that procedure in June.  Charming.

I did get to have breakfast with Jodi Picoult though, and listen to her interesting and entertaining talk on wolves.  Definitely a highlight of my otherwise miserable Christmas holiday.  The lesson to be learned is do not embark on two big surgeries in a two week period.
The weather has been beautiful most of the time, I just haven't been in a condition to enjoy it.
Hopefully my shoulder will be sorted and will be back to normal in a couple of months.  The shoulder surgeon said it can take a year to come right.  As I said before, charming.
So do I have any new year's resolutions?  Survive, dig deep and survive.  That's all I want for 2013.
Have a good one!

Great Detective Story

This is a police procedural par excellence, with more twists and turns than in that David Bowie classic Labyrinth.  A villain with an agenda set on revenge and a dogged police inspector with the uncanny ability to think out of the box.  You can't go wrong with this read.

Book Blurb:

What would you do if you had been falsely imprisoned and if while in prison your wife and your children had been brutally murdered? Samuel Maxwell, the Prophet, decides to spend his time plotting out his plan for revenge against the greedy men responsible..

The Prophet stops at nothing to avenge the deaths. Will Inspector Duke Becker and his squad from Special Investigations Homicide be able to stop the Prophet and the reasons behind the killings before more die? 

Bio:

Gary L. Kassay born on March 20, 1956 in the Bronx, New York.  Married to high school sweetheart, Eileen on May 6, 1978.  Two children, Jason Kassay born March 30, 1980 and Samantha Kassay born January 6, 1986.  Eileen Kassay passed away on May 14, 2003.Worked as an x-ray tech for six years at Brooklyn Hospital and then joined the New York City Police Department, Transit Police.  Trained for the K-9 unit and worked until injured in the line of duty forcing early retirement.  Next worked in the field of commercial photography, starting in customer service, then becoming the assistant manager, manager and then with two partners buying Diversified Photo located on Long Island. 

Although retired at the time, he worked Ground Zero after 9/11 for several weeks.

In 2004 left business to two partners and moved to North Carolina  where he met his second wife Raella. Married on September 10, 2005 in Maui, Hawaii.  Worked for Homeland Security as a TSA officer, and then as a Lieutenant for Guilford County in charge of the Social Services Building.

In 2008  he moved to Casper Wyoming where he currently resides.

Online Links:

Twitter: @GaryKassay or www.twitter.com/GaryKassay

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/gary.kassay?fref=ts

Website: www.garykassay.com