Ahhhh! What a beautiful day to be alive and healthy! I have risen with a resplendent sun and am eager to greet the inchoate new day. My husband's snoring kept me up all night, but I will not let that deter me from taking full advantage of the day I have been granted. I will simply tuck the recently discovered snoring-cancer connection into the recesses of my mind as I go about my morning routine.
First I'll pop two calcium supplements. Yesterday I learned there is a fivefold increase in heart attack risk for people who take calcium supplements regularly. Does every single day for the last 20 years count as regularly?
I suppose I could skip the calcium and get Prolia injections instead in order to stave off the osteoporosis that is already beginning to assert its presence in my bone scans. Blythe Danner takes Prolia and she's vibrant and gorgeous. Of course, last month Diane Sawyer announced that osteoporosis medicine might actually cause bone fractures instead of preventing them, and a friend of mine who was injected with the stuff is suffering devastating jaw issues, so I think I'm better off with the calcium, but I don't know because there is a fivefold increase in heart attack risk...
I've made peace with the fact that it takes twice as long these days to look half as good as I did in my 20s and 30s, but today it might take even longer because I gave up my cancer-causing Brazilian straightening treatments and my hair is really angry about it and refusing to cooperate with me. What was I supposed to do? Get follicle cancer? I've survived three types of cancer already and confess to being, I think understandably, a bit cancer-phobic. So I'll buy a pretty ponytail holder, perhaps with a daisy or butterfly on it, and look like a five-year-old until the humidity in the summer air dissipates and I can fit my hair back into my car.
I faithfully apply my moisturizer with SPF 15, my sunscreen with SPF 20, and my foundation with SPF 30. My skin is pristine like a baby's. I hope it will detract people's attention from any disfiguring tumors on my lips that may occur because my lipstick is made with lead.
Hmmmm... What to wear? Five years of Tamoxifen and 57 years of life have added unwanted globs of fat to many previously toned body parts, but miraculously my legs have remained long and lean. I look stunning in skinny jeans. Unfortunately, skinny jeans have been found to cause meralgia paresthetica or "tingly thigh syndrome." I hate tingly thighs. So its back to skirts, which I have to wear over shorts or Spanx because my thighs tend to rub together and I hate chafed thighs even more than tingly ones.
By this time I am desperate for a cup of coffee with milk and...what? I used sugar before gaining the menopause fifteen, at which point I switched to artificial sweeteners. Everyone says the ersatz stuff is poisonous, and I was about to tear open a packet of real sugar when Dr. Oz and Dr. Gupta stayed my hand by screaming at me from TV Land that sugar is toxic. If sugar is as toxic as the good doctors say it is, I would like to know why everyone isn't already dead, but first I'd like to know what the hell to put in my coffee, which, as of two days ago, was still good for me.
Breakfast time. I want strawberries on the sugar-free, gluten-free, high fiber, low-taste mulch I eat after eliminating everything white from my diet because, well you know, but here's the thing. I'm having trouble finding locally grown organic strawberries and I keep forgetting if its better to buy locally grown pesticide-ridden strawberries or organic strawberries that come from far away.
Being a cancerphobe is a full-time job and very stressful. And by God, we all know what stress can do to almost every system in our bodies. It can cause cancer and should be avoided at all costs, along with calcium and Prolia and Fosamax and keratin and pesticide and lead and skinny jeans and high heels and nonorganic produce and sunshine and whatever else one comes in contact with after breakfast. I'm supposed to meditate 20 minutes a day to avoid stress, which means my morning routine has now taken me to lunchtime.
Or I could just sleep in thus avoiding my morning routine altogether. But today I learned that sleeping in can cause social jet lag which leads to obesity, diabetes, and even cancer. So I'm up.
And I have five hours until dinnertime when I have to decide if I'm going to pass on an alcoholic beverage because of alcohol's connection to breast cancer. And it's a beautiful day to be alive! Really.