Meet my great tits

Two Parus major, aka a pair of Great tits

I have been soliciting bird puns from friends and was deeply disappointed in my friend Doug when he didn't come through with a Parus major joke. That's the scientific name for the great tit, and yes, that is actually what they are called. (Parus minor, of course, is the Japanese tit). I might have made the occasional reference using these names in conversations with Anna, and not talking about birds.  

When I pointed this out to Doug, though, he came through and told me that in the old days of the listserve, the mailing list for birders was BIRDCHAT. And then there was a sublist for those interested in birds in this family (Paridae)...called TITNET. Ahhh the Brits. I admire the ability you have to say this with a straight face, but I will forever have the sense of humor of a 12-year-old boy.

So, friends, I invite you to the new TITNET.

It's not that kind of tit, but I can keep the paridae jokes going all night....I'll spare you.

Anyway, I post this because I wanted to talk a bit about intentions here.

This week, I went to the dentist. They always start with the question "Any changes to your health?" I assumed cancer qualified.

We've been going to this dentist for years and their staff turnover rate is admirably low. I know most of the people there by name; they are really wonderful. This hygienist mentioned though that the main dentist's wife had had breast cancer (which I had known and had forgotten; I'd never met her, but she the people at the practice had talked openly about it previously).  She told me that if I needed anyone to talk to, she was willing. She may have seen my perplexed look: offering a stranger that another person would talk about their breast cancer with them...so she continued. When this woman was diagnosed, no one would talk about breast cancer. She could find no one to even talk about the diagnosis with, no support, nothing. So she made it a mission to speak about it to people, to help normalize it. 

When I was diagnosed and told friends, I found two things. First, and I may have mentioned this, but this strange tension of being the one who is sick, and so experiencing the thing, but also having to be the arbiter of all news, information, and in most cases, comfort for the people who care, to reassure them that I'll be fine. The first two weeks were spent that way, until I got tired of reassuring people and just texting them and sending them to the blog (sorry if you were one of those people). I know that all came from a great place, but wow, it was tiring.

The second thing I found was immense support and curiosity. People DID want to talk about it, but often didn't know how. So I think we've made some progress, but we still freak out about talking about scary shit. I'm not immune, I KNOW I've said dumb shit to friends (and probably strangers) in the past about being sick, and plenty of other things that are scary to talk about. We are so proud as humans of our ability to communicate, but in reality we kind of suck at it.

It doesn't help that breasts are a hyper sexualized part of the body. Men (not exclusively men, but often men) say stupid shit about breasts because they don' know how to find the right words (let's give the benefit of the doubt here). We're trained that breasts are shameful parts of the body because they are sexualized. We're trained that they are desired parts. We're told a lot of things about breasts and we wrap up excessive amounts of our self-esteem and self-image in breasts. 

We have a lot of baggage around breasts, when really, they're just another body part. 

And that is why I made this blog public. I'm still trying to figure out what I want to make super public -- you all know I'm a pretty major introvert, but also, it's important that we can talk about breast cancer. As a body part, they serve a function (feed them bebehs! We are mammals, after all.) and as a body part, they're prone to cells that do stupid things like mutate and divide out of control: 12% of women in the US will be diagnosed in their lifetime (Waks and Winer 2019 JAMA).

So ladies, let's talk about our great tits.

In update news, I see the surgeon again tomorrow (Tuesday). More soon.