Walter White :: A Pain in the Neck | My experience with Hodgkin's lymphoma (& neuroendocrine tumors)

Me As Famous Bald People

I still need to write about my Halloween as Heisenberg hijinks and my biopsy surgery that took place on Wednesday. But in the meantime, I thought I’d share some photo goofiness. When I first shaved my head, I decided to take some photos of me as famous bald people. I took two of these photos in August, and then when I recently re-shaved my head, I took the other two.

Sinead O’Connor, probably the most famous bald lady of all time. She actually has a bit more hair than this in her “Nothing Compares 2u” video. If I had to dress up for Halloween before my head was shaved, I was thinking about being Sinead O’Connor. I’d wear a black turtleneck and carry around an open letter to Miley Cyrus, and I’d scold scantily clad girls in Miley costumes from the warm comfort of my turtleneck. I may actually go see Sinead O’Connor on Sunday. People will think I’m a superfan!

Sigourney Weaver from Alien 3. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Alien, although I get it mixed up with that V TV movie. Anyway, this is me as Sigourney Weaver in that film. I didn’t have any dirt to put on my face, and I was just waiting for my boyfriend to get ready so we could go to the Museum of the Moving Image and not fighting a battle against aliens, so I look less rugged.

Kojak, with a lollipop. I didn’t have a fedora, so I just relied on the raincoat, sunglasses and sucker to carry off this Telly Savalas look. I had gone into the bank to get a Dum Dum and had collected several lollipops, but I ate them. I’m eating one of those ginormous all-day suckers here (grasshopper pie-flavored, if you’re wondering.).

Walter White, my summer cancer anti-hero. I started watching Breaking Bad in July and caught up just in time for the premiere of the final six episodes. I was Walter White for Halloween. My boyfriend says I look like a little Jewish man (with the beard, not all the time, because that would be weird). I wished I could have found a more reddish beard. Alas.

Heisenberg, Walter White’s alter-ego. Actually, I was Heisenberg for Halloween, complete with porkpie hat, blue rock candy meth and sunglasses. I plan on writing a whole post on my Halloween, but for now, here are the pics of me as Heisenberg, who is in the empire business.

Make Your Own Cat Tortuga Costume for the “Breaking Bad ” Finale

Walter White’s dark deeds are far-reaching indeed, and have crept into my very home. On Sunday night, the chain of destruction he’s set off will unwittingly affect the lives of two unsuspecting felines, who are dressing up for our Breaking Bad finale party. Well, technically, I’m dressing them up. But if there’s one thing I learned from the show, it’s that sometimes the innocents must suffer to achieve your dreams.

That’s the lesson I was supposed to take away, right? Is it that, or something about the road to hell being paved with good intentions?

In addition to the finale party, I’m getting a jump on my Heisenberg-themed Halloween costume. Cancer hasn’t been fun, but it really has been the best thing that’s ever happened to me Halloween-wise. I might shave my head every October. As I mentioned before, I kind of don’t mind being bald, I was never that great at having hair anyway, and it’s made me even more of a Breaking Bad fan.

Cat lady alert: I already have a tie for cats I bought at Target years ago, so one cat can be Saul Goodman. The other cat is going to be La Tortuga—specifically the head of Danny Trejo’s character mounted on the tortoise. Trust me, it will be the most adorable re-creation of a disembodied head mounted on a tortoise ever.

This most likely will be a little upsetting for the cat, but think about how the Tortuga DEA informant felt once he saw that big knife. Or what about the panic attacks and mental trauma poor Hank suffered after this incident?

Since I’ve clearly tried to dress up my cats before, I’ve found that they don’t mind the tie, because it’s lightweight and around their necks, and they already wear collars. They don’t like to wear things on their heads, and it seems that they’ll wear this costume for at least a little bit. The clever cat knows that I will eventually set her free if she will sit still awhile for photos—struggling only prolongs the indignities. So she cooperates for a bit in hopes that the ordeal ends swiftly, and with liver treats.

Below are instructions to create your own Tortuga cat costume.

INSTRUCTIONS

You will need:

Tape measure
Fabric pen
Green felt. I used an 8″ x 12″ piece, because that cost $3.10 at the local fancy knitting/yarn/craft store. A yard, by the way, is $76. Those are meth kingpin prices. I had stood up too fast while leaning over looking at the smaller pieces, and I’m prone to vertigo right after chemo, and the blood thinners aren’t helping with that. I was still a little dizzy when she told me this, and I thought I should pass out when she told me the price to demonstrate the reaction that price deserves. (Maybe she meant 76 cents?) But I’m not Skyler White. I can’t feign labor or physical trauma to get out of a sticky situation. So I just bought the little pieces, because I didn’t have time to go elsewhere.
You can use my turtle pattern that I made up, or you can draw a better tortoise of your own. Mine isn’t very precise—I just cut it out as I went along. Precision isn’t my thing. I’m no Gale Boetticher, with a fancy notebook (and karaoke skills).
Scissors
A tiny piece of white felt, for the eyes. Or you can buy googly eyes at a local craft store.
Tinier pieces of black or brown felt for the eyes.
White thread and dark thread if you’re sewing on the eyes, or glue if you’re using googly eyes.

1. Measure your cat’s neck with the tape measure for the neck hole. If your cat is trusting and purrs while this happens, you might feel a little guilty. But ask yourself: WWWWD? (What Would Walter White Do?) He would pause for a second, and then manipulate that trust; that’s what he would do. “Nothing’s going to happen, good buddy. This is all going to turn out well for you. For both of us, really. Well, okay, just for me.”

2. Use my pattern and pin it to your felt as a cutting pattern, adjusting for the size of your cat’s neck. You’ll want the neck hole to be big enough to slip on, but not too big. (Mine’s actually a bit too big.) But keep in mind, if your cat has any sense, it will try to run away from you and your turtle costume, so make sure it’s fairly easy to slip on. Or use your fabric pen to trace the pattern, or a better tortoise shape, before cutting.

3. Cut out two tiny circles of white felt for your tortoise eyes. Or, if you’re using googly eyes, just glue them on.

4. Cut out two tinier circles of black or brown felt for your tortoise eyes.

5. Sew the white felt circles on to the turtle face with the white thread.

6. Sew the dark felt on top of the white circles to complete the eyes.

7. Capture your cat, slip the tortoise over its head and take plenty of photos.

For a more rigid tortoise:

After my tortoise was complete, I noticed it was a bit droopy. For a tortoise with more shape, you’ll also need:

A second piece of felt. I used brown felt that I already had since I don’t have millions stashed in trash bins in the desert and couldn’t afford more green felt.
Chenille sticks or pipe cleaners.
Green thread. Ideally, you would have the right shade of green thread. I didn’t. But what has Breaking Bad taught us? When life takes away your pseudoephedrine, steal some methylamine. So I just used a different shade of green thread.

In step 2, pin the two pieces of felt together and cut them at the same time.

After step 6, you’ll sew the chenille sticks into the edges of the tortoise, between the two pieces of felt. Then you capture the cat.

ADDENDUM: Someone pointed out that for maximum accuracy, the tortoise shell should say “HOLA DEA.” You can add this with puffy paint or a paint pen, or you can embroider the message onto the shell.

Though I have the potential Saul costume, a friend had been lobbying for Todd as a cat costume. Since I’d spent most of my evening making cat costumes, I thought, “Why not devote my entire evening to making Breaking Bad-inspired petwear?” So I made a Vamonos Pest nametag.

Today, I will don my porkpie hat and watch the finale, though I will shave my head again before Halloween. In fact, the show provides a lot of costume ideas for a variety of medical conditions. When I spotted a girl in a wheelchair with a painful-looking broken leg contraption at a show recently, I thought that she could go to parties as Hector Salamanca. Crutches? Flynn/Walt Jr. Off crutches, but still limping? Hank.

Meth empires cause a lot of fights, so if you’ve been injured in a brawl—obviously, “you better call Saul”—and then you can go as beat-up Jesse, Walt or Saul. (Alas, my blood thinners rule out brawling, so this doesn’t apply to me.) Pregnant? First few seasons Skyler. Klepto? Steal things from your host’s home in character as Marie.

And of course, if chemo made your hair fall out, be Walt or Heisenberg. And make your cats your victims, er, accomplices.

More Thoughts on Being a Bald Lady

I’ve been bald for several weeks now, and I still love it. I’ve put a big glob of shampoo on my hairless head in the shower only twice so far.

Reactions to my new look have been mostly positive. People tell me I can pull the bald thing off. I have big facial features, and it balances out the baldness somehow. They’re strong enough to stand on their own, without a hair frame. Babies seem to like me, and I think it’s for this reason. If someone increased my facial proportions just ever so slightly, I’d look like a cartoon. I’ve never had my caricature done. I’m convinced it would look just like a regular drawing.

I recently thought back to a conversation I had in high school with a friend about my nose. I hated my nose. It’s not exactly that it’s so big, it’s just kind of weird. It’s not like other noses. I mean, I wanted to be weird when I was 15, but weird in a cool way so that counterculture peers would accept me and people who might make fun of me would leave me alone. I don’t think any 15-year-old girl wants to be known for her unique nose.

Anyway, my friend’s wise words that day put me at peace with my nose. She said that my nose fit in with all my other facial features and that if I had a smaller nose, I’d look strange. I realized she was right. I wish I could say from that day forward, I shed all my insecurities and had some epiphany about what makes you unique can make you beautiful, but that didn’t really happen then. No longer hating my nose was an important step forward, though, in a still-ongoing journey of self-acceptance.

Now that I’m bald, this is probably not even the “weirdest” I’ve ever looked. Maybe it’s the most subversive look I’ve had, but not on purpose.

In my mid-teens to early 20s, I was goth. When I lived in Columbus and walked by this sports bar with a giant patio on The Ohio State University campus, I would habitually cringe and wait for insults to fly my way from drunk guys, but in later years, I remembered I wasn’t goth anymore so I wasn’t such an easy target. (Still, really drunk guys will yell for lots of reasons, so groups of them in situations where they can yell at me, safe behind some kind of patio fence, still make me nervous.)

In my 20s, I wore all sorts of crazy outfits. I wasn’t exactly Lady Gaga, but I love fun clothes. Even recently, when I worked in an office (often by myself), I would still sometimes have themes to my weeks: polka dots, black-and-white, cats, gingham.

Now that crisp fall weather has arrived, however, my head has been getting cold. I have my Kangol hat, a purple floppy hat from a friend, a purple cap knitted by another friend and my Heisenberg fedora, of course. And I have plenty of hoodies.

Unless I’m going to an office or a business thing, I don’t usually wear my wig. It’s partially out of the same laziness I’ve always shown toward my hair situation. My wig doesn’t look very realistic either, particularly because I keep fiddling with it—shifting it, touching the back to make sure it’s not puffing out, snapping at its band.

In those situations, I wear the wig for other people. I don’t want to be too distracting by being “the bald lady.” Or the “bald cancer lady” at the office. When I wear my wig, I feel a little bit less like myself, though.

In fact, I went to dinner in my neighborhood the other night after a long day at work and just left my wig on. I didn’t notice until we were almost done eating that there was a bald woman at the table of three next to us, as if we were seated in an invisible bald woman/wig area. I felt like kind of a phony wearing my wig then—I wanted to rip it off and say, “Hey, nice ‘do!”

I think we might be leading parallel, hairless lives, because I think I saw the same person at a concert on Friday. She can pull off being bald and wearing glasses, though. I’m not a huge fan of wearing my glasses, but I mind much less now. Still, I think I look a little like the Beacon’s Closet baby mascot. Oddly, I don’t mind wearing my glasses with my wig. They work together.

As long as I’m talking about wigs and glasses, an aside: Does anyone remember a TV commercial for Focus contact lenses that showed a man and a man in drag out to dinner? (It aired in 1996, so it’s OK if you don’t.) Suddenly the man in drag says, “I have to tell you something!” and he wipes off his lipstick, pulls off his wig and confesses, “I have astigmatism.” Then his date tells him about soft lenses for astigmatism. Not only did I find out I could have disposable lenses, but I loved it for some reason so much that I’ve remembered it for 17 years. So I think about this commercial when I think about pulling off my wig in a public place.

I don’t get many stares. I did get an oddly dirty look on the train that day that left me wondering if I looked like a skinhead. I don’t think so. Dirty looks on the train can be about anything.

I caught someone’s jaw drop once, but she appeared to be from out of town, because she was seated outside having dinner with a bunch of people wearing nametag stickers. She quickly composed herself, but she just didn’t have that looking-without-looking thing that New Yorkers have down, the dead-eyed subway stare—the skill of looking very intently at nothing at all.

Perhaps she wasn’t from out of town, and, like me, she wears all her emotions on her face. Maybe the look wasn’t about me. But for a moment, our eyes met, both of us confused for a second. My look said,”Huh? Is it because you didn’t expect a bald lady when you looked up from your falafel? Or is it because I look like someone who would steal your falafel from your plate as I walked by?” I was casting an envious glance at her meal, and perhaps it was a protective feeling that made her look up at that moment. Maybe she was opening her mouth to say, “Hey, lady! Get your own food!” But she saw that I was bald and either thought I was too bad to mess with or knew that I was going through chemo and decided to be nice.

If I was worried I’d be the weirdo on the train, I quickly remembered that you have to do a lot to draw attention to yourself. On my way to a housewarming party, a man painted silver got on a few stops later. (What do people painted in silver do? Pretend to be statues? Robots?) But no one looked at him either, except for me.

I think my head sparked a discussion between two teenagers, but it wasn’t really about me. They were trying to come up with the name of the bald singer and one of them finally remembered it was Sinead O’Connor.

On a train ride home, someone stole my thunder by throwing up. I didn’t even notice, until someone warned me to watch out for my shoes, as the motion of the train caused some vomit to roll toward our area. Then, before switching train cars, the stranger and I reminisced about other times we’d seen people vomit on the train. (This was the third time for her in two years and the fourth time for me in five years, though once I was only visiting and it was New Year’s Eve so I’m not sure that incident counts. I have never thrown up on the train, but I’ve fallen asleep on a stranger, who was not at all happy about it. That’s why this is not the City of Brotherly Love, but the City That Never Sleeps, especially not on the shoulder of a public transit stranger.)

When I shaved my head, I had kind of hoped maybe I would get seats on the train. Not necessarily people standing up to offer, but at least I’d get dibs as long as no pregnant women were around. A few years ago at Upright Citizen’s Brigade, I saw comedian Pam Murphy’s one-woman show, “The C Word,” and she has a really funny, true bit where she plays two parts: the cancer patient on the train who hopes for the offer of a seat, and a seated passenger, wondering if she should give up her space.

I realize I fall into a gray area, along with pregnant women who aren’t fully showing yet. I mean, what if she’s not pregnant? In these cases, I sometimes just get up and pretend like my stop is coming up to ease my conscience. I’m also terrible at noticing pregnant women and have stared at someone’s belly for a full minute before I realize I should stand up. I saw one non-showing woman reading a pregnancy book on the train to let people know that yes, she would like to sit.

But I know all bald women don’t necessarily have cancer. And most of the time I’m fine, and I don’t even need to sit. I just like to sit.

I really just need a seat once every two weeks, right after chemo, when I’m tired and in a Benadryl haze. That day was today. I happened to get a seat on the first bus, but today everyone was in a mood. The bus stopped to pick people up and it wasn’t an official stop, so the bus driver wouldn’t let someone off. At least four people who weren’t affected by this were angry. It was just one of those days when everyone’s in a contagious bad mood and no one could break it.

I certainly couldn’t. I was just trying to stay awake and yearning to get home. I should say that today of all days, I guess I looked more like a cancer patient than ever, because I was also wearing a cancer center sweatshirt and my hand was bandaged where they had put the IV in. I was short a hospital gown and a sign, but what can you do?

The next bus was crowded. There was a group of naysayers that you sometimes find at the front of buses and by train doors who loudly assert that there’s no room. Sometimes they’re right, but often, they’re not. I tried to go past them, but got caught in a crush, and someone was yelling at my boyfriend because he was too close to her. “Let’s just leave!” I said, defeated and medicated. We finally got to the space that was behind the group, the space that they told us wasn’t there.

I was still tired and a little cranky that I had to hold on the strap with my numb, bandaged chemo hand, but my other arm hurts from blood clots (that’s another blog). Mostly I was sad—I didn’t want a seat. I just wanted people to be nicer to me, even if it’s because I’m sick.

And people are often nicer, or nice in general. It’s not always the way you think it will be. Good things happen, even on public transit. A stranger will warn you of a stream of bodily fluids heading toward your velvet flats. A comedian I recently saw said a bus driver stopped the bus and wouldn’t move again until someone gave up a seat for a really old woman. (The story was way funnier than that; I’m paraphrasing.)

Some people go beyond nice: someone I ran into this week had gone to the beach the day before and had risked his life to save a stranger who walked into the ocean and tried to commit suicide. He said that hardly anyone was there on a weekday, and he was initially annoyed that a guy had set up his beach towel pretty close to his own, but it turned out to be fortuitous, because this man also helped to save the woman. So things that might seem unfortunate sometimes turn out to be lucky. (Sometimes they’re just irritating. I don’t think the person I fell asleep on gained any good fortune from it.)

I know I’m lucky to have such good support and so many kind words from everyone. I realize it’s selfish in a way to hope to temporarily work my way into the train hierarchy of people who get seats first.

I was just looking for perks, something few and far between when it comes to cancer. Being bald, however, has quite a few benefits. Fast showers. A blank canvas on which to put temporary Cleveland Browns tattoos for football season. My impending Walter White Halloween costume. For now, I can content myself with these perks.

How Walter White Became My Unlikely Hero

When I watched the first of the final eight Breaking Bad episodes on AMC last night, I had something in common with Walter White. We’re both bald.

Well, I guess we have two things in common, as I learned in the middle of the show (spoiler alert): It turns out Walt is going through chemotherapy too. I feel as if Walt and I have been through a lot together in the past few months, as he’s become somewhat of my cancer hero—or antihero. (Though I’m no Gale. W.W. is far from a shining star in my eyes. And perhaps Gale is the most obvious example of the dangers of loving Walter White.)

As everyone turned against him as the show progressed—from his wife to his former business partner to viewers of the show—I still felt somewhat of a cancer kinship with him. He was beginning to lose me in season five—but as we see so often with Jesse Pinkman or with Skyler—just when I thought I might be done with him, Walt pulled me back in.

In February, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and I’ve been undergoing chemotherapy at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center since April. In June, I started watching Breaking Bad, after hearing hype about the show for years. The show’s premise—a high-school teacher who makes crystal meth after a fatal lung cancer diagnosis—seemed timely.

Just as everyone predicted, I became addicted. In fact, when I watched all of season four at Lincoln Center during a recent Breaking Bad marathon, a fellow fan confessed he would sometimes skip work or lie to his friends about having plans when he wanted to stay home and watch multiple episodes.

As I feverishly caught up on the show in time for the new episodes, Walt became a cancer companion of sorts. There are the physical effects of the chemotherapy—the nightstand full of medications, the red urine, the PET scans—but it’s the psychological effects on Walt to which I could relate.

Anyone who has ever received a bill for cancer treatment has probably thought that they need to make more money—fast. Even with insurance—something that I may be losing at the end of the month—the bills for a biopsy, medications, scans and chemotherapy add up.

Obviously, making and selling drugs is no joke. But if you could do something to make enough money—even if it were illegal—to not worry about medical bills, would you?

I might. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s as if, from time to time, the snakes from the medical caduceus symbol slither from their post and curl up in bed with me and hiss into my ear, reminding me of the expense.

Fortunately, for society’s sake, I have no illegal talents. I’m also a terrible liar and a goodie-goodie at heart, so I’m not cut out for a life of crime.

The thing that resonates with me the most about Walter White, however, is his anger, always bubbling near the surface, and his need for control, which drives him as much as—if not more than—his love for his family.

Walt’s anger is always present, constantly bubbling near the surface. After his diagnosis, he tells off his boss at the car wash and beats up a teenager for making fun of Walter Jr.’s cerebral palsy. Most of us can relate to wanting to do these things—and a cancer diagnosis is just the thing to push you to actually do it. You often want to have a tempter tantrum over how this isn’t fair. The smallest things can set you off, because you find yourself thinking, “This happened and I have cancer.”

Sometimes, I find myself walking around daring the world to piss me off—just for the release of pent-up anger. While I haven’t blown up a drug den or even thrown a pizza on a roof, I did find myself hanging on to a cab’s door handle and screaming at a startled driver when he refused to take me to Brooklyn after my biopsy surgery in Manhattan. It was during the change in shifts for cab drivers, when they decide whether you’re on their way home or not. After being turned down by one cab, I vowed to not let it happen again. “I just had surgery and you won’t take me to Brooklyn!” I screamed, pounding on his window. If I had been close enough to the open part of the window, I would have tried to force my upper body into the cab, new stitches along my neck or not.

Most of my anger is reserved for insurance companies and bureaucratic entities that are out of the grasp of my wrath. It make me feel helpless and as if I don’t have control—which brings me back to Walt.

But pride and a need for control are what really drives Walter, more than anything, and that’s when he started to lose my sympathy. Had he accepted the offer of his former business partners, he could have avoided this meth mess completely. We finally learned this season that he’s always been haunted by his decision to sell his share of a company now worth billions for $5,000, and that’s when his reluctance to quit the meth business comes into focus.

Yet I relate to his need for control in the face of cancer. To me, cancer has felt like a betrayal of the body. Your own cells are going renegade. When you have so little control over your own body, then what do you have?

You want to be tough. I’ve assured people over and over again that I’m fine, that this is no big deal. You put on your badass black hat or your wig and you become Heisenberg, your alter ego who is always strong and in control and unfazed. Who doesn’t want to assert, “I am the danger,” and “I am the one who knocks” when you feel as if you have very little control?

As Walt sits in a hospital gown and socks for his PET scan—a test that determines the state of your cancer, whether the treatment is working or whether you’re in remission—he’s still struggling for control. As a fellow patient spouts clichés and grapples with his diagnosis aloud, Walt goes off—again there’s the anger—and asserts to this poor stranger that he’s in control.

During one of several Breaking Bad discussions this past weekend, someone observed Walt has become the cancer. He’s the danger, but as the body count piles up and the consequences of his actions become increasingly dire, he still doesn’t have the control that he wants.

In spite of all of Walt’s transgressions, I still wanted him to be happy. I often find myself defending unlikeable characters. So I was disappointed when Hank found that copy of Leaves of Grass, after it seems that poor Walt had only a month of what he finally wanted. And now his cancer is back—as is Heisenberg.

I am now bald. I have a black hat, though it’s more Holly Hobbie than Heisenberg. Am I the danger? Inadvertently. I almost set my kitchen on fire while baking cookies and two of my lab partners in high school science classes almost set our stations on fire. (I wasn’t responsible, but I still feel as if I was an accomplice.)

Before the premiere of the new episode last night, my boyfriend shaved my head. A lot of people shave their heads early in the chemo process, but my hair was so thick that the thinning wasn’t noticeable until this week. Within the course of a week and half, my hair suddenly looked really thin. It was time. And what better time than before the return of Walter White?

I didn’t cry, though I’ve done my share of it over the past several months. But I’ve never been one of those people who cry when they get their hair cut. It will grow back—though in this case it will take longer.

Right now, I’m waiting for the results of my most recent PET scan. If everything is on track, my last chemotherapy appointment will be September 27—two days before Breaking Bad comes to an end. Walter White’s story and my cancer journey will end together. I know better than to expect a happy ending for Walt, though I hope for one for the end of my own story.

Breaking Bad: Bills and Anger

I recently started watching Breaking Bad. I’m not sure I’ll see all the seasons before the show’s final six episodes air in August, but this seems like an easy, attainable goal to set for myself—not quite as pressure-filled as finding a new job, getting freelance work and getting rid of cancer. I actually recently put that last one on my to-do list.

Breaking Bad is meant to fill the void left by completing The Wire and the end of this season of Mad Men—although this last season, for me, was a little more meh men. And, of course, this seems like the perfect time to be watching a show about a man with terminal cancer driven to cooking meth to pay his medical bills and support his family.

I can sometimes relate to Walter White’s uncharacteristic outbursts. While I’m not in the nothing-left-to-lose frame of mind, sometimes something very little sets off anger—or sadness. This small thing happened and I have cancer.

It doesn’t happen very often for me, although I joke that Seinfeld’s Frank Costanza is my spirit animal. However, after having my biopsy surgery in March at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center to confirm my Hodgkin’s lymphoma diagnosis, we had to catch a cab back to Brooklyn. Groggy and newly stitched, I wasn’t in the mood for cab drivers who just don’t like to go to Brooklyn. We were also facing drivers in between shifts. That’s how I ended up hanging on to a cab’s locked door, screaming at a visibly alarmed driver, “I just had surgery and you can’t take me to Brooklyn!”

Once the crazy lady was made to wait on the sidewalk, we got a cab. On our way home, my boyfriend looked at me and noted, “You can’t keep a good woman down.”

And even with insurance, cooking meth for extra cash seems pretty tempting. Obviously, my situation isn’t nearly as dire. But sometimes, in the middle of the night, the snakes from the medical symbol slither from their post and curl up in bed with me. “$$$$” they hiss, one in each ear. “Thi$$$ i$ going to be expen$$$$ive.”

Of course, aside from the whole moral dilemma, there are a few other reasons I’m not following in Walt’s footsteps. I have no idea how I got through high school chemistry. One of my lab partners and I set a paper towel on fire—she decided to start cleaning without turning off the Bunsen burner. Another lab partner almost set a fellow student ablaze, because she was goofing around and setting his apron strings on fire. The fire would quickly go out, but one time, it took an extra second for it to go out, and I have to confess, I just stood there with my mouth open. Looking back, I probably should have stopped my partner from actually playing with fire.

I also recently failed to bake cookies in our new oven. (Well, new to us.) I put the cookies in and then the apartment filled with smoke five minutes later.

So it’s probably best I don’t work with volatile substances.

I don’t think I’m cut out for a life of crime, either. I’ve always been a goodie-goodie. I don’t jaywalk. I get upset when people don’t come to full and complete stops at stop signs. I’ve thought about making a citizen’s arrest when local police have driven through the traffic light at the end of my street. (I’m told that won’t go over well.) But I figure my new unemployment will give me time to finally patrol the streets and keep them safe. I also might become a pet detective and look for all the lost animals in the neighborhood.

Alas, neither will bring in much cash, so I just buy a lotto ticket every now and then. And now that I have Breaking Bad to catch up on, my citizen patrols might have to wait for now.