Mother of Two, Boo Hoo

Before we married Melanoma Man and I talked about having two children, as if it was all up to us. Thinking we were in charge of all the variables, and because we said so things would just happen the way we planned. The fact of the melanoma was there from the start. I pushed it aside, tried not to look. Two years after we married imac was born. Again it was a planned event. I planned to use self-hypnosis to get through labor. My walking partner, Judy, mother of three, physician and epidemiologist had done it. So I figured I could too. Judy's Dad was a psychiatrist and had taught her self hypnosis. She used it for the birth of all three of her children. My friend Marianne was a Doula and a Bradley method instructor at the time. The evidence was all  around me that natural childbirth was feasible. After a bit I found a class, HypnoBirthing, one state away. Melanoma Man was game. We spent 8 weeks with six other couples watching videos of women quietly giving birth. There was no resemblance whatsoever to what I witnessed during my labor and delivery rotation in nursing school. I decided to believe in Hypnobirthing anyway. We had guided imagery scripts to practice with and a cassette tape, a t shirt and a pen with the Hypnobirthing logo. We did our homework, practiced. Pretending to give birth is like pretending to be dying I'm guessing. The pretend version really doesn't do it justice.

Imac's due date came and went. I had a doctor's appointment on his due date. Dr. B determined, "Nope it won't be today, not dilated." He gave us a time frame, after which, if labor had not begun, he would induce. I left the office crying. Dr. B. knew of my plans to use HypnoBirthing and to his credit he was not critical, offered no opinion, let me know I could change my mind at any time. That afternoon Melanoma Man and I went on a long hike, ate spicy food, did everything we could think of to induce labor. Nothing. Ten days would pass. On the tenth day I woke up around 5 a.m. feeling crampy. This is it. This is the day! Melanoma Man started in with the HypnoBirthing scripts around 7 a.m. We timed contractions and went to the hospital around 11 a.m. when the contractions had reached the frequency that warranted it. To my dismay I was only 2 cm dilated, zero percent effaced. I was advised to walk the halls, which I did for 2 hours. Then we were sent home. "How will I know when it's time to come back?" I asked. The labor and delivery nurse replied, "Oh you'll know. You will know."

Dutifully Melanoma Man read the scripts, checked on me. I didn't feel like I was on a pink cloud. I didn't feel like I was going to be ok and soon I started vomiting. The vomiting broke whatever little bit of spell the hypnosis might have cast and it continued every 20-30 minutes or so for the next 19 hours.  Back at the hospital I  wouldn't let Melanoma Man go to the cafeteria for dinner and I wouldn't let him eat the snacks I packed for him either. After 20 minutes or so, he said he was "stepping down the hall to the nurse's station." I knew he was going to the cafeteria, but I liked the idea that he was just down the hall, not two floors down in the cafeteria. Although I was in no medical danger whatsoever I became convinced that I was going to die and this is why it was absolutely imperative that Melanoma Man NOT leave the room. I thought that dying would be OK really. I thought Melanoma Man would do just fine as a single Dad. By this time I had already thrown in the towel on Hypnobirthing,  asking my labor and delivery nurse for whatever relief modern medicine could afford me. "Not yet, too soon," she said.

Around 10 pm the anesthesiologist arrived to put in the epidural. I was prepped, in position sitting on the side of the bed,with my back beta-dined and ready. A contraction started. I asked him to wait. "No, this is the best time to put in an epidural, during a contraction," he said. I was doubtful. Next the pitocin drip to try to strengthen the contractions. Around 3:30 a.m. Dr. H came in and said imac had still not dropped and that I was only 4 cm and not effaced. He recommended a C-section, to be performed by his partner when she arrived at the hospital after a full night of sleep. Imac was delivered at 8:38 a.m. At this point I had decided to retract my earlier decision to have two children. One would be just fine.

At home I took everything too seriously. I couldn't watch the news or the television show ER or anything which might include bad outcomes or danger. I was stunned by the responsibility of this one baby, this one baby that I would leave at home to go back to work in 5 weeks. Melanoma Man ran the show for the first month, during which I was totally irrational. He had baby care down in a week. Thoughts of melanoma returned. I remembered a patient I'd had, showing up 5 years out from her first melanoma with a tumor in her jaw. I thought maybe I could manage raising one child by myself, but certainly not two. Twenty years as a litagator, he won that argument, as he has won most. I finally fessed up to Melanoma Man just last week, once our two children ages 10 and 12 were in bed: "you know the real reason I didn't want to have two kids was my fear of the melanoma coming back and me doing this on my own. Now I can't imagine imac without Butter or Butter without imac."

Snacks, and Shoes, and Legos! Oh my.

Sometimes it's the little things that just make my week. This week the little things are snacks, shoes and Legos. This weekend, after my dramatic realization that the Legos are overtaking my home and life, I told imac and Butter that we would make Lego display cases for their rooms. After they cleaned and vacuumed their rooms I took them to Home Depot and they put together these primitive cinder block bookcases for about 20 bucks each, or half the cost of a Lego kit. It was key that they do their own vacuuming, ensuring that when they heard the tell tale clickity clack of a lego piece getting sucked up into the vacuum, it would be a tragedy of their own creation. They were extra careful to prep the area on hands and knees ahead of vacuuming. "Oh well, too bad," I could say, but alas no clickity clack. They carried all the cinder blocks and boards into the house and assembled their shelves. I wished I had more manual labor for them to do. I repaired a lot of split rail fences, cleaned a lot of stalls and hooves as a kid and sometimes I wish I had more of that for them to do around here in sunny suburban Florida. Which reminds me, how did I end up here again?

My work shoes have been getting me down lately, so I replaced them and I much happier every time I look at my feet.

Finally snacks, the dreaded snack problem. Melanoma Man complains to me for the umpteenth time tonight that Butter does NOT like the after school snack Melanoma Man brings in the car each day.It is a different snack each day. I explain to Melanoma Man for the billionth time that it is NOT about the snack. It's about autonomy, the choosing, the  independence, being included. I offer my usual suggestion: "Why don't you have the boys pack their own snacks in the morning before they leave for school?" I am met with stone cold silence, the putting on of reading glasses and raising of book, as if to say "You are not here Laundry Thief. I cannot see you and I cannot hear you. The End." It's a simple solution and it will work, unless your goal is to compete with your 10 year old for your wife's attention. I'm not sure what the goal is, so I filled a basket with snacks, put it by the front door and asked the boys to pick one in the morning and put it in the car. Ta Da!

These small, tiny, minute and irrelevant things made my week

Legos have taken over, I want a place of my own

I suspect there are other working moms like me who come home to backpacks and jackets lying in the hallway, living room overtaken by legos, kitchen island covered in books, apples, legos, mail, a pair of boy scout pants that has needed hemming since the beginning of time. I say "working moms" because in my imagination the stay at home moms have got it all under control and would never let this happen in their house. Some days it feels like it's the final straw. Yes I think, it must be time for me to move out and get a place of my own. Somewhere along the way I got lost in the creation of this family.

I surrendered the Mom job to Melanoma Man years ago. Honestly I think I'm better at it too. Although to give him his credit he's done beautifully in the Dad role. In the evenings and on the weekends I take the Mom job back, bit by bit, trying to instill a bit of my way of doing things into the people in this house. I am usually only temporarily successful, with things returning to the usual state of affairs by the time I walk back in the door the following day.

I remember my Mom alerting us when my Dad left the office. It was a 25 mile commute for him, so that gave us time to pull things together. No toys, books, coats, debris in the living room, dining room, or kitchen. Everything put away or in your room by the time Dad got home. Now I really get it, as I trip over oodles of other people's belongings on my way into this house.

I think somehow that books will help me accomplish my goals, so I'm working my way through these two books:

1  Cleaning House: A Mom's Twelve Month Experiment to Rid Her Home of Youth Entitlement  and
2  The Crumpled Paper Was Due Last Week .

I'll report back on my progress. I'm still recovering from spring break when I worked while Melanoma Man, imac, and Butter stayed home and trashed the house. Now that Melanoma Man is in a relatively stable period and I'm no longer in crisis management mode, all the things I always wanted in this marriage and this family have bubbled up to the top. It is clear that it ain't gonna happen and I was a fool to think it ever would. Each truth is revealed in it's own time. This truth revealed either too early or too late.

Little House on the Prairie

I read the whole series of books to my oldest son, I, when he was about nine years old. I thought the pace might be too slow or boring, but it wasn't. He was fascinated to hear how kids lived in another era. Some days I wish I could go back in time..

We celebrate this week, tentatively. Word is the tumors are still shrinking. Melanoma Man calls from the road on Wednesday, "I've got PVCs, but it could be nothing. I'm supposed to get a rhythm strip done when I get back home." He tries to joke with me about PVCs being polyvinyl chloride, rather than premature ventricular contractions. But I'm not biting. He's in a toxicity study, pre-clinical trial to see if XL888 should even go to clinical trials.

I know the PVCs are not anxiety or "nothing" as he would have me think because they do an EKG at every visit and this is the first time the PVCs have appeared.

Thursday morning I hear him on the phone with the call center of the university medical center for which I work. He's leaving a message for his primary care doc. He tells the person on the other end: "I had a routine EKG at my other doctor's office yesterday. I'm having PVCs. I need to get a routine rhythm strip done. Is that something Dr. A can do?"

Off the phone I tell him that he needs NOT use words like ROUTINE when he's talking about an appointment with his ONCOLOGIST, an investigational drug, and an abnormal EKG. "Look the call center folks answer the phone, schedule appointments, that's it. They can't triage. So they are going on clues you give them and if you keep using the word ROUTINE, no one is going to call you back!"

Sure enough, no call back Thursday, no call back Friday. I could call on his behalf but I don't. It's not worth the fight. That would just be me, stealing something else from him. First the laundry, now this. I can't even ask him if anyone called back. It makes me too mad. I getting weary of saving his life.

Friday night the youngest, W, is in a full bratty "I don't like the dinner" meltdown, clearly not reading the signs I put up in the kitchen that say "YOU get what you get and Don't throw a fit." He is throwing it, the fit, that is. The words in my head, which would be like gasoline on this fire, are getting dangerously close to flying out of my mouth, so I put on my shoes and head for the car, drive to a nearby playground parking lot and call a friend. I tell her all the horrible words that I want to say to youngest son.

I remember my mother running away when I was a child. Always drunk, spewing her vitriolic words at us on her way out the door, often a special event like Mother's Day, sometimes in a fur coat. Hmm, maybe I am an ok Mom after all? The bar is set kind of low.

Back home later W tries to make it up to me with a cursory "I'm sorry." I'm not sure where it came from when I said "It hurts my heart when you act like that while your Dad struggles to breathe and make dinner at the same time. He's not going to tell you how hard it is for him or how sick he feels from his diseases and his medication," The tears came streaming down, W's and mine.

Sunday morning Melanoma Man says "Do you know Dr. A.'s fax number?" That's how I officially find out he never heard back after leaving his "routine" message with the call center. His oncologist wants him to drive 4.5 hours to the cancer center Monday if he isn't able to get the rhythm strip done locally at Dr. A's office. I'm annoyed because I was right about the call center. I call in a favor from my Department Chair. Ten minutes later Melanoma Man's phone rings. It's Dr. A. He will see him Monday at 11. No 4.5 hour drive! Here I am again, saving his life.

These are the days when I wish we were out working the fields and one day he just got tired and sat in the rocker. And the neighbors noticed that he wasn't working the field with me anymore. They came and helped me with the harvest. And we weren't all so monitored and measured and aware every moment of what we are losing.

May and December

Last night I stepped outside the front door in bare feet, which is usually a reasonable thing to do in Florida in January. The temperature was dropping, the driveway cold, a little wind, crisp air. I looked up into the sky, clouds racing by, breathing in the cold air, feeling free for a just a moment in my driveway. Free of burdens or worries or cares. Then I remembered my baby birds inside the house and how I am here to teach them to fly. Some days I push too hard, rushing them, and wishing I were more grown up myself. Wishing I had been a better planner, less of a follower, more of a leader, less acquiescing,  more demanding. As if any of this would have prepared me for today, in this house, in this life.

I sit on the sofa tonight, demand  Melanoma Man hold my hand. He complies. There is less, a smaller hand, a weaker hand, less each day. By next week the mustache will be gone. I've never seen him without it. He's had a mustache since 1975 I think. But I wasn't there in '75. I was busy working through the fourth grade.

Now I understand finally about May and December. They didn't seem so far apart when we were 25 and 42, 28 and 45, 32 and 49. It's my springtime, time to gear up for the next 40 years. Three months ago when he told our baby birds about the cancer being back,"Don't worry, I'm not losing my leaves yet, not yet."

Mother of One

I am thinking back, trying to remember what plans I had for myself as a young girl. I remember being elementary school aged and planning to have four children, to be married by twenty five, first child by twenty seven.

By the time I turned eighteen I had no such plans. I had a high school boyfriend.We spent most Friday and Saturday nights together. We were just friends, but friends that held each other up in spite of the circumstances of our families of origin who often pulled us down. By college I had decided against marriage and against children. I would remain single. I would become a veterinarian. I would require my three older siblings to call me Dr. so and so. I didn't understand children or men. I understood animals and that was pretty much my scope.

At twenty, walking from my college dorm on Cold Spring Lane en route to the Farm Store, I passed a young woman with a baby in a stroller. My thoughts of childlessness were over. The game changed. Yet how to get from here to there? I decided to familiarize myself with children by becoming a nanny. The bulletin boards  in the Education Department featured a Help Wanted advertisement for a summertime nanny for one eighteen month old girl, mornings Monday through Friday. How to convince her mother of my qualifications? I crafted a ridiculous resume listing all the varied creatures I had cared for from snakes, to rabbits, horses, donkeys, house cats, dogs. I explained earnestly that babies and toddlers have a great deal in common with puppies and kittens. To my amazement, she bought it. I spent the glorious summer of the seventeen year locusts outdoors with the loveliest purest goodness of an eighteen month old girl.

Fast forward fourteen years, I had been married for two years when I gave birth to number one son. None of it had gone as planned in any version of my plan. That left me thinking that all the other mothers knew a secret I didn't know. I remembered the advice I had given confidently and convincingly to so  many mothers and fathers over the years. I had thought I would be a natural. I certainly had the educational background and the professional experience, working with pediatric patients for ten years.

My mother couldn't be trusted on the subject of mothering, no natural or acquired skills. I had come to her at two weeks of age from St. Anne's Home for Infants and Unwed Mothers. She  was jealous, insanely jealous that I gave birth to this beautiful boy with his gorgeous blue eyes and full head of jet black hair. He looked just like me with darker hair. The first person I had ever known who looked like me.

Melanoma Man taught me to be a mother. He believed I already knew what to do and continued to show me evidence of my skill and worth as a mother until I could believe too. How did he know, fifty years old, confirmed bachelor until age 48? He will tell you he learned it all, Mother and Father from a cat known as Mr. Stubby gifted to him years earlier by me and the Matchmaker.