Nine Days

Most people will have at least one watershed event in their lives, something that leaves them forever changed. Mine happened over nine days in July 1998.

It didn’t come out of nowhere, yet it blindsided me. My Dad had been sick, with diabetes, then high blood pressure. He suffered a minor heart attack the previous fall, and surgery on his arteries. He had recovered from it all, but he still had pain.

So in January, I took a Tuesday off from work and drove up to Exeter to go with my Dad to his doctor appointment. By the time he walked the short distance from the car to the office, he was angry and covered in sweat. That’s the kind of pain he was in.

His doctor, whom I will call Dr. Heart-of-Stone, spoke of medications and blood pressure, cholesterol and insulin levels. Then I said, “He’s in too much pain.”

“He’s on so many medications,” he explained. “I don’t want to add narcotics to the list if we don’t have to,” He looked at my Dad.

“No, no, we don’t want to mess things up,” he agreed.


Six months later, my Dad went to bed and stayed there. He stopped eating, and he was mad at everyone.

After a week of this, I called Dr. Heart-of-Stone. “He’s been in bed for a week, he’s not eating,” I pleaded. “He won’t talk to me. He’s mad at my mother.”

“Everything, all the tests we’ve done have looked good,” he said. “I really think we’re dealing with a case of depression.”

“So, what do we do?”

“Can you get him to come in?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, give me a call when you can get him to come in.” And he hung up.


Three weeks later, on July 20th, we got my Dad into the hospital for some tests.

When I came in from work, my husband Brian handed me the phone. It was my mother. When I told her she sounded like she had a cold, she started to cry.

“I don’t have good news,” she said. They found a tumor on my dad’s esophagus that they were 99 percent sure was malignant. And given his condition, they said, he was not a candidate for surgery to remove it.

I called my dad. “Quite a day, huh,” I said meekly.

“Yeah.”

“We’ll have to figure things out,” I offered, thinking about going to Boston for second opinions and so on.

“Yeah, me and your mother have things to figure out.”

“Have you been eating?”

“Talk to your mother, and she’ll tell you what happened when I tried to eat.” He handed
the phone over to her. Later, she asked me what I’d said, because his face had turned red and his eyes had filled with tears.

That night, I sat on the floor and sobbed. I started yelling, “Damn it, damn it, damn it,” until Brian came and took me into his arms.


The next day, when I came in from work, the answering machine’s red light flashed at me. I took a deep breath, pressed play and heard my brother Mark’s grim voice.

“Kris. The news is not good. In fact, it’s really very terrible news.”

I walked out onto my back deck and called my brother. I surveyed the crystal blue sky, watched seagulls and a hawk coast about, felt the cool air on my skin, and listened as my brother explained that the cancer had invaded my dad’s hip and ribs, that it was inoperable. By the time he said the prognosis, “Six months, if we’re lucky,” I was on my knees, unsure if I could stand again.

“Dad?”

“Hi.”

“Dad, I’m so angry.”

“I don’t have time to be angry.” A chuckle. “I’m not surprised they found something like this, I’m really not. I’m not done, I still have things I wanted to do. This is going to be hard on your mother, it’s going to be hard on everybody, the next six months. But you need to distance yourself from this, Kris. You have responsibilities and you need to meet them. If you can’t do that, then I haven’t been a very good father.”

That night, my emotions took me on a ride – anger, despair, numbness, panic, fear, uselessness, failure, regret. Guilt. Guilt for thinking about life after he was gone. Guilt for laughing at a joke. Guilt for feeling normal for a second. And especially, guilt for not having dragged him into Boston months and months ago.


When I walked into the hospital on Wednesday, the nurses and staff on the fourth floor met my eye. My brows were so furrowed, the anger shooting out of my face. This is how I feel. Back off, I’m pissed.

I had to sit close to my dad to hear him, his voice was so low. We didn’t really talk about things as they were. But he’d suddenly huff and slap, bad-ump bump with his hands on his ever-round belly, and I saw the chill run through him.


By Thursday, my Dad was on a lot of morphine. He would be saying something and just trail off, muttering and staring off into the distance. Then when he realized it, he would look at me sideways. But he maintained his composure.

Then Mark came in to talk to us. He had spoken to the doctors again.

When he told Dad he would live another two months, not six, Dad said, “OK, I guess Sandie couldn’t make it, huh? She can’t do it ...” My sister Sandie was homeless and we couldn’t find her. He looked to his side, hands folded over his belly.

When Mark told us that he was not a candidate for a feeding tube, and that the probable cause of death would be an opportunistic infection like pneumonia or malnutrition, my Dad said, “What do I do, just starve to death?” with a shudder and look that said, of course not. Then, “Keeping me alive, getting a tube. That’s just insanity, isn’t it? Putting you all through that?”

“Hope is a form of bravery, Dad.” Mark struggled to speak. “Strength comes in many forms, and hope is ...” Then he broke down.

My mom and I left the room as Mark went over the hospice contract with my Dad. I felt the floor giving way under me, like I was stepping off a cliff. We collapsed in the family waiting room, feeling like we’d just been beaten with a baseball bat.


By Friday my anger gave way to weakness and resignation. As I sat with him, he hallucinated. He peeled tomatoes and made salad, his arms flailing, his eyes determined. He had photos in his hand, then they were gone. He said, “C’mon, I keep having something right in my hand, then it disappears.”

I only saw him break down once. I’d gotten him into his wheel chair, the first leg of the trip home. Then Mark and my mom came into the room, and the confusion and effort of it all became too much. “I can’t, I can’t.”

His face got red and his eyes filled, and we said, “It’s OK, it’s OK, Dad. It’s all right.”


On Saturday, hospice came and the astute nurse started him on oxygen, which gave him immediate relief. Brian and I were in the car, about to drive across the state to look at a used automatic-lift recliner for him. But my mom said, “Don’t go, Kris. Come here.”

When I stepped into the house, I saw him sitting in the chair, oxygen tubes in his nose, smiling at me with the sweetest expression. The hospice nurse pulled me into the kitchen.

“Often times a person knows when they are going to die,” she said. “I asked your dad how he feels and he said, ‘I feel myself slipping away.’”

“He’s dying now?” I asked.

She nodded.

My brothers Mike and Mark came. We took turns talking with him privately. I washed his feet. A priest came and performed last rites.

I asked if he wanted to go lie down. “No,” he said. “I’m just enjoying this feeling of tranquility.”

That night in his sleep, he had a stroke and the next morning he couldn’t talk or swallow his pain medicine. I kept saying Dad, you’ve got to take your pill. And he just stared at me, his eyes wide and glassy, panicked.


By Monday my mind started playing tricks on me. Why didn’t hospice give him water even? They made him comfortable, but at a price. They don’t even want to help you preserve the last couple days.

My friend Terri called. She said, “You have it so together, you have such a level head.” And I didn’t know why I did, but now I look back and realize that of everything that happened that week, talking to her couldn’t make me cry. Watching my dad take the communion and repeat “Lord have mercy,” watching mom sing to him and stroke his head, seeing his eyes after learning that he couldn’t even get a feeding tube -- those things crushed me, so that the only way I could breath was to cry.


On July 29, nine days after the doctors discovered his cancer, my dad died. For weeks I cried driving home from work. I thought, “People assume that I’ll be alright. But maybe I won’t be. What about that? Maybe I’ll never be alright again.”


It’s been six years, and I am alright, although I am not the same. The way my Dad died taught me things about life. Like, you can’t rely on doctors to see the obvious. You can’t make enough time for those you love, especially those who are struggling. And you can’t beat yourself up too much. You have to forgive yourself.

Many people believe that when someone dies, they are not gone, they still exist in your heart. Soon after my Dad died, I caught my reflection in the mirror and saw a beautiful young woman, one I’d never quite seen before, and I knew it was true. I knew that I would never see myself the same way again, because now I saw myself, at least in part, the way my dad did. Now I loved myself a little more, for my Dad.

Have Your Embryos and Your Stem Cells, Too

I’m staying away from the news these days, for the usual “no stress” reasons, but I do catch blurbs all day, on the radio, on Web sites, and on TV. Yesterday that blurb was “embryonic stem cell research.”

Conservatives are often accused of being “evil.” We don’t care about the poor or the working class. We don’t care about minorities. And now, we don’t care about Alzheimer’s patients.

This frustrates me because, if the people who criticize the president over this issue would just sit down and do the research, they would see that he has taken a responsible approach to government’s involvement in stem cell research. I just think that people don’t know the full story.

Research on embryonic stems cells started just six years ago, although Congress moved to ban federal funding of it eight years ago. George W. Bush made that ban permanent, but has allowed federal funding for the 71 lines that were already created, where the life and death decision already has been made.

Although thousands of embryos exist in this country, the “extras” created during in vitro fertilization, researchers continue to create and clone embryos solely for research. They continue to create life just to destroy it. And they say WE don’t care about people? By the way, the IVF embryos still have human life potential (check out the Snowflakes Embryo Adoption Program).

According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), embryonic stem cell research (which requires the destruction of a week-old human embryo) has not led to any treatments for any diseases, but may “at some point in the future.” In addition, 20% of animals injected with these cells developed untreatable brain tumors. Scientist are finding that embryonic stem cells are hard to control.

Adult stem cells from bone marrow, however, have been used to fight fatal and chronic diseases for over 30 years. Within the last few years, scientists have discovered that we also produce stem cells in our brain, blood, blood vessels, skeletal muscle, skin and liver. They have turned adult liver cells into insulin-producing cells. They’ve turned blood stem cells into brain cells and heart muscle, for God’s sake!

The NIH says that adult stem cells have a “significant advantage” over embryonic stem cells: We all have them, and if we needed a therapy requiring stem cells, we could use our own, thereby negating the need for immunosuppressant drugs.

Another source of stem cells is the umbilical cord. Scientists have found a way to make these stem cells multiply to the point that they can be used to treat an adult (previously only children could be treated with cord blood stem cells). One woman’s chemotherapy depleted blood was replenished using the cord blood of the baby she just delivered. They think treatments like this could be standard WITHIN A FEW YEARS.

The NIH says that adult stem cells have a huge potential to deliver treatments for Parkinson’s, diabetes and damage from heart attacks. Real-life people are already receiving real-life treatments, unlike the mythical treatments that may someday be developed using embryos. 

To destroy one life to possibly save another devalues all human life. The routine practice of destroying embryos for research is a dark and dirty road that the U.S. government should not travel.

For the people who want funding for embryonic stem cell research, go organize a fund raiser. There are plenty of firms conducting this research, just make a donation to them if you choose to. 

The stem-cell research issue is just another bogus attempt by the left to discredit the president and American conservatives. It's another attempt to use emotion and fear to try to sway people to the their side. All I can say is, when the most stirring, raise-the-rafters speech at the Democratic Convention is delivered by the Rev. Al Sharpton, then you know, THEY ARE IN TROUBLE.

Picture Imperfect

Even though I’m a perfectionist, I know that no one’s perfect, no human anyway. I like to think that we are perfect in our imperfection.

Maybe my perfectionism led me to editing. What better job than the office nit picker? A comma here, a switch from passive to active voice there. Taking imperfect text and making it, if not perfect, at least publishable.

But as a stay-at-home mom, there’s no clear-cut way to satisfy my perfectionism, or even my need for a general sense of control. I can only balance the good with the bad.

Good things I did today as a mom:
1. Cooked oatmeal with fresh blueberries, ground flax seed and organic soymilk for the boys’ breakfast.
2. Went on to feed them snacks and, yes, even lunch.
3. Put John down for a nap promptly at 1:30 so that he wouldn’t get into that “hitting mood.”
4. Washed a load of clothes and put it in the dryer.
5. Coaxed my 4 year old to practice writing before turning on his afternoon video.

Bad things I did today as a mom:
1. Slept in until 8 a.m., five minutes before Ben woke up.
2. Fed the kids an unhealthful quantity of raisins so that I could dawdle at my PC a little longer.
3. Let them jump on the couch cushions, threats of uncoiled springs and bruised heads be damned, so that I could linger over my magazine a little longer.
4. Lost my patience with them at least five times – between the fights over toys, the poop on John’s hands, the wrestling over my lap at story time, the refusal to eat the previously-begged-for macaroni and cheese, the pulling of my hair by John as I knelt cleaning up spaghetti at his feet – leading me to speak in volumes so loud that my friend from the next town called to see if I was OK.
5. Stayed home on a beautiful day without taking the kids to the park, for a walk or even for a ride in the car.

It’s become clear to me that, while I love my kids more than life, I did not miss a calling to be a preschool teacher or daycare provider. Being my kids’ caretaker wears me out. It may be because I gave up caffeine two weeks ago, but I was so tired by 2:30 this afternoon that my limbs hurt. And all I could think was that I still had six hours to go, which would surely include six cases of Ben’s covert candy eating, four cases of who hit who, five cases of someone whipping a hard toy at my wall or furniture, three cases of me screaming and instantly regretting it. Plus a load of laundry to fold and put away, dinner to make, dishes to wash and put away, the evening “put the house back together” ritual, bedtime stories, a shower for me ... Thank God Brian came home early because of the Democratic National Convention, and took the kids to the park for awhile.

Perfection? Kids make it easier to let it go, because when you have to kiss a boo boo while you’re taking a poop, when you hop up six times while eating a sandwich to wipe hands, get more ketchup or give a time out, when you don’t finish doing the bare minimum required of this lucrative occupation until 9 at night, you learn that the dust on the bookcase kind of covers that scratch, and that your husband’s shirt looks pretty good hanging over the dining room chair, and why on earth make pancakes from scratch when they sell them already made? A little partially hydrogenated fat and high fructose corn syrup probably won’t hurt them, too much.

As I pursue “balance,” I have to admit that I cannot:
- Feed my family fresh bread from organic wheat which I grow and grind myself.
- Single handedly teach my children at home while being a successful freelance writer and running an organic farm in my backyard.
- Keep my house spotless top to bottom, look presentable, exercise, eat well, play with the kids, do the laundry, cook dinner, and still have enough energy to say “Hello” or even smile at Brian when he gets home.

But I’ll keep striving for that perfect life, where, having “excavated my authentic self,” I will know my “limits” and my “boundaries,” and I will pursue my “passion,” so that even work is fun and earns me enough money to take six weeks off a year, hire a sitter and personal chef while paying for the kids’ college education. For now, though, perfection will have to be a day in which my husband comes home early and takes the kids to the park, so that I can go for a long walk and think about what I’m grateful for, then come back home and cook dinner, in peace. 

 

No Stress

My mantra this week is "no stress." I'm at the point where I get residual anxiety. I'll be sitting around, watching TV, and be seized by panic and dread. Part of it's from being a mom, I think. For no reason some awful thought like Ben getting hit by a car or John falling down the stairs will pop into my head.   Then I can't sleep. Or I'll get stressed to the point that I scream at the kids, to the point where I feel enraged.  I hate yelling at my kids. It makes me feel like the scum of the earth.  I can't be getting enraged every day.

So, what, yoga? Meditation? I'm exercising, and eating right, getting mostly enough sleep.
 
We're trying to get pregnant, another reason why I can have no unnecessary stress. In March I had a miscarriage, so that makes this process more annoying:

- Try. (That's the only good part.)
- Wait.  For weeks. While abstaining from caffeine, beer, advil, jogging (listed in order of importance).
- Get "fake-out" cramps that come and mysteriously go away ("This must be it!").
- Get period and remember what real cramps feel like.
- Drink too much for six straight days until it's time to try again. (It's the "If I get pregnant I won't be able to drink for a year, so I might as well drink now!" party! Doesn't every woman do that?)

Of course, the other scenario is actually Becoming Pregnant. Then a whole new family of stressors will invade my life. And my body. Ever see Alien? Pregnancy sucks all the energy out of you, then wakes you every hour to pee. It disengages your esophogeal sphincter so that you get heartburn up to your tonsils. It swells your ankles till they look like your thighs. (Well, in my case, a little smoother.) It expells from your body an infant that only likes to be awake between 1 and 5 am and screams bloody murder from 5 to 9 pm.

So no stress relief via a cold beer at the end of a long hot summer day chasing and screaming at my 2- and 4-year-old boys. Meanwhile, my job as Mom entails keeping the kids entertained, changing the sheets, vacuuming and dusting, cleaning the toilets and tub, doing the laundry and ironing, and of course shining the sink, plus grocery shopping, cooking three meals a day, trying to use all the veggies from the veggie co-op, running the dishwasher, mopping the floor for the fiftieth time this week, because my 2 1/2 year old won't stop pitching his bowl of yogurt across the room ...

My other major stress-relief tactic has been criminalized as well. I've been informed that we are "hemorraghing financially," so the days sitting glued to my PC, surfing from Barnes and Noble to Overstock.com over to eBay, Banana Republic, Gap, Pottery Barn are over. Even my $4 books and $10 shirts. IT ALL MUST END.

Go to bed at a reasonable hour, eat every three hours during the day, drink 1/2 gallon of water a day, excercise, meditate, go to church ...  I know I need to do all these things. But sometimes even they are not enough to unstring my high strung resting metabolism. But WHAT ELSE CAN I DO?