On Our Way to Costco

Catalina called me today from the nurse's office to tell me that one of the brackets fell off her braces again. My daughter must have the slickest teeth in the world because this happens fairly often no matter how strong the cement is that they use. The orthodontist managed to squeeze her in at 3:15. This bummed me out a little bit because I planned on going to Costco between leaving the office and picking up Catalina after basketball practice. While I love having Catalina as my sidekick when shopping, I was really hoping to just get in and out, grabbing the essentials and using my fresh batch of coupons. Oh well.

I got Catalina from practice and she was excited to go shopping, mostly for the tasty samples they give out at Costco. Catalina told me how happy her coach was that she was able to make it to practice despite her orthodontal emergency. The rain started coming down harder as we drove past 7-11. I drove slowly through the giant puddle in front of the parking lot. Up ahead I saw three girls who looked like they could have been Catalina and her friends. They were splashing along down the street, laughing and one of them was spinning a fuschia umbrella. Catalina and I were trying to decide what to have for dinner. The light turned green. We started to inch forward. The three girls started to cross Union Boulevard, which is a pretty big street in our little town. The girl with the spinning fuschia umbrella darted ahead of the other two girls. She didn't see the red car turning. The drive didn't see her and her spinning umbrella darting. Even though I was looking right at them when it happened, I can't tell you what happened when they collided. The next thing I saw was the girl laying montionless on the pavement, her fuschia umbrella upside down in the gutter, and the two other girls standing over her in hysterics.

At first I thought they were goofing around. That the girl slid on the wet pavement and her friends were playfully teasing her. As we pulled up beside them, it was clear that this was not a joke. Catalina recognized the girls as students from her school. They're eighth graders so Catalina only knew them by sight but it's a small school in a small town so they were easy to recognize. I got out of the car and went to the girl on the ground. I told the two friends no to tr and mover her. By then another woman had already stopped and parked her car in such a way that it blocked oncoming traffic. A man also stopped and was already on the phone to 911. We both looked down at the girl and asked her if she was okay. She did not respond. Her brown eyes were half open and rolling around in their sockets. Her jaw was slack. "What's your name, honey?" I asked her. No response. "What's your name?" One of her friends answered, "Giselle," as she trembled and cried. The other girl was on the phone to Giselle's mother. "Giselle, can you hear me?" Her lips quivered but no sound came out. Her eyes were rolling further back in her head. An oil delivery man ran out with a moving blanket and covered Giselle with it. An older gentleman came and held his umbrella over her head. And the driver of the red car was standing beside it, watching us from a distance.

Catalina stood near Giselle's friends. She kept looking back and forth between the driver and Gisellle. "I'm gonna make sure he doesn't try to get away before the cops get here," she said to me, pointing at the driver. I know she meant it. I know that if she saw that man attempt to get into his car and flee the scene, Catalina would run after him and stop him in any way she could. You have no idea how much I was hoping he would stay put.

The police arrived first. Giselle was still unresponsive. The police had some sort of small kit to use on her so we all stepped away so they could do what they needed to do...but none of us left. I joined Catalina near Giselle's friends. They were still distraught but seemed comforted by the police's arrival. I asked if they got in touch with Giselle's mother. They said they had and that she was on her way. She lives right nearby. The girls cried and hugged each other and blamed themselves for what happened to their friend.

When the ambulance arrived, Catalina and I got back into our car to get out of the rain. I was trying to hold back tears and decided to take out my Blackberry and ask for prayers for Giselle from my Facebook community. Catalina told me how scared she was by the whole thing and told her Facebook community about it as well. She thought the same thing I had at first; that the girls were goofing around. "It happened so fast." Yes it did.

It was a little while until the paramedics loaded Giselle into the ambulance. Just as they shut the doors, a woman who must have been Giselle's mother arrived. She was running as fast as she could on the wet pavement. She had a look of restrained panic in her demeanor. I could see her face contorted and tears streaming from her eyes. She slipped slightly as she reached the rear of the ambulance and she beat on the door with a clenched fist until it slung slowly open. She jumped inside and the door shut quickly behind her.

The police had moved on to talk to the driver. They were speaking casually. The officer held the sideview mirror that came off in the accident in his hand as he spoke. And that's what it appears it was. An accident.

Catalina and I went to Costco as planned. We shopped and ate the free samples. We laughed together as we normally do. But from time to time, we mentioned Giselle and everything that happened. Catalina said that everytime she shut her eyes, she saw Giselle laying there in the street. She had never seen an accident and its consequences unfold before her eyes. It was truly frightening.

As I sit here writing the account of what happened today, it all seems so surreal. If I did not feel this lump in my throat, I would think that this was all just a bad dream. But it isn't. It's real. Giselle and her friends could so easily have been Catalina and her friends. That mother at her baby's beside could have so easily been me. It could be any of us or our children. Next time I get a call from the nurse's office, I will try not to get bummed that my plans have to change. I will take it as a gift that I get to spend some time that I didn't expect to with my baby. I will hug her a little tighter now and be even more nervous when she is out with friends.

And I will pray for Giselle, that she pulls through without any permanent injury. And I will pray for Giselle's family, that they see their little return to her normal self quickly. And I will pray for her friends, that they don't feel guilty for something that was beyond their control.

Namaste.

Life and Love

Exactly 10 days ago my daughter, Catalina, turned 13. It has taken me this long to come to grips with this reality well enough to state that fact. It will take even longer for me to adjust to the reality that I have a "teenager." It's not an age thing for me like for a few of my friends, the dawn of a mid-life crisis --"Oh my goodness! Am I really THAT old that I am a teenager's mother?!?!?!?!?" Don't get me wrong, I am really starting to feel my age but that's inevitable. Obviously I've always known that Catalina becoming a teenager was inevitable as well but I am just not ready for it.

I was not in a good place when I found out I was pregnant. I didn't feel right so I went to my GYN. He performed the regular array of tests for someone expressing my vague symptoms. When he got the results, he sat me down and told them to me. My pregnancy test came back positive and my pap smear came back abnormal. He'd have to take a punch biopsy to be sure but he believed that I had cervical cancer (which the biopsy confirmed two days later). The good thing about cervical cancer is that it is extremely treatable and has a very low likelihood of recurrence. The treatments aren't like that of typical cancers. The options are cryosurgery, laser vaporization or conventional surgery. If you catch it early and it doesn't metastasize elsewhere, you don't have to endure chemotherapy or radiation treatments -- ladies, for this reason, please get your pap smears done every six months religiously. Truly, if you are a woman and you must get cancer, this in the one you'd want. That's how my GYN explained it to me.

He also explained that I could not be treated while I was pregnant so if I wanted to move forward with the treatment immediately, I'd have to terminate my pregnancy. Each of the treatments would weaken the cervix to some degree. How much would depend on how far the cancer went into my cervix and they wouldn't know that until the treatment was underway. You can have a baby with a diminished cervix however it would be more complicated. Precautions would have to be taken including the possibility of going under general anesthesia at 20 weeks and having the canal sewn up (like trussing a turkey) and then having a Cesarean birth rather than a vaginal delivery.

Or I could go to term with this pregnancy, with my cervix in tact albeit with cancer. My doctor explained that Mother Nature is a very clever lady who is singularly focused on carrying forward new life. During pregnancy, the spread of the cervical cancer is generally stunted. During the birth, part of the cervical wall sheds with the afterbirth. Depending on how deep into the cervix the cancer is, often the baby cures the mother.

I was 26 when I had this conversation with my doctor. I was hardly the clear-minded, level-headed woman you see before you today. I was completely blindsided. But the choice was clear.

Just as my doctor told me it would, the cervical cancer was stunted. In fact, except for that, it was rather uneventful...until my 35th week. I had one Lamas class during which we were instructed how to navigate the hospital paperwork so as not to get stuck with any bills our insurance company won't cover (EXTREMELY useful). I was examined by my doctor on a Saturday and he told me, "If you go to term, and there is no reason why you shouldn't, you will have a ten pound baby. Easy." I told him that I didn't think delivering a ten pound baby would be so easy. He laughed. I didn't.

The following Monday, on the first day of training the woman who would be covering my maternity leave, my water broke. I worked in Manhattan at the time. My doctor was affiliated with Winthrop in Mineola. My boss threw me in a Town Car with a dear friend and coworker and sent us to Long Island. It was 4:30 in the afternoon. Our driver decided he wanted to save the tunnel toll and go by way of Brooklyn. At rush hour. My friend gave her opinion of this decision, loudly, to the driver.

We arrived at Winthrop at 7 p.m. When we left the office, I wasn't feeling any pain. During the course of that even-longer-than-it-had-to-be ride, the contractions had begun and I was feeling them, full-force, as I was admitted. My doctor confirmed that my water broke and suspected the reason why was a bacteria had ruptured the membrane. It would need to be confirmed but he was putting me on intravenous antibiotics immediately so the baby and I would not get infected. He didn't tell me what bacteria it was until the day after Catalina was born when he came to check on us. When I got home I looked it up and saw that there was a 60% death rate for babies infected by it. Even though by then I knew Catalina was safe from it, I just held her and cried. In any case, because she was five weeks early and my doctor was concerned about her lung development, my doctor decided that I would be kept pregnant for a couple more days to strengthen Catalina's lungs. There were good air pockets. He gave me a narcotic to stop the contractions. The pain stopped and I fell asleep, attached to monitors. I had completely forgotten about the cervical cancer. It was no longer important.

When I woke up, another member of my doctor's practice (during the course of my pregnancy, I was seen by all but one of the doctors in the practice -- they do this so that in case your regular doctor is unavailable, the doctor who delivers the baby will be a familiar face. It would be a heck of an introduction if you first met in the Delivery Room, huh?) and a man I'd never seen before came to visit me. The stranger told me that I would be giving birth in a few hours. I told him he was wrong. I told him that Dr. Goldstein told me that I would stay pregnant for a few days. The stranger said that he was a high-risk delivery doctor and because of the bacteria's presence, he thought it best to deliver sooner rather than later. I told him I was on antibiotics which should take care of the infection and my baby's lungs had to be fully developed before she is born. He said in his opinion, it would be safer to deliver now (remember, at this point I still had no idea what the bacteria was or its potency). I told him that with all due respect, Dr. Goldstein has been with me and my baby for the last 35 weeks. I know him for less than five minutes. I trust Dr. Goldstein. If he says giving birth now is right, I'll do it. Otherwise, no. The stranger and Dr. Goldstein argued in the hall outside my room for a few minutes then Dr. Goldstein came in and told me that I'd be giving birth by the end of the day. They gave me more drugs to counter act the ones they gave me to stop my contractions.

Those drugs worked. I was feeling the pain of the contractions. Much worse than in the car on the way to the hospital. Much more frequently, too. However, my damn cervix was not cooperating! It would not dilate (ironically, quite the opposite problem of a cervix that had been treated for cancer). Unbelievable. They gave me more drugs -- an epidural -- to deaden the pain while they maxed out the dosage of the petocin to get me ready to deliver. I fell asleep again.

When I woke up, I felt incredibly sharp pains. Regularly. Very regularly. I was confused. I asked the maternity nurse why I was feeling pain because I had the epidural. She left to get the doctor. Lo and behold, the one doctor in the practice I hadn't seen previously came in. Dr. Goldstein had been at the hospital 36 hours straight and delivered twins. He went home to get some sleep which was good; he looked like Hell the last time I saw him. The new doctor came in and introduced herself to me, Dr. Valderaama. She said I was just about ready to start pushing. I was in blinding pain that this point and full of quite an array of drugs. I told her I was done. She would have to give me a C-section because I was in too much pain as it is and I didn't want to subject myself to more. She told me that she doesn't cut open healthy women carrying healthy babies and that I just have to push. I told her no and that she couldn't make me. She agreed that she couldn't make me push but at the same time told me that I couldn't force her to give me a C-section. That the baby was going to come out the only available opening, soon. She turned and walked out saying that she'd be back when I was ready to push.

I was a lot more spiteful then than I am now. My maternity nurse begged me to push and promised me that it would make me feel better..."If you'll only try it..." The pain started to get really bad so I gave in and said I'd try pushing. The nurse ran and got Dr. Valderaama, who, by the way, bore a striking resemblance to Ronnie James Dio. I pushed. I felt better! Now I wanted to keep pushing. Dr. Valderaama told me to stop pushing. What?!?!?! I told her I didn't want to. She said I better stop. The cord was wrapped around the baby's throat and pushing would tighten the noose. It was difficult to restrain myself because the pushing brought such profound relief, but I did. They had a bit of a hard time loosening the cord from Catalina's neck because rather than crowning, she decided it would be better to come out face first. Even from the moment of her birth, she was wide-eyed and curious, ever-anxious to see everything that is before her.

I don't know if I can accurately explain how I felt in those moments where I gave that one last, great push but I'll try...you know how people say as death approaches you see your entire life flash before your eyes? It was something like that but it wasn't my life, my past that I was seeing. I felt the overwhelming feeling of hope and saw an incredible brightness. Like all the answers about life and what it means were answered when I held my baby for the very first time, both of us crying and exhausted from birth. I had never felt love so strong before, a different kind of love. It made me strong and humble at the same time.

After 24 1/2 hours of labour, on Tuesday, February 4th at 5:07 p.m., Catalina Leah entered the world...and my cervical cancer exited (it came back later but that's a story for another time). On the day she was born, Catalina literally saved my life. And she has been spiritually and emotionally saving me every day since.

All this seems like yesterday but it was 13 years and 10 days ago. She's a smart, kind, beautiful person with her own life and interests. It went by too fast. I wish that I could have some of it back again but I can't. And that's okay. I will always be her Mama and, God willing, will always be part of her life. Wide-eyed and curious, ever-anxious to see everything that is before her. Take it all in, my baby. Take it all in and make it your own. The world has never been the same since you entered it. Mine especially.

Today Catalina and I spent the day with my sister-in-law who is pregnant with her first baby. Our men were back working on the house, getting it ready for the baby's arrival in late September. After going to the movies, the three of us went to Barnes & Noble. I bought my sister-in-law the all-new "What to Expect When You're Expecting." It was the best book I read to guide me through the pregnancy and I was thrilled to share that with her. It is a special connection mothers have with their babies. Through all the weirdness, discomfort and pain, there is an incredible bond that mothers and babies form that only they can share while they share a body. It's mind-blowing. I am excited for my sister-in-law as she begins her adventure, her incredibly special and absolutely individual relationship with her baby.

After that we went to the diner, picked up dinner and all of us -- men and ladies -- ate together while watching the Ranger game (they won, Hallelujah!). It was the perfect Valentine's Day. It was what love is all about.

Namaste.

I Hate Valentine's Day

It's true. I hate Valentine's Day. I consider it an insincere day of atonement. It's a day that people who are not particularly good to their significant others for the previous 364 days can compensate for it by giving an overpriced bouquet of roses or going out to an overrated restaurant for dinner. Then after the roses have wilted and the dinner has been digested, it's back to the old behavior...until next Valentine's Day. I don't subscribe to this.



Don't get me wrong, I am far from perfect. I am not conventionally romantic. I can be down-right despicable to live with at times. I'm opinionated, demanding and, as my husband and daughter have pointed out, occasionally hypocritical. I am not what anyone would call "warm." I generally dislike being touched. Over the last couple of years, the latter two aspects of my personality are starting to make more sense. But you always know where you stand with me and I think that is refreshing in a world where people so often make pretend to people's faces. My ears are always open to anyone who needs to be heard and I have been known to give some unselfish (even good) advice from time to time as well. And when someone I care deeply for tells me that I've said or done (or sometimes not done) something that upsets him or her, I work towards changing so that I don't cause that person any more pain...at least not in that particular way. To me, that is romantic. To me, that is love. To me, that beats a bouquet of roses any day of the year.



So go ahead and celebrate Valentine's Day any way you want...and remember that celebration doesn't have to be confined to February 14th.



Namaste.

Short and Sweet

Over the weekend I had the opportunity to help someone very special to me celebrate a milestone in her life. I will not go into details here; they are not mine to tell. What I can tell you is that when I feel myself starting to give in to my old ways of thinking and being, I can use the experience, strength and hope she shares as inspiration to keep making myself and my life better. It is a gift to have her in my life.

Namaste.

Smiles All Around

Today I had the worst headache in very long time. It felt like my daughter was stomping on the entire front of my head with her cleats. The gorgeous sunny day made my eyes scream in pain. I felt sick to my stomach. I finally gave up on it passing on its own and took some Excedrin (the only medicine that works for me and Catalina who has suffered from migraines since she was 5 -- headaches that make what I had today look like a walk in the park) and took a little nap. Sleep is the only other thing that helps. I woke up feeling a bit hungover but in significantly less pain. I was able to get some of the things done as I had planned and watch an absolutely dreadful Rangers game. Now my headache is back. I want to get to sleep so I will finally be rid of it today but I couldn't let the day end without sharing the out-of-this-world great feeling I got from what two old friends said to me today.

When I write, I write for myself. For the inner joy I get from expressing myself in the written word. But I have to say, I get an incredible boost in my confidence when I know that there is someone other than me who is reading these words on a regular basis. There's no way of my knowing who is reading it or even if it's being read at all except for when I get feedback. And today, I got some. And it was so good.

A friend who I met during that terrible 7th grade experience and I recently found each other on Facebook. Our friendship was one of the few bright spots of that year. She was among my first friends after the "big move" and I have always been incredibly grateful that she reached out to me, even amidst all the taunting led by Bart Todd. She told me today that she enjoys reading my blog. She said that she remembered me on the first day of 7th grade, in my red top and polka dot skirt. But she said that what she remembered most of all was our friendship and those memories made her smile during the decades that passed. She also remembered my writing, right down to the name of one of the poems I wrote back then and is glad to be able to read my writing again. Even with my head splitting, it felt incredibly wonderful to know this today.

And there is Susan. Her opinion always mattered so much to me back in the day. It still does now. She told me that she LOVES my blog, pulled out a quote from one of my posts and asked if it would be okay if she used it. That was the greatest gift I could have ever asked for.

Ladies, thank you so much for the smiles on a day that I was/am feeling so miserable. I'd like to return the favor. I will share my favorite joke of all-time. I didn't write it, but I cleaned it up ever so slightly:

A bear and a rabbit are in the woods. The bear turns to the rabbit and asks him, "Hey, do you every have trouble with poop sticking to your fur?"

The rabbit replied, "No, I don't."

So the bear wiped his butt with the rabbit.

That joke makes me laugh so hard every time. Hope it did the same for you.

Good night and Namaste.

Lost and lovin' it

I am obsessed with Lost. I admit it. I have every season on DVD. Every issue of Lost Magazine (except #1 -- if you know where I can get a copy, please let me know). I have all the action figures they made (they were supposed to make several more series but I guess I am one of the only people that bought them so they stopped -- why they made a Shannon and no Sayid, I'll never know). Next week it returns from its final season and I cannot contain my excitement!

There have been a lot of TV shows that I enjoyed but nothing on the level of this show for so many reasons. First, there is the obvious; this is no ordinary TV show. Every episode is like a short film. The way it's shot. The writing. The acting.

For me, I think that it's the underlying themes that really does it. Science or faith? For so much of my life, if I couldn't see it, hear it, feel it, it did not exist. Period. I was not dealt a good hand growing up. Most of my young life, I felt that I was unwanted. That nothing I did was good enough. That I was a mistake. It's difficult to believe in a benevolent higher power when you are living in that sort of misery. It's difficult to believe in anything. But there came a time in my life when I decided to grow up. If I was unwanted, so what? I am here. I have a right to be here. If the things I did were not enough to please certain people, so what? If I was satisfied with my own efforts, then that's all that matters. And if not, that just means I need to raise the bar for myself. If I was a mistake, so what? The greatest and most powerful lessons I've learned in life started out as mistakes and ended up as gifts. It becomes easy to believe in a benevolent higher power when you allow yourself to be human like the rest of the world. It's funny. You think that believing in "people" that you can't see, hear of feel as something childish, like Santa, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. As you get older, you let go of these ideas. But I've never felt more grown up as when I believe in that intangible thing that binds us all together. But old ideals die hard. I still have this internal debate over which is the real truth; science or faith? Lost externalizes the debate.

I also love the theme of second chances. All the main characters on Lost have taken a wrong turn somewhere (no pun intended). They all feel that the choices they made determine the road they must always travel for their lives. But what if you were not condemned to the consequences of the choices you made? Not even the terrible ones? Can you find redemption? Would you chose to walk the path to it even though it is completely unfamiliar? If you were given the opportunity to return to the familiar, would you go back to your old ways?

I can go on and on for days writing about Lost. Maybe I will. But for tonight, I think I will just get lost and watch the back catalog.

It's amazing that a tropical island with healing powers and polar bears could be so much like our mundane lives. February 2nd can't come soon enough for me.

Namaste.