Daffodils, Again

Last year I wrote about the neglected daffodil bulbs that sprouted in their bag after Little A's illnesses and tests prevented me from planting them in a timely fashion. Back then I promised I would post photos of the flowers once they were safely deposited in the ground.

I never posted the followup pictures. It's not that the daffs didn't grow at all once planted. They did. But I'd gone and set them up as a damn metaphor for the beeyoooteeful reflowering of Little A's health and our family life ... and that proved a wee bit embarrassing. Without a lot of soil around them, the daffs didn't put much energy into their sprouting. They turned out strange. The sunny heads looked great, but lay with their chins in the dirt. A 2-inch stem is just not long enough to hold a daffodil high.

But spring keeps rolling around, and today I looked into the yard and saw this:





Hey, good lookin'. What's up with you?

I guess another difference between this year and last is that I don't think being compared to a stunted flower is quite so unsettling anymore. They were pretty, those flowers; and pretty strange. But with some time and a little more dirt, they managed to sort things out.

I guess I'll stick with the metaphor.

Wordless Wednesday: Snow!

Acceptance

I was about to post a long-winded treatise on how dealing with physicians after you've experienced serious medical errors is a minefield of awkwardness. But then Bon wrote a beautiful post about what acceptance of the death of her baby feels like over at Glow in the Woods. I nodded all the way through, recognizing myself in what she said.

Like Bon, I said goodbye to my lost baby a little bit at a time. The first big moment of letting go came seven months after my loss, when I was pregnant again and learned Little A had normal chromosomes. Up until that point the lost pregnancy and the new one were firmly merged in my mind as the same. So that was the first moment I relinquished my ghost baby from my body. It was when I began to tiptoe slowly away.

Still, I felt a strong need to keep looking back. Little A's surprise birth exactly one week before the first anniversary of the death complicated that. The joy (and feeding) of a live baby eclipsed all else for awhile. And it felt wonderful to be in the moment, to have the weeks go by and the photos pile up showing the happy progress and growth. But ... it also made me feel guilty. It seemed I was somehow slighting the baby who came and vanished. I think that's why I started this blog when Little A was an infant. Even with my outrageously good turn of fortune, I still needed to voice the stories of what had happened in the previous year. I wanted to be able to write about the good things that happened in my family, too -- this has never strictly been a babyloss blog. But mostly I *needed* to vent that bad stuff. It was an irresistible urge.

To be honest, the second anniversary of her death swamped me like a sneaker wave. I think my life was finally stable and safe enough for me not to guard against the onslaught. So it came, and it shook me in a way that grief had not in a long time.

And then Little A got sick, and life flipped around for me again: new fears and concerns. But as terrifying as some of what happened in 2008 was, there was always hope that it could get better. There were also little stretches of happiness and calm. And during one of those worry-free patches in June of last year, it occurred to me that I my ghost baby's estimated due date had passed unnoticed by me for the very first time.

For me, it took about two and a half years after the death to let go in a significant manner. I knew the change was real when the third anniversary of my daughter's angel day rolled around this December, and I didn't feel the need to write about it. I was busy taking my eldest child to a showing of the Nutcracker that day. It was an awesome day, not at all ruined by my knowledge of what had transpired three years before. If anything maybe that made it just a smidgen sweeter, by contrast.

These days I don't write so much about my babyloss grief journey because it mostly feels completed. When I get a pang, I dish. But most of my harangues revolve around other issues. And that feels right. I guess when it comes to grief, you just have to do what your gut tells you to do: Wallow when that's the only thing you crave, and then move forward when that starts to feel more like a rut than a catharsis.

Forgive the awkward segue, but this feeling of release is precisely what made my last conversation with the doctor so damn frustrating and ironic. Because I have done the work to get over this pain as much as I am likely capable of getting over it. And frankly, outside a doctor's office most days, I feel good -- so long as I'm not dealing with things that would make anyone wig out a bit, such as a sick kid or your own mystery illness. But one lasting tattoo of these experiences is my discomfort dealing with doctors. Discussing my medical history always makes me freeze up. I suck at distilling the story into dry, emotionless bullet points. Because all of the most noteworthy events in my medical life (the D&E, Little A's c section) revolve around medical errors or cascades of complications from medical errors.

Talking about someone else's mistakes or misinterpretations within the medical field is AWKWARD no matter how you go about it. And I never know how doctors will react, either: will they think I'm a raving lunatic? A liar? Somebody ready to sue the next doctor they run into? Or maybe I remind them of someone they accidentally hurt in the past -- their own mistake that haunts them. Any of these reactions is possible, but none of them are particularly helpful in getting me decent care.

Anyway, I think I need a do-over with that appointment with my doctor. Heh, THAT's gonna be a great conversation, when it eventually takes place ...

Boiling Frogs

I finally managed to see my primary care doctor yesterday about the stomach/back/belly pain I've been experiencing. Since I saw her partner for a sick appointment the last time, I had to bring her up to speed on the whole scenario of what happened and what tests I've had so far. Every test has been normal, yet the pains persist.

Of course she asked me what my level of stress has been. I said, "Heh," and briefly outlined what's been going on my personal life for the last three years. She gasped here and there, and stated that it sounded like a traumatizing level of stuff. In addition to giving me a referral to a gastroenterologist, she suggested I should take antidepressants and possibly seek more counseling, since I haven't gone to any therapy since right before Little A's birth.

I expected she'd refer me to a GI doc, but the antidepressant discussion totally threw me. I get that GI problems are often linked to anxiety and stress. I'm absolutely sure some part of my stomach problems are stress, given that they began around the time of Little A's lung CT scan. And I appreciate being asked how I'm coping.

BUT ... the thing is, my doctor didn't actually ask how I was doing. She just listened and said, "You look really sad and tired. And when you were just talking, your body was really tense. You just don't look well. I think you should seek psychological counseling and possibly medication to help your mental state."

"Um ... I am tired," I stammered. "I've been up since five a.m. with my sick toddler. And I'm in pain. For three months."

"Wabi," she said. "I worry that you're a boiling frog."

I wasn't aware of the analogy, so I asked her to explain it.

"If you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, he'll try to jump out immediately. But if you put him in a pot of cold water and warm it up gradually, you can boil that frog alive and he'll just lay there and let you."

My mouth dropped open. There was so much I wanted to say, but it was all jammed up behind a huge WHAT THE FUCK that had to come out first. So I just took the referral and left, mulling and simmering for the rest of the day.

Seriously though, WHAT THE FUCK?

1) Is she saying that I'm a retarded frog just happily paddling around the boiling water, completely oblivious to the roil? Because I kind of recall telling her that I was well aware I was under lots of stress.

2) Doesn't the frog die in either scenario of the analogy?

I bet I did look stressed telling about my life. But frankly, it would have been a little bit less awkward and, well, stressful if my doctor seemed to have any memory of our last exchange about these subjects. Because we've talked about my medical history before. Then I must have done a better job at keeping my voice from cracking, because the other time her reaction was, "SQUEEEEE! Weird medical mishaps -- tell me all the details!"

Which was also disconcerting. For different reasons.

I'm the first to admit that the last couple months I haven't been twirling on a mountaintop singing with Julie Andrews. Aside from a fabulous summer, 2008 sucked. And lord knows, I've got my scars and mental tics. But I also don't drink heavily, snort coke, or smoke anything. I don't beat the kids or daydream about driving my car into the ocean. I'm basically ok. Functionally disfunctional, and cracking jokes along the way. Enjoying the kids and trying my best.

I thought I was some sort of a success at this. Moving on and getting over. And then she went and decreed I wasn't. It made me wonder if I was completely dellusional -- am I just telling myself I'm ok, when I'm really hanging by a thread?

So ... What is your idea of "good mental health" after a trauma and a tragedy? Do you have to be able to talk about it 100 percent of the time without feeling it? Do you have to stop thinking about it, or just stop minding that you think about it?

Lenses

Big A flunked the eye exam at her five-year-old well visit with the pediatrician. No surprise to me, since I've noticed she now sits on the hardwood floor right in front of the TV rather than lounge on the comfy sofa ten feet away. World'sBestPediatrician referred us to a kid-friendly optometrist. WBP and I shared stories of getting our own glasses when we were kids to show Big A that glasses were normal.

Turns out Big A needs no convincing that glasses are neat. "I want to have glasses like Mommy and Daddy!" she shouts, "When can we go?" I am wondering if there might be some sort of replacement insurance one can buy for children's eyeglasses, since there must be 50 different ways she could crush her specs every day of the week.

Insurance musings were pretty much the beginning and end of my internal dialog about Big A's eyes. At least until I mentioned the optometry appointment to DH. Surprisingly, he seemed crestfallen at the news that Big A is nearsighted. He wondered if Big A was distracted during the eye test. Since then he has pointed out moments when he thinks Big A is seeing very well from beyond ten feet.

"What's the big deal? I asked him. "We both got glasses when we were in gradeschool."

"Yeah," he said wistfully. "But I had hoped she would be more perfect than us. Glasses mean she isn't, and that she'll have to deal with this for the rest of her life."

I get what he meant. Really, I do.

But the thing that popped into my head was we made one kid with an extra eighteenth chromosome, another with brittle asthma, and you're seriously sad about this one having 20/80 vision?

Somehow, it didn't seem appropriate to share at that moment. So I just changed the subject.

2009 Resolutions

Oh, what the hell. Maybe I'll have better follow through if I put these out there:

IN 2009 I RESOLVE TO:


1) Go for a walk every single day for the first 100 days of the year. This probably sounds totally lame to anyone who spins, swims, or runs on a regular basis. But I tend to lie around like veal in the winter months. Walking for the first 100 days of the year will probably net me many extra hours of exercise compared to normal. And then when I have my annual oh-my-God-it's-almost-swimsuit-season panic attack in April or May, I'll be in better shape to start exercising more strenuously at that point.


2) Organize my bedroom closet. They say a bedroom closet is a metaphor for what's going on in the rest of a person's life. That's so true for me -- mine has been a den of chaos since I became a mother. It seems like I never have anything to wear, yet the rack is so full I can't wedge another hanger in there.

Time to ruthlessly prune my wardrobe of everything I don't wear anymore. Even if I do manage to get back down to my prekid weight, those prekid work outfits I've been saving for years? Out of style. Likewise, I have tons of too-big clothing from early postpartum days. All of it needs to go.


3) Go to the dentist. It hit me the other day that I haven't had my teeth cleaned since my pregnancy woes began in 2005. I don't think this is a coincidence -- after my r@.pe nearly two decades ago, I also stopped going to the dentist for a long time. I think there is something about the dentist experience that tweaks my sense of being vulnerable. Getting teeth cleaned makes me feel ... invaded. But, time to suck it up. I'm way overdue for a checkup.


4) Renew (or, depending on age/passport status) or apply for brand-new passports for everyone in the family. Currently it seems unlikely we'll have the extra money to go on any foreign adventures this year. But not having valid passports for everyone just ensures that we stay home. At least having the valid travel documents leaves the possibilities open for us. (You know, in case I inherit megabucks from some long-lost relative ...)

Wishing much resolve to others in the resolution boat!

Bring on 2009

Christmas plus two December birthdays in our immediate family make Wabi a frantically busy nonblogger this month. But I'm slipping online in the dwindling last hour of 2008 to say HOORAY, this damned month and annoying year is finally over!

Don't get me wrong, we had a great Christmas. The kids were adorable, and even though we had fewer gifts under the tree due to the loss of my income this year, we seemed to enjoy it more than usual. I can honestly say that I'm grateful for every damned, sleepless, stomach-churning moment. And sitting in front of the TV watching Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve tonight may be lame, but it feels like progress to me. After all, last year Little A and I spent this night together at Children's hospital, Big A spent it sleeping at her aunt's house in Sonoma, and DH spent it by himself. (Poor DH ... I can only imagine how lonely he felt that night, coming home from the hospital to our empty, cold house.) Now we are all together under one roof again. Thank God.

I would like to say that since Little A didn't die -- something I really feared could happen last December -- the rest is just gravy. But I am a small and bitchy person who bounces between immense gratitude and equally huge pissiness. Because Jesus H. Christ, 2008 was hard. Financially, professionally, physically, and emotionally difficult. Something had to give this past year, and over and over again, the thing that gave was me. I'm heavier, wrinklier, drabber, and poorer in so many ways. So while I'm glad it wasn't worse, it could have been a damn side better. Really.

I don't usually do resolutions, but this year I'll bite. In 2009, I want to hunt for joy. Too many of the past few years the Wabi-Sabis have measured the worth of their years with the yardstick of past horrors. And I am really tired of saying that a year must fall into the good category only because I somehow survived it. I am ready for a good year by anyone's measure -- even the happy oblivions who skip through life. I want one of their good years.

It's time to try for something new and different. But after being in crisis mode for so long, I fear my horizons have narrowed to the point where I don't even know how to dream big anymore. I'm actually having a little trouble figuring out what might bring the family more joy in the coming year. It's a little alarming.

So help me out: When was the last time you were deleriously happy? And is it something you willfully made happen, or was it happenstance?