FROM A READER: “It sounds like your hormones are definitely up the wop at the moment. However, FSH levels are not reliable as they can vary. A better indicator of fertility these days is the AMH (Anti-Mullerian Hormone)test.Look that up. Maybe you could get that done. But I would be worried about high estrogen levels – due to the association with breast cancer and would try to lower it if I could. Maybe you could look into ways of balancing hormones naturally etc – i.e evening primrose, agnus castus etc. Try not to have any alcohol for a while or too much caffeine.”

This comment NEARLY gave me hives. I realize that wasn’t your intent, of course, but you’ve just focused my attention to yet another concern. First I had to google “up the wop,” fearing it was a technical medical slang. I still don’t know what it means, but I figure it’s polite for “you’re fcuked.” So then I look up “how to lower estrogen levels,” because I won’t be affronted by a list of possible diseases I likely have (the only result of medical searches), and in only two days time since my appointment, I feel like my life is going to become unrecognizable… cutting out dairy (I can’t imagine. I live off Greek yogurt for its protein. Adore frozen yogurt as a special treat. I could learn to live without meat, I could, but to live without meat *and* sugar *and* cheese? All three? To live a life of chicken and almond milk and no soy? THAT calls for Drama and whining. I just can’t imagine. Mostly the sugar thing, especially when asked to limit my fruit intake. Limiting anything, actually, makes me lunge for it immediately. Whereas, if you tell me I can have all that I want of something, there will undoubtedly be an initial spike (read: binge), but then there’s a leveling. But if you get all “off limits” on me, I’ll climb barbed wire to milk a cow, then have one.

I realize people have health scares for a reason, to redirect them, to wake them up, rattle them into important. I have been unable to sleep. Now *need* to take Ambien. Thankfully I’ve been “off” caffeine for a year now, so that’s not an issue. And I don’t drink all that regularly, a few times a week, a glass or so, sometimes none. But now? With all this news of HIGH estrogen levels and menopausal range hormone levels, never even mind this “common potato” PCOS (which is likely the least of it), all I want to do is have a glass of wine or five to get myself to sleep. I am very disturbed.

I realize, of course!, that this isn’t anything as close to as serious as Phil’s heart issues or what Lucas has dealt with, given his brain surgery. Of course. But it’s the very first time in my life where my mortality is even something that’s bubbled to the top. I realize this happens, and that I’m lucky not to have worried about my health up until this point, at thirty-six, but it is alarming to me. The change of it all, the changes that have to happen with diet and exercise (consistent) were always a luxury, a vanity, never a necessity. And it does, it scares the shit out of me. Though not literally because I haven’t been able to stop eating since receiving this phone call from my doctor. I’ll leave that comment alone, actually.

All that aired, I’d still rather have well-meaning concern than be in it alone, so thank you. All of you. And if you know of any friends in Florida with a “friend” visiting, I can take all the bleeding friends I can get. A girl can only hope to have such a profound influence on a friend, right? Let’s right this wrong together.

Oh, and in case my tone is all over the place, then I’ve done my job. Because *I* am all over the place, high and low, serious, scoffing, this is nothing relax, this is something, what are you waiting for? I’m here there and everywhere.

I’m also bored by The Bachelor this season. And, I miss Lost.

I went to the gynecologist yesterday for an annual exam. I’m 36 years old. I know my period has been fucked up for over a year now, coming infrequently. I assumed it was because of the weight loss and stress of moving. The nurse asked me what I used for birth control, and I answered honestly. “Marriage.” I thought it sounded better than, “abstinence.”

Yesterday they took blood and also did an ultrasound of my ovaries. The doctor believed I had poly-cystic ovaries (my whole life, I’ve never heard this) which results in fewer periods, but a technician looked at my ovaries with a giant wand up the crotch and saw two cysts on one ovary and one cyst on the other, all smaller than 1-inch. With poly-cystic, he said, people have like six to eight cysts. He said he thought I was ovulating right now, consistent with my silky thin discharge (normal), and TMI, I know. He said I should take Provera for 10 days to bring on a period, and then he wants to start me on birth control, to regulate my period, so it comes more often than THREE times a year (which is how often I had it last year).

This morning, 8:27am, I get a message from him.

“Hi, Stephanie, this is Dr. Silfen. I got the results of your blood work. You’re not pregnant, as we expected. Your thyroid is normal, your prolactin level is normal. You’re estrogen level is high. And your FSH is in the menopausal range, which does not make sense. Your LH is very high, consistent to what I spoke about yesterday, PCO, poly-cystic ovaries, so what I’m going to recommend is that you take the Provera for ten days. I think you’re going to get a period, but if you don’t get a period, give me a call and we’ll decide what to do. But first let’s just take the medication and go we’ll go from there. Bye.”

So, now, I’m my father’s daughter. A wreck. I walk around the grocery store looking at people. Fat, thin, old. People buying ingredients, fondling fruit, living their lives. I feel removed from it, from the everyday, seeing daily events as motions. Medical news can shift things in your life, especially your perspective. Literally.

Lord love a duck! Here’s hoping that I soon, very soon, see spot run. Period.

“Wider than it should be. And it will only get wider if you leave it alone.” ‘Nough said.

To likely be told to wait some more. Meanwhile, mama’s got the ‘rhea… Update: September 22, Little Miss will be getting a “revision.” That is, the plastic surgeon will be removing the scar tissue, then stitching her up properly. I want to bitch-slap the ER doctor at Westlake Hospital in Austin who used glue, and only glue, on my sweet girl. So for the next two months, I’ll be massaging her chin with Kelo-cote (advanced formula scar gel) three times a day. Then applying SPF 50 or higher. And, so it begins.

“I‘m hanging on by a thread*,” I heard myself say today. I was speaking to my father’s wife, Carol, who promised if she were here with me in Florida, she’d find us a suitable case of wine. “Yeah, no kidding. Phil just said he was heading to Wal-Mart [he is unnaturally obsessed with the place], asked if I needed anything. Nope. Nothing. Then he’s in the driveway, and I’m suddenly chasing after him, ‘Wine, get wine. Hello? WINE!’ Carol, I’m a mess.” I needed to vent…

“Abigail likely needs eye surgery to correct the eye that wanders out when she’s tired. She now needs to see a plastic surgeon and have that surgery on her chin. Lucas had a fever of 102.5 the other day and was throwing up. Oh, ya know, and there’s a major move going on is all. Boxes haven’t arrived yet. Abigail lost her beloved “Snuffy,” the ugliest stuffed elephant ever—it looks like one of the Trash Heap’s stooges from Fraggle Rock. Basically, it’s a rat-penis combo.  I have exactly no friends nearby. And Lucas decided to eat a Bend-A-Roo this morning. That’s all. No. Wait. I haven’t had my period since May 16, which basically means I’ve got two months of ‘bite me’ coming everyone’s way. I haven’t returned any work phone calls, and I HATE THE SUN! It causes cancer. Both my parents had skin cancer removed. It’s like a nightmare. Every time I get a pimple that I suspect might keep coming back, I’m convinced it’s cancer, obsess over it, then forget it, then obsess. Add it to the psycho list right beside ‘Find a new dermatologist in Boca that does mole mapping.’ And why, for the love of God, is Phil so obsessed with WAL-MART?! I mean, what is that about? He actually walks around huffing about how the Austin Wal-mart prices for fresh roasted turkey are $3.00 LESS per pound than the Delray Beach Wal-mart. All I can think is, why in the ham sandwich are you buying “fresh roasted turkey breast” when it’s never really fresh, never tastes like a carved slice from an actual turkey, a la Thanksgiving? And Wal-mart?! Seriously? Can’t you just bargain shop at Costco like a normal person?! Hello? Are you still there?”

HOLY NUT SLING! My phone dropped the call while I was “double-cheek-checking” Lucas’s wipe work after his own double. 

Vent FAIL. 

It’s 2:52 AM now, and I can’t sleep. Hence the re-vent, blog-style. 

I realize, of course, that everything that’s got me all worked up and histrionic is not life-or-death. It’s temporary. The fear and the overwhelming anxiety is all build up without anything actually “happening” right this second. It’s like crying when you see the needle, insisting it hurts, when the doctor hasn’t touched you yet. It’s pain foreplay.

Fear is the anticipation of pain. 

ABIGAIL’S EYE SURGERY: We’ve tried the Pirate Diet, but it’s just not cutting it. These types of surgeries are “best done early. Timing really is of the essence.” I hate this phrase. All at once, it makes me think of salt-substitute and a magazine with the tagline: fierce, fun and fabulous! I’m speaking with their new pediatrician over at Pediatric Associates. “Don’t wait on this. Call Dr. Kanterman. Really. It’s all about timing.” So, I’ll beg for the earliest appointment, then I’ll freak once I hear the news from the horse’s mouth. Only this logic never works. The whole “Cart before the horse” bullshit makes me want a ram a carrot stick up the horse’s hind mouth.

ABIGAIL’S CHINNY CHIN CHIN: Thank God Phil’s mother was with me when we walked into the doctors’ offices. One look at Abigail’s chin, and the nurse said, “That is NOT going to look very good when it heals. At all. Which hospital did this?”

I want to hit rewind, the button where everything’s still in play, just slick, squeaky, a blur of backward, then play. I’m back in Austin, July 4, on our way to Dell Children’s Hospital when Phil says he thinks we should just get her to the ER as fast as possible, turning to Westlake ER (not a children’s hospital). This is not his fault; I am in no way blaming him for any of this. But I am blaming myself, and I’m blaming the doctor who PUT GLUE ON HER WOUND. I asked for a plastic surgeon, not just once, three times. Then I had Phil ask the doctor again if she didn’t need stitches, didn’t need plastics. “No, no, no. This will fix her right up.” I am so mad at myself… and at him. Why why why didn’t I take her to Dell Children’s an extra 15 minutes away?

“What’s done is done.” That’s another phrase I’d like to drop-kick.

Tomorrow I have to call Ophthalmology and Plastics… and all I can think is how Les Miserables she’s going to be… and camp starts and she can’t swim because of her chin. I feel so so bad. I also intellectually know that this is TEMPORARY and not life-critical, but still. All this with a move, putting our house on the market (once we’ve seen the pics, heard feedback from realtors), new house, new school, no friends nearby, no brownies, and zero sleep… suck to the sucky. I’m going to dig out some devil juice now. Or at least I think that’s what Charlie Sheen called Ambien. Yes, it’s come to misquoting Sheen. Up from here.

xo from the Sunshine State,

Stephanie

* How does the phrase “hanging on by a thread” make you think of anything but a vagina party-favor?
 

July 4, 2011. I’ll remember this Independence Day above all others. The day when our house was packed, when our cars were being shipped across country, when the final staging, last-minute “we should take that”s take over, and when I returned home to Abigail, lying on the living room floor beside our beloved nanny, a paper towel pressed to a bloodied chin, with Abigail crying in short fits, hoping to catch her breath.

Two days before our move to Florida. We wouldn’t be admitted so quickly to an ER in FL. Here in Austin, we rushed to the ER at Westlake, drove right to the front door, no wait time, no forms to fill. We were seen immediately, the only “customers.”

I’m asked what happened, what was needed. “I have a little girl in need of some stitches,” I said. “I don’t want shots,” Abigail said. I knew there would be at least one. She was weighed: 32 1/4 lbs. Height taken: I can’t remember. Blood pressure: 100/64. Chin up so we can see what we’re dealing with here.

Exposed flesh. Mealy looking. Her skin, a long ripped seam. Flesh was hanging, no, more bursting out of the slit that had been cut across her chin. “We need to get that flesh back in. It’s real important.” I want to faint. “You’re doing so good, Abby,” I whisper in her ear as she squeezes my fingers.

Phil and Lucas are in the waiting room. The light hurts her eyes, she’s covering them with her free hand, and I’m thankful then for the sensitivity of her eyes, that she doesn’t see what I see:

The doctor coming at her with a needle. A syringe of lidocaine.”Ouchie, ouchie,” she screams. “You’re hurting me. You’re really hurting me!” Her whole body is red, her ears, her arms, the whites of her eyes, everywhere. Except the blue veins in her forehead. To say I wanted to protect her, to stand in for her, to take away her pain… that’s all just words we’ve heard. What I felt was angry that it happened at all. And thankful that it hadn’t happened on my watch. That guilt is there, bursting like flesh that belongs inside, no matter what. But it’s worse when you were in charge. It can happen to anyone.

“It” being kids being kids. “We were playing Dinosaurland,” Abigail told me in the car ride to the ER.
“What’s that?”
“A pretend game.”
“Right, right, of course. And then what?”
“Then Lucas accidentally kicked me. And now my mouth really hurts.” She cries. I tell her it’s okay to be scared, but that I won’t leave her, that I’ll hold her hand the whole time. There’s nothing I can do.

On the ER table/cot/bed, she’s told to hold still, “It’s real important,” the doctor says. The nurse holds her forehead. I hold both hands. She screams the kind of scream that makes you think of tonsils. I will never forget the pain she is in. 

The wound looks horrible once the doctor has finished. I am nervous that it’s a botched job. How do I know? I can’t tell. Liquid bandage. “Does she need a plastic surgeon?” I ask.

“No, no, this glue will work.”

Not my question. I want to keep this in perspective. I try to think of Lucas and all we went through. Of the NICU, of life or death, of mental capabilities, of hearts and hernias. But they were younger, I think. It’s not the same. That didn’t count.

Of course it counted! Are you high?

But I’m in the moment, the kind of moment where no amount of perspective or sense of proportion makes you feel anything less than all you do. I’m still shaking. “Ouchie, you’re really hurting me.” The screams. I watch as the doctor breaks a wooden q-tip, then uses the wooden end of the broken stick to shove flesh back in. It’s not working. She won’t stop crying. I worry that they can’t fix it. I still worry, now, an hour later, with Abigail safe, asleep with her favorite friend “snuffy” on the sofa beneath a princess blanket.

Her front tooth is bleeding. “‘The ligament’ for lack of a better word,” the doctor said, “at the base of the tooth stretched, so the tooth is loose, but within 24 hours or so, it will snap back into place and be tight around the tooth again.” 

We’re home. Company is on the way. Phil is boiling water for corn, then says, “Maybe we shouldn’t make the corn. She can’t have the corn.” I feel heavy and shaky, like a gong. Medical instructions are read. Only the softest of foods. Don’t get the wound wet. Avoid sunlight. There is blood on her dress. I know up top that she will be fine, but inside where fear runs deeper, where guilt burrows, I feel blackness. Safekeeping, guardianship, my evolutionary and genetic makeup feel bankrupt.

They say these things happen in threes. I don’t know what it is; there’s something happening. Over the past two weeks I’ve received news. None of it is my news, but it’s the kind of news you turn over and sit with, news that steals your breath and intrudes on your dreams. Then you spend the day talking in sympathy cards.

Two weeks shy of his forty-fourth birthday, Jay, Phil’s friend from college, lost his battle to cancer.

Twenty-two weeks pregnant, one of my closest friends went into pre-term labor and lost her son. She called me and got the news out in sobs. I don’t know why, but as she told me, I found myself crouching down, then sitting on the floor, under my desk. It’s the kind of news that brings you back, if that makes any sense. I can’t know what that’s like, not even close, even with my pre-term labor and NICU nights. Because we all wear it so differently.

I’ve been really quiet these past weeks. Being still. Just feeling it, sitting with it. Life’s joys and the way they’re taken from us, a lot of the time without warning. And even when we are warned, when we can see the signs, when we know it’s the end, we’re not really ready for it. We use the word surreal because we’re too tired to say anything. Anymore. To anyone.

Another friend of mine was at the airport, waiting for her husband to pick her up. Maybe he was running late or got a head start. It takes time to load a car with four-year-old twins and a sassy six-year-old—who has to pee, okay, who needs water, stop pushing, you’re sitting on the seat belt, if you’re going to argue we won’t listen to anything. An eighty-nine-year-old woman drove her car onto the highway, into oncoming traffic. It was dark. Foggy. She slammed her car into my friends’, and she and my friend’s husband, Grier Laughlin, were pronounced dead on the scene. He was 37. The children survived and are home recovering and mourning. All the while my friend was at the airport, waiting. I still cannot believe it. He was buried this past Friday. Yet, still, I keep thinking, “No, they got it wrong. Someone just needs to turn that lady around. Grier will be fine.”

I was a guest at their wedding. They opened their home to me after my divorce, despite the fact that Grier went to college with the wasband. They remained my friends and visited with me for hours when I was in Denver on book tour for Moose. Just the other day I was organizing my bookshelves and came across All About Us, a fill in the blank type of book the wasband and I had begun to complete together. I opened to a random page and saw the question: which of your partner’s friends is your favorite? The wasband wrote Smelly, and I wrote Grier.

I can’t even begin to think of the road in front of, ahead of, the living. Or all the thoughts back, the replaying of daily details, the saved texts, his voice on the answering machine, an unfinished to-do list and to-live life. I wish there were something each of us could do to take the hurt out of living. Grier, I am sure of it, loved his family with the win or lose love they’ll carry with them deep inside. I hope they are all feeling supported, surrounded by love, and that they’re each finding comforts, however small, in the ordinary moments of their extraordinary lives.