Mother's Day...

Mother's Day...

I've always thought the best part of Mother's Day is getting the homemade gifts from children. AJ has made me any number of glazed pinch pots, popsicle stick boxes, and drawings. I cherish each and every one of them. Today, I got not only a wonderful one-of-a-kind AJ drawing permanently imprinted on a dishwasher safe decorative plate, but I also got a handmade card with the most incredible sentiments. I quote the card verbatim below:

My mom

My mom has tan hair and tan skin. She makes me skrambled eggs and bacon on mother Days. She takes care of me when I am sick. She is beautiful. She helps me when i am hurt she puts a bandad on my leg. She has a beautiful hart. She makes me laugh by ticking me. She is the best mom in the world.

It isn't the handmade stuff that makes Mother's Day so great, it is the heartmade stuff from my seven year old that makes everyday a joy and today even more precious.

Soccer Mom...

Soccer Mom...


OK, I love that kid of mine. And, I love going to his soccer games. I enjoy how well the kids play together. I enjoy hanging out with the other parents. I enjoy cheering on the Maroon Mayhem (last year it was the Green Goblins). There is something so simple and so satisfying about the whole experience.


AJ being in perpetual motion is definitely a draw. Being able to capture it with the digital camera is also a joy and a challenge. For every 20 pics I click, I'm lucky to get one that isn't of AJ's back or blury. I'm in awe of his physical abilities - the dexterity, the speed, and the utter joy of running around and enhancing his skills with each game is miraculous for me. I have no ability to move the way he does. I get to sit back and enjoy as people comment on how good he is - he's a natural. The best comment to date came from one of the grandfathers of a girl on AJ's team. AJ and Sarah were in kindergarten together and this is the third season they've played soccer on the same team (her dad is one of the coaches - and a very good one at that). Anyhow, Sarah's grandfather turned to us during a rainy game last season and said, "AJ is so fast that he can fall in a puddle and not get wet!". Too funny!!! It is great to say - that's my kid!

A nice realization is that sitting back and watching someone else move around can be ultimately satisfying and fulfilling - no guilt, no calories, no strain and definitely a FANTASTIC day-before Mother's Day gift to me -- watching AJ play!

Finally having something to do...

Finally having something to do...

The saddest thing is that the highpoint of this week was my mission to get a gift I sent to my sister for her 1st mother-to-be-day properly delivered. The FedEx delivery guy couldn't see the # sign for her house, so they called my sister and told her she would have to come get the package. When I heard about this I was determined to not have that happen - heck, I paid for them to deliver it and $%#@@&& they were going to do it! So, my time on the phone talking to 3 FedEx people in three different states (the last one being in New York where all of this started to begin with) was a high point of activity, energy, and it kept my problem-solving skills from atrophying too much.

Sad, sad, sad -- a consumer complaint call is the best I can come up with for a highpoint....Gotta find a hobby/life. Or, I simply have to admit that I needed to vent some frustration and energy somewhere...

When the leaking begins...you have no choice but to give up control

When the leaking begins...

Besides being tired a lot and having an attention span just a tad longer than that of a 2nd grader, I thought I was recouping fairly well. I had been humbled by my venture out to Target, focusing on resting in bed the next day with a limited number of trips down the hall and back. After watching my 2nd movie of the day, I got up to discover blood on the heating pad I was using to reduce the bloating and pressure I had been experiencing. I called for my husband, and we investigated the scar to find that it was leaking. We called the doctor, and he said to come in. The receptionist said he had an opening in an hour and a half. That's when my "morbid thoughts are being hidden by my cool under pressure" posture and my husband's "what do I do, and how do I not show her how scared I am?" strained look kicked in.

I had my husband call my brother to alert him that he might need to pick our son up from school. As my husband did that, I started repacking my hospital bag. I had no idea what was going to happen. I was terrified that my guts were going to fall out and/or that the doctor was going to have to put me under again to restitch my incision. I calmly gave my husband one task at a time to do so he would be out of my way as I tried to get control over things that didn't seem to be controllable. These tasks were simple and direct since when he is stressed he can't multi-task. I had a binder filled with all of my hospital records. I grabbed it and my bag and we left for the doctor.

We didn't have to wait long. The nurse brought both of us into the examine room, and she took a look at the incision site. "Yep, you are having frank bleeding," she said. Another one of those terms you hear and have to pause to think about. "Frank" - my incision from evicting Charlie produced frank bleeding - what is it with the men's names and my very female problems? At least my problem was being straightforward. In fact, the situation was so straightforward that we were there for a little over 2 hours while my wound drained all over the exam table.

It is times like these when being in control of things just ain't happening. I had to lay flat and let others clean things up, squish out the old blood and fluids, clean me up some more, etc. My husband definitely got the "for better or worse" part today as he sat letting me squeeze his hand as the doctor squeezed my belly like an inordinately large blister. Leeches would have been useful at this point. It was definitely a "letting" of post-operative fluid retention. The doctor said that some build-up of blood and fluid was normal, but what I was experiencing was the most he had ever seen (Go me! - got to do everything bigger and more dramatically than anyone else). It was actually grosser than my description, but in hind sight, it felt really good to get that stuff out, less of the bloating and more of the floating away on the table in my mess of fluidic discharge.

The hardest part was laying there not able to do anything, watching the doctor and nurse for signs of worry/alarm (that came and went a few times). Watching my hubby as he went from grossed out to clinically fascinated about the process (no choice for him but to do that in the 2+ hours that we were there). I was totally helpless and dependant on others. Not a position (pun intended) that I want to be in again. That was Tuesday; 2 days latter, I'm still a leaky scar, but things can only get better...

6 weeks for recovery...

6 weeks for recovery...

I thought that 6 weeks was a LONG time for a recovery period. I'm a quick healer, I'll bounce back quicker. Well, when a week to the day after my surgery I asked my husband to take me for a walk around Target to look at a deck box and pick up a few things, I figured that would be a good walk. The doctor said I should be walking around a little each day increasing the duration with each walk. This is the theory of the recovery cycle for a hysterectomy patient's post-operative health.

Theory & practice do not always mesh. It is totally different to be walking around in the house than it is to be in a store. Being out in public and walking like I was 90 years old, was a little strange. Too many people was the first thing that threw me. The second is the one thing they don't tell you about in the hospital when you check out -- the bloated feeling after surgery and the back pain that comes with it. BLOATED BLOATED BLOATED!!! WOW, I know how those large Macy's Thanksgiving balloons feel when they are at top form in the early morning of the 4th Thursday each November.

So, when we got home, I crawled into bed, took a mega pain killer, and SLEPT!!! Who knew that TARGET would get me in the end...I shopped until I dropped. Now, I drop after about 10 minutes. Maybe tomorrow will be a longer day! So, 6 weeks now seems like a reasonable amount of time for recovery. It takes a lot for me to learn how to not push myself...

Operation Evict Charlie...

Operation Evict Charlie...

A little over a week ago, 9 days to be precise, I had a hysterectomy... a supracervical hysterectomy with no opharectomy. Gotta love the terminology -- kept the cervix and the ovaries. When the doctor told me in mid-March that I would need to have a hysterectomy to relieve all the physical problems I was having as a result of the large fibroid on my uterus (at the time we thought it was the size of a grapefruit), I knew it was coming. 6 years earlier my previous obgyn told me that I had fibroids, and that while things were not bad then, they would probably get worse and that I should have a hysterectomy. I was 35 at the time and didn't want to hear about a permanent sterilization to my already "infertile" body. I told him to wait until I was 40. So, 4 days before my 41st birthday, my current doctor examined me and told me that it was time. My symptoms were so bad that I had become severely anemic and my life revolved around my period. 2 weeks every month were absolute agony. So, it was time...

In my own perverse way of dealing with the stress of knowing that a part of me was going to be surgically removed, I decided to name the fibroid Charlie. I have no idea why I picked that name, but it suddenly became fun to say "bye bye Charlie" time is near and other silliness. When I shared with folks at work and in the family, the refrain was - "How's Charlie? Ready to get him out?" . Somehow naming this parasitic growth both depersonalized a very intimate and personal situation while simultaneously anthropomorphizing a mound of tissues that was making my life miserable.

More tests happened and a surgery date was set. It felt like eternity, but really only a matter of weeks went by before the surgery happened last week. In preparation for the surgery, I started doing research and found the Mayo Clinic site to be very informative (www.mayoclinic.com). I particularly connected with the individual profiles. It was good to see that I was not alone in what was happening to my body. So, 10 days after having evicted Charlie (with a lot of assistance from my obgyn), I am starting to feel that relief that I read about from so many women. It seems like every woman who has a hysterectomy wonders why she didn't do it sooner. I know why I chose not to do it sooner, but the relief is no less sweet at this time. Recovery is interesting, and I plan to write more about what they don't tell you about the post-operative symptoms and other fun stuff. All my research was able to draw out was the pre-surgery, what happens during the surgery, and the "Thank God" I did it. Nobody says anything about what happens in between the surgery and "Thank God". It is actually an interesting place. More to come on that....

P.S.
I was curious, so I had the surgeon take a picture. If you are squeamish at all, DON'T look. If you have a weird sense of adventure and medical curiosity, take a look at Charlie. The scapel in the picture is 12 inches long, and Charlie had to be cut in order to get him out. He was heart shaped and about a foot squarish...

What's a Red Marble Moment???

“Teachers are those who use themselves as bridges, over which they invite their students to cross; then having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create bridges of their own." - Nikos Kazantzakis

For the last 19 years, I have taught in and run learning support programs at a state university, a Big Ten, a private university, a SUNY for non-traditional adult learners, as well as at a college level military academy. In all of my teaching experiences, I have found the students at these institutions to be remarkably similar. Simply put, they are learners looking for where they belong, what they want to do, and who they want to be.

My vocation is to provide some of these wandering and wondering souls with a place to reflect upon their lives in a supportive, caring environment, in a place where they will experience a version of support and coaching that is foreign to them in traditional learning environments.

In traditional college settings, when my students meet me, DocDW, they know they have met a teacher who will know their first names on the first day of class; who will call or e-mail them to just “check-in”; who will “call them out” on the “stories” they tell to get out of doing what is expected of them; who looks at them with an intense grey-blue stare and tells them that she sees the good and the bad and cares about them because of both; who will cry with them when they are hurt or scared; who always has hugs and candy in the office; and who will miss them when they graduate, but they know that I will never forget them. Now with my current adult learners, they meet the same caring person, Lisa, who supports them as they try to claim an education that had eluded them for a long time.

One of the reasons that they and I both know they will not be forgotten are the heartfelt memories we have of each other. For a cherished few, these memories are stronger because we had what I call a “red marble” moment. In order to best explain what a “red marble” is, let me take you through a journey of the imagination ...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In a long-ago once-upon-a-time place, where anything is possible and everything is probable, picture if you will a small child (either a boy or a girl - you cannot tell and it does not matter). The child emerges from the woods onto the dirt path along which you travel. The child is of four or five years of age, uncombed hair, muddy, dressed in overalls and an old tattered bright yellow tee shirt, barefoot, smiling and utterly charming. You see the child and feel compelled to get to know him or her. You approach slowly and simply say, “Hello.”

“Hi,” responds the cherub, “Wanna see what I’ve got?”

“Sure,” you respond.

Tongue thrust into the side of the child’s mouth, brow furrowed in concentration and anticipation, the small hands dig deep into the back pockets of the overalls and begin to pull out items of immeasurable worth. Carefully, before you on a dry part of the road, the child places: a string, a penny, half a cookie, a carved wooden snake... You make some admiring mutterings, indulging the solemn presentation of childhood treasures.

“No, no, these aren’t it yet!”

“Oh, I see,” you respond - not sure if you understand yet.

The child turns to one the front pockets now, turning out...a well-used and muddy handkerchief, some pebbles, a small toad, a fishing lure, a small Red Cross pocketknife, a dime, a glob of something wet and mushy...

“Darn it, you have to see it!”

Continuing with the last front pocket, out pops a magnifying glass, the core of an apple ...

“What is it?,” you inquire.

...a bent nail, a mashed piece of chocolate pushing it’s way out of the tinfoil wrapping...

“It’s my prized possession! It’s my most favorite thing. I love to hold it up and look at it in the moonlight and sunlight and see how it changes and sparkles.”

...another piece of string, a broken pencil...

“Here! Here it is!”

As the small fist rises out of the depths of the very last pocket of the well-worn overalls, the fist is thrust forward towards you, palm up, fingers slowly uncurling, revealed with great glee and somber pride the most spectacular, perfectly round, and shining red marble you have ever seen. Your breath catches in your throat and tears well in your eyes not because you’ve never seen a marble before, but because the child’s pride, happiness, love, and trust are evident in the way the marble lays there in the palm of the tiny hand, shining in spite and because of the grubbiness of the chubby fingers that dug it out of the pocket’s depths. You feel thankful and honored that the child wanted to show you something so simple yet so elegant, something so ordinary yet so cherished, something so seemingly insignificant to others but of the utmost importance to its owner, something so beautiful that you begin to feel a stirring in your mind and a distant memory begins to come in clearly. You remember your own overalls, your own desperate searches of your own pockets, your own red marble…

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As we grow older and go to school, our red marbles often get tucked away even deeper inside our memories - our emotional pockets. Sometimes they are forgotten forever, but sometimes a stranger, a friend, a family member, a student, a teacher or a mentor might be present, and we let down our guard, allowing our red marble to spill out of our out-turned pocket, hoping that that special person, that caring person, might notice it amongst the clutter, and appreciate its beauty, and its significance.