She is clothed in strength and dignity, and she laughs without fear of the future. Proverbs 31:25
Karen gave us mugs with that verse last Christmas - Aunt Kay, my mom, Mimi, Aunt Debbie, Kim, and me. I think Kim started this Christmas Eve tradition when she gave us all mugs with out first initials the Christmas or two before. I keep that one in Tucson and love having coffee each morning I'm there. I think it's my turn to get a gift for the women of our Christmas Eve. I wouldn't know what to do without any of them, and the only gift I manage each Christmas is usually drinkable as opposed to sentimental.
I had tea in the mug from Karen this afternoon, not because I wanted tea, really, but because I wanted to take this picture to capture my feelings for a blog entry that's been brewing for days. The tea I brewed was purely ceremonial, although I drank the whole thing and felt better afterwards.
I would love to be this "she," and that's why I made the "Calm Chamomile" today and tried to fake it. I have been functioning lately, and that is as far as I would put it. Not strong, not dignified...and I've never spent a day in my life not fearing the future.
A few weeks ago Adam and I went to the ER because he was feverish, nauseated, and after a long nap experiencing severe pain in his side and lower back. I was surprised they admitted us so quickly. When in the history of emergency room experiences can a person walk in, briefly describe symptoms, and instantaneously be led into a patient cubicle? A nurse was with us in a matter of minutes. At first, it was clear they suspected kidney stones and sent him for a CT scan. The ER doctor was a woman in her late 30s with a tight ponytail and bad people skills, but she was highly efficient. The CT scan did not show kidney stones. According to her, "What you have is a round pneumonia, and we can treat this, ok? I will prescribe you two antibiotics and we will give you your first dose tonight. But you will want to follow up with your primary care doctor and get this re-imaged to ensure that it is not a cancerous mass, ok? We'll go ahead and get you discharged, ok?" She smiled then, so there was her attempt at a positive bedside manner. Then she was gone.
Whenever I hear something upsetting and I'm not in my home environment, or if I'm in the presence of people other than Adam or my mom, I start to swell inside like an imminently erupting volcano. Luckily enough, the Good Samaritan staff was (if possible) even more efficient with the discharge process than they were with admitting us into their lair of dire possibilities. I only had to collect a minimal amount of magma into the reservoir of my soul before exploding in the car, because less than five minutes after "cancerous mass" was uttered we were out of there. Adam just sat there like he always does, patiently waiting for the calm chamomile side of me to resurface.
She hasn't come back yet.
Certainly, I've had my moments of glory and I did get to talk with my counselor on Thursday. She always manages to provide mantras that are helpful: "We will deal with what is true." The large thing they found has shrunk from 6.5 centimeters to 2.5 centimeters but now there's more stuff on the same side and new stuff on the other lung, and his primary care doctor is a 20-something-year-old well-meaning girl who I'm convinced is less helpful than a Google search. She doesn't know what she's looking at, but yesterday afternoon let us know the pattern of the new "nodules" on his lungs is similar to what people who shoot heroin look like when they get blood infections that lead to heart infections. The phrase, "vegetation on the heart" was uttered.
I don't like doctors.
Adam's sitting next to me now reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. He says he hasn't re-read the series in six or seven years. He looks ok, he really does. He says he would have liked to be more active over the weekend, but he rested out of a feeling of obligation. He does not look like a person who would have a vegetation on his heart, but what on earth does that even mean? I tried to ask the doctor on Friday, "Ok, so say he does have a heart infection. Then what would we do?" She didn't answer me. She proceeded to describe how it would be diagnosed (blood cultures, an ultrasound). I was building magma again so didn't feel capable of reiterating.
I looked it up on my phone. Heart infections are hard to treat but I think they'd just give him some more of those antibiotics that don't seem to be working. What kind of world do we live in when I find Google more comforting that the doctor in the flesh? Isn't Google where I'm supposed to determine everyone I love is plagued with something horrifying? Now, it's young doctors that make me feel that way. Google makes me feel like there's at least something to do about it.
I enjoyed my students quite a bit last week. I am able to find my strength and dignity when I am distracted by work, I guess. We are reading Wonder, the kids' novel about a little boy with birth defects and extreme physical deformities on his face. In the story, the little boy writes a paragraph for his English teacher in response to this principle: YOUR DEEDS ARE YOUR MONUMENTS. The prompt was simple: "What does this mean to you?"
First, we talked about what deeds were, and most of them were only familiar with the term when it is applied to "good deeds."
"You mean, like, picking up trash?"
"Yes, definitely, picking up trash would be a really good deed."
When I told them deeds could be good or bad, they were surprised.
"So, like cussing in someone's face?"
"Yes, certainly a bad deed," I replied. "So...what are deeds, if it could be picking up trash or cussing in someone's face?"
Eventually, a little boy raised his hand to share what he thought a definition of "deeds" could be: "It's like, you choose, right? You choose what you are going to do." This particular boy spends half of most class periods with his head down on his desk - that or making a point to taunt the other kids with various noises. I have found teaching special education to be challenging and frustrating for at least a portion of most days, but there is never a day I don't find my job interesting - a silver lining of sorts. I never know what these kids are going to do or say.
Monuments was a little harder to define, but eventually we determined monuments could be anything a person is known for - regardless of if it's a statue or an idea or a memory. We re-wrote the principle: THE THINGS YOU CHOOSE TO DO ARE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE KNOW YOU FOR.
I posed an initial question, intending for it to be a joke: "If you spit your gum on the sidewalk and someone sees you do it, what will that person think about you?"
I was shocked that apparently today's youth (and some of their parents) think this is a totally acceptable thing to do. One boy proclaimed that he and his mom both spit their gum out the car window whenever they are tired of chewing it. "GROSS!" I said, with what he at first thought was mock disgust. I love being honest with these kids, though. I get the feeling people aren't honest with kids enough. "Seriously, that's horrible." I told him. "If I saw that, if I saw a kid and his mom spit their gum out the window driving down the road, I would think, 'They don't care too much about the Earth.'"
"We do though!" he said.
"Actions speak louder than words, my friend."
To her credit, the young doctor did take action. She referred us to a pulmonologist who we saw today, and he did not seem concerned at all. He said we shouldn't have done the second CT scan for a couple of months, because there's naturally still mucus in there. We'll go back in January for a chest X-Ray to make sure everything looks ok. He said, "We don't need to worry," without a shred of uncertainty. On Friday, the young doctor left us with, "I don't want to scare you guys. Did I scare you guys?"
The short answer is of course, "Yes." But if we only consider what is true, it doesn't seem as scary.
What Is True:
- Doctors don't know everything.
- People disagree about whether or not spitting gum on the sidewalk is an ok thing to do.
- Adam feels a lot better than he did three weeks ago, and he's never used intravenous drugs.
- I've laughed a few times already today.
The fact that everyone I love will one day be gone is the most terrifying thought in the world to me. That is precisely why I fear the future. I didn't want to add that as a bullet point of "What Is True" because it's too upsetting to me. It's not the truth I'm choosing to deal with today. Today, I will choose to appreciate this last one:
- Adam and I both took a day off of work to go to his doctor's appointment, and it's warm and sunny for November so I went on a run and he walked Joni. It was lovely.
