the sweet love between mother and child

Yesterday I made the children go hiking in Marin, since we were all in desperate need of some exercise and I felt like seeing some nature. This was a deeply unwelcome activity to the children. As Iris noted, "If you wanted me to be so into nature, why did you have me in a city?"

At one point we crossed a creek on a little board bridge. Crabby fourth-grader Iris said vehemently, "I could fall and hit my head!" I had a hard time restraining my laughter. Iris upped the ante.

"If I fall, I am going to sue you!"

"I'm not going to send any children who sue me to summer camp." (Iris uber Alles has taken to perusing summer camp websites like a adolescent boy looks at porn).

"I could have a concussion! I could die! I am going to sue you!"

"If you sue me, I am NEVER sending you to summer camp, and I'm not having any more birthday parties for you, ever."

"Stop threatening me!"

"You threatened me first!"

"I stopped threatening you, so you stop threatening me."

I guess she won't be reading much Dan Brown

The Sober Husband mentioned the Holy Grail. He was referring to Monty Python, but he ended up having to explain the concept of the Grail and the Crusades to fourth grader Iris uber Alles. "Let me get this straight," she said. "They went on a quest to find some cup? Were they idiots? It's just a cup! They didn't even know what it looked like! It could have been any cup!"

Frowstcam

Iris gave me a wonderful Christmas present, something I had been longing for: a petcam. It is a small camera which you clip on a pet's collar, which then takes a picture every fifteen minutes to document what your pet has been up to. We specifically wanted this to see what our most glamorous pet, longhaired Frowst, got up to.

"I'm afraid we'll see a lot of dead animals", one child worried. Disagreeing, "I think we'll see his friends and other houses," a family optimist said.

What we have learned is that Frowst is much more boring than anyone suspected. You can see that he often spends over an hour without moving. When he does move, he generally seems to lurk about in trees.

I never noticed that he went under our beds, but he spent an hour lying next to Iris's rollerblades. This is all extremely disillusioning.

It's not all over for the petcam, though. I plan to attach it to the Sober Husband when he goes back to work. "I could just take a picture every now and then," he offered, but I said that wouldn't be the same.

"You'd be thinking about it then, and you'd plan the pictures. This will be different."

a holiday thought from Lola

Recently Lola presented her father with a beautifully drawn, colorful, sweet Christmas card, showing him getting his Christmas stocking. "Awww," I said. "I'm jealous."

Lola then happily presented me with her handmade Christmas card for me:
It's Holiday Road-Raging Mommy! I especially love how I'm driving on the wrong side of the road. Lola explained, "You are shouting at idiots! See, you are saying, 'Hurry up, it's Christmas!'"

one miracle of St. Audrey

Audrey, a child in the first grade, exercises a sort of fascination over Lola, who believes every word Audrey says. "Once Audrey was at the top of the climbing structure [at school], and she fell off, but a big wind came, and she floated, and she landed on top of the roof [of the kindergarten building]!"

"Lola, you know THAT'S NOT TRUE!" said big sister Iris, who finds these Audrey stories maddening.

"But Audrey told me," insisted Lola.

they like big butts

Iris, who is a sponge for pop culture, was singing that enduring classic, "I like big butts" around the house the other day. "Lucy! You sing it, too!" she commanded her little sister.

After a pause, Lola, who didn't know the words, gamely sang, "I like big butts when I have them for dinner."

the disagreement

Last night we were driving home after seeing "The Hard Nut" (enjoyed greatly by fourth grader Iris uber Alles and me; first grader Lola wanted to leave early. I myself could watch fifty-something, paunchy Mark Morris dance forever; that man is magic). Somehow the Sober Husband brought up the subject of Arthur Kade, who exercises the kind of fascination over me that a maggot-ridden corpse would for a small boy with a stick.

The Sober Husband (who has not even read Arthur Kadyshes' stupid website or watched his maddening videos) opined that Arthur Kade is a genius and an artist, a performance artist.

"No! He's not! He is for real!" squawked Iris (also an Arthur love/hater) and me.

"You're just saying that because of Sacha Baron Cohen and the Borat movie, but Arthur's for real," I said.

"Yes, Daddude, a guy from 'Philadelphia' magazine followed him around for a couple of days, and he's for real!" Iris said very earnestly, but her father was not to be dissuaded.

"He is an artist. He makes me think of Andy Kaufman." [There followed a long, squabbly and emotional debate, where I called Andy Kaufman "a comedic genius" and the Sober Husband called him "a horrible person who shouldn't be on TV." So why, if the Sober Husband dislikes Andy Kaufman so much, was he comparing Arthur Kade, whom he proclaimed to be a genius and an artist, to him?].

The Sober Husband would not back down on this issue, and he grew loud and animated. "Look at you. You're torqued because I called Arthur Kade an artist and a genius. That proves he is. He has such a powerful effect on you. I can't believe calling him an artist torques you like that."

"Ummm, Daddude, can you focus on driving? I hate to say it, but you are waving your hands around, and the car is moving around," said Iris worriedly. It was true. The car was weaving as the Sober Husband, with shining eyes, gestured and ranted about Arthur's genius and artistry.

"I am going to be really torqued if you get into an accident because you are calling Arthur Kade a genius and comparing him to Andy Kaufman. I will be laughed off The Lego Wig," I said very firmly.

"Why is that called 'the Lego Wig'?"

"Because Arthur got this really bad free haircut from his stepmother, and someone posted on his blog, 'Arthur, you appear to be wearing a wig made from Legos', and everyone thought that was funny."

Iris laughed uproariously. A wig made from Legos! We were all able to join together, for a moment of pretend harmony, in ridiculing Arthur's hair.

love blossoms, but not politeness

Today we drove to Doggy-o to pick up the Sober Husband after work. While we were waiting in the tiny parking lot, fourth grader Iris uber Alles got out of the car and tried to moon her little sister. Iris was not tall enough to effectively moon, and so she was trying to jump up in the air while bent over with her butt stuck out. Little sister Lola shrieked and shrieked with laughter, and then shouted exuberantly, "I LOVE IRIS!" Then reality sunk in, and Lola said, "Oh my God, did you hear that? I love Iris? I LOVE IRIS? What is this?"

Eventually the Sober Husband showed up. On the way home Iris shared about how she'd been forced to write an essay about the meaning of Christmas with a classmate, and she was assigned to work with the child she considers her archnemesis, a very religious girl given to correcting Iris, and as a result, their joint essay was largely about the Baby Jesus. Iris wondered aloud why non-religious people celebrate Christmas, and her father attempted to explain, until this civilized discussion of ideas about Christmas was interrupted by first grader and noted Jesus fan Lola shouting, "YOU ARE A JEW! SHUT YOUR YAPHOLE!" In yet another display of hideously bad parenting, I was taken by a fit of uncontrollable laughter lasting several blocks.

Pigwidgeon as Pygmalion

The Sober Husband has been very sarcastic about my African grey parrot's failure to speak. Pigwidgeon spoke on one memorable occasion, when desperate for attention (the girls and I were ignoring her while we ate lunch), she said, "Hello" in a sweet, piping voice, and we fawned over her for hours. She never spoke again.

"My parrot can talk," the Sober Husband snarks. "Yours is stupid."

We researched the matter and learned that most African greys don't talk until 1-2 years old. Therefore Piggle is not delayed in her speech. However, I tasked bored Lola with working on Piggle's speech. Seven year-old Lola took this assignment very seriously and went off to write down some phrases to teach the parrot. Returning, she pulled up a chair next to Pigwidgeon's play tree and, in a very serious voice, intoned certain phrases over and over again, including notably, "[The Sober Husband] was wrong. [The Sober Husband] was wrong."

packing

Iris has a sleepover tonight, and Lola is happy to send her off. "Pack your bags, Iris! Pack them fast! Pack them fast!"

a doctor and a plan

Today I saw the specialist, a doctor whose practice is devoted to fibroid tumors, and I liked her a lot. She discussed my ultrasound results, gave me a physical exam, and covered the various options, and we made a plan. I will have a hysterectomy on "the first available date", which will most likely not be until late January or even February.

I feel so relieved. The Sober Husband was just dismayed and depressed sounding when I called him to fill him in, but he kept to his prior commitment not to second guess me or my medical advisor of choice (and I am so glad to finally have a doctor handling this whom I like and respect).

a pleasure wasted on the young

The other day I was playing Warcraft, and someone was seeking others to join him in a twenty-five person raid. One of my guildmates reacted: "I hate that guy!" I asked why, and my guildie elaborated. "He only does .624 damage. He dies all the time; he's always bugging the druids for battle rezzes." My guildmate went on and on, thoroughly dissecting and condemning this other player, finally winding up by saying, "He's fourteen."

"He should understand that Warcraft is a game for the middle-aged," I said.

My guildmates, who are almost without an exception middle-aged, all agreed. Perhaps in twenty-five years this other player might mature into a good Warcraft player. In the meantime "someone should send him a 'Hello Kitty Island Adventure' membership" one snarked.

a raw fish

"Did you know Audrey ate a raw fish?" asked first grader Lola. "I heard about it at school. Once Audrey was at the beach, and there was a big wave coming [measures about 2 feet with hands], and she wanted to drink it. So she opened her mouth really wide, and she drank it in.... AND THERE WAS A FISH IN IT! So she ate that raw fish."

(This is the same Lola who treats virtually every utterance coming from her mother's lips with complete disbelief and condescension).

medical update

I now have an appointment next week with the doctor who is basically the local authority on this sort of tumor I have: her entire practice is devoted to this. Previously I tried in vain to get an appointment with her and couldn't get anything before January, but my persistent husband called several times and got me shoehorned in. Emboldened, I canceled my appointment for Tuesday with Dr. Condescension. I'm feeling much more sanguine now, hoping to get this dealt with quickly. I'll be so happy to stop having to cold call doctors, much less see them in person and endure their doctorly antics.

the outlaws and Lola

"Cats have no laws," observed Lola, who added sadly, "I have so many, so many laws that apply to me."

well, that was a waste of a morning and $170

So today I went off to try a new doctor, at a boutique medical firm recommended to me by countless friends. To a person these friends all rave about how their doctors have so much time for them, are such good listeners, send them email all the time, etc... In order to step foot across the threshold one must pay an annual membership fee, on top of having acceptable insurance and paying all the regular copays (a steep $40 for every visit in my case). I was happy and optimistic as I went downtown. I also had a printout in hand from my October ultrasound, with detailed measurements and descriptions of my tumor (the one thing which went right in all of this medical hell was that I went to the medical record offices at UCSF yesterday in person and got that printout promptly from a very friendly black woman).

In contrast to my friends' experiences, with doctors who have all the time in the world for them, the first thing this new doctor said to me was, "I hope they told you I only have a few minutes for you." He did not prove to be a good listener. I had filled out a form noting that I take Xanax, and I told him "it's for insomnia, NOT anxiety; I have no anxiety problems." I'd barely said that when he riposted, "Are you seeing a psychiatrist for your anxiety disorder?"

And what I came away with was nothing but a list of other doctors for me to cold call. Like Dr. Baby Gay whom I saw before, this male doctor knows nothing of the female organs, doesn't want to contemplate the female anatomy, and doesn't even want to discuss the female organs. Why is it that a tumor, just because it happens to be attached to a uterus, is so untouchable and icky? Why do uterus-phobic doctors accept appointments with women? Note: I was not expecting him to operate on my tumor personally, but I did expect him, as my new primary care physician, to want to make the arrangements for my care. Back in the old days when I had a doctor and needed surgery, my doctor set it up. I'd never met the surgeon and gastroenterologist who both operated on me back in 2000 before I went under the anesthesia; my old doctor arranged it all (and I read a profile of my surgeon in the Wall St Journal during my convalescence).

I was distraught when I left. I've put a lot of time into coldcalling doctors, and I'm not eager to work my way down a new list of unknown doctors. I have no faith in today's doctor to give me a good recommendation, either. He just picked some names off a hospital's practice list after I was unenthusiastic about his first choice, whom he raved was "a real holistic practitioner." "What does that mean?" I asked. "She's really good with herbs," he said. I looked at him. "I'm really more of a science type," I said dryly. What I need at this moment in time is a surgeon, not some herbal remedies. "So someone more allopathic," he said with disdain, and he pulled up the list of faculty from a local hospital on his computer.

When I got home, I looked up "allopathic", which Wikipedia says is a term "coined by Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy. It meant 'other than the disease' and it was intended, among other things, to point out how traditional doctors used methods that had nothing to do with the symptoms created by the disease and which, in Hahnemann's view, meant that these methods were harmful to the patients.. . . During the 19th century it was used widely among irregular doctors as a pejorative term for regular doctors. In the United States the term 'allopathic' has been used by persons not related to homeopathy, but it has never been accepted by the medical establishment, and is not a label that such individuals apply to themselves."

I think we can safely say I will not ever see this fancy new doctor, who sneers at science-oriented doctors as "allopathic", again. Going to this expensive boutique was supposed to solve my healthcare problems, but I'm back at square one, just out $170. Leaving the office I felt the familiar pain in my abdomen, and tears sprang to my eyes. I choked them back and trudged to the subway.

okay, okay, I came to my senses

I got a lot of responses on and off the blog about my post yesterday where I wrote about my fibroid diagnosis and how I'm going back to the same crappy doctor I hated to deal with it. To a one, the readers felt I was making a big mistake seeing Dr Condescension again.

Also, I got out my calendar to look up when I'd had the ultrasound, and it took Dr. Condescension one full month to get back to me with my test results. Irritatingly enough the sweet nurse who finally called me was kind of panicky sounding that she couldn't get me in within a week for an appointment to set up a treatment... which was ironic since a month had already gone by.

I am willing to take a big part of the blame there. When I never heard back within a week or two, I should have called and nagged them to pull the test results and look at them. In my defense, I had meningitis and felt like crap and could barely do anything, but still, if one doesn't hear back about test results, one should call up and be persistent.

I spent a couple hours this morning trying to get a new doctor. I can't see the fibroids specialist who heads up a special fibroids clinic until January. Every single primary care doctor recommended by a friend is not accepting new patients. I ended up agreeing to an unheard-of doctor at a recommended practice, whom I will see tomorrow morning. If I don't like him, I can try another doctor in that practice (and I will, since I've paid $129 as a new patient fee to get my foot in the door at that boutique practice). I'm leaving my appointment with Dr. Condescending on the calendar for now, and I am keeping open an appointment in January with the hotshot fibroids doctor as fallbacks.

I just wish my old doctor hadn't left. I've had the same bad luck trying to get a new dentist since my Dr. Huey moved to Arizona. Thankfully my children have a good doctor and a good dentist.

the chosen path

Along with a painful bout of meningitis, I've been suffering from persistent lower abdominal pain (and a variety of other annoying little symptoms I will spare the reader by not describing) this fall. Unfortunately this came at a time when my beloved Dr. Stephanie Scott had abandoned her patients, leaving the world of private practice in San Francisco to join Kaiser Oakland.

Doctorless, I decided to try a friend's doctor. That doctor was not accepting new patients, so that was a no go. Next I decided to find a doctor through recommendations on Yelp. This led to my discovering the top rated doctor on Yelp, who was conveniently located on the very same floor of the very same building where my beloved Dr. Scott had been. However, he was booked up solid, and I ended up getting booked to see his young associate. Yelpers seemed to feel that if you couldn't see the Wonder Doctor, you would be okay seeing his junior sidekick, so I went ahead with the appointment. I showed up early to the appointment, assuming that I would need to detail my checkered medical past on forms before meeting my new doctor for the first time. Instead, the office only cared about my insurance history. They had no interest whatsoever in learning a thing about my health past.

The doctor, a young gay man just out of medical school, seemed unsure of himself in dealing with a middle-aged straight woman. He also had no interest in learning about my medical past and also had no questions for me about anything which might relate to my reproductive system, which happens to be of the yucky female sort. The baby gay doctor decided, after a brief consultation following an extremely long, boring wait on my part, that I most likely had diverticulosis. I researched diverticulosis on my own (Dr. Baby Gay didn't bother to take the time to explain it to me) and learned that it is little irritated pockets in the colon and large intestine. It is believed that these irritated pockets form due to a lack of fiber in a person's diet, and they cause pain and constipation. That diagnosis was asinine. First of all, I don't suffer from constipation, and second of all, as a vegetarian I eat a diet rich in fiber. Diverticulosis is a disease for fast-food grubbing meateaters.

After my unsatisfying encounter with Dr. Baby Gay, I got side-tracked from the abdominal pain by coming down with meningitis. The Sober Husband asked me at one point how my abdominal pain was, and I said it was like how you'd feel if you were in a lot of stomach pain but then got hit on the head by a hammer repeatedly. You'd be distracted by the hammer too much to notice the stomach pain.

While I was recovering from meningitis, I dragged myself over to try out a new gynecologist and see what he had to say about my pain. At least he, whether he were gay or straight, would not be so yucked out by a woman's feminine anatomy as to pretend it didn't exist. This new doctor proved to be immensely condescending (every single thing I said, he had a condescending comeback to), and I disliked him intensely. However, he scheduled me for an ultrasound, and I kept that ultrasound appointment.

After the ultrasound, I got a bill right off the bat, but no one called me to discuss the test results. Dr. Condescension had assured me that he or his nurse would be in touch with me as soon as the results came back. When I never heard from them, I figured that was because the news was that there was no news and nothing showed up on the ultrasound. Indeed Dr. Condescension had disagreed with me (in a condescending matter, natch) when I had brought up the possibility that it was a fibroid tumor which was my problem. He felt that I was being stupid by speculating that, so of course he must have been proven right by the ultrasound. I also thought the ultrasound must have shown nothing interesting because I had been able to leave the ultrasound without a doctor being called in (I learned years ago, when I had an ultrasound which revealed gallstones plugging up my bile duct and a severely diseased gallbladder, that there is an emergency call button in the ultrasound office, so if the tech sees something freakout-worthy, a doctor may be summoned while the patient is still recumbent upon the ultrasound recliner).

I decided that I'd keep gathering doctor recommendations and try out another doctor in December, and I felt fine not doing anything right off as I'd had an ultrasound which must have been normal. Then the phone rang, weeks after that damn ultrasound. Dr. Condescending's nurse shared that I do indeed have a massive fibroid tumor, over three inches wide and three inches tall and about two and a half inches around, and it needs to come out. Dr. Condescension suddenly needed to see me ASAP to discuss my treatment options, but yet, despite the urgency, Dr. Condescension didn't have any time to see me for over a week.

After I got that call, I felt pretty upset, and I felt scared about getting major abdominal surgery. I called my greatly beloved husband of eleven years, the Sober Husband, at his office and blurted out the bad news to him and then shared my fear of surgery. The Sober Husband's words of comfort? He said, "You chose to go down this path" in a voice making it clear that if a person whimsically chooses to go have an ultrasound, she needs to deal with the surgical consequences like an adult.

After this second upsetting call, I took a few moments to calm down. After all, I should have known better than to expect the Sober Husband to be calming and reassuring without advance notice. The man benefits from having my expectations of him spelled out clearly, and so I went off and emailed him, explaining in very few words that my expectations were that (1) he would not question my judgment whatsoever in setting up treatment and would not ever say that I "chose" this unnecessarily and (2) he would take a couple of days off work when, as expected, I have surgery. (I know that there are controversial non-surgical treatments involving massive hormone doses, and I am not willing to choose the hormone path. There is also the option of just living with the fibroid tumor, as it is 99.99% sure not to be malignant, but I'm not willing to do that, either, given my pain and other symptoms. That would be essentially saying that I am willing to go on living as though I were in the second or third trimester of pregnancy with a fetus pressing on my organs and pelvis indefinitely, and that is not a pleasing option).

My plan is to stick with Dr. Condescending long enough to get a referral to a surgeon and a surgery date. Then I will post a scathing review of him on Yelp and never go to his office again. My hope is that I will be able to have surgery over the Christmas holidays, as that will be a convenient time for the Sober Husband to take off from work and be with Iris and Lola and help me out while I convalesce. My fears are that Dr. Condescending will himself want to do the surgery and that I won't be able to schedule it until January, which will be a busy month for the Sober Husband where it will be awkward for him to take time off. But of course, one might say that I chose this path, and therefore it's my own damn fault if I don't get to the end of it before January.

the mafia for beginners

"Did you know Lucy is in the first grade mafia? It's a group of individuals in organized crime who are all in the first grade," narked Iris today. "They go around attacking some people and protecting others. They attack kids that are bigger than them, not littler, and they protect ones that are little."

"Oh, no," demurred organized crime figure Lola. "Sometimes we attack kids that are littler than us."

eh, meh, feh

We had a lovely, quiet Thanksgiving. Yesterday I was happy and relaxed and busy. Today I'm feeling overwhelmed by stress.

This fall I had meningitis, and Lola is having a rough year at school. The Sober Husband created a custom nagging program, which sends me an email every day detailing my credit card and checking spending (upside: reduced spending and heightened ability to live within our means; downside: daily nagging, and also the Sober Husband often reclaims the best laptop to keep rewriting this little piece of software). After months of abdominal pain and a variety of other unappetizing symptoms, I have a diagnosis of a tumor bigger than my fist. On the bright side, it's 99.99% believed to be benign, but on the other hand, I need to have it surgically removed. I really dislike the doctor I've seen for this, but on the other hand, do I want to wait until I can find a doctor I like before dealing with this? The Sober Husband has also been highly stressed this past fall at work.

Iris has been the best off of all of us, but she's been suffering from chronic headaches. An initial attempt at treating her headaches through medication was an odd failure. Her doctor suggested a prescription antihistamine, and Iris and I were eager to try it, but the Sober Husband balked. He insisted upon setting up an experiment where Iris would be randomly medicated or given a placebo. He purchased empty capsules and decanted the contents of Iris's medicine into some of these capsules and filled the others with sugar. Iris was enthused at first at this experiment but soon tired of it. "I wish I could just take my medicine," she confided when her father was safely away at work. However, even with the intermittent taking of her medication, Iris was able to figure out that she was having the downsides (dry mouth, dry throat, sleepiness) without enough improvement in her headaches, and she gave up the meds. Iris has also been troubled by her teeth: several times when an adult tooth has grown in, her baby tooth refused to fall out, and the two teeth became somehow stuck together for several months. We refer to this as "a snaggle", and these snaggleteeth plague poor Iris (but again, Iris has otherwise been on the ascendant. "I have my teachers wrapped around my finger," she confided one day).

Today-- the day after Thanksgiving -- is the one day of the year when a person most needs a microwave for warming up leftovers. This is the day my elderly microwave chose to die, shorting out part of the kitchen in its death throes. "It had to take the toaster with it," I said darkly, but the Sober Husband assured me the toaster could be resuscitated. He opened up the microwave, which had some interesting radioactivity warnings inside, but several hours of surgery determined that the microwave was warming up leftovers in heaven or hell and not to be lured back to our earthly kitchen.