Hobson's Choice
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Preschool Theology
E: Who is God's mom?
J: What's that?
E: Who is God's mom? 'Cause I know he had to get borned.
6:11 p.m. - 2006-09-18
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Photos
Here's what I've learned from taking pictures of 24 preschoolers. You cannot easily take pictures of four year olds that don't make them look like the future Manson family. They can be the sweetest children in America; they can try to smile graciously for the camera. Nonetheless, the results will terrify you.
There's a reason why professional photographers charge so much and they should. I think they belong to some kind of cabal that can work magic on children to make them look like themselves or even better than themselves. You just thought they were smarmy people trying to get you to buy the extra 8X10s. No, they are wizards. In Book 7, we'll see the introduction of JC Penny Portrait Studio Magic to Harry Potter's curriculum.
7:20 a.m. - 2006-09-17
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My Brain
There's an article about Birth Control in the current Brain, Child. I devoured about half of it like some kind of anthropologist. Wow, there are people out there who have to work at not getting pregnant? They have to use devices to prevent pregnancy? How exotic. How fascinating.
I've reached the stage of infertility where it seems utterly hilarious to me that women manage to get pregnant without wanting to or trying to. Without involving thermometers and little blue sticks and professionals. It's wacky. They just have sex and voila! How bizarre.
The human mind is a great thing. Whatever our lives are like,however atypical, our minds can convince us that our lives are normal and typical at least for a few moments. And strangely, it's a comfort.
7:11 a.m. - 2006-09-17
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Mouse, Ralph S
Remember Ralph S Mouse and The Mouse and the Motorcycle? I know you do. Remember how all the adults were always going "Eek! A mouse! It must be killed!" Only I'm sure Beverly Clearly wrote their dialogue much more elegantly than that.
I've turned into that adult. I can't tell you how depressing that is.
I finally realized yesterday that the resident mouse must be one of the Ralph S Mouse variety. So far as I can tell, it doesn't eat any food. It just hangs out. And poops, of course. We now have two traps baited with snickers bar, which the school janitor assures me is mouse heroin. They've been baited for 48 hours. Nothing.
So I've decided that the mouse just wants to be a pet, just wants to live with us and a couple of elderly cats. And you know what? I still want it gone. I've turned into one of those soulless adults of children's literature who cannot see the magic of having a wild mouse living with them, but only think about poop and disease.
7:06 a.m. - 2006-09-17
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Betting Time
Running bets in our households. Wagers welcomed.
(1) When will our 25 year old stove give up the ghost? (I lost this one already because I bet on June 2006)
(2) When will Ares the cat's droopy stomach skin sag far enough that it drags the ground?
(3) How low can we get our heating bill to be this winter without getting chilblains or hurting our furnace?
(4) Can Jenny knit a present for all family members before December 25th?
9:16 p.m. - 2006-09-12
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Thank You, Dr. Burns
I got a surprise this week with the possible diagnosis of why I have had such negative outcomes in pregnancy. After four years of being told that it's just a mystery, that we'll never know why Eleanor came early or why I had a late miscarriage, I had accepted that we would never have an explanation.
And then out of the blue, the reproductive endocrinologist who had been reading my chart presented the theory of thrombophilia. Some women have undiagnosed clotting disorders ("thrombophilia") that are correlated with late miscarriage, placental abruption, stillbirth, and other negative outcomes. Treatment with blood thinners significantly reduce complications in subsequent pregnancies (for more information see The March of Dimes)
So maybe I'm going to be tested for these disorders. But more than that, I feel like I've been given the wonderful gift of knowing that there may be an explanation.
I know why doctors say "It's just a mystery; we'll never know." First, they know that women tend to blame themselves for losses and to try to seek out a cause in something they did ("I had a margarita" or "I cleaned out the basement with bleach" or whatever). I appreciate that health professionals want to minimize that guilt, and I have certainly gone to lengths to assure friends that nothing they did could possibly have caused their miscarriage.
Second, a lot of reproductive medicine is a mystery because the research dollars have not been provided to ferret out some of the causes and the whys. We can never answer the existential "whys": Why did this happen to me? Why now? But we do understand the physical mechanisms of many "health events." A heart attack may happen because a person's arteries are clogged. We're not able to find that kind of causation for many of the conditions that happen largely to women, because the money has not been there. And that's what has made me mad. Furious.
So it's nice to have a possible explanation of a physical process that can be studied and quantified, even if we're never able to say why in any global, overarching sense. And we also can't say why Eleanor lived. She did, and here we are. Those are the sacred mysteries we live with and must live with.
But I'm grateful at least that the body and its processes become less of a mystery.
6:51 p.m. - 2006-09-04
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Medical Stuff, hers and mine
Eleanor's Obsession with what we in this household term "Medical Shit" continues.
(1) She threw up last week for the first time in her memory. She spent about half a minute freaking out, and then the questions started.
"What is that called?"
"What is it made out of?"
"Where does it come from?"
(2) She found a box of rubber gloves in the basement today; she was thrilled. She said, "Now I can touch your nose and not give you germs."
She will either be in a healing arts field, or she will follow in the footsteps of Howard Hughes.
On my own medical front, I have discovered this week the purpose of the word "intercourse." I always thought it was a awkward, obtuse, clinical kind of word. Now I embrace the clinical as I enter further and futher into the realm of infertility diagnosis. The word "intercourse" is only thing that allows anyone even a shred of dignity in this process. If any of us had to say "sex" at any point in the proceeding, we would all ...me, the endocrinologist, the nurse...we would all just have to crawl under the table and die on the spot. Just expire. Give up and breathe our last. Saying "intercourse" saves our lives.
Life is a long series of gynecological embarrassments.
6:03 p.m. - 2006-09-02
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