February 2, 2017

When Being Right Doesn’t Matter, or Does

Something was wrong with my baby daughter.

I said it to her pediatrician when she was just a few weeks old. He laughed at me, told me she was fine.

I said it in the emergency room when her chest and throat were retracting with her rapid breath. They gave her meds, watched her for a few days, sent her home with me.

I said it to her new pediatrician. She looked more closely, waited, told me to sleep-train her.

I said it again when everything failed, when she wouldn’t eat solid food, wouldn’t sleep through the night, couldn’t make it through a cold without hospitalization. And finally, finally, someone found the something. When they did, nobody said, “oops.” They fixed her congenital heart defect, the source of every problem.

I was right, but it didn’t matter.

January 23, 2017

Feeding the Democracy

The house was quiet last Friday night after an evening of happy chaos. My children tucked into bed, I faced the kitchen with resolute attention.

On the stove, a nearly-empty pot of lentil stew was developing a crust. Next to it, the picked-clean brownie pan shone with spray-grease, and a cutting board with the shreds of peeled carrot and the ends of a cucumber was topped with my best chopping knife, visibly dirty. The sink was empty, but clean dishes dripped on a towel on the counter above my humming, hardworking dishwasher. Every measuring cup and spoon in the house awaited me.

I put on some quiet music and hatched a plan. First, set the oven to pre-heat. Get the next set of ingredients ready before you tackle the pots on the stove. Make some tea.

Every moment saved is vital to a mission of importance. I learned this in the years I followed this same set of late-night tactics to feed my family under a set of ridiculous dietary restrictions. In the evenings, I often made snacks, planned the next night’s meal or the next morning’s breakfast. I tried to clean my kitchen every night too, so that even I could start fresh the next morning.

It didn’t change my daughter’s diagnosis if I stayed on top of meal planning and dishes, but it contributed in a different way. When I didn’t do these things, I woke to a set of daunting tasks that kept me from pursuing the bigger issues of my daughter’s health care. If the day started with me unprepared, I played catch-up and my family absorbed that energy, too. Giving my family some sense of normality in what seemed like totally abnormal circumstances meant more work for me, but the results were worth it. As we dealt with a new set of daily routines and limited access to our previous life, whatever I could do to lengthen the fuses of my family had value.

I had to feed my family through that crisis. And now, I’m trying to feed my larger family through what’s to come. Continue Reading…

December 7, 2016

Huddle Up

Every day, there’s something new happening that scares me.

In fact, every day, there are multiple things — here in the US, and other places in the world. It feels to me like we are balanced on a saucer held on the index finger of someone walking barefoot across a sea of marbles, and — moment by moment — people are plummeting over the edge. I wake up from my spot nearer to the middle of that saucer than 90% of the people on this planet, and I look at the news and try to decide where I will throw my tiny threads of possibility today.

It feels desperate. On the worst days, it feels ridiculous.

As this year ends, I am reminded of the years that my friends and family made contributions to causes that would likely never, ever affect them. Though I tried not to be a broken record, I did occasionally reach out to friends and family via social media and other means to support the charities working on research, advocacy and support for the conditions with which my daughter suffered. When her primary diagnosis was eosinophilic esophagitis, I asked for support for APFED, The American Partnership for Eosinophilic Disorders. After she had her second cardiac surgery, we suggested people make donations to Mended Little Hearts. These were good causes — they are good causes, and I’ll continue to support them even though my daughter’s health is no longer affected by these conditions — but the people we asked to contribute or share stories or raise awareness were likely largely oblivious to their existence before my daughter’s diagnosis awakened them.

In the last few weeks, the pitched voices of a number of needs in the wider world and in my community seem to have amplified. Part of that is due to #GivingTuesday, a campaign to encourage charitable giving after the materialistic trifecta of Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday. Part of the onslaught of need has also come out of the recent US presidential election, which has given rise to a level of societal panic I can’t remember seeing ever before in my adult life. Causes about which I care deeply — civil rights, women’s health, the social safety net, immigration and international diplomacy among others — seem to need support more than ever. I find my personal politics pinpointed perfectly as my friends add me to Facebook groups daily, my email inbox fills with requests, and every news story seems to offer me an action item.

This holiday season, there are so many bigger needs than those that affect my family. This holiday season, the needs affect my whole world.

I’m doing a few things differently this season, and while I don’t dare tell anyone reading this that my plan should be theirs, I’m finding it useful to think about what I can do to help in three ways:

Actions that help the world
Actions that help my community
Actions that help my family

November 9, 2016

Figure This Out, Everyone

The results of the U.S. presidential election are not what I had been hoping they would be.

Although many issues were important to me — and my opinions were represented well across several candidates — one that made me especially motivated was the Affordable Care Act. Between my two daughters and I, we have a host of ailments — historical and current — which would have qualified, before the ACA, as “pre-existing conditions.” I have one daughter who was born with a congenital heart defect that affected her respiratory and digestive health. I have another daughter with a kidney/ureter condition. I have asthma and a severe food allergy. The ACA included within it a protection that kept insurance companies from denying health care because of a pre-existing condition, but President-Elect Donald J. Trump has been quite public about his disdain for the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Just last week, he was quoted as saying that Obamacare was a “horror” he would “repeal and replace.”

If we are to take him at his word, our next task is to pray — prayer through hoping, emailing, calling, writing, and traditional wailing prayer — that this most important protection made available through the Affordable Care Act remains in effect in whatever health plan replaces it. Even terrible health insurance is better than no health insurance, a reality many who never had insurance until now understand all too well.

I haven’t slept much. Forgive my lack of eloquence: this scares me. Continue Reading…

Swallow, My Sunshine

Feeding a Family in Medical Uncertainty

Category Archives: ACA

When Being Right Doesn’t Matter, or Does

Feeding the Democracy

Huddle Up

Figure This Out, Everyone