The Swimming Badge

When my son was in first grade, he came home wearing a sticker that said, "I want to be a Cub Scout."

"Pleeeeease?" he said, doing his best to look angelic.

It wasn't a hard sell. His big sisters, then 13 and 14, had been in Girl Scouts since they were in kindergarten. I'd been a leader for almost as long. He'd watched his cousins participate in Cub Scouts, often at our house, for the den that his dad led. Our church sponsors a Cub Scout pack, Scout troop and Venturing crew, but boys can't join until they're 8. That just seemed like far too long to wait to my 6 year old.

The local district was starting a Scoutreach troop at my son's public school, hoping to serve an area and a population of boys that was "underserved." So, we signed up my cherubic son, who was delighted to finally be a Scout "like everybody else."

He excelled. He loved virtually everything that his den did. Even after he turned 8 and joined the church sponsored pack, he stayed in his school pack for another year, doubling up on his opportunities. His shirt became covered in Arrow Points, and he built Pinewood Derby cars and Raingutter Regatta boats with gusto. The ceremonial decorated arrow that he was given when he earned his Arrow of Light still hangs in our living room now, during his senior year of high school.

From the time he was 7 years old, he wanted to become an Eagle Scout.

He loved Scout camp. At first, he could only attend with his dad accompanying him. They usually went with a buddy and his parents, and came home dirty and happy. As he got older, he went with his leaders and other boys – Dad stayed at home.

Some badges, such as those in rifles and archery, can only be earned at camp. Others can be earned anywhere, but are frequently done at camp because it's convenient. Swimming is one of those.

My son's not an expert swimmer. All of my kids love water, whether it's pools, oceans or what have you, but only one is a true water baby. She has always swum like a fish, and could not comprehend what her siblings were thinking when they wanted to wade or build sandcastles. To her, you're not in the water until you're over your head, so what's the point of the shallows?

I love water, but my swimming is very rudimentary. It gets the job done, but I have no real "technique."  It's very rare that I want to be in deep water. I lasted maybe 30 seconds in a two person kayak with my husband this summer before I made him take me back to shore. I have to ease into anything, especially anything concerning deep water, and he doesn't know how to ease in. He shoved off from the shore and we were in deep water, rocking back and forth, within 5 seconds – and then he headed for deeper water, with the kayak riding the waves, tipping side to side. The swaying motion did me in. I had close to a meltdown and had to be taken back to the beach immediately. Elementary school aged children stared at me like I was a science experiment. "It's OK if you fall in," one said to me. She didn't realize that I'm not as worried about drowning as I am of having a heart attack, right there in the boat, in my life vest.

I'm pretty sure it's genetic. My brother doesn't even wade. He literally will not go into knee deep water. He doesn't generally walk down to the shore and let the waves splash his feet. He remembers being like this at 4 and 5 years old, despite never experiencing a water trauma. So do I.

At camp, the areas you can go into are governed by how well you do on the swim test. At Boy Scout camp, the swim test includes jumping into water over your head and a 100 yard swim. In 8 years of camp, my son only got deep water clearance once, and that was totally OK with him.

As he got older, the badges took more work, but he still coasted.

Sometimes we ran into snags, usually having to do with lost records. He had to repeat his efforts on a few badges, which annoys the perfectionist in him. Once, at a merit badge clinic, the counselor promised to mail his Blue Card (the official record you need in order to earn your badge) to him after the clinic closed. It was an Eagle required badge, and it not only was never mailed to us, we couldn't track down the counselor. The council couldn't give us her contact info (privacy issues). So, he had to re-do an entire Eagle required badge. (In all, he completed every requirement 3 times, but the paperwork only went in to the council once.)

Then we hit a few more serious snags. To attain Eagle, you must earn a cycling, hiking or swimming badge. We hike fairly frequently, but it's usually easy, casual hikes that don't count toward the badge. His entire troop worked on the cycling badge together, and he got every requirement except one – a 50 mile bike ride in 8 consecutive hours. He managed 40 miles. He's asthmatic, and after that it was just too hard to breathe. The next year he tried again, and made it to 38 miles. No matter, we thought, he'll get one of the other badges.

Even when his troop completed a 50 mile, 5 day backpacking trip along the Pacific Crest Trail, those hikes did not count toward his hiking badge. (He likes to remind me, too, that because of snow on the trail they had to detour, and only made 48 miles. He brings this up every time I tell someone that he completed a Scout 50 miler; stickler.) Neither did the week long pioneer reenactment trek that he did two summers ago, or our volcano climb in Hawaii this year. "Forget it," he said. He would not consider the hiking badge if none of his experiences counted toward it.

That left swimming – ah, swimming.

Some kids breeze through the swimming badge, even non-athletic kids. My son doesn't consider himself an athlete, but he spent 5 1/2 years in karate lessons, where he competed in monthly tournaments (and won a few awards). He's now in his 6th year of fencing lessons, and he's very good. (His own assessment is that he's "OK" at fencing.) He's just short of scuba certified; he needs two more dives, and we just never get around to scheduling them.

Still, even his scuba training and our frequent snorkeling excursions do not count toward the swimming badge. They're very specific requirements. He'd done more than half of them at camp, but the remaining requirements were kicking his butt. He finally crossed off one of the difficult ones in passing all the swim test requirements at camp, but there were 2 left that were just vexing. He needed to dive headfirst, not jump feet first, into water over his head. He also had to complete a 150 yard swim with certain prescribed strokes. "I can't," he said repeatedly. "100 yards nearly killed me."

He researched and proposed an Eagle project with a community partner, the local wildlife park. It was reviewed and accepted by the council. He would re-landscape a large, two tiered planting bed that had become a hazard, and had actually caused injuries to children. Work started off with a bang, a rousing success with Part 1, digging out and disposing of invasive cactus, and is set to conclude later this month with the completion of Part 2, planting and identifying native plants.

Still no swimming badge.

The only badge besides swimming that he has to complete is one in which he's already completed the requirements, and now simply has to review them with his Merit Badge counselor. It's Citizenship in the World; after two Student Ambassador trips abroad over the last two years, it's almost ridiculously easy for him. Asked to compare the US government to that in other countries, he can draw on such experiences as the time he attended a lecture by a member of Britain's Parliament, specifically designed to teach the similarities and differences between our systems.

Filling out his worksheets recently, he looked up from one requirement – to participate in an "event such as an ethnic festival, concert, or play," and wondered aloud whether he should write down one of his experiences in Europe, his visit to an Aboriginal village in Australia (where he learned mythology, spear throwing and didgeridoo playing), or his role in a play telling the true account of a man who was the director of an orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto during WWII.

("Shut up, you jerk," said his big sister. "I hate you." She adores him, so she says this sort of thing often.)

It was beginning to look as if ONE requirement on ONE badge would keep him from earning his Eagle - his 18th birthday, the deadline to finish, is looming.

Let me practice full disclosure here. I never thought of myself as particularly driven or goal oriented as a kid, and I was slightly puzzled when I was referred to as an overachiever. I just thought of myself as bright and capable. Still, I frequently earned honors that others around me found rather astonishing.

I was one of only two girls my age in my congregation to earn a particular religious award. It took six years to do so. I had joined this church, with my parents' blessing but somewhat to their bafflement, when I was 12. My father thought it was a phase that would pass. My mother drove me to every meeting I wanted to attend (and never bad-mouthed my choice), but she would have been OK with it if I had come home one day and said, "You know, this church thing just isn't for me." When I earned this award, I heard, over and over, that, "It's hard enough when you have parental support!" and, "I can't imagine doing this without your parents' support!" First, I felt like I had support – they let me come to church, didn't they? Plus, I was not impressed if a kid accomplished something because their parents pushed them. Then, I felt, it was the parents who accomplished it, not their child. If something was important to you, you did it. If it wasn't important to you, no amount of "support" from your parents would get it done.

At school, I was usually a straight A student. My parents were happy about that, but they didn't see it as amazing. Others did.

I wasn't even trying to pad a college application or best my classmates, and I still racked up some pretty cool awards – from the National Council of Teachers of English, from participation on the debate team, for my work on the school publications, from service club speech contests, for my work in the school's theater department. Outside of school, I won a weekly competition on the local TV show "Talent Search and You!", a precursor to today's myriad of TV talent shows. I was one of the only actors in a field of singers and musicians, and I still came in second on the Grand Search, where the winners competed against each other.

My father informed me, the week after I graduated from high school, that "all your accomplishments mean nothing." His reasoning – I was "not a well rounded person," because I had never played on a high school sports team. (Way to be supportive, Dad.)

Here's the disclosure part: as much of a go-getter as I may have been, even if I had been working toward a goal for 10 years, if reaching it required me to dive into deep water, there is NO way I would have accomplished it. Zero chance. Pigs will fly and Hades will freeze over first. I am 46 years old, and I have never jumped off of a dock, a diving board, or the edge of a pool. NEVER. I cannot imagine such a thing happening. It goes without saying, then, that I have never done an actual, hands over the head, headfirst dive.

People whose kids have been doing this kind of thing since they were 3 or 4 have been baffled as to why my intelligent, accomplished, healthy and physically fit 17 year old son could not seem to handle these swimming tasks. When I said, "I wouldn't have been able to," I could see some of them mentally rolling their eyes. They seemed to think, "Yes, but you're fat," "Just get over it and do it," or "You've caused your son to fear the water." I really didn't want to discuss it. My kid has jumped off of a boat and swum to the bottom of Lake Tahoe as part of the required deep water dives in scuba training. He does not share my fear of water; he may lack skills and experience, but that's different.

He went to the pool with his merit badge counselor last spring, did a painful belly flop while attempting a dive, and passed on continuing the session. "Have him spend a lot of time in water, until he's really comfortable, before we try this again," the counselor said.

We visited our doctor's office several times, consulting with the physician's assistant. Tests showed that, while his asthma was a factor, it wasn't bad enough to qualify him for a medical exemption, which would have enabled him to complete an alternate badge, such as archery or sailing. His hypoglycemia, while again a possible factor (especially with fatigue) is mild.

 He tried the PA's suggestion to use his inhaler just before he swam, but he still couldn't make 150 yards. 75 was about the limit.

I can't stand to hear my child say "I can't" (even though I knew that I probably could but never would.) I didn't want to see him come this far to give up.

Partly by design, party by chance, he spent most of the summer in the water. A couple of times a week, he'd go with his sister to a friend's apartment and swim in the complex's pool. Then he went on the second of his Student Ambassador trips, where he spent time in hotel pools, swimming holes under waterfalls and in the Pacific Ocean at the Great Barrier Reef. (Yeah, it's a tough life, but somebody has to live it.)

When he came home, the physician's assistant had another suggestion. "Google 'carb loading for a marathon.' Feed him that way, then have him use the inhaler. Let's see if that does it."

Mondays my middle daughter is off work, so we usually do something fun. The next Monday, we carb loaded my son, and I took a list of the undone requirements with us to the pool.

He tackled the 150 yard swim first. I offered to swim next to him – I'd looked up the strokes online, and I was prepared to swim the entire thing in the lane next to him, despite the fact that the lanes go all the way across the pool, and therefore through the deep end. "I don't need anyone to swim with me," he said, in a voice that indicated that the suggestion was on a par with having him wear water wings or an embarrassing, badly hand knit holiday sweater. So much for "parental support." Still, because I'm the mom, and I was stoked, I swam or walked next to him when he was in the shallow end, telling him when he had to switch strokes (there were 5 required). He breezed through it like it was nothing. When he finished, he was a bit winded, but remarkably calm about the whole thing. I was practically bouncing up and down.

After resting for just a few minutes, he was ready to tackle the diving. This was his sister's territory. She demonstrated. He was nervous, but he mimicked his sister, and in he went, like he'd been diving for years. He came up and did a second one just for good measure. Then, he dove down to retrieve an object from the bottom of the pool (another requirement), and very matter-of-factly went off to enjoy the rest of our pool time.

I expected the heavens to open and angels to sing; no such thing happened. The kids played, and mocked me for staying behind the rope in the shallow end.

He scheduled the last requirement – jump fully clothed into water over your head and tread water while you demonstrate how to use your clothes for emergency flotation – for the following week at the apartment pool. His counselor signed off on the badge, and soon we had a Blue Card in our hands. I treated it like gold.

The finish line is in sight now.

Of course, it's about the journey as much as it is about the destination.

Renovation

Eighteen years ago, we bought a big, sprawling fixer upper house on a quiet street. It had six bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a family room. I hoped that, since most of the living would go on in the family room, the living room would always be company ready. HA HA HA HA! (Never happened.) It needed everything - paint, carpet, new windows, you name it.

Here's what it looked like at the beginning of this summer:

The original owner had added on to a house that was originally four bedrooms and two bathrooms, adding two more bedrooms, a bathroom and a family room. He was a building inspector who wrote his own permits and signed his own inspections; nothing in the addition was up to current building codes. The plumbing runs on the outside of the walls (as did the Romex cable for the bedroom light fixtures). The bedroom hallway has a little 1 1/2 inch step between the original house and the addition - just enough to be annoying. One bedroom no longer had a window, since the addition was added onto the wall where the original one had been. The studs are 24 inches apart. The joists run the opposite direction from those in the original half, so no ducting (for instance, for a furnace) can run from one half of the house to the other. The family room is paneled in plywood, with no drywall underneath, and the only source of heat was a wood stove. (The upstairs master bedroom also had a stove for heat.) The addition went 10 to 12 inches over the kitchen window and an upstairs bedroom window, so looking out of those windows, you looked at the wood used to construct the addition. There was just enough space - about half an inch - between the wood and the glass, so that it was constantly full of whatever blew in: grass, feathers, dust, just general crud. In the family room, the two large "windows" were made of sliding glass door panels, turned sideways and glued into the wall.

There's more, but you get the idea.

We bought it from the original owner's son and his wife. The wife hated the house. She actually tried fairly hard to talk us out of it. "What will you do about this?" she asked, dragging us through the house. "And this?" Pointing to the overhang over the windows, she demanded to know how I'd deal with it. I shrugged. "Right now," I said, "I'll hang curtains. Later, we'll replace the windows." All of our paperwork on the sale said "AS IS" in capital letters.

We didn't take any photos of that. We should have, but we hated it so much that we really didn't want to immortalize it.

"How long do you think it will take to fix all this?" people asked. "Twenty years or so," we'd say. They'd laugh, thinking we were kidding. We weren't.

We're fast approaching twenty years. We're not done yet, but oh, the progress.

The first thing we did was redo the children's rooms. We painted, made new curtains, and ripped out the carpet to replace it with vinyl. I hate carpet. I will happily sweep, daily, if needed, but I can't stand vacuuming. Plus, carpets get dirty far too easily. They're not recommended for asthmatics or people with allergies, and that's me and roughly half of the rest of my family. People thought we were crazy, but over the years those floors have seen diaper accidents, vomit, broken fish tanks and other incredible messes, and they all cleaned up with damp paper towels. On carpet, it would have been a total nightmare.

We started replacing the windows next, sometimes one or two at a time, once in a batch of 4. The old, single pane windows were so awful that the curtains blew in the wind even when the windows were closed. With the new ones, the house was warmer, less drafty and prettier. We replaced the front door and one of the sliding glass doors. We ripped out more carpet, replacing it with parquet and vinyl. We painted indoors, but not outdoors. We wanted to replace the siding, so why paint? When we replaced and resized the windows with the overhang, I did the happy dance. I was giddy for months. Frankly, I'm still giddy when I think about it. We replaced the sliding glass door panels glued into the walls with actual windows, and I was beyond giddy. They open! They close! They're amazing!

We installed a wall heater in the family room.

We replaced the roof, which was so bad that it had begun to leak. I was so delighted with my new roof, especially when it rained or snowed.

We had a small deck off of our bedroom, with stairs going down to the yard. It was made, nearly as I can tell, with untreated lumber, because the decay rate was tremendous. Plus, it grew moss - moss! In the desert! The last time anyone walked on it, years ago, their foot went straight through the wood. We barred anyone from even thinking of walking on it.

We had holes in our siding and our roof to accommodate the chimneys from the wood stoves (which we had to tear out, as they're now illegal in our county). We had flaking paint, peeling wood, birds nesting in the rafters... it was a mess.

One of the many incompatibilities between myself and my husband is in our decision making processes. For me, the only reason to contemplate any decision is to make it and act on it, preferably quickly. Why even consider something if you're not going to DO anything? For my husband, the entire point of a decision is to consider all the possibilities. He loves considering the possibilities, often for years (and years). Making and acting on a decision actually makes him quite stressed out. He worries that: 1. any decision might be the wrong one, and 2. once you act on something, you have "cut off all the possibilities." When we're done with something, I am always relieved and delighted. He always feels at least a bit let down.

Imagine trying to balance this dynamic while making home repair and remodel decisions. He cannot imagine why I spend all of my time trying to eliminate possibilities. I cannot imagine why he can't just DO something and stop endlessly discussing it with no action in sight. As long as a project remains undone, in progress or even in total chaos, he is soothed, knowing that he could, in theory, do any one of hundreds of things. As long as a project remains undone, in progress or in chaos, my anxiety level goes up and up.

We ran into this problem while making decisions about the outside of the house. We weighed doing things ourselves vs. hiring pros, vinyl siding vs. hardboard siding vs. stucco, chose contractors that went out of business, turned down outrageous bids, weighed varying options for financing such a large purchase... it took years. YEARS. And years.

I mean, come on. Does that look even habitable to you?

Finally, decisions were made, contractors hired, and we got our last window and two doors replaced, the deck rebuilt, and stucco put on the house. It was not a moment too soon, in my opinion.

(Yeah, that's the plywood. Eventually, it will be replaced. Right now, there are bigger fish to fry.)

It looks gorgeous. Our neighbors have all complimented us. "What are you doing to your guys's house?" one 20-something neighbor wanted to know. "Are you moving?"

"No," I said. "We just got tired of looking at it."

I cannot describe how delighted I am with the results.

We still have to paint our front door and garage door, but that's small potatoes.

And my deck! Look at my deck!

After having the yard covered in scaffolding for most of the summer, I'm now in serious outdoor improvement mode. By the time winter hits, the yard should look pretty amazing, too. Here's our new fire pit, and the new chairs my husband made. Yes, marshmallows have been roasted.

For 14 years, this fountain has had no, well, fountain attachment. The original one, a spitting fish, mysteriously walked out of our front yard. This little frog recently replaced him. I'm happy every time I walk out the door.

And just for good measure, here's a shot of my iris, shot this spring, and my daylilies, which are recovering from the trampling the stucco guys gave them.



Yes, indeed - life is good.

Illness Part 2: Surgery

I woke up clearing my throat, which felt remarkably gooey.

A woman's voice fairly barked at me. "Sharon! Stop. Stop that!" Who was this woman? Why was she in my room? Why couldn't I clear a gummy throat?

As I tried clearing it again, despite being told not to, I remembered. I was in the hospital recovery room. I'd had surgery, surgery on my throat. I'd expected to feel soreness, and maybe a pull from the stitches, but instead I felt a slight twinge on the right side of my throat, soreness across my collarbone, and incredible phlegminess in my throat.

"Phlegm. Feel phlegmy. Can't breathe."

"You can breathe," the woman's voice informed me. "Your oxygen level looks good. You're speaking. You can breathe."

"Phlegm. Feel phlegmy!" This woman, I thought, has never experienced their throat closing from phlegm. Unfortunately, I have, and the only way to deal with it is to cough it up. "Can't breathe."

"Let's sit you up and see if that helps." The head of the bed started moving upward.

I opened my eyes, and kept clearing my throat. "She's starting to panic," the woman said to someone else, asking them to call a third person. "I'm going to give you anti anxiety medication, OK? It should help calm you down."

What will calm me down, I thought, is being able to clear my throat.

"Does that help?" she asked.

"No. Not really."

The man she'd called came and listened to me breathe. "I hear some wheeziness. I'll get some albuterol," he told her.

"I didn't hear any wheezing," she said, rather defensively.

I'm asthmatic and phlegmy, I thought. Anti anxiety meds won't help either of those things.

The man brought over a mask and clamped it over my nose and mouth. After a minute or two, both he and the nurse next to me started asking, "Is that better?"

"No. Not really." They had ceased telling me to stop clearing my throat, which was a good thing, since that was the only thing that actually helped. It did seem that being upright was better than lying flat, too.

I cleared my throat to the point that it felt reasonable. It's probably irritation from the breathing tube, I thought. The surgery was supposed to take a minimum of two hours.

My surgeon came by my bed. The first thing he said to me was, "It was larger than I thought – much larger. I had to dig down behind your collarbone." I nodded. I'd expected that from the soreness; in fact, I expected to bruise. Still, my second thought was, "LARGER? How could it be any larger?" It was already apparently The Gland That Ate Cleveland. In my surgeon's office prior to surgery, he'd told me that I had "a minimum of 50 times the normal mass" in my neck. How much bigger could it be?

My surgeon had allowed twice the usual time for a thyroidectomy, but it turns out that I took about an hour longer than predicted anyway. "Are you in the Guinness Book?" people tease me. "Is it on display in a jar somewhere?" If it is, and my surgeon is a keynote speaker at some conference, I don't think I want to know.

My neck itself wasn't sore, as I thought it would be, but there was a pull on the right side when I moved or turned. It turned out to be the surgical drain, a piece of clear tubing extending down to the little collection jar housed in the pocket of my gown, a different gown than I'd had on when I went into surgery. I'd noticed that my pre-surgery gown had a large absorbent pad across the chest; it reminded me of a feminine pad. I was sure that the gown was now too gory to wear. My new gown was fabric, whereas the old one was paper. I didn't mind looking at the tubing, despite its being filled with blood, but I did find the concept of a surgical drain creepy. I'd move and it would pull, and I'd find myself thinking, "I have a drain in my neck!"

My family was waiting for me when they wheeled me out. My daughter saw me going down the hall and said, "Dad, I think that's Mom." I tried to call her name – "Terry Anne!" – and realized that I couldn't raise my voice. The scratchy, growly voice I had apparently only had one volume.

One of the beauties of family is that they know you. They stayed for about half an hour, long enough to be sure that I was lucid, in no pain, and cheerful enough, and then they left. My mother had said to me that morning, "You know that I'm not coming to visit, right?" I'd had to turn down the offer of a friend to sleep in my room with me. When I'm sick or in pain, I want to be alone. My entire plan for the hospital was to sleep as much as is humanly possible. My family knew that solitude was deeply appreciated.

"You think you're going to be able to sleep?" a nurse teased me. "We're going to keep waking you up. We're not going to leave you alone." I knew that, but I planned to try, anyway. I'd brought my favorite hand stitched quilt and a pair of earplugs. My doctor had promised only one night in the hospital, and I intended to hold him to it.

It's hard to sleep when you have that number of tubes and monitors. On my right arm, there was an IV. On my left was an automatic blood pressure cuff that went off roughly every half hour, and a blood oxygen monitor. On my legs were compression stockings and leg wraps that inflated and deflated every two minutes, left leg, right leg, left, right. At first, it's almost like a massage, and then it gets really irritating. Plus, I had a huge, six inch square bandage on my neck, and the tubing (I have a drain in my neck!) snaking out from underneath it. Trying to sleep was interesting, but it was my top priority.

My adorably perky nurse wrote my schedule on the wipe off board on the wall. It said, "breathe deeply, rest, walk," with little boxes to check off when I accomplished something. That was a schedule I can handle.

About 9:30 that night, I phoned my house to share my latest accomplishment." I went to the bathroom by myself!" I told my 24 year old daughter in my raspy, post operative voice.

"That's greeeeaaat, Mom," she said, in an indulgent voice that said she was wondering how many drugs were still in my system. Hey, when you've been cut open, spent hours on the operating table, have a drain in your neck and are surrounded by whirring, beeping machinery, you celebrate every small victory.

After several hours, I resisted ripping everything but the IV out by myself and called the nurse. "Can I get all this stuff off?" I asked.

"Well, it might have to go back on later," she said, but they all came off. Relief! I actually got to sleep for about 3 hours at a time.

I left the next day, relieved to be on the way home to my own bed, and to be able to go to the bathroom without dragging my IV pole with me.

Friends ask me about a diagnosis. "Cushing's? Grave's?" "Why did this happen? What caused it?" my big sister wanted to know. The truth is, I have no diagnosis yet.  Now comes the work of seeing a specialist, regulating the medication I'll be on for the rest of my life, and figuring out my new normal. I'm not sure I'll get a diagnosis.

"You'll be miserable for a while, and then you'll start an upswing," the surgeon told me before the operation. I never actually got to miserable, which is exciting. I think it bodes well.

Illness, Part 1: I'm Not Using It Anyway...

I was sick this spring, and at the doctor for a diagnosis. As is normal procedure, he felt my neck.


"Wow, your thyroid is huge!" he said.


"Yeah. I know." We've been down this road before.


He glanced over my chart, then at me, with my thinning hair, fatigue, coarse facial hair and general roundness, and said, "We need a full blood workup."


"OK – but we've done this before."


The first time was so long ago that I had a different doctor, probably 18 or 19 years ago. The blood panel said that everything was fine. "We'll keep an eye on it," the doctor said.


Years passed. Pregnant with my fourth child, I inexplicably lost weight all through the pregnancy. When I had her, I was 45 pounds lighter than I was the day I got pregnant. It stayed off for a year. I was eating a lot of fresh fruit, since that was my craving with this baby (with my oldest it was salad and eggs; with my third it was ham fried rice.) Still, I was also eating an extraordinary amount of sweets, which I always crave. I was eating more of everything than I ever had before. With two adolescents, a preschooler, a toddler and a newborn, I was also getting very little exercise and craving naps even after I had them.


After almost exactly a year, I started to gain weight. I cut down on sweets, then cut down on all food. The weight crept up anyway.


My doctor – a new one this time –sent me to an endocrinologist to be tested for Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, based on my difficulty getting and staying pregnant, and the fact that I'd never had regular periods before Baby #4. Suddenly, after the baby, they were showing up every 30 days or so. For someone who regularly went three months without a period, it was actually annoying. "Again? We just did this!"


The endocrinologist felt my neck."Your thyroid is quite enlarged," she said. "Has anyone ever told you that?"


"Yeah, a couple of years ago."


"Did they test it?"


"Yeah. Everything was normal."


She did an ultrasound of my thyroid, then sent me for a complete blood workup. I did not have PCOS, it seemed,and my thyroid function tested normal.


"I'm not convinced," she said. She wanted another test on my thyroid. My portion, after insurance paid out – and we have great insurance – was $500, for a single test. I don't even remember what it was for anymore, but I declined. My PCOS diagnosis was negative, we'd already run thyroid tests, and I was not interested, with 4 kids and one income, in forking over $500 on a possibly unnecessary test.


At least twice more in the intervening years, my doctor has noticed that my thyroid is enlarged, and become alarmed, especially given some of the rest of my history/symptoms. So, he'll again run blood tests, tests that will all say that I'm fine.


So, last spring, I was grumpy and miserable enough that I griped to the physician's assistant when he mentioned doing it again. "We do this every three years or so, and I'm just tired of doing it over and over."


"Well, yes, I can see how that would be annoying."


He flipped back through my chart. "Yeah, last time everything was normal," he said. "We'll just see what comes up this time." He also ordered an ultrasound of my neck.


I have long resigned myself to the idea that if something is wrong, a standard blood test won't catch it. I also don't enjoy getting blood drawn just to hear that I'm fine. I grumped, I procrastinated, but I got blood work done AGAIN, and had a new ultrasound done.


Unlike my endocrinologist, my GP doesn't have an ultrasound machine, so I went down to the huge testing facility in town, where I've had MRIs, mammograms and more.


The technician seemed slightly bored. "So, what makes you think that you have thyroid problems?" she wanted to know.


I was annoyed. I felt as if she had looked at me and was thinking, "Come on, lady, every fat woman in town decides after reading some magazine article that she has thyroid issues. Just lay off the potato chips." I'm not a nut about healthy eating, but I have never in my life, for instance, polished off  a carton of ice cream by myself, as an annoying number of people assume, after no more than looking at me. Besides, I was there under protest.


I answered neutrally, "My doctor has noticed that my thyroid is enlarged. He'd like some tests run."


She had me lay back while she prepped the ultrasound wand. I felt her attention sharpen as soon as it touched my neck. She took a full hour plus to scan my throat, hitting what I think of as the still photo button ever minute or so. When we were done, I was miserable– I hate having my throat touched, much less getting pressure put on it – and dizzy. I went home and commented to my husband, "At least she stopped treating me like a hysteric when she saw that it actually is enlarged."


My blood tests - surprise, surprise–came back normal. My ultrasound, however, showed nodules on my thyroid. My doctor's office referred me to a surgeon. My PA remained puzzled during my follow-up visit to go over the test results – "Whatever they are, they're obviously not impeding function," he said.


I was still grouchy, but at least well enough behaved NOT to say what I thought – "Oh, yes, of course the gland that's been swollen for years and is now covered in unexplained growths must be functioning at its optimum." I just made an appointment with the surgeon.


The nurse ran through the now very familiar list of questions.


Fatigue? "Always."


Difficulty sleeping? "Yes."


Hair loss? "Since I was 16. This (riffling my hair) is all Rogaine."


Difficulty swallowing? "Yes. Even as a kid."


Digestive issues? "I was diagnosed with an ulcer at 20. It hasn't bothered me for years."


Joint issues? "I was just diagnosed with cubital tunnel syndrome." (It's like carpal tunnel, only in your elbow.) I also have knee issues.


Unexplained weight gain or loss? Depression or anxiety? I've been through all of this before. "But my blood work says my thyroid function is normal."


The surgeon felt my neck and dictated to his nurse, "REMARKABLY enlarged thyroid." I giggled. He had me swallow while he felt my throat. He felt all around my neck, then had me meet him in his office.


He was uninterested in talking about my normal blood test results, even when I brought them up. "The normal thyroid is about this long," he said, holding his fingers about an inch and a half apart. Mine, apparently, goes almost up to my jawbone, and down to my collarbone, and maybe even under the collarbone, "but I can't feel down that far." It spreads in the other direction almost ear to ear. "You have a minimum of 50 times the mass and volume that you should," he said. "Enlarged," indeed.


The original plan had been to look at removing the nodules, at least some of them, but he was not interested in trying that. Turning on his computer, he showed me the scans. The largest nodule is about 3 inches across, twice the normal size of the whole thyroid. He showed me more and more. "This one is over 5 centimeters. This one is over 6. This one is 3.5. So is this one." Things that were normally viewed in a single slide took two for me, on both sides of my neck.


I could keep it, he told me, but it was going to start encroaching on my voice box and windpipe. The best option would be to take it out entirely, and put me on daily pills for the chemicals it normally provides.


So, in a week, I go into the hospital. I have to stay overnight, which I am not at all thrilled about, but it's doable. I will leave without a thyroid. "Your operation will take twice as long as an ordinary thyroid removal."


He's making no promises for how I'll feel after it's gone, but the surgeon has made one promise about how I'll look. "You won't recognize your neck," he says.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

     We have finally hired professionals to do some long overdue work on our house - trust me, there will be essays, with photos, devoted to all those details. Right now, though, I want to talk about my garden.

     I knew that my plants would be trampled by workmen. They were putting stucco on the house, which necessitated scaffolding, which was up for weeks, and a lot of foot traffic right next to the house. It was important enough that I was willing to sacrifice everything in the two beds next to the house. I didn't even plant my vegetable beds this year, since they're against the back of the house.

     I was right - those two beds were trampled almost to oblivion. My yucca and two worse-for-wear chamomile plants survived. There's no trace of my daylilies or of my yellow and gold lantana. My lamb's ears survived, but they're pretty matted down.

     I knew it was coming, so it wasn't excruciating to let go. It's sad, and I'm hoping that some roots survived to send up new shoots. If not, OK. I just planted some annuals, including portulaca, one of my favorites, so it doesn't look too naked.

     I was not prepared for the wear and tear on the rest of my yard.

     Before I say this, don't get me wrong. The work these men did on my home is beautiful. I am very glad; I would have the work done again if given a chance for a do-over. We're happy, the neighbors are happy, and as far as I know, the workmen are happy.

     But for crying out loud, is it that tough to walk on the paths? We have a lot of gravel, since my husband and I are both allergic to grass. We also have quartzite flagstone, surrounded by pebbles. You'd think that walking on, and piling your materials on, gravel and flagstone would be easy. We're not going to whine that your lumber is killing our lawn - we don't have one.

     Why, then, did wood end up in the flower bed, tossed right on top of my shrubs? SHRUBS - I mean, they're tall, they're lumpy - how convenient can it be to set your stuff on top of them? Now my shrubs are matted and broken.

     I don't know what these shrubs are; they're something that tolerate poor soil and low water and produce lots of blue flowers that attract bees. I bought them because they were on end of season clearance years ago, 2 for $5. (I bought 4.) Still, I love them, and they're clearly not a walkway.

     Areas that were clearly flower beds, filled with blooming things and edged in stone, became thoroughfares. I'm not talking "occasionally stepped in," I'm talking "the main walkway through the yard." My phlox are trampled into the ground.

     Some of my flagstones were broken, I'm assuming while bearing the weight of the scaffold. I'm OK with that. They're not set in concrete or in any pattern, so it's easy to move them around a bit and make it look OK.

     There's gobs of dripped and dropped cement all over everything, though. The workmen cleaned up a lot, I cleaned up a lot, and you can still find it in my flower beds, on my gravel and on my rocks. On the rocks is the worst - you can leave it, or you can expend considerable energy chipping it off. I'm peeling the cement and the plasticized final color coat of stucco off of my spiky yucca leaves.

     Still, there is much to be happy about in my garden.

     My entire theory of landscaping is to make it totally neglect proof. I'm not talking "benign neglect," I'm talking about, "I haven't even thought about you for weeks" neglect. I love masses of flowers (my favorite colors are purple, lavender, blue and white) spilling out of overcrowded beds. I love succulents, vines, veggies and trees. I do not, however, want to baby anything. I hand water once a week; it takes between 15 and 30 minutes. If something can't survive that, I don't want it.

     I know that there are places where you can plant anything, and expect Mother Nature to provide all the water it needs. I do not live in one of those places. I live in the high mountain desert, with snow and low temperatures in the winter and blistering heat and lack of rain in the summer.

     I have four different colors of bearded iris. I love how they look, I love how they smell, but most of all, I love that neglect makes them actually happy. I once had some in between two outbuildings, and I didn't water them for literally a year; they bloomed and multiplied happily.

     In the last house my daughter rented, the landlord wanted a nice looking yard, and my daughter wanted to avoid yard work. I got permission to plant things, and put transplanted iris from my yard in her front yard. My daughter hasn't lived there for years, and the house spent more than a year vacant. We still drive by occasionally, dropping my son off at work. Now, with new owners, little remains of much of the original landscaping. The lawn is gone, the tree is gone, even some of the weeds are gone. Most of the yard is dead. The iris are thriving. Even when the house was vacant, there they were, a bigger and bigger mass, flowering like there was no tomorrow. Their exuberance makes me happy.

     In my yard, we also have grapevines that we frequently have to cut back, Virginia Creeper that is spreading and raspberry bushes that are multiplying. We have fruit and shade trees. I do not water any of them, ever.

     Besides the iris, I have two kinds of sedum, a succulent called "hen and chicks," something blue that I got as a hand-me-down transplant, lilies, daylilies, lamb's ears, honeysuckle, roses, a burning bush, chamomile, phlox, yucca, those shrubs, lavender, several kinds of bulbs, a butterfly bush, yarrow, some corkscrew-looking plant whose name I don't know (the tag said "donkey tails), euonymous bushes, creeping myrtle, two kinds of mums, and strawberries. All those get watered once a week. I chose most not because I adore them, but because they're tough and look great in rough conditions. (My soil, for instance, is not great.)

     I did not count on my hoses being removed from my house during the stuccoing. I also did not count on having limited access to my yard, even away from the house. I am not about to try to cart out a watering can for my entire yard, even if I could reach it all. Nothing got a drop of water for over a solid month. Of course, it's summer, with temperatures in the 90s and 100s.

     Everything looks great. Except for the stuff that was crushed (and I pruned those), you'd never know that anything less than ideal had happened. Even strawberries that had only been transplanted three weeks before the process began are happy. Even the crushed stuff, inclding my poor phlox, is blooming. Not every plant, but certainly every variety that's normally in bloom right now.

     Success! I have mastered the neglect proof landscape! There is, alas, no trample proof landscape.

     To thank everything for looking so great with no water, I watered as soon as the stucco hardened and the hoses could be reattached.

The Frog vs. the Chicken

If you know me fairly well, you know of my love for anything ever created by Jim Henson. I adore the Muppets. I regularly cry while watching them. Their stuff is genius, pure and simple. I also value their contributions to society in the form of lessons on how to treat one another: size, shape, color, origin, housing etc. are unimportant. Always be nice. Share your things. I also support their current CEO's right to believe and act as she sees fit, and to direct her company without interference.

 I also like Chik-Fil-A products. They're tasty. I also have always been impressed by the company's choice to monetarily support things that are important to me, such as public television. I support their current CEO's right to believe and act as he sees fit, and to direct his company as he sees fit.
...
 I find it ridiculous that I am now being asked to choose which company I will support, with my money and my approval. I find nothing contradictory in supporting them both.

 I realize that their CEOs have recently aligned themselves with groups having opposite opinions on a divicive issue. All laws of God and all reasonable laws of man allow them to do just that, and should allow them to do so without fear of attack, verbal or otherwise, by fellow humans.

 The last time I had a similar conversation with someone about this very issue, they assured me that there was no middle ground, that they could not possibly tolerate the view that opposed their own. I held that opposing opinion. "You realize that I find your belief to be immoral and dangerous," they said, trying to explain why they just could not be civil about this issue. My answer: "Yes. Yes, I do realize that. Do you know how I can be sure? Because I find YOUR belief to be immoral and dangerous. I am STILL willing to support your right to hold and express that belief."

 If people want me to get behind them and their rights to have and espouse and act on beliefs that I find wrong, immoral, offensive or otherwise unacceptable, those people MUST (must, must) be willing to stand behind me and my right to have and espouse and act on beliefs that they find wrong, immoral, offensive or otherwise unacceptable. If they're not willing to support someone that they think is wrong, they have NO right to ask me to support them when I think they're wrong. NONE. (And the thing is, I will still support their rights, because it's the right thing to do.)

 So will eat my Chik-Fil-A products while I watch my Muppet entertainment, and I will not feel bad about it all. Who's with me?

Don't Let the B******* Win

I know people who pride themselves on being contrary; I know people for whom conformity is paramount. I find it difficult to avoid being disdainful of both types; very little good comes from turning your brain off and functioning mostly on knee-jerk reactions. Every situation needs to be evaluated on its own merits.

Sometimes what seems to me to be the only reasonable course of action is one that smacks of defiance. I'm OK with that if the situation warrants it.

In the fall of 2001, while we were still reeling from the new reality of a world in which actions like the 9-11 attacks were possible, the news carried stories of people cancelling plane reservations. They either dropped their travel plans entirely, or they went by car if it was an option. People were fearful.

I had a different reaction. I booked coast to coast plane tickets for my entire family of 6.

My oldest was 15; the other kids were 14, 7 and 3. With a child in high school, we were realizing that soon she'd be out of our home, followed by her sister. I'd recently come through a health scare. We'd all always wanted to go to Walt Disney World, and there seemed to be no better time than the present.

We'd fly in and out of San Francisco and Orlando. The idea of cross country flights still seemed frightening to many, but I refused to be frightened into submission.

The idea of Disney World seemed unnerving to people, as well. More than one person told us, in worried tones, "Theme parks are considered high risk targets." Terrorists wishing to strike at the heart of America were likely to mount an attack in a place crowded with people seen as infidels, we were told, and Disney World has the largest attendance of any theme park destination. "They're likely to strike there next," they said.

I didn't care. The chance that I was painting a giant, theoretical target on my entire family was remote, I was sure, but I knew that it was there. I also knew that we were statistically more likely to be struck by lightning.

Do you remember those commercials that ran through a lot of 2002 and 2003 – "I fought terrorism by going to my sister's wedding." " I fought terrorism by attending my class reunion." That's how I felt – my own version of "give 'em hell." "I WILL put my family on cross country flights to high risk targets!" In any crisis, my strength is keeping things as normal and calm as possible. It was just inconceivable that we'd let evil keep us from doing what we wanted.

We had a great time. (And I have no regrets.)

Why am I thinking of this now? Because my husband and I had planned to see The Dark Knight Rises on July 20, 2012. We didn't go to a midnight showing (although I have friends who did). With our two youngest children out of town, we had rare time to do couple stuff. We had plans to go during the first day of the movie's run.

We did not change those plans after what happened in Colorado. Again, intellectually it was clear that the risk to us was small, but mostly, we were both angry enough to attend simply to thumb our noses at anyone who tried to ruin something as universally loved as attending a movie. Our family loves the movies – we refused to let the experience be tainted.

There were, perhaps, eight people in the afternoon showing we attended. We passed more security personnel on the outside of the theater.

That's a shame.

I do appreciate the efforts being made to keep me and others safe, don't get me wrong. Thank you, security personnel everywhere. It's just a shame when we let fear make too many of our decisions.

If I am ever harmed by going somewhere that others were avoiding, please know that it wasn't ignorance. It was defiance. They can come after me if they want, but in the Big Scheme of Things, they cannot win.