“What tender days, we had no secrets hid away
Well, it seemed about a hundred years ago.”

–The Rolling Stones

Dear Steph,

It’s been a year now since you died, and I’m left wondering: did you wake up knowing that this day, February 9, 2008 would be the last day you lived and breathed on the planet? Did you know in your heart that your poor abused body wouldn’t be able to withstand even one more night? Or was this day simply one of many days, stretched out into weeks and yawning into years?

I guess I’ll never know.

I’m shocked, I suppose, that even a year later, my grief still feels so fresh and new. The loss of you as a soul on Earth reminds me very much of when I got my wisdom teeth out. I know you’d remember that if you were here. That day that you tried to bring me a card and flowers but ended up one street apart from my house, where, by some miracle, another Becky lived. I remember how that made us laugh over shared cigarettes and cups of endless coffee. Because, what are the chances of THAT happening?

Remember how long it took me to recover from having those four simple teeth out? Four malignant teeth that required breaking my jaw and ripping my cheeks to remove. For weeks afterwards, without thinking, I’d shove the tip of my tongue into those holes into my jaw where my teeth once were, and I was always so shocked by the sudden electric and metallic jolt that jumped through my head painfully.

It was as though my brain was painfully reminding me of something that days before had JUST BEEN THERE. Those four teeth had been there for so long that I’d come to take them for granted. Forgotten until removed. If I didn’t remember about the gaping holes in my jaw, they’d still throb dully, but to have my tongue dip in and out was sudden and exquisite pain, and it was something I couldn’t seem to stop doing.

My grief over your death reminds me of this. Dull and sharp pain that’s unable to be touched no matter how much time passes. It always hurts, but now and again something will remind me of you and it’s like chewing on tinfoil. Why NO, I can’t call you and tell you about, well, anything. I can’t call you to catch some coffee or a drink. I’ll never hear your voice again. Ever. And it hurts just as badly as it did one year ago.

I imagine that it always will. There will always be a gaping hole where you used to be.

For as guilty as I normally feel about things that I have no control over, I’m shocked that I don’t feel badly that I didn’t do more to prevent your death. It would have been pointless and I knew it then and I know it now. I’ve had enough experiences with addiction to know better than to assume that an addict will simply start to listen just because *I* said so.

What I do feel guilty about is that I never got the chance to tell you how much you meant to me. It would have been weird to try and talk to you about feelings and shit because we were SO not like that, but I wish like crazy that I’d tried. Now I can never tell you about how much I admired you. How much I wanted to be more like you. How your laugh still makes me smile and crinkle when I remember how it sounded, ringing out through the room. How proud you made me to be your friend.

Trust me when I tell you how sorry I am that I never told you any of this. It will probably be one of the biggest regrets I have in my life.

But I will remember you. Always. I’ll remember your kindness. Your ability to stick up for me when everyone else went the PC all-bullshit route, something I’ll never forget. I’ll remember celebrating good things with you while mourning the bad and laughing at everything in between. I’ll remember your fierce love of your two young sons, who will never live to know just how amazing their mother was.

Because how can you possibly capture who someone just was by words alone? It’s simple: you can’t. I can’t tell The Internet how amazing and awesome and sweet and funny you are without sounding like a trite cliche. My friend died, therefore I must sound like an ass trying to tell you why it still hurts so fucking much. I know I don’t need to justify it by telling other people what made you so special, what made you so unique, and yet I’m unable to stop myself.

If one person, if only ONE person can walk away and say “hey, now that must have been one hell of a chick,” maybe it won’t hurt so much. Maybe I can refract some of the pain.

But now I’m afraid that I’ve reached that ugly and nebulous area where I prattle on and on saying nothing while trying to say everything, a victim of too little sleep and too much stress, and I know I must wrap this up before it gets any uglier. Besides, I’ll talk to you in my dreams soon enough. I always do.

Dreams, though, don’t and never will replace having you here on Earth.

I miss you, Steph, perhaps more than I did back then, and probably less than I one day will. I imagine that you’re happier wherever you now are, and I try like crazy to take some comfort in this. Because the real me, the SELFISH me, wants you here. Where you belong.

I’ll be seeing you, my old friend.

Love always,
Becky

I remember it happening when my father had his unexpected heart attack last winter and wound up in the ICU for nearly a week. A day like any other, a day like today, in which my biggest concerns went quickly from “Man, I hope Alex goes to fucking sleep tonight” to “Man, I hope my dad makes it through the night.” The shift in thinking here is vast and it’s frighteningly quick.

Suddenly, even news that on a normal day would be some of the worst news you could hear “he had two clots, one of which is threatening to kill him, but we’ve removed one of them” sounds rather…good. It could always be worse, you tell yourself as you pace up and down those hospital corridors peeping into rooms whose occupants, well, HAD it worse than you do. But somewhere in those dark recesses of your brain, you remind yourself that even though for now, for RIGHT now, things are going as well as you can expect, they can sour without warning.

Yesterday, The Daver and I took our week old daughter to a pediatric neurosurgeon after we picked up her MRI films from the hospital. We sat there in the waiting room, me with a baby on the boob while he filled out the piles of paperwork and received the kind of pitying looks from the other patients as they walked by that made my heart swim with tears.

Yes, it reminded me, it is this bad.

After the neurosurgeon, ranked one of the best in the area, bounded into the room, filling it up with a sort of ebullient energy that only someone who abso-fucking-lutely loves his job has, he flicked through the massive stack of films to find one to show us what was wrong with our daughter. In cross-sectional picture form.

And for some reason, despite my incredible love of anatomy, my utter lack of horror for things like internal organs and dissections (I am, apparently, my father’s daughter), I could hardly handle looking at these films that showed my daughter’s head. In ways I never wanted to imagine it.

It’s funny–I know HOW these things work, I could probably give you a dissertation on reading an MRI of the brain without much prep–and yet seeing these parts of brain, parts of my DAUGHTER’S brain, made me cry and feel revolted. It felt unnatural to be looking at these films. In several, I could see that she was crying, or at least her mouth was open and neck arched backward and I ached. I physically ached for her.

Sure enough, right where some brilliant tech had put some of the measurements on the films, the brilliant and kind doctor pointed out what we can easily see from the outside: her cyst. In medical terms, as I alluded to by the title of my last post, it’s called a cephalocele, and it’s sort of like a hernia on the skull where the bones of the skull didn’t properly fuse together while in utero.

I’d known all about cephalocele’s before I’d birthed Amelia, before I married Daver, and I knew enough to know that the one that my daughter has been born with is really pretty minor. Typically, they cause all other sorts of neuro symptoms and retardation, but by the grace of God, Amelia seems to have none of those. We will, of course, know more as she ages and appropriately (or not) hits all of her milestones.

The upside to her cephaolcele is that it’s not an ENcephalocele, which means that the cyst is full of cerebrospinal fluid WITHOUT brain matter. The bad side is, of course, that she’s still going to need brain surgery in the following weeks. And no matter what way you try and spin this, it’s fucking scary.

The bounding doctor would like her to have this surgery in the next couple of weeks so she won’t remember it when she gets older, and while it makes sense to me, I’d still like to cocoon myself away from the thought of my daughter going under the knife for the next, oh, I don’t know, 60+ years? By which time I’ll be dead and I won’t have to sit in the PICU for several days while she wakes up, my breasts aching and full.

Unfortunately, the doctor whom I adored on sight, does not take my insurance and although I have a PPO, I’m not sure we can swing the thousands of extra dollars it’ll require to have him specifically do the surgery. Besides, he argued, this is a minor surgery. It’s not like it’s REAL brain surgery (his words). So, he referred us to a colleague of his whom we will see on Wednesday of next week and form a Plan Of Attack.

I only wish this Plan Of Attack included leaving my sweet baby girl’s head unscathed and eating a bunch of Funyons while sitting on my bum, but I’m pretty sure I’m not going to get out of this one.

And so I sit here, waiting again while freaking out quietly, and trying to remind myself that things could always be worse. Always.

It doesn’t help much, but it’s all I have to cling to right now. Well, that and my brand new bottle of Valium.

I want so very badly to come here and type out just how happy I am to have my daughter home. I want to tell you all about how her biggest brother is also her biggest fan and how her middle brother, although he won’t touch her, screams “BABY!” joyfully whenever he sees her. I wish I could wax poetically on how much easier having her come home has been than I’d previously worried.

But I can’t.

I’m stuck in this limbo, waiting for surgery on her brain and the subsequent recovery which I imagine will take place over many more hospital days. I’m afraid to get too excited about her knowing that I’m going to have to give her back to the hospital again, and knowing how well I won’t handle this. I cannot picture me NOT flipping out the entire time that she’s gone, pacing the corridors of the hospital with snot dripping down my face and tears blinding my eyes, because it’s what happened before.

If it’s something primal my reaction would make more sense, and maybe that’s what this is all about: maybe I can’t help my reaction and I can’t CALM DOWN like I should be able to while my baby goes in for surgery. I’m picturing a highly tranquillized day that day. Otherwise I physically do not know how I’m going to get through it. I don’t appear to be made of strong enough stock to handle this.

Our appointment to discuss the MRI results, which, of course, don’t show a miracle, is tomorrow with the doctor who doesn’t take our insurance, and from then on we should have some sort of plan. I imagine that although the plan isn’t going to help as much as hearing something like “OOPS! We totally made a mistake. Your daughter is fine!” knowing what the next steps are may help somewhat.

Or maybe they won’t. Maybe I won’t feel better until this is all over. And maybe I won’t be able to come here and share all of the good things in my life right now because I’m too afraid of losing it all.

Can you please say a prayer tomorrow for us?

Jessica Kate and Charley said goodbye to their daughter Tuesday after a long battle with cancer. My heart is shattered for them.

And thank you to each and every one of you who has held my hand during this week. Words will never express just how that helps me feel better. I am so lucky to know each and every one of you.

I’ve been going back and forth and trying to decide if I should talk about what’s been goin’ on (with apologies, of course, to Marvin Gaye) and I’ve decided that tentatively yes, I will do so. Between the precipitous drop in postpartum hormones that always leaves me sputtery, spineless and weak and the Very Real Fear that something is wrong with my newest daughter, I’m kind of a mess.

Okay, fine, you’re right Internet, just like you always are. I’m really a HUGE mess right now.

By trade, I’m not A Worried ™. I tend to be more cautious and careful while I’m gestating a crotch parasite, but after they pop out and are alive for about 6 or so months, I tend to stop worrying. I’d only invest in one of those video baby monitors to perform hilarious Stupid Human Tricks on it while Dave is on an Important Work Call and while I see the need for a bedside apnea monitor in many situations, having the damn thing in my house would freak me out and my thinking would get all skewed and I’d convince myself that because I had it, my baby would stop breathing.

See: not rational. So I ignore it.

I worry when I need to, like when Ben is dealing with a bully or a super-crazy-liberal private school, or Alex comes into the room holding an empty pill bottle and not usually other than that. It’s probably one of my better features, along with my shiny hair and impeccable powers of observation.

I fully expected to be worried from the start of labor until I pushed Amelia out, you see, because while she was cooking, I couldn’t SEE her. Once I could see her chubby face I knew I’d relax and begin to prepare myself for the inevitable poo I would have to take before I left the hospital to come home to Casa de la Sausage.

But it didn’t happen that way at all. Suddenly, the room was swarmed with neonatologists and specialists while I hung 34 feet in the air, crotch on display for all to see and I wept. I sobbed, I wept and I shook. Had The Lump been on her arm or leg or somewhere other than the back of her head, I’d have apologized to her for the plastic surgery she would invariably require, promise her a boob job–or a nose job–as a booby (get it!?!) prize and move the hell on with my day.

Over the following 12 or so hours, despite being filled with The Panic AND The Hormones, I managed to convince myself that it all was okay. That the cyst was full of fat or goo or hair or gold something.

Then the dreaded phone call post CAT scan prompted a flurry of people coming into my room and forcibly removing the baby from my boob. Which may or may not have happened quite like that, but you get the picture. From out of nowhere.

The NICU time wasn’t nearly as brutal as it could have been and I thank God for that each and every minute I breathe, but it served to remind me of just how not in control we are. I’d prophetically made a comment about that a couple of days before Amelia was born–how parenthood strips us of our control–and it rang true once again. Despite all of the ultrasounds and folic acid and all that shit, these things just…happen.

The neurologist, while seeing something unfavorable on the CT scan and thereby ordering an MRI without so much as seeing my daughter, has let us know remarkably little, save for the fact that he doesn’t accept our insurance. We have an appointment on Friday to talk about the MRI results–which he claims are not dangerous or urgent or anything else. But the whole time we were there, he appeared to be in surgery for patients with Real Problems.

Which reassures me more than it might someone else. As does the fact that she seems to have no visible neurological issues and manages to both eat, shit, and scream up a storm. Being home with her is awesome but waiting and seeing what the hell is going to be the next steps is sort of like torture. But I don’t exactly feel comfortable pulling the doctor–apparently an amazing MD–out of Real Brain surgery to hold my hand. Dave spoke with him while I was in a drug-induced coma and seemed to be reassured.

I’m aware that whatever is going on with her is not currently life-threatening, and while that does bring me some peace, not knowing exactly what is going on or what will be going on is slowly driving me bonkers. I’m hoping like crazy that I’ll look back on this and while I doubt I’ll laugh, be able to say, “Wow, Becky” *bitch-smacks self* “You have a degree in Freaking The Fuck Out!” Because that would beat the fcuk out of the alternative which is that something is really and truly wrong with my sweet and feisty daughter. Something I’m pretty sure I’d never recover from.

So now I sit here in Hermit Mode waiting for Friday and unable to do much besides care for my kids and my overactive boobies while avoiding talking on the phone or to anyone besides Daver lest I break down completely, unable to pull myself back out of the fit. Sleeping is not going so well–me, not her–as I seem to flip out and imagine Worst Case Scenarios, up to and including Daver getting arrested for human trafficking–and the fact that I’m not an emotional eater means that I’m literally forcing myself to eat fatty food.

If my dieting self could see me now…

*sighs*

Hold me, Internet? Don’t mind the spit-up on my shoulder–it’s dried. And ignore the boogers, Alex sneezed on me but I wiped it up as best as I could. Oh, and that smell? Probably more spit-up. Don’t worry, it’s not catching.

Oh, and BONUS!! for listening to me whine. Here’s Amelia!

….may I introduce to you, my sweet Internet friends, my new daughter, Amelia Grace.

With her daddy…

With her youngest body guard…

And lastly, with her now neurotic and freaking the fuck out mother. Who could probably use some vodka right about now.

We’re home now and doing fantastically, save for the PANIC! that I seem to have coursing through my veins. What, me hormonal? Tomorrow, we’ll call the neurosurgeon (am not planning upon getting used to that phrase) and arrange an appointment to see when she’ll be having surgery to remove the hernia.

While he seemed unconcerned, this wasn’t HIS daughter’s head he was talking about, so you’ll have to excuse me now while I go drool over a bottle of Valium while stroking it lovingly. Thank you all so very much for your kind words and prayers. If anything has helped me, it is that.

….are on the menu for our homecoming night. I’m too overcome with emotion to say much besides thank you.

She will need surgery within a couple of weeks but she looks great. I have never been happier or more relieved. Vicodin has nothing on this.

Welcome to the world sweet girl. It’s a better place with you here.

It took me all this time to actually log onto my blog after I posted because all of your sweet comments made me weep with appreciation. Amelia is a lucky cookie to have so many virtual friends out there, and I plan to let her know just how fortunate she really is. Because she is.

I’d offer to tongue kiss you all individually, but I’ve been crying all day long and cannot breathe out of my nose any longer so it would be gross. That said, thank you to each and every one of you who prayed for us. Believe it or not, it made today just that much more bearable. And trust me, I needed anything to make today more bearable.

So, WTF, right?

Let me back up a second so you realize how out of left field this whole situation was.

Yesterday, at 4:27 my daughter Amelia was born after about 10 minutes of pushing. Let’s not say a thing about what that means about the state of my girl bits, okay? When she was born, my OB said the words that no one really wants to hear upon pushing out a child: “Becky, it looks like she has some sort of cyst on her head.” Then she called neonatology.

Well, shit. I had an US last week and it wasn’t picked up, so that’s good, right? Her color–despite being covered in cheese–was pink and rosy, she was screaming bloody murder and moving around like no one’s business.

I didn’t catch her Apgars because I was too busy hyperventilating, but I’d assume that they were good. After she was de-cheesed somewhat, she was brought into my shaking arms where she looked around at the world for awhile. Just taking it all in. Before she dived head first into the old boobies for some delicious treats.

The neonatologists ordered a Cat Scan for today and overall seemed remarkably unimpressed by her cyst. Apparently, these things DO happen, and are typically superficial. While the prospect of sending my 10 minute old child into a tube wasn’t exactly my idea of a party, I was somewhat placated by their nonchalant attitude.

Well, Daver and I reasoned, it was a good thing she’d have some hair to cover that up, right?

No big deal.

This morning, after being up half the night in pain and the other half either nursing or throwing things at my snoring husband, my attitude was slightly more nervous. The alternative to having it be a fatty cyst was decidedly less pleasant. It could mean that there was some sort of breakdown in the formation of the skull where some of her brain could be hangin’ out.

While I have frequently been called a “boring” “idiot” by some of my blog trolls–a charge I would not deny, but would plead down to simply obnoxious–I have never exactly had my brain anywhere but firmly inside my skull. Where it belongs.

Around 10:30 this morning, my daughter who had been nursing like a champ (or her brother Alex) was wheeled away from her panicking mother and accompanied by her doting father down to get a picture of her skull. Always the way *I* want to start my day.

Afterward, since no one rushed around yelling “STAT” or even making any sort of big deal out of anything other than my overzealous use of ice packs on my aforementioned girly bits, I began to sort of calm down. She acted just like any other normal baby, and shit, it probably WAS just a fatty cyst. Good thing she’d have some hair to cover it up, right?

I’d claim that the joke was on me, but there was nothing remotely funny about what happened next: the phone rang as I nursed her for the 40th hour that afternoon, and on the other line was her doctor. Begging Dave to talk for me so as not to have to juggle my nursing daughter we got some news. Suddenly, NICU, who I’d had no contact with, was on their way up to take her down. To the NICU.

Down to the NICU for a consult with a pediatric neurosurgeon.

I’ve said before such lofty things as “xxx ranks up there with things I never wanted to say” (xxx being something like, visiting my father in the ICU, the last time I shit my pants, or my favorite Rush song), but nothing could possibly compare to the thought “my daughter’s possible brain surgeon.”

Not only was she not even 24 hours old and not only was this not detected previously, now she’s suddenly in need of a NEUROSURGEON?

F-C-U-K.

No one took the time to explain much of anything, and I was stuck juggling the needs of Alex who misses his mommy desperately and vice versa, but juggling the needs of my new daughter who needs to eat for 50 hours a day. So Dave and I did precisely what mature parents do in situations like this: we both flipped the shit out.

And continued to do so until about an hour ago when, discussing the MRI that the neurosurgeon ordered for tomorrow morning with one of the NICU nurses, it came out that the ped was being cautious (= good), that Amelia was looking awesome (=good), and that our worst case scenario (death, major brain surgery) was probably a little drastic (= extra good).

Music to our addled ears.

Whatever may or may not be in the cyst (fluid, fat OR the ever popular BRAIN) is “small” and the neuro was so unconcerned that he won’t be around until tomorrow to read the MRI/CT SCAN results.

More music to our ears.

While we’re certainly not out of any woods yet, nor do we have anything really specific as a diagnosis or treatment plan, this is certainly better than things appeared to be this afternoon. I will continue to worry, stress, and pray, but I’m feeling slightly better. So is The Daver.

Please, if I haven’t already asked enough of you all already, could you do whatever it is that you do tomorrow that my wee daughter will check out to be more fine than not? If you do, I’ll give you pictures (just as soon as I figure out how to do so on Daver’s lappy).

I’m off to try and con a sleeping pill from a nurse and hopefully conk some zzz’s before Amelia comes back for more boob time. I can’t wait to see her again. She’s just…awesome.

Bad news. We’re off to the NICU for observation. I wish it were me.

Help.

As with anything else, we have hit a snare. On the back of my daughters head is a cyst. It appears fluid-filled but she is due to have a cat scan in an hour.

I’m terrified.