The Greatest Show on Earth

 

I never liked the circus.

Even as a child, the format of three rings with three simultaneous acts made no sense to me. What was I supposed to be focusing on and regardless, all three acts were not entertaining. At all. I didn’t buy into the costumes, the acrobatics, the parades. I finally just started to beg my parents not to bring me anymore.

When I got around to having my own kids, I felt obliged to take them to the circus as a rite of passage. It was as awful as I remembered and my kids were not sold on it either. Thank goodness for good taste.

Last weekend I walked my own tightrope as my oldest son was in an emergency room in Massachusetts and my mother was in an emergency room in New York. I have been in this position so many times yet each time it happens it is a shock and I yearn for the luxury of a monotonous existence.

When my oldest son was a baby, he let us know he was ready for a bed by launching himself out of his crib. The next morning he was seemingly fine with the exception of a slight alteration to his usual routine: he danced to The Wiggles but he used only one arm. I could not fathom that he might have seriously injured himself. He was such a champ that we did not even know he had fractured his clavicle until a follow-up x-ray revealed a healing bone. On Sunday, this same son broke his clavicle in two.

Inhale.

When my oldest son was 4 years old, I went to Mexico with my family and my parents. While walking back to the room with my mom to call my aunt, my mother began to have a heart attack. We did not know what it was at the time, and it did not unfold in the typical way in which it is often depicted: a man with left arm pain grabbing at his chest and directing someone to call 911. Rather, it was as if she had a sudden and severe reaction to something she ate, vomiting until it was over. And then she was fine. Until we learned she wasn’t. On Sunday, my mom called me in the morning to tell me she did not know what came over her but she couldn’t stop vomiting. But once you have a history of something kind of terrible, you cannot just crawl back into bed and assume that you have a virus. Thankfully, after an EKG and blood work, she learned she had a virus.

Exhale.

On Sunday, as if not to be left out of the disastrous emerging trend, another son of mine injured his hand and wrist simply while walking in the hall of our home. Nuts. But no broken bones; just a sprain. You try leaving an orthopedist’s office with two wounded boys and not being  looked at suspiciously. I joked with the woman at the front desk, asking if she was going to contact CPS. She just eyed me and went back to questioning my children.

Repeat.

When I was pregnant with my twins, the sonogram technician advised that I was going to be having two more sons. Broken bones was in my future; it was a given. Although you never expect it when you get that call, when you see that dangling arm, when you hear that primal scream that alerts you that something is very wrong, you always know that these things are possible, that they happen all the time and you are not going to be excluded from this club. After all, if I got through this life with 3 sons and no broken bones, I would worry that I was somehow failing my boys.

Aren’t we all performing some kind of high wire act? Teetering between news–both dreadful and wonderful, striking the great balance of life and making careful–extra careful–to keep our balance and not succumb to a mere slip of the foot.  The more we love our people, the more we’re going to be walking that tightrope. Because we care. Because we are lucky.

Maybe the circus is our introduction to life. Maybe by throwing so many things at us at one time, we are learning how to focus, how to zero in on what makes us the happiest, and to filter out all those tricks we see right through. Life is both the Worst Show on Earth and the Greatest Show on Earth and I wouldn’t want to live it any other way.

 

Not Perfect, But All Right

2014 has not been kind.

On a cold, snowy day in January, when my husband was in Tokyo, my 10 year old son received a lifelong sentence. It began with a sick visit to the pediatrician followed by another sick visit to a gastroenterologist. As I sat across from this woman, who I disliked as soon as she entered the room, I could not imagine that my son’s world was going to permanently change. After a brief examination and a denial of all symptoms from which she was sure he was suffering, she stoically pronounced “he has Crohn’s,” which only made me hate her more than I already did. She prescribed antibiotics and advised that he would need to be examined under general anesthesia.

That night, my son slept in my bed. I spent most of the night feeling his forehead, making sure he was still asleep, plotting the death of that emotionless doctor. By the time it was morning,  we were on our way to the emergency room. A morphine drip was administered and my son finally relaxed.

An MRI revealed that my son had an abscess which required draining. He remained on the morphine as well as IV antibiotics and by the time the surgery was performed, the abscess was already gone. We were there for several days, during which time every physician assured me that they did not think my son had Crohn’s. I assured myself of this as well, right up until the time we were leaving when the discharging doctor looked over his forms and said “I don’t see what else it could be aside from Crohn’s.” And just like that, the rug on which I was solidly standing, was pulled out from under me. Again.

A few weeks later a blood test revealed no inflammation. That horrible doctor was wrong. I knew it. A week after that my son started to complain of stomach pain. A week after that, a stool sample was three times the normal level and I had to offer some begrudging respect to this woman who so casually spoke the words that would change my son’s life. By April, a colonoscopy/endoscopy confirmed that she was, in fact, right. She was always right. My son had Crohn’s Disease and the tiny thread attached to my heart that came loose in January, started to fully unravel.

I did not want an education about fancy medication, about the physiology of the colon, about colostomies, about therapies offering ways my child can “live with Crohn’s.” I wanted him to be the person I thought he was, physically, on the morning of that snowy day in January. I wanted to circle the equator over and over like Superman until I reversed time enough to unearth Lois Lane from her car and free my son from a diagnosis I did not want attached to him. I wanted to find a new doctor, one that was a human being, one that would not tell me, when I asked if my child would be ok, that she “can’t predict the future.” I wanted someone to hold my hand and my heart.

I know that there are worse things in life than Crohn’s Disease and that my son will be all right. But we mothers don’t want our children to be just “all right.” We want them to be perfect. Being a parent is so hard. From skinned knees to bruised egos to diseases about which we want to know nothing. I would love it if I could just kiss this terrible boo boo or apply ice to it, or simply make a wish and watch it fade away until there is nothing left but the perfect body into which he was born. He’s learning too much too soon and I hate it. He has a sophisticated medical vocabulary, refers to his pills as “my meds” and is overly concerned about his height and weight. On the other hand, right before a second operation, he gamely dressed up in his gown, sterile shower cap, and held up a book, pretending to be the Statue of Liberty.

So maybe he’s doing all right already. And maybe 2014 has been kinder than I thought.