Written September 19th and 20th

 

                I have been sitting here a long while now trying to think of how to start one of these.  I have avoided social media like the plague and have so shamelessly mocked all of those “face spacers and blogger crazies,” so believe me when I say the humor of this has not been lost on me.   I wish I would learn the art of silence; I then wouldn’t have to eat as many of my words as I have had to.   I wonder if there is an app, something like spell check, that will stop what will certainly became an embarrassing or regrettable thing from being published because I am sure to need that.  

Since it is not yet clear to me where to start I will just start where I feel comfortable starting.  I imagine my thoughts will jump around quite a bit and this will be most likely very difficult to follow, but this is just how I think and process information so if you find yourself dizzy, confused and quite exhausted by the end of this just think how I feel at the end of every day.  Also I should warn you my spelling, grammar and punctuation are horrendous.  I am positive they covered those subjects in either sixth or seventh grade along with bubble letters and the ability to write in a straight line without lined paper so, since I attended neither of those grades, it is not my fault. 

I feel like I have gone years without learning or truly being challenged on my way of thinking. I have gotten quite comfortable with the way I see, think, process information and understand the world around me.  It has been quite clear to me for years that I am a genius and anyone who doesn’t agree is just stupid (bless their hearts).  So it is amazing to me how in just one moment my whole reality was challenged so severely that my grasp of the world completely slipped and turned on end.  I see now quite clearly that everything I have, everything that I am has been so graciously given to me; I can claim none of it.  

  I have my whole life thought of myself as strong and independent.  I remember telling myself somewhere around the age of four that I would be the strong one.  Anyone who has siblings of the same sex understands what I just wrote.  I have four sisters the smart one, the beautiful one, the tenderhearted one, and the just plain adorable one.  Those four laid claim to their role in the family at birth.  So at four I decided I was to be the strong and brave one.  I took much pride in being independent; I didn’t need anyone I could do it all myself, be it a win or a loss, they would both be mine to claim.  As recently as this summer I thought to myself I might not have much or be much, but I have worked and fought for all of it; these hands have made it possible, I earned it.  In my mind I would deal out condemning judgments of others based on the harsh conclusions drawn from the intolerably severe standards I imposed on those around me.  If they would just pick themselves up like I do, dust off their pants, slip on their boots and start walking they wouldn’t be in the mess they were in.  Yet, here I sit stripped down and just plain exhausted from spinning my wheels, I can find no more rabbits in my hat; for the first time I can see there is not a thing I can do to fix what confronts me.  I can now see the truth of what my life has been and what I now know my future to be; and I stare at it quite frightened for I now know that it is God who gives and it is he that takes away.  Please pray that I will be able to bless his name.

 

 

This is where the story is going to start.  I am going to begin it this way because I needed to show and also remind myself that we have been cared for.  I wanted people to know that this transition has been easy, lovely even.  This has definitely been a fresh start for us.  A much needed fresh start. Sorry for being redundant, but cared for seems to fit best.

 

 

The kids and I, along with my dad (who graciously drove us here), arrived in Chandler Arizona late August 3rd.   Greg had moved into the apartment just days before.  He had most everything unpacked for us so we were able to just relax and enjoy our new surroundings.  We love it here.  Our apartment is beautiful and the amenities here are just amazing.   I am not normally one who likes big cities, but this one is great.  Chandler is spread out over 60 square miles, so it doesn’t seem as congested as other big cities I have been in.  People here have been wonderful.  I was convinced I was too old to make new friends, but yes even I have made friends.  Everett loves his teacher and truthfully there is nothing not to love.  Every day he brings her a new picture or trinket and every day she enthusiastically receives them.  We have been able to have some real family time and start some real traditions and routines, which a year ago seemed impossible.  It has truly been wonderful.  I pick Everett up from school at 3 and then I have both of the kids do homework for an hour before heading to the pool.  We usually spend the rest of the afternoon there sometimes we will stay until Greg gets home from work and just eat dinner poolside.  One day a week we do kids pick night.  On kids pick night the kids have to come up with the dinner menu, do the shopping, stay on their $15 budget and then prepare the food for dinner.  They love it.  We do a “who does it best” night.  This is where we get the same food from a couple different restaurants and we vote on which one is the best.  Game night is every Friday and movie night is every Saturday.  Greg only works four days a week and so far I am not working at all so we get a lot of time together.  We have checked out museums, parks, splash pads and a few restaurants and even an apple orchard.  Yes I was surprised too when I found they had those in Arizona. It sounds simple, but this is the most family time we have ever had.  And we have all thoroughly enjoyed it.   For the first time Greg and I talked about our future with excitement.   Again a year ago these things seemed impossible.

Having only been here not quite a month we were still getting use to our new home when Greg started to complain about some dizziness one evening.  After a moment of shaking his head around he asked me if I thought it could be vertigo.  I think I rolled my eyes a bit and continued to watch my T.V. show.  We both tend to be hypochondriacs and on this particular day I was tired and not up for the “what if” game.  Those of you who know Greg know that at times he can be a wee bit dramatic and for those of you who know me, you know that I am basically a jerk all of the time; so on this particular day I was determined to ignore him. Finally after several awkward moments of Greg being in obvious discomfort I said, “Alright go to the bedroom.”  I then proceeded to make him roll around the bed and then I shock him a bit to see if I could get his eyes to jump. (I just realized that last bit probably sounds a little odd to most of you; with vertigo your eyes will jump a bit with position changes.   I have never actually performed this test, but I have watched it be done dozens of times and consider myself a bit of an expert in this particular field.)  I did not see his eyes jump.  Therefore, I judged it was not vertigo and asserted that he was just being a big baby.

  I think it was the next day that he started to complain about tingling in his right arm and would shake it regularly trying to get the tingling to stop.  About a day later Greg started to do the same thing with his right leg.  This annoyed me even further.  In my mind if something is broken you fix it and if you aren’t willing to fix it then you need to stop talking about it.  This is pretty much what I told him.  After that he didn’t say much more about it to me, but continued to rub and shake his arm and leg for several days. 

Greg thought that the muscles in his back were just tight and maybe he had a pinched nerve.  Greg had unloaded most of the truck himself and then carried the items up a flight of stairs to our apartment.  So that sounded probable to me as well.  Still after several days of using my heat pad on his back and using icy hot regularly the symptoms were the same.  He decided to go get a massage to see if that would do the trick, however after that he seemed to be doing even worse.  Finally he decided to see a doctor. 

He was hoping it would be a quick in and out and that he would leave with a prescription muscle relaxer.  Much to his surprise the doctor refused to do anything at all and told him he had to go to a neurologist.  This just made Greg upset; it didn’t make any sense at all and it was just wasting time and money.  So he waited for a couple more days and finally decided to make the appointment with the neurologist.  Well, the appointment came and went with still no answers.  No one was listening to Greg.   He was sure it was just his back, but now they wanted him to have an MRI of his back and head with and without contrast.  This was particularly annoying to us because our insurance doesn’t cover MRIs and it was most likely just a pinched nerve.  “Why can’t people rule out the most likely diagnosis and then work their way up,” we thought.  Greg spent a couple days on the phone trying to see if this was really necessary and how much it would cost and so forth.  He finally came to an agreement that he would do his cervical spine without contrast and then they would go from there. 

Well he went and got the MRI Tuesday morning and then came home and I thought was going about his normal routine.  I was lying down in bed at the time.  I had a horrible migraine the day before and was exhausted.  I had been resting verily quietly for a while when something like a little nervous energy came over me; so I got up and I went out to the living room.  I found Greg in tears.  The radiologist had called him and said he needs to come back right away the next morning.  They had found an abnormality at the base of his brain stem.

The next few hours were a mix of fear, anger, tears and all sorts of “what ifs” coming from the both us and the “why didn’t you get this taken care of earlier” from me.    Slowly the emotion of the moment calmed down, I think we had both convinced ourselves at the end that things were going to be fine.  We have had close calls before and they have eventually worked out.  Especially for Greg, I sometimes angrily accuse him of being Teflon because everything always seems to slide right off.  His MRI was scheduled for Wednesday, September 18^th at 8 am.  Everett had school at 8:30 and Greg had decided he wanted to go by himself.  By that time, the emotions had died down a bit so I took Everett to school and then brought Amara back home.  We only stayed there for a of couple minutes.  For whatever reason I decided to look at Greg’s e-tablet and go through his google searches; there I saw all of the very scary things he had been looking up.  I grabbed Amara and decided to find Greg.

 It took me two tries to find the right location for his MRI (this place is crazy, there are literally hospitals and clinics on every block) by the time I got there it was too late and he had already left.  I was on my way home expecting to meet him there when I got a text saying that he was going to the neurologist.  Once again it took me a couple times to find the right office.  When I walked in, Greg was sitting on the edge of the examination table and the Dr. was at the computer.  It was quiet, calm even.  I walked in very casually, by this time I was quite sure it was nothing.  “So what are we looking at” I said as I walked over to see the computer screen.  The doctor looked at me and said “the tumor.”  Everything stopped, I could clearly see that they were looking at images of the brain and sure enough there it was; a 2cm by 2cm by 2cm tumor, right in the brain stem. 

The doctor started talking about setting up appointments for the neurosurgeon and oncologist.  I only caught part of it.  This was the time to grab Greg and tell him we would figure it out.  But I didn’t, in fact it was much the opposite.  I would love nothing more than to be able to say that I was a supporting and understanding wife at that moment.  But I refuse to lie; the truth is, I was terrible.  I was angry.  I was angry at everything and everyone.  I felt like Greg had let me down. I felt like God was playing a terrible trick on me again.  I walked outside calmly not really knowing what to do or even really what I thought.  Finally I told Greg we should pick up Everett from school and head to my friend’s house in Scottsdale. 

We were at my friend’s house for about an hour or two.  The kids love it there.  My friend Christi has a daughter which my kids love to play with; so they stayed outside with Isabel.  Inside the house there was many tears and many more fears.  Greg and I both determined to not make this scary for the kids so we cleaned ourselves up and decided to have a day of fun with the kids.  We hadn’t taken the kids swimming in a few days so we decided to go to the pool and goof off for a while.  Both Greg and I gravitated towards the camera that day wanting to make sure we caught these happy moments. 

The next day was spent in tears for me.  My friend Christi had encouraged me not to take action until I felt “led by the lord”.  I almost mockingly laughed.  What would God do?  There were plans to be made, things that needed to be done.  I didn’t have time to wait for what God may or may not say.  Surely, common sense was the place to start.  Sure, there were other times I have prayed, but not ever really expecting an answer.  I would pray and then put on my boots and start working towards the solution.  I could almost always pull a rabbit of my hat; impossible situations are where I do my best work.  In truth I have never really minded problems, because where there is a problem there is surely a solution and I was great at finding solutions.

This is the part where I come clean with one of my many very regrettable moments.  I had been dealing with this whole thing like it was a head problem; but, to Greg, it was a heart problem.  He was worried about whether or not he would get to see his kids grow, would they remember him.  What would their last memories of him look like?  I was spending my time trying to figure out what to do once Greg couldn’t work.  Should we move back to Iowa?  There are better medical options here in Phoenix, but none of that matters if we can’t afford it.

  I lashed out in anger towards Greg.  I felt like he had been negligent in preparing for these types of situations.  I like to always have my bases covered.  I have contingency plans for my contingency plans.  My mind is always working on solving problems including those that in truth might never happen.  Greg is the opposite.  He lives in the moment; he deals with things as they come.  He doesn’t expect bad things to happen and in truth they typically don’t happen to him.

 We had just switched insurance and I was quite unhappy with it.  It is expensive and I didn’t feel like it covered much.  I had told Greg many times for four months that we needed to look into different coverage.  I felt like he was dragging his feet and in fact, just a few weeks earlier I had one of my famous railroad-over-Greg moments.  He had gotten into an accident on the interstate.  It wasn’t a major one; it mostly just damaged the bumper of his rental car.  But I was furious, what if it had been worse.  “What if you would have gotten hurt?  What if you hurt someone else?”  We couldn’t afford either of those options.  Once again we were throwing money out the window because of what I perceived as his negligence. He should have watched where he was going.  He should have been more careful.  By now, I am sure you have a solid mental image of Greg trying to shrink into a corner, feeling sorry so terribly sorry and me just full of rage not willing to stop until I drove home the point that he almost destroyed us.  I ended it that night with “YOU HAVE TO FIX THIS!”  Over the past few weeks he’d been working on it but was still just a couple of days away from making a decision on which insurance company to switch to.  So, of course I pointed out to him on Wednesday it was too little too late now.   We had most of our life insurance through the hospital in Iowa.  For years I had told him we need more.  “We have to be prepared, we have kids now, and it is time to grow up!”  We were in the midst of signing up with a new life insurance policy in fact we were supposed to meet with the agent at 1 pm that same day.   Once again, I angrily exploded at Greg and told him just how devastated we now were.  He melted.  Of course he did, how could he do anything else?  He spent the night with the kids and telling me he was sorry.  I angrily sulked on the couch and said nothing at all.  

I told you I was terrible.  We all know that terrible isn’t actually a strong enough word for what I did.  Not wanting to offend any more than I already have I will leave it with terrible.   I railroad over people who have unfortunately gotten in my way; always I feel very justified in my opinions and actions.  I impose myself, my thoughts and opinions quite forcefully on those around me.  I have a sharp tongue that tends to go for the jugular in the heat of a moment. Unfortunately, Greg has taken the brunt of it. I am determined, like I said before, to tell the truth about this.  I want the truly beautiful parts (God willing there will be some of those) to be conveyed in their full beauty, but I will also not hide the ugly moments that seem mostly to reside in me.  

Hopelessly broken, we now look to God.  For in this situation, what else can we do?  It didn’t take very long to see that Christi was right that I have to wait for God to lead.  There isn’t a single thing I or anyone else can do.  I now see that I am; that my family is, completely at God’s mercy.  Our prayer now is just for manna in the desert.  Every day to see his graces renewed.  I can’t even fathom a guess of what our life will look like from here on out.  What I do know is it is all in God’s hands.  This is particularly difficult for me because I am the only one I trust.  I feel like I need to be very honest on this particular point.  I was brought up in the church.  I worked at bible camp.  But my god is small and my faith is weak, I will not pretend that it is different than what it is.  Over the last four years I think God has been preparing me for this.  Continually we have been put in tight situations and continuously it has worked out.  He was showing himself to be trustworthy, but stubbornly I took the credit for all of it.