I have a book that I love. "Our Lady of the Lost and Found" It was written by a Canadian Author with a great sense of humor. She is having a good week and low and behold Mary shows up with a small suitcase, Nike's and a trench coat (blue of course).
It is almost May and she needs a rest. During the course of the discussions with her host there is a lot of talk about prayer and the requests. It is both a thought provoking and funny book.
Cancer Mom's like Mary a lot. She watched her son grow and then die. She felt the agony of not being able to do anything to stop it or to make it better.
Michelangelo's Pieta in the Vatican is one of the most powerful pieces of marble I have ever seen. It saddens me that it is behind glass because some man took a hammer to it. I was lucky enough to be at the Vatican several times and just stood at the bottom, holding the foot of Jesus and looking up at Mary. Such a calm resigned look. Not sad or distraught but a mom's face as she holds her child for the last time.
I know, that the face did not match the feelings behind it. But those of us that have faced the potential loss of our child know that if everyone knew what was going on behind "the your so calm" look, the world would spin off it's axis and then upside down and we would all just float off into the Universe.
That being said, we do pray a lot. We pray for high numbers, we pray for low numbers, we pray for 10 match bone marrow donors, we pray for remission, we pray for no relapse, we pray for engraftment, we pray for one cord to fade away, we pray for a little GVHD, we pray for the GVHD to go away... We don't really know what we are doing.
I don't think any of this illness or suffering of our children is part of a grand master plan. God did not break Mary-E twice. This is not some grand plan to see how many needle points I can finish. It is not some huge test I have to pass. Now, that being said. My ongoing conversations with God, the universe, Mary, the Ganesha, Navajo healing ceremony Buddha, the katsuras in my front yard have helped me survive this process. I know we have no control, we have no way to know what is going to happen. We have to survive every single day in the best way possible and only deal with what we face this moment and the next.
I find I can handle it better if I have a sounding board. Boy there is not a church within 15 miles with a candle left unburned. I need to know I have sent my thoughts and prayer somewhere so I can focus on this point in time.
Only prayers today are to just get through this week with the ability to pick my sister up from the airport next Tuesday.
I had a doctor's appointment with my new provider yesterday. I had to change health plans when I had to leave Mikkelborg to take care of Mary-Elizabeth. I landed at Group Health.
Yes, we all used to call it Group Death and I clung religiously to my Regents Blue Cross but since I had new body parts they automatically made me un-insurable by the same people that paid for them in the first place. So Group Health it is. This is where I spill my guts about how incredibly impressed I have been. These people all but come and wash my windows for me. Everyone that works there is happy. It is sort of like Children's with better food. So this is the context for the rest of the story.
My new doctor learned that I was a lawyer and told me she had e-mailed the Attorney General about problems with her Phone/Internet service. (Clearwire is not clear.) She was complaining about how the service did not work, it was deathly slow, the techs had suggested that while she sleep, she unplug it. I told her that phone issues was an old old problem and told her my favorite phone problem story.
Dad and his partners added on to the clinic in Hayden Lake. They thought it would be useful to have phones in the new office space. Despite repeated and frustrating attempts at repair, there were constant issues with the phones. A favorite for the office manager Virgina was the issue of not being able to call from upstairs to downstairs.
At some point Virgina threw up her hands and just quit paying the bill in protest. She was a regular at PUC meetings and had gone through all the proper channels and was done.
One night, around 2:00 A.M. The sheriff was found pounding on our door. Low and behold our phones were not working. Neither were the phones of the other three doctors. A child was trying to be born and the hospital sent the Sheriff to find a doctor because alas the baby needed to make an appearence.
A couple of hours later the manager and a crew were stringing temporary phone lines through the windows in order to hook up the bedroom phone until morning.
My doc felt better because she was not alone.
So the moral of the story:
Sharing a story helps. Being alone sucks and it is nice to know that you are not.
Don't fuss at me if I don't answer my phone, I know that if it is important the sheriff will come.
History repeats itself in slightly updated versions.
Final point: If you write the AG, you are only allowed to use words like Yahoo and idiot only once in an e-mail. I am going to provide Dr. M with a thesaurus because the world is a frustrating place sometimes and there is a need for lots of words to express our frustration.
Oh, I love Group Health.
