by Band Back Together | Nov 13, 2010 | Encephalocele, Fear, Neural Tube Defects, Stress, Trauma |
Hear my prayer, hear my prayer, hear my prayer, please God, hear my prayer.
I instinctively checked the monitors as I approached my daughter who was sprawled out, getting a sunbath underneath the warmer. Her stats were picture perfect, I noticed, breathing a little more easily, and I made my way slowly to her bedside where she was sleeping peacefully.
I slogged my soggy bottom from the wheelchair onto the rocker that had been shoved into her tiny NICU room; barely even a room, more like a broom closet. She was sandwiched in between two misbehaving (“misbehaving” means that their alarms were constantly blaring) babies who I could hear misbehaving.
Most of the NICU, I noted as I was wheeled past, was full of Feeders and Growers. That’s NICU slang for babies that were, for whatever reason, finishing their gestation outside of the womb. It”s always evoked a pleasant picture of a garden of freshly hatched babies. A Baby Garden.
Of the other babies that I could see cooking away merrily in their incubators, Amelia was the biggest, fattest, and likely the only full- term baby there.
According to her room placement, though, she was the most ill.
Hear my prayer, hear my prayer, hear my prayer, please God, hear my prayer.
My ass firmly planted now onto the chair (I’d had a traumatic vaginal birth mere hours before), I held Amelia’s lone sock as a talisman, hoping it would ward off the Bad News. I was preparing to nurse my daughter again, just waiting for our nurse to come and help me sort through the tangle of wires my daughter was attached to.
It was hard to believe only thirty or so minutes had passed since we’d heard “there’s something sinister on your daughter’s CT scan.”
Our–Amelia’s–nurse walked in and introduced herself to The Daver and I. I was openly weeping, holding onto Mimi’s sock and my iPhone – where the Pranksters live!- as a life preserver. The Daver was pale(r) and stalwart.
I handed off the box of kleenex that had been pressed onto my lap as we left Mother/Baby and my daughter was brought back to me, hooked up to so many wires that she looked like an electrical outlet. The nurse stood there, kindly talking to us, but not revealing anything.
We still had no idea what was wrong with our daughter. A diagnosis would take weeks. Her life, as far as we knew, hung in the balance.
I begged the nurse to have the house neonatologist visit my daughter as the pediatric neurosurgeon was busily operating on someone’s head somewhere other than the NICU. It’s probably good I didn’t know where he was or I’d have stalked him down and dragged him to my daughter for a diagnosis.
The neonatologist – the one I’d met a lifetime ago in the delivery room, the guy who was always drinking a bottle of something – he came over to Amelia’s “room” and he told us that there was a “bright spot” on Amelia’s CT Scan. He didn’t mean diamonds.
I had no fucking clue what that meant and he didn’t follow it up with much, although I did see his lips move, I couldn’t understand his words.
Guess that’s panic for you.
After the doctor left, the nurse came back in to ask if we’d wanted to see the chaplain; rather to have Amelia meet the chaplain. A thousand times yes.
She was amazing. Just. Incredible. For the next year, it was her words, her warmth and compassion that I kept coming back to. She blessed my daughter. My daughter was blessed.
And she is so, so blessed.
We sat there in the NICU; just the three of us. I couldn’t tell you how long we just sat. Time in the ICU is timeless. 4 AM and 4PM are the same.
Soon enough, I had to go upstairs to change my undergarments and ready myself to see my boys. My sister-in-law was bringing my sons to visit, and I had to put on my Poker Face. Given the raw, chapped and bleeding state of my cheeks, was going to be damn near impossible.
Back in my room, I saw that I’d gotten some flowers and a basket from two of my Pranksters and it made me cry. Then again, I think the package of Saltines that had been ruthlessly thrown on the floor the night before might have made me cry. I wasn’t in a Good Place.
Alex and Ben came in a bit after I’d gotten cleaned up. I held Alex very, very close as Ben showed me some pictures he’d colored of Amelia. Ben knew his sister was sick but Alex (only 22 months old) had no idea what a “sister” was, let alone what being “sick” meant. I held them and faked normal until I got the call from the NICU. Time to nurse the baby.
Talk about being torn.
I cried as I said goodbye to my youngest son–my eldest just wanted to get home and I couldn’t find fault with that–and he cried and yowled “Mooommmmyyy” as he was led away to the elevators that would dump him back into the outside world.
By myself for the first time, I tearfully found my way back to the Secret Place, The Land of Tears. Never have I felt so sick to my stomach in my life. People stared sympathetically as I wept in the elevator, leaning against the walls for support.
I begged God to let her live, even if she was retarded and her IQ was 43 and had to live at home for the rest of her life, just please let my baby girl live. I didn’t care what was wrong with her so long as she made it out alive. I begged God to take me instead. I’d had 28 wonderful years on the planet already, and she was less than 24 hours old. Certainly, I’d give my life to save her in a moment.
Hear my prayer, hear my prayer, hear my prayer. Please God, hear my prayer.
After scrubbing the top 50 layers of skin from my arm and signing a reasonable facsimile of my name, I wobbled to her bedside. There she was, my girl. Perfect stats, thrashing about her isolette, pissed as hell and looking for something to eat.
In the brief time I’d been gone we’d gotten a new nurse.
When she came in to assess my daughter and saw me crying as I nursed my girl, for the first time in a day, someone asked me what was wrong. I explained that I didn’t know if my daughter would live or die. I told her that no one had told us what could be wrong with her, what that bump COULD be, why she was in the NICU, nothing.
She looked pretty aghast that we’d been told nothing, and for the first time, someone tried to reassure us. I remember leaving the NICU several hours later slightly less burdened.
That night, we ordered a pizza and tried to relax in my somber room. We tried to let go of some of The Fear. I didn’t feel much like celebrating anything, so no balloons, no stuffed animals, no signs that I had just given birth decorated my room. I could have been on any floor, in any room in the hospital.
The nurse brought me my Ambien and the NICU called to tell me that they would bring my daughter up to nurse every 2 hours (the NICU runs like clockwork. It’s no wonder that new parents struggle to care for their NICU graduate when they get home). I turned on the sound machine to blast white noise over The Daver’s snores, and waited, trying to fall asleep.
Unsurprisingly to no one, I couldn’t get anywhere close to sleep that night. This made the tally of nights without sleep 3.
I was about to lose it.
Somewhere around 4 AM, after someone had barged into my room to empty the wastebasket, waking me from the lightest of light sleep, I panicked. I’d sent Dave down to the NICU to sit with our daughter in the vain hope that having him at her side would set my mind free.
I was alone. The panic that had been a constant dull buzzing had morphed into something much more sinister and I knew what was about to happen.
Frantically, I paged the nurses station because I knew I needed help. I explained as carefully as I could that I was about to have a panic attack and that I needed my nurse NOW. My nurse came in, I don’t remember what she did, but she didn’t want to call my doctors because they would be rounding in a couple of hours and I could ask for something for my anxiety then.
Fucking bitch.
She told me to “relax” and then left.
I tried to “relax” which was as useful as punching myself in the face with a hammer. It didn’t work. I put a call back into the nurses station, begging; pleading with them to call my doctor. I begged for help.
My last rational thought was to quickly inventory anything in the room with any sort of calming properties. The best I could come up with was a bottle of Scope.
I didn’t end up drinking it, but I did call the NICU and beg Dave to come back up. A nurse passing by my room took pity on me and called my doctor, who prescribed me an Ativan. A swarm of people all happened to come into my room at the same time: a partner in my OB practice who looked terrified by me but discharged me anyway, a nurse with that beautiful pill, a tech to get my vitals, and my husband.
It sounds, in retelling this, that they were all there to help, but it wasn’t really like that. Dave and the nurse were trying to calm me down, but the tech, the doctor and whomever was washing the floor were doing their jobs. With spectacularly bad timing.
Ativan on board now, I was trying to gulp some calming breaths and stave off the panic. They’d turned off the lights, and covered my still-swollen body with fresh sheets, cleaned off the bedside table and turned on the white noise machine.
Finally, I began to relax and beat the panic away, if only slightly. Dave held my hand and told me over and over and over again that my daughter was just fine, she was perfect, she was wonderful, she’d done great overnight, she was beautiful, she was going to be just fine. It was soothing to hear, but what would have been MORE soothing? Having her bassinet next to my bed where it belonged instead of three floors below.
Then (dun, dun, DUN), the absolute worst person to show up did.
Lactation services.
Lactation Services showed up, because they say they’ll come by every day you’re in the hospital with a new baby, and they do. It’s awesome for people who need help because breastfeeding is nowhere NEAR as easy as it looks on those weird Lamaze videos.
(also: why are people in the Lamaze videos always naked?)
But I didn’t need help. And when she showed up and saw me shaking in bed, being held by my husband while the nurse clucked around me like a mother hen, lights off, white noise blaring, she should have excused herself. This is not a debate about breast and bottle feeding, this is about decency. But no, she didn’t get the hint.
No.
She introduced herself perkily and asked me how breastfeeding was going, and through clenched teeth, I answered that it was fine. Kinder than the situation warranted.
I expected this to be enough for her, but no, she followed that up with, “Do you have any concerns about breastfeeding?” Wrong question, dipshit. Time, place, all that.
“You know what?” I snarled, “I’m MUCH MORE concerned that my baby is going to die than if I have proper latch, okay?”
Again, she could have gracefully bid be farewell. But no. She kept on keeping on.
“Well, what about your concerns with BREASTFEEDING?” She asked, just not getting it.
I responded with, “Look, if she’s dead, I’m not going to give a FUCK about colostrum, okay? Please!”
I began to sob heavily again. It was the very real truth that my daughter could die. We all knew it. Nursing her wasn’t going to help an encephalocele.
Dave told her to get the fuck out of our room.
Finally, with a DO NOT DISTURB sign on my door, I slept for a few hours.
I awoke when The Daver bounded in and announced, “the neurosurgeon ordered an MRI! And he’s really nice! And not concerned! He thinks it’s an encephalocele! It’s a piece of brain or something that’s herniated out! We can go home after the MRI! And follow up with the results next week! Oh, I wish you’d met him. He was so, so nice.”
And just like that, we went from critical to discharged in less than 36 hours.
by Band Back Together | Nov 12, 2010 | Cancer and Neoplasia, Chronic Illness, Coping With Cancer, Grief, Health, Help For Grief And Grieving, How To Help A Friend With Chronic Illness, Loss, Parent Loss |
In August of 2006, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. I was at the movie store with my boyfriend and our 4 month old daughter when I got a phone call from my aunt. I had to stand outside because I couldn’t hear her inside. As I stood in the wind with one ear plugged, huddled so she didn’t hear the gusting through the line, she told me my mother was in the hospital fighting for her life. I couldn’t believe it. In shock, I think, I asked her question after question.
My most important question: “What happened?” She went to the ER with abdominal pain, which turned out to be a tumor pushing on her internal organs. She was in multiple organ failure and had to be wheeled into surgery immediately. They only had time to get contact information for my grandparents before she was under and being cut open. They had removed what they could, put her on dialysis and a colostomy bag, and told my grandparents to come as soon as they could. They were 4 states away.
Against the odds, my mother survived the massive surgery which left her with no large intestine, no reproductive organs, and one barely functional kidney. My grandparents packed her home up, leaving behind precious memories and beloved family pets in the process, to try to get her back to their home before another rent payment was due. A few days after they finished packing, my mother was declared stable enough to transport and made the several hour flight away from the only state she had ever called home.
Practically an invalid for months, she relied completely on my grandparents for everything. I was unable to get down to see her, despite impassioned pleas to everyone I could think of, including my and my mother’s previous employer, for a loan. I just needed a plane ticket. A simple fucking plane ticket. $300 that our family couldn’t afford without shutting off the gas in the middle of a Michigan winter. What if she had died in that hospital? Or the months just after? The doctors hadn’t given her much chance, and I couldn’t get a lousy $300 loan to go see her.
How could things get so fucked up so fast? I’d just seen her! She came up after our daughter was born, twice, because soon after she left the first time I needed gallbladder surgery. She may not have been a poster-girl for perfect health, but she wasn’t DYING! How could two months make such a difference? And why the hell couldn’t I get someone to give me a fucking hand up so I could go see one of the most important people in my life when they were practically one foot in the grave?!?!
By the time I finally got to see her, she had mostly stabilized and was started on chemo so the tumors wouldn’t start growing again and really do her in this time. It was a calculated risk: if they started it too soon, and she couldn’t handle literally injecting poison into her body, she died. If they waited too long, the extremely aggressive tumors could grow right back and totally kill her internal organs, if they didn’t starve her of essential nutrients first. Rock, meet hard place. Fuck me.
But she survived. Against all odds – and often stupefying her doctors – she lived. She bulled through that surgery, her recovery, chemo, and eventually radiation as well. And in the end? She kicked cancer in the balls, hard. Her very last oncologist appointment gave her an official diagnosis of remission. Three months later, she died. The treatment(s) had left her with an inability to absorb vital nutrients.
But even as she lay dying, she had the satisfaction of knowing she had won.
She might be dying, but she’d taken the big C with her, kicking and fucking screaming. I’m proud of you, Mom.
by Band Back Together | Nov 12, 2010 | Cancer and Neoplasia, Coping With Cancer, Sadness |
I got the call last night. It’s Stage 4 cancer this time. It’s “everywhere.” I don’t know what to do. I’m half a continent away from them.
On one hand, it’s not right to mourn. He’s not out yet, and they’re beginning chemo again next week. But really, it doesn’t look good. The chemo is just to “slow it down.” And I’m a realist. And so I mourn, if only inside.
This is the uncle that is quietly awesome. He’s in the background, making sure everyone is okay. He’s brilliant, and made sure his 3 kids all went wherever they wanted for college (we’re talking Ivy League Schools), despite living on a teacher’s salary. He’s the rock. When I drove through town on a whim, getting in late, he made sure a bed was made, dinner was left out, and then took me out for a hockey game the next day.
And he’s too young to go.
I guess I don’t really have a question. I just need to type this out, and make it somewhat public. Thanks.
by Band Back Together | Nov 10, 2010 | Shame, Stress, Stutter, Tourette Syndrome |
To speak. To form sounds, syllables, words, that when combined, convey a specific meaning to the listener.
A lot of people I’ve met take this ability for granted. They don’t contemplate their ability to articulate a certain sound in the brief moments before they are expected to respond or answer the question looming in the room. Others appreciate the hard work and seemingly miraculous events that occur to allow them to talk.
I’ve never known such bliss. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a stutter. It is what my childhood neurologist referred to as a “hesitation stutter” in that I have difficulty moving past initial sounds.
Throw in a few ever-changing involuntary muscular tics, and you have a diagnosis of Tourette Syndrome, which is a genetic condition consisting of both verbal and motor tics. I rarely admit this as the root cause of my stutter because of the next question I inevitably get – “so why don’t you swear all the time, then?”
Well, I do, but it is completely intentional and not related to the 10% of Tourette’s patients who have coprolalia (involuntary swearing or inappropriate comments and usually how the media portrays Tourette’s).
It feels like a giant lump in my throat, paralyzing my vocal cords and restricting sounds from emerging. Stress makes it worse, as does lack of sleep, or too much sleep, or sometimes just the changing of the winds.
I have struggled with the mundane aspects of life, the things my husband does without a second thought. For me, they require meditation and at least 10 minutes to psych myself up.
Calling to schedule an appointment? Awkward. Answering the phone with the professionally appropriate, dictated script? Impossible. Going through a drive through window? Painful for all involved. Successfully navigating a phone interview? Screw it.
I’ve tried being honest and upfront with employers and customers (I have a very public-facing job. In this recession, I took what I could find. Call me a masochist), and sometimes it helps.
The sympathetic ones understand that my stutter does not define me, nor does it indicate a lack of intelligence. I can’t say that has been the universal reaction from everyone.
The ones who laugh and mock are the most painful. I’ve learned to have a thick skin, at least outwardly. I’ve learned their insults and degrading comments are indicative of their shortcomings, not mine. I thought it would get better once I was out of high school and into the professional environment, where “adults” would know better.
10 years later, I’ve found that’s true about half of the time.
I’m 28 years old, but I still long for just one day where I can say what is on my mind without struggling to get the words out. It sounds so stupid when I put it on paper, and it almost seems ridiculous in comparison to other people’s issues.
In the last 6 months or so, it has gotten worse, likely because of the stress of my current job. I’ve tried medications, but the zombie effect is counterproductive to successful employment, and my doctors took me off all of them two and a half years ago at the start of our child bearing efforts.
I’ve tried alternative therapies, yoga, acupuncture, long hot baths. Nothing helps for long.
I’ve learned to fight past it. Keep doing the things I want to do, and screw anyone else who doesn’t understand. I don’t normally talk about it except when absolutely necessary because I don’t want to be the whiny chick who feels sorry for herself. I keep my head down and go through life as best as I can in that moment.
I’ve noticed a common theme on this site – a lot of the posters say they don’t like to complain or talk about the issue in their post, myself included. I am so grateful for this forum and the creators for providing a safe, open environment for all of us to gather and support each other.
Sometimes we need encouragement, a listening ear, thoughtful words, or a place to vent without judgment.
Sometimes we just need to know we’re not alone
by Band Back Together | Nov 5, 2010 | Adoption, Breast Cancer, Coping With Losing A Partner, Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, Loss, Partner/Spouse Loss |
The day Tom died, I lost more than a husband. I lost a family. From the moment I turned on CNN, the family I loved, enjoyed and belonged to began to fracture, as if the second the plane crashed, it became more than tortured steel and shredded rubber.
Tom was from a large, German, Catholic family, where he was the baby of seven. There was quite an age difference between the oldest and the youngest. I’ve always believed Tom was the favorite, the golden child, because he was most like his father and was the last child his mother could ever have.
He loved his family, but they exasperated him. He was closest to his father and endured his mother. He once told me he loved his mother, but he didn’t like her. So, I shouldn’t have been surprised when they turned on me. There were signs over the years that I didn’t measure up. When we got engaged at graduation, she was planning a celebratory family dinner. I wasn’t invited, until she found out we were engaged, and then she felt obligated.
Tom’s first job took us to Fargo, ND. There was never any question I wasn’t going, although the wedding was 10 months away. The night before the moving van came, we moved my boxes to his house. As my boxes sat in their living room, his mother told Tom if I intended to live together, and then have a large “white” wedding not to bother sending invitations to the family, because none of them would come. Tom stood up against her and she finally backed down. She never apologized to me.
Years later, his family was incredibly supportive when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. They flew in for my surgery and sat by my bed. Seven months later when I ran the NYC marathon, they were wearing sweatshirts with words of encouragement.
But, when we announced we were adopting, his mother wasn’t happy. The rest of the family was ecstatic. Weeks before Tom’s death, one of his brothers call to try and convince him not to adopt, but hire a surrogate instead. I was the problem after all, and with a surrogate, the family genes would be passed on. Tom hung up the phone in anger. It was the last time he ever spoke to his brother.
If these memories of the past didn’t raise a red flag, how they treated me during the funeral should have woke me up. Tom’s memorial service was held in the church we were married. His family wanted to memorialize the child Tom was. I wanted to celebrate the man he became. They wanted to have the Stations of the Cross; I wanted to toast him with Scotch and cigars.
It didn’t stop there. His brother insinuated himself into the investigation of the crash, claiming I was overcome with grief and he was acting on behalf of the entire family. He was notified of official information before me, such as the recovery of Tom’s remains. When he knew about the recovery of Tom’s wedding ring before me, the shit hit the fan. My attorneys took on the Nova Scotia government and I tackled the US State Department. But, as soon as all of his remains were identified, I closed the door on his meddling family. They wanted Tom’s remain repatriated and buried in their small town cemetery, I intended to have him cremated and his ashes scattered over the crash site. They tried to manipulate me by playing the church card, but I stood firm.
The day I scattered his ashes, his family was absent. They didn’t know. They would have turned it into a three-ring circus, but I made it about Tom. I informed his father in a very difficultly written, heartfelt letter. His family never forgave me for that, but if I had to do it all over again, I would change nothing.
An uncertain truce was called after I adopted Elliott. Although they attended her christening and showered her with gifts, they were sharpening their knives. I sued the airline after Tom’s death. I was the only person who had the legal right, but they effectively counter sued me. They seemed to have forgotten at the moment we said, “I do” all rights shifted to me. They claimed our marriage wasn’t solid, Tom wasn’t Elliott’s father, and they disclaimed Elliott as family, and claimed breast cancer wasn’t an excuse not to have children.
By the end, his mother said Tom married beneath him, it was my fault we didn’t live near home, and if I read between the lines, she wished it were me on the plane rather than Tom. One of the very low points during this difficult time came when a brother told me “they” had decided it was harder to lose a son than a husband.
My attorneys tried to protect me from the worst, but the damage was done. I became so paranoid I feared they would have me followed by a private investigator. By this time I had met Colby and I wanted to move on with my life. The amount of fear and anger this family was causing me was overwhelming. The hardest part of it all was I thought they loved me, I thought they cared, but to discover how they felt about me rocked me to the core.
Four years after Tom’s death, we were summoned to federal court in Philadelphia. The judge clearly took my side, but he went through the meditative process. In the end, an agreement was reached. The lawsuit was settled and I could move on. I exchanged “pleasantries” with his parents on leaving the courtroom. His mother was not warm and welcoming, his father was in pain. He hugged me a long time and I could feel how much he missed his son. He asked after Elliott and I gave him a picture. It was the last time I ever saw them.
I remember getting in a cab bound for the airport when I turned to my parents with tears streaming down my faces and said, “I can finally marry Colby.”
I lost more than a husband the night Tom died. I lost a family I loved, a family I enjoyed, and family I felt I belonged to.
How naïve I was…
by Band Back Together | Nov 1, 2010 | Anxiety, Cirrhosis, Hepatitis, Liver Disease, Stress, Trauma |
The day I got the phone call, I felt the wholeness of my little world, my security, bodily health, relationship, and peace of mind break apart, red hot, and scatter in every direction around me. That phone call was an atom bomb. My life blew to pieces and then rained down all about me. Everything burned.
Three words changed my life: “you tested positive.”
The blood ran from my face into my feet as I hung up the phone. Although my eyes were open, in a spell of synesthesia, I saw nothing but the sound of the blood beating at my temples. I was delivered my test results in a department store, without my shoes on, and in jeans that weren’t even my own. My skin grew cold and foreign.
I don’t remember peeling the denim from my legs, pulling my coat around my body, or stumbling into the November air of the parking lot. Minutes tick by and I have no recollection of their existence. In the following weeks, I find that whole chucks of my life go missing. I am thankful for those disappeared hours… the sound of my own keening and wailing, all animal, would have later haunted my dreams.
I sat in the car as the sobs ripped through me and left no part of my body untouched. They pulsed through my fingertips, clung to my ribs, drew my thighs toward my chest. They puffed into little clouds of steam in the cold, dispersed, and were replaced by more tiny clouds. I cried all the way home, bent double, called my lover, begged forgiveness. He talked me down. Said I had nothing to be sorry for. He went on with life as usual and by doing so, pulled me through all of my darkest days.
I owe him everything.
You would think that I’d have more to say about the details of this day, but it’s grown flat. I remember the back drop of grey clouds and little else.
I wavered between periods of eerie silence that sounded almost like peace and inconsolable mourning. One moment I was calm, while in the next I swore I could feel the tiny, organic machines sliding through my blood, dismembering my liver. During those first weeks, I read all I could about viruses in fascinated horror. In this, I found a strange comfort.
I lived through the nightmare of half a dozen doctors visits, a battery of tests, and waiting for more phone calls that once hung up leave me sobbing into my shaking hands. My bilirubin was so high, I was only a hairsbreadth away from jaundice, a second antibody test came back positive.
My heart pounded as I read domestic magazines in waiting rooms. The insides of my elbows turned the color of plums with bruises that bloom in the wake of one blood draw after another. I dropped ten pounds in a few weeks. The nurses looked at me with chiding eyes and said, “you really need to eat, you know. You can’t lose any more weight.”
But food turned to sand in my mouth. I had been hollowed out and couldn’t seem to fill myself again.
During all this, my one respite was sleep… plagued night after night by nightmares all my life, the dreams I had at that point were more beautiful than any I had ever assumed possible. My sleeping mind drew images in the dark that blotted out my suffering: my beloved dead showed up, smiling; an evening was lit up bright as day with my mind’s fireworks; a door set into the floorboards swung open to blue sky.
My dreams provided me with a much needed unremembereing. Waking up was the hard part; the sweet flesh of night gave way to the hard light of morning. Really, the relearning of your life as you wake up is the hardest part of this disease, next to liver failure.
This is not to say that there is no hope.
Treatment is long and brutal, similar in its side effects to chemo, but at a success rate of 50%, worth the hair loss, headaches, nausea, anemia, and sleeplessness for the chance to have my health back and a glass of chilled white zinfandel. I did my research and found I was ready to wander 48 weeks in that desert of treatment at the chance of being delivered from my suffering.
It was then I decided that I wasn’t going to mourn any more, I was only going to fight.
