Into the Land of the Many
“I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.” —Carl Jung
I have a lot to say right now but not much appetite to say it. Thoughts swirling around like mini-maelstroms, some helpful, some not. Like a turtle my M.O. has always been to suck myself back into my shell when times are tough. I don’t want to be seen as anything less than plucky, hopeful, a fighter. I don’t want people feeling sorry for me, or us. But I feel compelled to poke my head out and say it right now. The writer in me won’t let me go it alone.
It’s been a few weeks since learning that my nine-year-old daughter, E, who just recently went into remission for a rare blood disorder, ITP, now has been diagnosed with another serious, chronic lifelong condition: Crohn’s Disease. Ever since, we’ve been dealing with the immediate crisis of getting her over this flareup. The interim plan seems to be working: The inflammation was down somewhat last week, and she seems to be having fewer bouts of pain and they are of less severity.
All promising. But it’s not helping much with the crushing blow of having something else to contend with, getting in the way of just living a normal life (whatever “normal” is, still not clear on that). A carefree childhood, I guess, is not in the cards for E. And maybe it’s not in the cards for too many children these days. But I still can’t help but lament the fact that E’s path has been so difficult—downright treacherous at times—even for a tough kid like her. At what point will her mind say, “Enough!”?
We’re back to taking it day by day. And it’s going OK, I guess. Though it often doesn’t seem that way. Exhausted all the time, I’m having trouble focusing on things like work, completing errands and finishing household tasks. Like laundry: I get to the last mile but then can’t seem to put it away, so there are piles of clean laundry sitting in baskets for days. Mocking me.
So I carry on and try to accomplish the important day-to-day tasks as best I can. And I try to pepper our days with things to look forward to. And I try to find funny things to laugh about, because life is still funny no matter what. But it’s a struggle.
I know that this is hard and it will get better. But I just want this part to be over with.
My therapist says, “It’s OK to feel devastated by this news. Allow yourself to do that. It’s devastating.”
E says: “I don’t want to take all of these meds. They may help my body, but they’re not helping my spirit.”
Tuesday night E has her first appointment with a child psychologist to help her grapple with her feelings. I’m hoping this will help her. To my mind, she’s a therapist’s dream: articulate, in touch with her feelings and willing to express them, and in need of the kind of help that goes beyond what any parent can do.
Meanwhile, every day I learn of someone else who either has or knows someone with this disease, which I appreciate—we need the support, clearly—but I’m still in that overwhelmed phase where I can’t process all of this. Part of it is culture shock, because we now have gone from the land of the rare (ITP, 1 in 30,000) to the land of the many (Crohn’s, 1 in 200). I’m used to people not knowing anything about E’s condition and having to explain it. I even have a long and short version of that explanation (the short one is about 45 seconds, skyscraper elevator-pitch length). With Crohn’s, seems like everyone knows someone or knows something about it. But not all of the input is especially helpful. (Note to the seemingly well-intentioned: If you want to tell me about your family members who have had this, in the future, please refrain from mentioning that, in fact, one died of it.)
Retreating back to shell: Please forgive this self-indulgent pity party. And my need to get this out there. But maybe it will help get us to a better place.
Trapeze Parenting
So here we go again on our journey back to good health. Two and a half years after being diagnosed with ITP at age 6, my daughter, E has now been preliminarily diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease.
With her ITP in remission, this new news is a huge setback to E, who, more than anything, wants to just live her life like a normal nine-year-old, without pausing for things like medications, blood tests, hospital visits, and worrying about whether her stomach will cause undue embarrassment for her at the worst possible moment: in front of her peers at school or camp this summer.
As before with health crisis #1, my parenting m.o. is to return her back to living a full and mostly uninterrupted life as soon as possible—or as soon as her body will allow it. Determined sorts, philosophically we are in accord that she will not be defined by her condition(s). I take her lead on how much (or how little) she wants to talk about it, and with whom, with the caveat that as before, I must tell anyone who is taking care of her (teachers, camp counselors, school principal, school nurse, etc.) what’s happening so we can set up protocols for her care and well-being, and they have a clear sense of what to do if something happens.
Though I’ve never done any time on the trapeze (and probably won’t. I don’t dig heights. Though I did hike Bonticou Crag: http://www.nynjtc.org/hike/bonticou-crag, so I guess anything is possible), parenting a child with a chronic illness seems a lot like what I imagine navigating the high wire would feel like. On the one side, you need to be supportive, empathetic, present. Nothing like a health crisis to remind you about who and what comes first. On the other, there’s the need to keep in place all of the expectations and limits that a high-spirited almost-tween needs. In her less than stellar moments, I often remind her that as her mom, my job is to raise a human being, not a beast. And while she does an admirable job holding it together for others, she can, at times, be a total pill with her close family.
Some of that was directed toward me yesterday afternoon, and I called her on it. After apologizing begrudgingly, E replied, “But I’m angry. I don’t know what to do with that.”
OK. No one likes being dumped on, but I take a step back from our mother-daughter fracas to appreciate her comment. No, I don’t like the behavior. And no, I don’t deserve it. But I am very grateful that my kid is so in touch with her feelings and able to express them. She’s always had a lot to say, and never had a problem saying it, often incisively. I have faith that her ability to identify and articulate her feelings will help her in this second-round fight back to better health.
Over the past few days, we’ve had an ongoing conversation about other things she can do to help her heal herself. She asked me what I do to stay in good health, so we discussed some of my go-to remedies. We talked about going to a doctor who she can talk about her feelings with. “Can we go Saturday?” she asked me. She’s eager. Yoga: Bored of downward dogging at age 5, she now says she’s willing to hit the mat again. We talked about acupuncture. E has witnessed me ‘get needled,’ and vehemently opposed it before. She’s now willing to try it. Like me, when faced with an acute health issue, she is game for the kitchen sink approach . . . don’t just do one thing, do many things. Then figure out what works.
So another chapter begins, the one where we learn through trial and error what works best to get her back in balance. In the meantime, I’ll stay up here on the trapeze and do the best job I can to not fail her. There will be no perfection; I expect to fall, maybe often at first. I am counting on those nets beneath me. But every day I’ll get myself back up there and keep trying. I owe her that.
Running in Crocs 