Joys of Parenting

Being a mom is never boring, although sometimes I could use a bit less excitement. Even now, with my “baby” scouting out universities for 2011, he can still provide moments that remind me not to take anything too seriously.

Last week I was up to my eyeballs in clinic patients when I realized I had not turned the ringer off on my BlackBerry. I realized this because it was ringing, of course, and my son was calling. Tim is a texter, not a caller, so I answered. If he wanted verbal communication, fire or massive blood loss was probably in progress. The conversation went something like this:

Tim:  “ Mom, I have a hypothetical question.”

Me:  “OK. Make it quick. I am working.”

T:  “Suppose someone cut off my left sideburn. How can I make it look even with the right one?”

M:  “Well, I would cut off the right one even with the left. And what do you mean by ‘hypothetical?’”

T:  “OK, so technically this isn’t a hypothetical question. Is there anything else I could try besides cutting off the right one?”

M:  “Who the hell is cutting your hair?”

T:  “A friend. She, I mean he or she, forgot to put the guard on after cleaning out the clippers and whacked off the sideburn accidently.”

M: “Look, I think you will have to cut the other one off even and let them grow back. Maybe you should go to the barber and get it done. I have patients to see. Talk to you later.”

T:  “OK. Bye, Mom.”

About 30 minutes later he shared his solution with me:

I took the guard off and buzzed my head. I am officially bald.

He also posted the “officially bald” part on his facebook wall. I knew it must be true.

Of course, we have to get senior photos done soon. His father felt doing this just before their college tours may not have been his best idea. I’m hoping they will assume he had chemo recently and come up with more scholarships, but I have always been a dreamer.

It’s only hair. It will grow back. And I have had a great story to share.

Image courtesy of PhotoXpress.

Maternal Remembrance

A few years back I was working frantically to finish a grant proposal. My husband was out-of-town, my daughter was at dance class, and I really needed to write. I parked my almost 8-year-old son in my office with a GameBoy© and tried to work. Every 5 minutes, I would hear a chorus of “Mommy! Mommy!”

About the time I began plotting where to hide his body, he cried for me again and handed me this sheet of paper, now carefully laminated and preserved:

Kids seem to know when you feel like eating your young. Then they do something cute so you won’t. He has survived to the age of 17 now. In another year he will leave my home.

10.  I love you, too, Tim.

Maternal Pride and Organ Donation

Organ donation is a topic near and dear to my heart, as I have blogged before. I am quite proud of my daughter’s efforts on behalf of organ donor registration this year. As a PR major at University of Nebraska – Omaha, she has chaired a group of students organizing a major transplant awareness event. A local TV station featured her event on last night’s news (doesn’t she look good on TV?):

She has worked her ample butt off for this event, even talking me into donating prizes for a “pin the organ on the body” contest [Note to I Heart Guts: if you offered express shipping, your stuff would have been the prizes, but I could not get it here in time].

Jennifer is on track to graduate next December; if anyone wants to hire her, feel free to contact me!

Two Opposing Forces On A Road Trip

We are in the Twin Cities so my son can see the University of Minnesota. He wants to study engineering, and he (finally) narrowed his list to about 10 campuses.

After living in Minneapolis many years ago, I am interested in seeing the campus. The boys have consented to having me along for this first college visit.

I am needed to referee, I am sure.

See, my husband is interested in things like the buildings, the library, and the academic programs:

My son also wants to ascertain the level of shenanigans and collegiate fun (which hubby considers unimportant):

It may be a long weekend in our car…

Some gains aren’t worth it

My son attends an excellent high school, recently ranked #1 in Nebraska by a national publication. He has great academic opportunities, and he takes advantage of these. He is out doing some volunteer work for his National Honor Society application as I write these words. He also loves sports.

His first love is baseball (homerun shown), and he plays all summer. Since 8th grade he has played football as well (it’s the state religion of Nebraska). He has played offense and defense on the freshman and sophomore teams, and he got to suit up with the varsity as a long-snapper for one game last year.

He will not be playing this fall.

Oh, he has gone to weight training almost every weekday at 8am all summer long. He even attended football camp. He finally decided that the payoff was not worth the effort required.

Or the pressure to gain weight.

No one offered him steroids. No one offered any nutritional advice. No one suggested supplements, other than other kids on the team. But coaches did mention that he should try to put on 30 lbs or so if he wanted to play a position besides snapper.

He is currently between 90th-95th percentiles for height, and just above the 90th percentile for weight with rippling muscles I never imagined anyone with my genes could possess. Adding 30 lbs to his frame would increase his body mass index from a healthy 27.2 to an obese 31.8.

He came to this decision on his own. He did not want to get fat because that would mess up his baseball game, not to mention setting him up for health problems later in life (his father has type 2 diabetes). He plans on academic scholarships and achievements, not sports, for his future.

I wonder how many boys on his team could make this decision? I wonder how many of them would pack on pounds in hopes of football glory and a chance to go to college with the sport? I wonder what happens to them, metabolically, when their playing days end?

My daughter quit her dance major because of the pressure to lose weight when she had no body fat to shed. Now my son is giving up a sport  because he refuses to become obese.

I am proud of both of them. But I am worried about all our children.

Impossible, Improbable, & Wonderful

Last Friday the first chatter about an upcoming movie began hitting the blogosphere. My Sister’s Keeper got my attention because it involves a kidney donation situation. I picked up the novel Friday and read it to see what was coming.

SPOILER ALERT: I may relate things in this brief plot summary that you don’t want to know before you see the movie. Or better yet, read the book. Consider yourself warned.

This family (Mom is Cameron Diaz) has two children, son Jesse and daughter Kate. The daughter develops a rare form of leukemia. Her best chance to survive involves a transplant from an HLA identical sibling – which her brother is not. The parents select an identical embryo and give birth to a sister, Anna (Abigail Breslin). Her cord blood is used to transplant Kate.

Kate does well for several years, but then relapses. Anna then donates lymphocytes, granulocytes, and bone marrow for further procedures for Kate. After the second transplant the tumor may be licked, but the drugs to control graft-vs-host disease toast Kate’s kidneys. For some reason she has to have an exact HLA match. Her dialysis has “stopped working.” Unless Anna hands over a kidney, Kate will die. She sues for medical emancipation at this point (and gets Alec Baldwin for her lawyer), setting up the conflict for the book.

So let’s start with what is wonderful about this book. It may be the best picture of the effect of chronic illness on a family that I have encountered. Too many depictions have saintly parents working tirelessly to produce a miracle for their child, with no ill effects on others besides the medical establishment. From my read, Anna suffers the physical effects of donating to her sister, but seems to be rather well-adjusted compared to the rest of the family. The whole family exists in a state of readiness, waiting for another crisis or illness to disrupt their lives. The brother feels invisible, and both parents admit they have, at some point, “given up on him.” He brings his own pathology as well. The book makes the family members neither saints nor ogres, but human beings trying to take on a bad situation as best they can. I hope the movie can convey this as well as the prose.

What bothered me about the book is the kidney transplant situation. I cannot name a center in North America that would consider using a 13 year old donor, even if she were willing and the circumstances dire. The descriptions of dialysis would imply in-center hemodialysis. It is unclear why this procedure has “stopped working.” Can’t they do more? I see patients survive hemodialysis, even after cancer treatments, for years. We usually require 5 years cancer-free before we consider survivors as transplant candidates. OK, I understand that the kidney was the appropriate organ to set up the dramatic conflict in the story. I guess I will grant some literary license on this point; however, I can’t figure out where Kate’s nephrologist was in the subsequent proceedings. The emancipation trial presents testimony from a psychiatrist, the head of the hospital ethics committee, and Kate’s oncologist. The latter is who testifies to Kate’s renal needs. Huh? This is a book – you don’t have to pay extra for another character! It would have required a bit more research to bring the nephrologist in and somehow make it realistic, perhaps explaining how this extraordinary set of circumstances came to be.

LAST SPOILER WARNING!!!!! PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!!!

So we have covered the wonderful and the impossible. What is improbable? Well, when I first heard the plot summary, my reaction was, “the only way we take 13 year old donors is as cadavers.”

Yup, after the trial, Anna is in a car accident with a massive head injury and ends up giving a kidney to her sister after all. Impossible? No. Improbable? Yes.

There is a lot more to the story than what I’ve discussed here. The book is an excellent read, although as a nephrologist I had to really suspend disbelief and forgive some literary license. I still ended up sobbing into the better part of a box of Kleenex at the end. I am told they altered the ending of the movie, but previewers tell us we will still like it. I guess I will have to wait another 10 days or so to find out with the rest of the world.

More thoughts on babies

Yesterday afternoon when technical difficulties made a lot of my effort futile, I went out to buy a gift for a baby shower. It is for a grad student with whom I have published, and it was fun to look at stuff. There are so many new gadgets and gizmos. The baby monitor we used seems so... "primative" now.

After "oohing and ahhing" over tiny little socks for awhile, I made my purchases. As much fun as the shopping was, I'm still glad it wasn't for me.

Now, I believe I could have lived a happy fulfilling life without a husband and without children. I am also glad I had children, and I am incredibly proud of my offspring. I mean, it's hard not to be when Jen is on stage or Tim fields a double play. They are also, at times, difficult, messy, and expensive. Reproducing is not a choice that should be made lightly.

Life is a series of experiences, and child-rearing is one stage of my life. I am looking forward to the "empty nest," being alone with my spouse again, and enjoying the next phase of my life. I have no regrets about my kids, including them growing up and successfully leaving my home!

Original photo courtesy PhotoXpress.com

Who Am I?

I don't mean this quesion in the literal sense. I blog & comment with my real name, and the links at right will take you to more information about me than you probably want. This is more of a rhetorical question about the many identities I have, including wife, mother, scientist, doctor, and editor.

I bring this up because there has been some discussion about attempts to "out" one of my favorite bloggers, Isis, over at ScienceBlogs. This woman has kept her real identity a secret and has some very good rules for pseudonymous bloggers. She is trying to keep her online life separate from that as a scientist and her wife/mother roles.

I came down on the other side of this issue, in part I believe, because of my "advanced age" when I started this blog. About the time I hit 40 I realized that no one could really do that much to hurt me in life. I shouldn't be evil because then I would deserve retribution, but I could generally state my mind in most professional situations with little fear of the consequences. It takes a lot of energy to maintain separate identities, and I didn't see much advantage for me to do that.

I had my first identity issue when I got married. The question was whether or not to change my last name. I had not yet published anything but an abstract in a local proceedings in an unrelated field. Part of me was violently opposed to the patriarchal supposition that I would take my husband's surname. However, I started talking with those who had already walked the path. First there was the "keep your maiden name group" who found this choice was really awkward when the kidlets came along. Did mom want to be the only one in the family with a different last name? The teachers were confused, and most women were "Mrs. Daddy's Name" when the school called, just to keep everyone from thinking they were divorced. Kids taking mom's name alone is pretty rare still, and I could not bring myself to dump a hyphenated name on my offspring. What about hyphenating my own name? One friend pointed out the difficulty that presents with forms and other documents. I had other friends who used their given name professionally and their married names personally. Talk about confusion! I have been introduced to women at parties where it took 20 minutes to figure out we shared patients! In medicine and academia, the personal and professional lives overlap substantially.

In the end, I took my husband's last name. Of course, I couldn't do anything easy. See, my birth name was Ann Pascale Hammond, but no one had ever called me Ann. Compared to a hyphenated last name, using your middle name is pure hell in this country. It is not your legally recognized name! I ended up dropping the "Ann" and becoming Pascale Hammond Lane. It was the right mix for me, even though I had to jump through a bunch of hoops for a common usage name change. I like that my family has the same last name, even though it wasn't the one I was born with.

I suspect my daughter will not change her name, but you never know. Just as I had to debate myself for a few months, Jen will have to make her own decisions. We all have to make our own decisions about who we want to be and how we will balance roles as professionals, partners, and parents.