Tag: medical

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Taking Her Best Shot

In the life of my beloved Heather Rochat, nothing medical is ever simple.

She’s the one juggling such wonderful conditions as multiple sclerosis, ankylosing spondylitis, Crohn’s disease and a couple of others that would drive spell check absolutely insane.

She’s the one with the list of allergies and sensitivities that looks more like the Terms and Conditions for a software purchase.

If this were a comic book, she’d be all set for her superhero origin story. In this world, she’s mostly set for a lot of doctor’s appointments and unexpected Urgent Care trips.

So I don’t know why I was surprised when even her vaccination turned into high drama.

Like most Americans, we’ve been mentally singing “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” since an early stage in the pandemic. Heather has been especially eager –  her immune system has more compromises than a last-minute budget deal, so the sooner that all of Chez Rochat got inoculated, the better.

Finally, the calls and emails started to arrive. One by one, each of us got the first poke. Heather’s appointment came last, on a fine Saturday morning that seemed to project blue skies ahead.

Jab. Wait. Return. Simple, right?

One more time. When we’re talking about Heather, nothing medical is ever simple.

“I don’t feel too good,” she said after pulling up in the driveway.

Alarm bell. Yup. Heather had a lovely rash across her shoulders and along her neck. And a little confusion into the bargain.

Allergic reaction. Again.

Aargh.

At moments like this, it’s easy to feel stuck. We’ve all had a taste of that, right? The light at the end of the tunnel that turns out to be an oncoming semi. The “few more weeks” that keeps stretching on and on. The crisis that keeps popping up its head like a Whac-a-Mole game.

When it’s all dragged on so long, it’s oh-so-tempting to give up. Sometimes it doesn’t even seem to matter if the news is good or bad. Some folks throw off precautions too soon, believing the worst is clearly over. Some simply quit out of fatigue and despair.

But it’s still about all of us. And we’re still in the fight.

And when you stay the course, hope has a chance to pay off.

In Heather’s case, she won on the long odds.

We talked to an allergist a couple of days later. Yes, he said, it had been an allergic response. But based on 4,000 similar cases he’d seen, it wasn’t severe enough to prevent dose no. 2 from going ahead. Just keep the appointment and stay a full hour afterward in case of trouble.

But that was it. No having to seek out Johnson & Johnson single-shot clinics. No need to encase Heather in a protective bubble for the rest of her days. Just a brief setback that didn’t have to be permanent or severe.

For now, we could exhale.

For today, we’d won after all.

Sure, we’re still crossing our fingers a little bit. The unexpected could still happen on the second poke. But that’s the way of it for all of us, right? The unexpected can always arrive. All you can do is do the right thing, give yourself the best odds possible, and then pray that you’re ready for whatever happens next.

I think we are. As a family. As a nation. So long as we hold together.

We know what we need to do. We just need to keep doing it until we’re in the clear.

And in a complicated world, maybe that’s pretty simple after all.

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Just for Kicks

If Paul Bunyan had a dog, he would probably be a lot like Big Blake.

For those just joining us, Blake is our English Labrador of heroic proportions. Say the word “food” and he becomes an irresistible force. Say the word “vet” and he becomes an immovable object. Like a furry giraffe, he can steal leftovers straight out of the kitchen sink; like a canine billy goat, he has consumed everything from aluminum foil to baby wipes and lived to tell the tale.

And at night, it seems, he can kick with a speed and power worthy of Babe the Big Blue Ox.

My wife Heather has been the most frequent witness to these Leg Strikes of Unusual Velocity. This is due to a combination of two simple facts:

1) No matter where Blake the Mighty lies on the bed, his feet are invariably pointed in her direction.

2) I have apparently inherited from my father the ability to sleep through nearly anything, including the blows and lashings of a domesticated earthquake.

Still, I haven’t been entirely oblivious. ( A phrase that could apply to many a husband on many an issue, now that I think of it.) This has been going on for a few months and has become, as the King of Siam liked to say, a puzzlement to ourselves and our veterinarian.

We know it’s not a seizure, because we can wake him instantly from it.

It doesn’t seem to be simple doggy dreams, based on the length and the frequency.

Lab tests so far haven’t shown anything dangerous.

Medicines have slowed the episodes down – a little – without stopping them and even a surreptitious video from Heather’s phone has yielded no clues.

And of course, Blake’s wondrous gifts have yet to include the ability to speak English, so he can’t give us any direct hints as to whether this is the Labrador version of a senior moment, or a reaction to arthritis stiffness, or secret instructions from his masters on the moons of Pluto.

And so, the nightly screenings of “The Hound of the Baskervilles” meets “Chariots of Fire” continue. As do the bruises on Heather’s legs. And our general mystification.

On reflection, I suspect I’ve got a lot of company.

I don’t mean the regular bouts of Canine Kung Fu. (Though if anyone knows where I can get a cheap set of catcher’s shin guards, Heather would really appreciate it.) But the feeling of trying to understand an uncomfortable situation with few or no clues is something that most of us have experienced far too often. Especially when it involves someone we love.

It’s the feeling every parent has had when a young child is sick and can’t explain the symptoms.

It’s the feeling anyone with a nonverbal friend or relative has had when trying to figure out “What’s wrong?” from scattered clues.

It’s the feeling just about anyone has when staring at the news of an increasingly chaotic world and asking “Why?” without response.

It feels helpless. Even frightening. But in the midst of it, all of us are doing one thing right.

We’re paying attention.

Maybe we won’t solve the problem right away, or at all. But if we’re even trying to struggle or understand, then our attention is where it needs to be. On the ones we love. On the ones that hurt. On the problems that need solving and the people who need help.

We’re not turning away or making it someone else’s problem.

We’re taking it into our heart.

That’s where it starts.

And so, our own Saga of Big Blake continues. And with enough love, and attention, and bruise ointment, maybe this particular piece of the world’s problems will finally yield to us.

And that’s nothing to kick about.

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A Day in Emergency

Missy lay back in the emergency room bed, exhausted. After the day she’d had, neither Heather nor I could blame her.

Too much crying. Too much pain. Missy had been done with this long before her medical team had, and that meant she turned into 97 pounds of pint-sized stubborn. The vomiting hadn’t helped, nor had the “I gotta go potty-o” trips that repeatedly produced nothing.

We’d had to come, though. Abdominal pain can’t be ignored. Especially the sort that transforms a face into a living mask of hurt, a tragedy mask wrapped in wordless agony.

So here we were, and here we stayed for the longest five hours on Earth. Heather and I had been this route before – in fact, with my wife’s many chronic illnesses, Heather was something of an emergency room veteran.

But not with Missy. Never for Missy.

In more than six years of caring for our developmentally disabled ward, we had never once had to bring her to the ER. Colds, yes. Bugs, sure. But never anything that needed more than bed rest, patience, and a quiet reminder of “Don’t pull your hair, Missy.”

We could feel the difference now.

At the best of times, Missy is a quiet person. She isn’t non-verbal – in fact, she’s “chattier” than she used to be – but even so, her use of words tends to be pretty sparing. In those moments, translation tends to rely on facial expression, body language, and a glossary of common phrases, filtered through the context of the moment. (For example, “book” can mean an actual book or it can mean her ever-present, filled-past-the-brim purse.)

The three of us communicate well. But when the moment of pain hit, Missy didn’t have the words to explain it. And that’s scary, on both sides of the conversation.

No one likes being helpless. And few things are more helpless than to see someone you love in pain, without being able to do anything about it.

We all know that one, don’t we? Whether it’s a night in the hospital with a relative in pain, or a headline that screams of disaster visiting friends and family across the country, it opens the same doors. That desperate need to help that can’t find resolution, however hard we try.

And when the person involved can do so little to help themselves – the very old, the very young, the disabled – it only gets magnified.

Yes, this is part of how we know we’re human. This is the heart showing that it can feel need, empathize with pain, and spur us beyond ourselves. It’s how we know the depth of our bonds, as a family and a species.

But when all that potential has nowhere to go, it hurts. You find ways to help, but they never seem enough. Maybe they are. Maybe even our smallest gestures mean something on the other side of the divide. I hope so.

It finally seemed to for Missy.

Blood tests. An X-ray. A CT scan.  And in the end, some good news – no appendicitis, no bowel obstruction, none of the worst possibilities that Heather and I had been fearing. The meds were helping her through, the pain was receding. Everyone could go home.

We didn’t have final answers today. For now, those could wait. For now, it was enough to be together, to have been together. To have “normal” back, however fragile it might be.

No, you can never do enough.

But sometimes you can do enough for now.

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Horton Hears an Owww!

There’s a place in your head where your cranium sits,

And it craniates daily without throwing fits,

But sometime last December, my cranium crashed,

Making thinking as hard as a week-old Who-Hash,

 

There came first a wave,

Pounding hard as it came,

Dimming down all the lights,

Blotting out my own name,

And when the knife-pain came after,

(As knife-pains will do),

I was sure as a Cat with Thing One and Thing Two.

 

“It’s a migraine!” said I, in a voice mighty quiet.

If you don’t know why quiet, I suggest you should try it.

For a migraine’s a headache scaled up just a few,

To the factor of five hundred seventy-two!

 

Had it happened but once, well that might be just life,

But I soon found that daily I met with that knife,

And my doctor said “Hmm,” with that doctorly eye,

“Why not come place your head in this fine MRI.”

 

So it hummed and it thrummed as I lay in the drum,

And I waited to see just what answers would come,

(I also did learn in my lengthy long lying,

I could quote Alice’s Restaurant, without trying!)

 

And my doctor said “Humm,”

And she asked me to come,

To see what transpired in that rumbly drum.

 

And I saw there … a spot.

Really, almost a dot.

In the midst of my brain,

Where a dot should be not.

 

Now a spot can be deadly or nothing at all,

Just a mark of the chalk on your cranium wall,

But as we looked it over, we couldn’t help stewing,

Just what is this dot? What the heck is it doing?

 

 

Is it a lesion? A mark of MS?

A tumor that does who-knows-what-can-we-guess?

Or simply a scar from when really-young Scott

Hit his head? (I’m told that this happened a lot.)

 

I get slightly more anxious

With each passing hour,

I just want to know,

(They say knowledge is power)

As though knowledge would make all my problems go “Poof!”

“Enough with these questions now! Give me some proof!”

 

For we’ve puzzled and puzzed til our puzzlers were sore,

After all, we declare, that’s what puzzlers are for,

It’s hard to admit, faced with puzzling stuff,

We might never know “all” – we might just know “enough.”

 

And if we find something that puts down the pain,

All the waving and stabbing and pounding the brain,

I’ll be happy for now, though I’d still like to view,

Just what kind of dotting that dot likes to do.

 

So we’ll poke and we’ll pry,

Seeing if we can spy,

Things that are so important yet lost to the eye.

 

And if something be seen,

Be it yellow or green,

Or even some new hue, like blue-red-gra-zine,

I’ll tell every fact and I’ll keep you apprised.

(That’s the value of knowing the newspaper guys.)

 

But if you have a spot or a dot of your own,

And you’re longing to see more than doctors have shown,

Take comfort, though comfort may hide far from view.

It can still come to me, it can still come to you.

 

With patience and calm, may we all come to see,

Just “enough” of our needs for a small guarantee,

That somehow our problems may each be turned loose,

Now, farewell – for I’m calling a truce of the Seuss!