Summertime Sadness

This has been the hardest summer. Foolishly, I believed that the tragedy of the summer was over as July became August. But then my brother had to go under the knife for a serious shoulder surgery that keeps him out of work for six months (he's at home recovering but it's a rough road ahead). And then Alex's 93 year-old grandmother took a bad spill that fractured her spine and many bones in her face (she's recovering in a rehab facility). And then my first cousin's husband suffered a heart attack (the verdict is still out on his recovery as he's still in the hospital).

I feel like most people around me can't begin to grasp the kind of anxiety and depression that go along with suffering such a profound loss. Many try to relate, but unless you've gone through it yourself, it's impossible to understand. I don't blame them - I wish I were in their position too! I try to look on the bright side, but the bright side doesn't include my dad and it never will. I just can't be happy right now, and according to my therapist, that's normal.

Alex is a fantastic partner and has worked overtime to try to help me put my life back together again - taking me on sailing adventures, celebrating our 4 year anniversary with a special dinner, and just being there in general. And my close friends have been a savior. That saying about not knowing who your friends are until things go south, well I can say from first hand experience, that the friends who have been there for me as I wallow in my despair are worth more than their weight in gold. I'm so grateful

A short rant:
I don't have room in my life for the people who don't know what to say to me and remain silent. If you care, you must be there. Period. Some may disagree with my philosophy, but it's what I believe. I'm sure that in the future, some from this small group of folks will reach out to me. And I will do unto them just have they have done unto me - I'll be silent.

I still walk around with shaky legs. I sometimes awake with a jolt at odd hours of the night but often I can't sleep at all. Sometimes I burst into tears walking down the street. Most days, at some point, a horrible wave of anger overwhelms me and an unbearable sadness washes over that anger. Other days I feel totally numb. Losing a parent cannot be compared to any other type of loss. It has its own chapter in the book of horribly sucky things that happen over the course of your life.

As Queen Elizabeth II said it so perfectly: Grief is the price we pay for love.

Green Mountain State

Alex is an avid skier. Up until this winter, I had never been skiing. The thought of sliding down a slippery freezing cold mountain with my feet strapped in flat planks of plastic did not sound fun. But, after much convincing (and 3 and a half years of dating), Alex made plans for a ski trip to Vermont. He enrolled me in ski school - and after a few hours, I fell in love with the sport. The first class was extremely elementary. I learned to put on my skis, how to glide to a stop, how to fall properly... but by the end of the day, I was sliding down the bunny slope. After 4 days in ski school, I headed down my first green. I loved it so much that I convinced Alex to go on another ski adventure. During our second trip, I conquered a few blues. It was bittersweet watching the snow melt.

But it's been a particularly brutal summer for me and my family after my dad passed away.

It all started about 10 years ago, my dad had an aortic dissection (basically a tear was discovered in his aorta and it had to be patched up) which caused him to have a stroke. While the surgeons were in there, they gave him a double bypass and put an artificial piece into his aorta to fix the tear. After a long recovery, he was back to normal... or so we thought. About a year ago, we noticed dad wasn't his normal self - he struggled to make the Monday evening tennis matches that he loved so much, he was out of breath often, he became forgetful to the point where we all became frightened. Yet, his cardiologist claimed everything was fine. So we pushed my dad to exercise, eat right, and work harder at taking care of himself. Little did we know, the artificial piece in his aorta had sprung a leak.

My mom brought dad to every doctor - the gastroenterologist, pulmonologist, psychologist. The list goes on and on. But when my dad went to the neurologist, he noticed scary low levels of potassium in my dad's system and rushed him to the ER. With the correct amount of potassium being pumped into him through an IV, dad's memory was suddenly back but he remained so so so tired. A week's worth of testing at St. Francis Hospital on Long Island confirmed a really difficult to reach hole in the aortic replacement piece. The surgery was a complicated one, and for it, my dad was taken to Weill Cornell Medical Center (a place I am very familiar with). By then my dad's kidneys had started to fail and it was a cause for concern. His last words to me before he headed into that first surgery were: you're a very good daughter. And I'm eternally grateful for that.

Dad came back from the day long surgery in good condition. He was squeezing hands and responsive. But then things took a turn for the worse when they noticed he was bleeding and had to open him up again. He never really came back from that second surgery. My dad took his last breath with me, my mom, and my brother by his side praying.

The funeral was a blur. I read a eulogy that my dad had prepared months earlier - a beautiful poem about how thankful he was for the years he had that he entitled "Don't Cry for Me."

In the month since, I have struggled to keep it together. I find my mind drifting back to the winter when I was in Vermont, a state dad loved so much. Dad went to camp there as a kid and even attended UVM for his undergraduate studies. I long for the phone conversations with my dad about my growing love of Vermont. I wish I could call him and tell him about the retreat my work team is going on there this summer. My heart breaks every morning when I wake up and every night when I go to sleep.

Losing my dad has shaken the ground under my feet. I have never felt such a deep hole in my heart. I will always think of the words dad chose to live by, a little poem my grandmother used to recite for my dad as a kid: "Live for those who love you, for those whose hearts are true, for the heavens that shine above you, and the good that you can do." I try to live by those words too. I hope I make dad proud.

Who's the fairest of them all?

I've always been pale, or fair skinned as I like to think of it. I've got tons of freckles and beauty marks all over my body. So, naturally, I make an annual trip to the dermatologist to get checked out. Sometimes, he finds something suspicious and needs to biopsy the area. I usually get a friendly phone call letting me know I'm totally fine a few days later. Most often visits end with a "see you in a year, stay out of the sun!"

During my last visit, my doctor noticed something unusual on my neck. So, he removed it to have it biopsied. I went about my business for the next week - waiting to hear "you're fine, it was benign." At the end of the week, that just wasn't the case. My doctor called to tell me that what they found was "neither good nor bad but looked as if it would likely turn into something bad." Once my full report came back, I would face 3 scenarios -
1, he'd see what he could do about the scar, and tell me they got all of the bad stuff;
2, he'd have to remove just a snip more of the bad stuff and I'd be free of bad stuff;
or the dreaded 3, there would be too much bad stuff left for him to remove and I'd be sent to a surgeon.

In my adult years, I've stayed away from the sun. Well, except for that one year in college when I had a subscription to Hollywood Tans.

I was still optimistic when I went in for my results but it was scenario 3 for me.

The dermatological surgeon's office was very fancy - there were biscuits and tea, big leather wing-back chairs, and hard cover copies of Vogue. I soon discovered my Fifth Avenue surgeon also does face lifts and nose jobs for upper-east-side ladies. I felt I was in good hands, literally!

A week later, I was back for my procedure. It took about 40 minutes. The anesthesia was local so I was awake for it but I felt no pain at all. And in the week following with stitches in place, I also felt no pain. No wonder all of the rich ladies go there! Don't get me wrong, it was not pleasant. There was a lot of bandage changing, wound cleaning, difficult showers, sleepless nights, and many many awkward questions about what happened to my neck (my standard response was vampire bite).

Later that week, my pathology came back 100% clear - WHAT A RELIEF!

My follow up appointment to have the stitches out was happily uneventful. And 3 weeks later, I "graduated" from the experience with only a scar on my neck and a clean bill of health. I feel very lucky.

But if anyone asks about my scar, I'm sticking to the vampire story.