Chrissy, Give Me The Big Knife!

Surgery.

A word people most don’t like to hear unless you are a surgeon and that is what you do for a living but when you are the one going to be on the table, I would say that’s a hard pass. 

But tomorrow that’ll be me. The one who is going to be on the table. 

It has happened kind of fast. I had some tests done at the end of September and here we are mid-November and it’s almost go time. I have been having some minor female issues and it appears surgery is the appropriate course of action. 

For a planner like me, this development has put a wrench in my schedule. I don’t like the fact that I will be off work for a few days. I don’t like that this is happening a few days before Thanksgiving. I don’t like that a part of me I came into the world with will no longer be a part of me tomorrow. Yes, there is so much not to like. 

I am no stranger to surgery. I’ve had close to five in my lifetime. My very first surgery happened when I was seven years old. I was a child who had lots of ear infections. I am not sure if things are the same way now, but back then the answer was tympanostomy tubes - small plastic tubes that are inserted into the ears to help with fluid drainage. 

I found out about my very first surgery days after my mother’s father had passed away. It was a crisp, cold November day, much like it is now, and I recall my mom and I sitting in a booth at Stan’s Restaurant in White Oak. We were trying to process the news just delivered to us at the doctor’s office and I had a few questions. 

Having experienced a funeral just a few days prior, I was wondering about my own mortality. It’s funny how much I remember about this experience. I remember asking my mother if I was going to die and how she tried to console me. I was staring at the squiggly lined tabletop waiting for my French toast as she spoke. I was just wishing I could make it all go away. 

 

My recollection of the surgery is fuzzy of course but I don’t remember anything bad. (And believe me, I would have remembered anything bad.) I was thirsty when I woke up wearing a fashionable blue hospital gown and wishing I could just be in my bed. The hospital staff made such a fuss over me and how well I had done. I even got a brand-new coloring book;  a special gold McKeesport Hospital coloring book with a bunny on the cover that I am positive can be found somewhere in my parents’ home.

I had two to three tubes surgeries throughout the course of my childhood, plus a few other procedures as an adult. None of the experiences were bad although I would have preferred not to have them at all but as they say life happens. This upcoming experience is one I have tried to resolve in my mind and I think I am getting there. A recent visit to a health professional helped considerably. 

We talked about all of the positives surrounding having the surgery; having a good support system, having the sick days to use, having the new Beatles documentary to watch during my recuperation period. (Ok, we didn’t talk about that but you know I’ve been thinking about it.) And oh, I almost forgot to mention the Thanksgiving leftovers that will only be a room away. 

 

I can see it now. 

Me: “I’m feeling a little sore. Maybe I need some extra whipped cream on that piece of pie?”

I recently re-watched the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks and he performed tooth surgery on himself without anesthesia or the proper instruments. I don’t need to worry about any of that either thank goodness. 

As I mentioned earlier, I am a planner and I never would have planned any of this but it is nice to know the timing, while not great, isn’t that bad. I can have a prepared holiday honey-do list that may or may not get done and I need to allow myself to be ok with that. I have a book to read and a few shows to watch but the only thing I have to do is get well.

So, in the meantime, send some good vibes my way and maybe some extra stuffing and oh yes, lots of whipped cream.

Till Death Do Us Part

  

Death and life.

Life and death. 

This past weekend, my husband and I attended our first wedding in four years. The ceremony was held at the amazing gothic Sacred Heart cathedral in Shadyside. 

It is a treasure you take for granted if you live around here. When you step inside, you are transported to Paris, Cologne or Florence and are immediately lost in the architecture and little nuances embedded in every inch of the impressive structure from the tile floor to the wooden ceiling. 

It is the perfect setting for a Cinderella-like bride to walk down the aisle, accompanied by a man in uniform, to join with her forever love. It was very romantic. But when you take away all the visuals and listen to the words, it becomes a good exercise in marriage evaluation; especially for couples who have been on a journey for decades. 

I get emotional at weddings for many reasons but I guess it is mainly because my husband and I are so far removed from that new love stage. For couples hearing the ‘to have and to hold’ and ‘to cherish’ it sounds absolutely lovely. But when you add the  ‘in sickness and in health’, ‘richer and poorer’, ‘til death do us part’ things get a little less dreamy. 

When you’ve been married 22 years, and you’ve got multiple teenagers in the house, you are in the thick of the less dreamy part. Lately, when my husband and I wake up in the morning, I whisper, “Let’s run away.” He whispers, “Ok.” and then closes his eyes for a few more winks of sleep. 

For us, there is nowhere to run but we also know there is nowhere else we would rather be. We are in it together and no matter how hard it gets, we understand what we vowed to do decades ago. And with that he gets up and makes our coffee and oftentimes he’ll bring me my first cup. It’s no diamond ring or view of a Tuscan village but, at this point, caffeine is our love language.

As luck would have it, the DJ played our first dance song during the wedding reception. It was an exciting moment for us to hear the Beatles “Something” as we danced near the new bride and groom. Old love and new love may look different but deep down inside they are the same. Comfort, trust and affection - yep, we’ve still got it. 

Just a few days after the wedding, I found myself standing in a hospital room. I stood there holding my aunt’s hand and she attempted to comfort her husband of 56 years. My uncle was hooked up to a ventilator to help him breathe. He had been sick for a few months and he took a turn for the worst. A priest came to give him his last rights. 

My aunt said something that was both beautiful and heartbreaking in the same breath. 

“I don’t want you to go but this is how it has to be.”

To love someone enough to not want to see them suffer. To love someone enough to put their needs in front of your own. To recognize the gift of 5 decades of marriage, thankful for each day you’ve shared, both good and bad, and knowing your time together is nearing its end. At that moment, I saw those marriage vows, the ones I heard just a few days prior, come to life before my very eyes and only then did I truly understand what they are all about.

Death and life.

Life and death. 

In the same breath they give and they take away. But the great uniter is hope. Hope that we will one day be together again with those we love after they depart. The hope that love never dies and goes beyond this life and transcends into the great unknown. 

Seeing love from all sides in the past week has been eye opening. I can only hope that I can carry the lessons I’ve learned and truly celebrate the gift I’ve been given. Yes, my husband and I are in the less dreamy stage of marriage and the days of flirting, rapid fire kisses, and Sunday Fundays have been replaced by quick dinners, grocery shopping and Home Depot runs, there is beauty in those as well.

I wish my newlywed friends the gift of a long, loving, and fulfilling marriage. I wish my aunt and uncle a love that lasts until the end of time.

*My blog is featured in the On My Mind column of The Valley Mirror Newspaper each week. The paper serves the Steel Valley and Woodland Hills communities.

I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends

No phrase written by Lennon-McCartney has ever been truer. But in my case, I think we should add: and their friends and their friends and so on. 

Let's go back a little before we get into it. This story is about shoes. Lots and lots of shoes. As a member of the parent board for my daughter's marching band, we were looking for ways to make money - ways that didn't require a lot of effort but yielded a nice profit. You see, many organizations are trying to bounce back after the pandemic forced regular fundraisers to be scaled back or cancelled. We needed to start thinking outside the box. 

What do I do when I need to think outside the box? I go to Google. That is where, after typing in 'outside the box fundraisers', I learned about the shoe drive. 

An organization based in Orlando collects shoes for distribution among 25 countries; countries like Haiti where 60 percent of their population live below the poverty line. The shoes help create jobs by giving people inventory to set up their own micro-business. Selling is a way for people, with limited education, to work, make a living wage and provide affordable footwear to people who need it. 

So, collecting shoes would not only help our organization but also help others far away. Win-win in my book. Our band would get a check based on the number of bags of shoes collected calculating the exact figure per pound. Easy right? Well, wait...just how many shoes did we have to collect? 

2,500

Yes folks, two thousand five hundred pairs of shoes in two months. 

The Orlando company is great and assigns a coach to help each group. They send you marketing materials, bags, rubber bands and boxes to help with the collection of the shoes. They want you to succeed but you need to be willing to put in the time and realize this kind of fundraiser takes a village. Our band needed to go beyond our membership of 40 families and reach out to our entire school district. 

We had collection bins set up at four local churches. We had boxes set up at both our elementary and Jr./Sr. high school. We also had a collection bin at our local municipal building. We used social media heavily to keep the word out about our shoe drive and those posts were shared by friends and their friends and so on. 

To be honest with you, there weren’t many days I didn’t end up with a few bags of shoes in my van. Since I work at our elementary school, co-workers were pretty consistent with giving me shoes. The church and township bins were frequently full. Many of the donations came from people I never met. I had a local Brownie troop contact me to see how they could help out. But many donations came from my Facebook friends, my neighbors, and my family. 

To say there weren’t days when I wondered if we could actually do this would be a lie. We had a bag check off sheet and my fellow board members and I felt like the little engine that could every time we marked off a filled bag. (Each bag needed to contain 25 pairs of shoes.) I think we can, I think we can. 

We held drive thru events where people could pull up to the school and drop shoes off. These were very successful. People shared stories about having a kid in marching band a long time ago and remembering when they were the ones fundraising. Local businesses donated boxes of shoes that were discontinued and they couldn’t sell.

Our fundraising coach told us there would be two weeks when our donations would be the highest - the first week of the drive and the last. Well in our case, our last week was gangbusters. We needed to fill one hundred bags of shoes and we went over that by 11 bags. It seemed like the shoes just kept coming during our final week and we really felt the love. 

I didn’t know what to expect when we first kicked off this fundraiser.  I could not have imagined the way our community would come together to support our marching band. If I was having a bad day, finding one of our collection bins full of shoes was an instant mood booster. Finding a bag of shoes on my porch was like a visit from Santa. 

What is my take away from all of this? Well, for one, people have a lot of shoes. People appreciated motivation to clean out their closets. But most of all, people are generous. People are good and want to help. So, if you have any challenge facing you always remember to get a little help from your friends.

*My blog is featured in the weekly column On My Mind in The Valley Mirror - a newspaper that serves the Steel Valley and Woodland Hills communities.