There must be something in the water…

[Author’s Note: Nine years after my husband’s first symptoms and a zillion changes in who I am and how I think, I read this post occasionally and consider deleting it. While I would still dearly love to have a family with my husband and experience the wonder of bringing a brand-new life into the world, the panic over when and how that might happen lost its grip on me some time ago. I am leaving it here, at least for now, because this was me at one time, and these feelings put me in a dark place I never thought I would escape. I know that there are other women out there who feel this wound deeply. Perhaps one of them will read this and feel a little less alone.]

That’s what people say when all the women in the office start getting pregnant at the same time.  I’ve heard it a billion times, and each time I want to wipe those sweet little grins off their sweet little faces and demand the exact location of this alternative “fountain of youth”!    It seems that, in any group of women, like penguins diving off a cliff, one woman gets pregnant and soon the whole group is shopping maternity and cooing over Gymboree ads and Pottery Barn Kid catalogs.  One by one, all my female friends and family (even my baby sister!) have succumbed to the apparent thrill of seeing their bodies change while they happily play hostess to an alien invader who changes their sleep schedule and hip measurements forever.  One by one, friends have become unavailable for meeting for lunch or coffee, and long afternoon strolls on the beach with them are a thing of the very distant past.    I sit alone in the pedicure chair wondering what went wrong.  Where did everybody go?  Was there a fork in the road that I missed?  Where was that proverbial memo?

The problem, really, isn’t even that all my friends have kids and I’m too busy working or shopping to bother.  I’m DYING to have kids!  My life has been about caring for children!  I’ve been taking care of other people’s children since…well, since forever!  I began watching my sister at five when my parents needed to run to the corner store and spent every summer from eleven years old on babysitting for all my spending money.  I nannied, taught preschool and elementary school, and am like the Pied Piper when it comes to other people’s children at parties.  If there is a baby at a gathering, you can bet I’ll be holding that baby at some point during the evening.

It’s apparent to everyone around me that I should have kids already, and the questions have begun to come at me with more frequency.  “Do you have kids yet?”  That ‘yet‘ rings in my ears all night long.  That three letter word that reminds me of the insistent pounding of my biological clock stomping its foot on the hardwood floors.  Like many women in their early 30’s, I sit on the brink of uncertainty.  While other women are gleefully reveling in their reproductive bliss, I’m left wondering if all my planning to “do it right” was all it was pumped up to be.  Education?  Check.  Marriage?  Check.  House?  Cars?  Check.  Check.  I did it all right!  I did and have everything a girl is supposed to do and have before becoming a responsible parent!  Excuse the tantrum for a moment, but I WANNA BE A MOMMY!!!

I know what most people would say, and it’s not just baby fever, and please don’t tell me anymore that I have plenty of time or it will happen when it’s supposed to happen for me.  No one knows how much time my body might have left, and it’s impossible to know if it’s ever going to happen at all!  If it were a matter of just having a baby, I could go to any of my friends’ and neighbors’ and cuddle any number of babies all day long.  I simply long for the experience of creation…the experience of taking my love for my husband and creating a family.  I want to watch the evolution of the love that the two of us share as it shifts and grows to envelop someone that is a part of each of us.

I am in the unique situation of being completely prepared and able to start a family, with a husband who is as gung-ho about starting a family as I.  So what am I whining about?  In the end, it comes down to something as insignificant as a teeny, tiny, spiral-shaped bacteria.  We’ve been taxiing around on the longest runway ever all because these spirochetes have been swimming around in my husband’s blood stream, and the buggers won’t DIE!  So we wait…and wait…and, oh yeah, then we wait some more!  Every treatment and new medication, hopefully, takes us one step closer to resuming life as normal and moving forward.  He could, potentially, face this condition for the rest of his life.  What does this mean for our ability to reproduce?  No one can say.

So, I have no idea when, or if, I’ll get to start that family.  Maybe I’ll never know the feeling of growth and movement that comes from carrying something that is entirely me and my husband.  If he doesn’t ever fully recover, perhaps we will have to come to terms with adoption as the way our family was meant to come together.  I’m nowhere near that yet.  Not yet.  The truth that I may have some time yet still lingers at the back of my mind, and I am clinging to it with every fiber of my being.

So moms, please be kind.  Please be gentle as you are whipping out photo key chains and gushing over your babies’ latest spit bubbles.  I know you sometimes wish you were kickin’ it at the Coffee Bean with me on a lazy afternoon.  I wish you were there too.  You did leave me behind after all.  (I don’t blame you for it.  I’d have done the same thing!)  But that blended mocha just isn’t the same without you.

I’m a woman on the outside, looking in as if you have exclusive access to the best shoe sale in history.  I can only get a peek at the selection through the window, and the envy is strong.  So let’s make a deal.  I promise not to tell you how late I was in bed this morning if you promise not to detail every tiny moment of bliss you’ve had while watching your baby sleep.  And when you find you’re in the midst of women who swear there’s something in the water, PLEASE get some for ME!

rhyme and reason

I have had an impossibly difficult time trying to decide how to begin this new adventure.

Perhaps, I should start by talking about Lyme disease.  It is, after all, why I’m here.  I live in California, where Lyme disease barely registers on the radar of most health professionals.  Most West Coast residents don’t even know that Lyme is something from which they should protect themselves, much less what it looks like or what to do when they actually get it.  And so, a smart, little, spiral-shaped bacteria found its way inside my husband’s body and changed our lives, quite presumably, forever.  We’re coming up on four years of dealing with the effects of the infection, just in time for our ten-year anniversary, and we still don’t know what the final cure will be or when it will come.  Will I ever have my husband back the way he was?  The jury is still out.  But, then I figure, I have plenty of time for making you cry.  More on that later.

Since our Lyme journey began, I began work on a novel that I hope will help to shed some light on what chronic disease can do to a young, thriving couple. Who and what is left when life suddenly shuts down and reality sets in that the person you promised your life to may be changed forever?

Different versions of the same story are written all over the Internet in chronic disease support groups and chat rooms online.  But it’s the outcome that matters. More often than not, patients who suffer long enough end up alone.  Understanding chronic disease is next to impossible, even for health care professionals. Family and friends can’t help but burn out after of countless cancellations, lack of contact, and the changes in personality that are inherent with the development of life-long pain or chronic disease.  The human instinct is to move forward, move on.  Unlike our more fire-challenged ancestors, people rarely die anymore when they are left behind, but they are still left behind to die every day.

After believing they had everything to live for, and then having it all stripped away, the characters in my book continue to hope.  And, so do we.  But, leave that for the book.  I have to finish it first, and I really like fairy tales, so it could have unicorns in it tomorrow.  I’ll let you know.

And that’s it.  That’s what I hope to offer you as I venture out on the next part of this bold adventure: an introduction to who I am as a writer, a peek into what it means to ‘live with Lyme’, and maybe even a chance to see me in a way you never expected.

I hope you enjoy the ride.  I promise it was bumpier the first time around.