Afternoon Sun

Last week I couldn’t muster a substantive post. The best I could do was a page about why I wasn’t writing more. I struggled with Should I or Shouldn’t I send around notification that the only thing I was putting up was a weak explanation of why I wasn’t doing anything else. It seemed a waste of people's time to read notification that I wasn't posting much of anything, so I let last Sunday go by.

As it turns out, I heard from quite a few people who were wondering what was going on. So, I learned something about this whole blogging thing. I appreciate those of you who check in each week. Thank you for bothering with me!

This week, I was moved to think ahead by remembering back. It started with a bad day. You know...when you look bad, you feel bad and you probably even smell bad.

It had mostly been a nasty day at work. Dealing with clients in crisis can be so consuming. They are in the throes of divorce, or fighting for custody of their children, and they are needy and sometimes I feel like a lot of them are hanging all over me, clinging like some living thing with claws that won’t let go. Not that I blame them; I don’t. It is my job to untangle their mess and make it better for them. It’s just hard sometimes to remember that their mess is not my own.

And, of course, I do have mess of my own, like everyone else. This was one of those days on which it was hard to feel happy, and even harder to think things would get better.

I decided to lose myself in some writing. Escape is such a friend at times. I threw open the French windows on my sun porch and welcomed the music of birds in our woods. They seemed to be harmonizing with the sound of the pond fountain tumbling and splashing. The lilies—pink and yellow and orange—danced on the water while they settled for the evening. As if on cue, a breeze freshened my face, the way breezes do, and then there it was, the feeling better part.

Off in the dining room, the afternoon sun had cast itself through golden lace and shadows on the floor. This little sliver of beauty reminded me that the doldrums always pass. It could be in the next minute or maybe on the next day, but sooner or later something lovely will happen. When it does, your perspective shifts, your resilience factor notches up a peg or two, and you are able to deal with life's challenges, sometimes even with a smile on your face.

 

Ten years ago, the feds were trying to put Cecil in prison for the rest of his life. We were engaged in battle, consumed by hatred and fear that I thought would never go away. But then it did.

Ten years ago, Cecil was diagnosed with cancer. He lay down to chemotherapy and radiation, and all that goes with both of them. He nearly died, but then there was remission. His remission gave way to relapse, which was followed by another remission. But then came MDS, a secondary anemia.

           

Down again, but lifted up by the news that there was treatment for MDS. Except then we learned the treatment wouldn’t work for long and sure enough it didn’t. Cecil stayed alive only by transfusions, and then they weren’t working anymore either and the only thing left was the death that had been stalking him.

As we readied ourselves for that darkness, a light crept in through some door that hadn’t been completely closed, and there was hope again. If he met an endless list of criteria and, if two suitable donors could be found, he might be a candidate for a stem cell transplant. Before we had even contemplated what all that would entail, they told him to come on; it was time to get started. Another crisis had passed.

This transplant was so scary no one should attempt to reduce it to words, though I have tried a time or two. Let's just say it was all encompassing. Tubes and alarms and sterile gowns and suffering things none of us had ever even thought about. Cecil clung to life’s precarious edge while everyone around him jumped every time he sneezed or coughed, and they had good reason to. The slightest fever could mean he would die before the sun came up. At first, they measured his lifespan in terms of days. Then, people started talking about weeks, and then, cautiously, the word months came back to the vocabulary. When his doctor said something about the end of his first year, we started to think maybe he might make it.

When we were going through this, life seemed to end at our door. There was no promise of anything. I only half slept at night, reaching every hour to touch Cecil’s face, hoping I would not feel the heat from several inches away; hoping there would not be yet another race to the hospital in the middle of the night.

At the time, all of this was all there was, but Cecil fought off one insurgent after another until, finally, they stopped coming at him. Gradually, there was color in his face again and he could walk instead of shuffle and—dare we believe it?— he was stable. Though I never consciously transitioned, suddenly I was looking at him without trying to memorize his face for fear he’d be gone tomorrow. I started leaving the house without worrying I’d come home to find him lying unconscious on the floor. Pillows on the couch are actually in place these days because he is not camping out there all day long. He’s up and taking on projects. 

Cecil is skinny enough to be cast in the part of Dead Man Walking, but I used to complain that he was too heavy. Yesterday, he came with me to a gathering of Valley Writers, a wonderful group of friends and writers who work together to make each other's writing better. Cecil yakked their ears off and was actually even spunky.

A few months ago I didn’t dare look ahead to these sorts of things. Now, I can almost take them for granted again. Best of all, we find ourselves talking about more than just his health, and we actually feel it’s okay to laugh. The other day we learned that his stem cell donor, an infant girl, is black.

I bragged that, not only do I have a same sex marriage, but it’s interracial. We informed the kids they are now biracial, and all of us are walking tall because our interesting factor has shot way up. We’ve readied ourselves to be hounded by both political parties because, with our new DNA, we encompass so many voting blocs. By any measure, that alone should be enough to make us happy.

While we were consumed by Cecil’s failing health, and then his transplant, I found it hard to write, and I completely stopped trying to place my book with an agent to get it sold. There just wasn’t enough time or energy or focus. Though I understood the pullback, it was hard to accept. My book is about things that should never have happened; things that could happen to anyone. If there is some cluster of stories that need to be told, I think this one should be among them. When Cecil came home and stopped trying to die, I got busy again.

I believe things come around when and how they are meant to. I waited until the time was right to go forward with my book. When I reached out, I was looking for an agent who understood the significance of what I had to say. Suddenly, he was there. Within a week, I had found the right person. This agent and I are now working to get a proposal out to publishers. With any luck, the book will be picked up and available to readers before too long.

Within the past two months, a storm destroyed maybe a dozen of our trees and toppled them throughout the yard, my son and I had a blowout on a busy highway as night fell in the middle of nowhere, and a broken valve in the boiler caused a flood in the living room. To make sure we were really having fun, one of the dogs went around the house and peed on several rugs. (Obviously there are some issues here that need to be resolved!)

A little side attraction came to me this morning after I got both a flu shot and a shingles vaccine yesterday. Where was my head? Did I really need to get them both at once? Wasn’t it just last week that I got a damn tetanus shot, with the latest whooping cough piggy-backer cuz there’s a new outbreak of something we all thought went out with the Dark Ages, or at least by the fifties?  My left arm feels like it was blown off at the shoulder and threatens never to be the same.

There was a time when each of these things would have sent me to a therapist, or a meditation guru or some sort of relief just short of the bottle. Today, they are but minor inconveniences. My family has traveled a path so littered with hazard that nothing can rattle me anymore. I have come to trust that, however bleak things might seem, they will move away sooner or later. The afternoon sun will always shine through the window again and bring with it the promise of beauty yet unseen. Tomorrow should never be dreaded. It is, by definition, where possibility begins. 

I am happy to say this will be my last post about Cecil's transplant, barring unforeseen developments. There is no need to talk about it anymore because we have moved on and there is much else to bring perspective. Thank you all for bearing with me, and for supporting us through these difficult months.

Behind the Story

My husband, Cecil, is sixty days into his stem cell transplant. Cells from the cords of two infants were introduced on April 3^rd. The babies, as we call them, would compete and, eventually, one would take over. Cecil’s new immune system would come from that child.

We learned both babies were girls and that one of them had B+ blood type and the other was O+. Tests began to show that one of the babies was pulling ahead in the DNA count. We were dying to know which one it was, but the reports didn’t reveal that information. Day after day, counts came in, but the donor cells bore only identification numbers.

Curiosity was getting the best of me and about sixty of our closest people. “Ask them which one it is,” I kept pressing. Cecil said it didn’t matter and he was right. But still, the rest of us wanted to know. The cells came from two different babies. Each baby was a separate child with her own life. One of them would, without knowing it, rescue him. The main story was the stem cell transplant, but the story behind that story was the child herself. It made a difference which one it was. You don’t conjure generic stories; you conjure particular stories. We wanted to put a name to the child that had rescued Cecil and given him life again. She was the story behind the story.

All too often, the best part of a story is not as flashy as the headline. People are drawn to the juicy stuff. So, storytelling finds itself focused somewhere off center, out on the fringes of life’s most common experiences.

When federal prosecutors went after Cecil in their effort to control the practice of pain management, the story should have been about Cecil’s medical decisions and his treatment of patients. Instead, reporters succumbed to temptation and created headlines about silly details of the case that had nothing to do with the charges. It was not until the attention-grabbers ran out, or became old hat, that the media went looking for new material. When they did, they discovered the real story: Cecil was a most unusual physician whose patients were as dedicated to him as he was to them. Only then did media coverage begin to shift. Only then did the public start to get a sense that prosecutors had forced their way into the practice of medicine. People needed to know that story. The media needed to do their job.

That lesson came to me years ago when I was a journalist. My first job was in Providence, Rhode Island, where I was weekend anchor and a general assignment reporter for the CBS affiliated station.

My first week at the station I covered a story about gang violence. We pulled up behind the car of a man who had been shot to death in a drive-by, and I got out to see what was what.  I opened the driver’s door and leaned in. When I put my hand on the back of the seat, I felt something wet and gooey squish between my fingers. It didn’t take long for me to figure out it was the victim’s brain matter. As I hastened my way out of the car, I saw the dead man’s flip-flop still in place on the gas pedal.  Moments before, he had been driving down the street.  Now his brains were sticking to my fingers, and the last vestige of his life was a flip-flop on the gas pedal.

Other reporters quipped about the brains and directed their photographers to get a good shot. I couldn’t get passed the flip flop. On that night’s newscasts, other stations led with Shooting Victim’s Brains Found Splattered on Car Seat. My story was about a young man who had gotten caught up in violence and crime. It was about the reasons he found himself down that wayward path, and it was about the two young children who would grow up without their daddy. Of what use to society was the knowledge that the man’s brains had splattered onto the seat? Yet that's what people talked about.

The very next day, I was dispatched to cover a suspicious odor emanating from a house. We got there as the police arrived and broke down the door. Just inside, the remains of an old man were sprawled on the staircase. Long hair lay around him on the stairs, framing a stark and shriveling face. It was odd because he had begun to decompose, but he was still wearing his red plaid flannel shirt and black ankle-high boots.

I pictured the poor guy tumbling down the stairs. Had he survived for a while and died slowly, alone? Why didn’t anyone notice that he hadn’t been around?  My camera man, Howard, and I looked at each other. For a few seconds, we stood quietly. Then he picked up his camera and said “Go get your story.” To me, the story was an old man who was all alone in life when he died on a staircase. Others framed it in terms of Skeleton Found Sprawled on Stairs After Neighbors Notice Foul Smell. I have little doubt their headlines generated more audience than mine did. But, I think people care more about an old man dying alone than they do about a foul smell in the neighborhood.  

By the end of my first week on the job, I was torn. I knew our audience wanted the blood and gore, but I couldn’t bring myself to be that kind of reporter. I decided to follow a different standard, but it was a constant struggle. One of my last assignments in Providence has stuck with me these many years.  

I was doing a live shot on the railroad tracks, where a man had tried to scoot across in the path of an oncoming train. He didn’t make it. As Howard gave me the cue to go live…in ten, nine, eight, seven… I looked down to gather my thoughts, and saw the accident victim’s detached eyeball resting against my foot. It took me a second to realize what I was looking at and, by the time I did, I was on the air.

For some reason I bent over to pick up the eyeball. It was the sort of grisly find that has sent girls running and screaming throughout the ages, but, inexplicably, I reached down to pick it up with my bare hand. Howard flailed and stomped from behind the camera. He was rolling his hand in an emphatic circle off to his side, reminding me I was on the air and needed to say something now.

           

By my foot was a loose eyeball, with a long something or other stringing out the back and several fleshy strands dangling from the sides. In front of me was a news camera, its imposing red light demanding that I act like a professional and turn this situation around. After what seemed like way too long (especially for Howard), I went with the red light. I talked to the viewers about what had happened on this remote stretch of train track, where a man had acted carelessly in an instant, and then lost everything.

When the live shot ended, another reporter, who had been standing off to the side, came up to me. “Why didn’t you lead with the eyeball?” He asked.

           

“It’s not the story.”

“I’d have gone with it anyway.”

“Then I’m glad it was on my foot and not yours.”

Often, the important story lies behind the flash that feeds morbid curiosity. The real story will expose injustice, educate society, or maybe enlighten the human condition. The real story is not usually the eyeball on the ground.

And so, when we learned that Little Miss B+ had carried the day for Cecil, the story was not Cells From Baby Used in Controversial Medical Procedure. The story for us was that we are connected in ways we have yet to discover to a precious child, who is playing somewhere today as a five-year-old. She and Cecil have the same immune system. She is fighting his battles. A part of her is living within him. We want the child and her parents to know the difference they have made, but likely we will never get the chance to tell them.

Little Miss B+ is the story that lives behind the medical technology. She is the story we should all look for when life’s highlights come our way.

Little Girl Turned Big

One night a couple lifetimes ago we decided it was time to start a family. The next night we decided maybe we had rushed things. Nine months later, our beautiful daughter, Kirstyn, was born.

The 80 mph race to the hospital, though a white knuckler at the time, has mostly faded from memory. The 39 hours of labor, not so much.

We held her every waking moment in ‘the football hold’…it was the only relief any of us found from the miseries of colic. Her second birthday party was an enormous affair, what with the clown, the pony, the puppeteers, the face painting and the full buffet for parents who came with their own toddlers. You might say we got a little carried away, but it seemed the obvious thing to do at the time.

Years passed, second by second and also at lightning speed. We sat with her through night terrors, worked with her through speech therapy, and lathered cream upon her eczema. We clapped and fawned our way through countless performances of Rock and Roll banged out on her kiddy piano, and did our best to remedy the hideous haircuts each of her dolls would suffer sooner or later.

When she was ready to branch out, Cecil ran alongside as she learned to skate, and then again as she learned to ride a bike. She tapped and pirouetted for a while, then played piano. Finally, she punched and kicked her way to a black belt in Taekwondo. We moved through her life as if it were our own. Day and night, we were what she needed us to be, for we had cast ourselves as her champions and never lost sight of what that meant.

I remember the day of her first Homecoming dance. She floated down the stairs, the child I knew concealed beneath a veil of beauty and grace that had made their way to her when I wasn’t looking. When did all that happen? It was as if I was seeing her for the first time. She’d become a young woman before I’d had a chance to say goodbye to my little girl.

I think the change cranked into high gear when Kirstyn was in the eighth grade. That was the year she decided she wanted to go to Harvard. “Wow,” I said almost to myself. “How does one get into Harvard?”

“Straight A’s forever, unusual extra-curriculars, community service, leadership at school, interesting summer enrichment programs, top scores on the SAT and a killer essay.”

“Are you up to all that?” 

“I think I am,” she said. 

She’d barely uttered those words before the feds descended upon our life. For the next five years, prosecutors and their agents were after Cecil with a vengeance that made no sense, but which drove them, nonetheless. Throughout her entire high school experience, Kirstyn’s father was a high profile criminal defendant. She stood like stone at his arraignment and watched him shuffle along in a jumpsuit and shackles. One day in health class, not knowing the connection, her teacher held up an article and wanted to discuss the local doctor’s drug case. Kirstyn stared down at her paper, choking back an assortment of emotions no child should have to endure. 

It was only a matter of time before hungry cameras caught her up and delivered her to page one, above the fold of the newspaper. With that, Kirstyn publically became the daughter of the accused and her world shifted beneath her.

At home, we whispered and wrote notes in case the feds were listening, and we stomached the humility that came to the door in food baskets left anonymously when people knew money had run out. Kirstyn watched her father almost die from cancer and the treatments meant to save him and, in the end, she sat in a courtroom watching him be crucified.

Somehow, through all of this – and much more – the girl never wavered.

She fought her way to a Second Degree Senior Black Belt. She rocked babies in the hospital, big-sistered underprivileged children and sat on her school’s Youth Court. Every Science Fair yielded trophies. Every summer she headed off on some experience of a lifetime. She took the SAT four times before she was satisfied with her score, and she spent six months writing her college admission essay. Determined in her goal, Kirstyn brought home nothing but A’s on every report card. She graduated Valedictorian, and spoke of injustice and prosecutorial excesses at Commencement.

One night, in December of her senior year, Kirstyn called from down the hall. As I walked to her, I could see she was shaking. “What’s wrong?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know. She took my hand and led me to her computer. “I think I just got into Harvard,” she said, barely above a whisper, not daring to believe; not realizing what had just become of her. 

The Welcome to the Class of 2009 message stared from the screen. We stared back at it. Then we squealed like little girls and we jumped up and down like little girls and then we cried like little girls.

Kirstyn’s four years at Harvard were an experience that cannot be described. Overlying it all, of course, was the mystique and the privilege of attending a college of Harvard’s ilk, but most of all, it was the people and the atmosphere and Cambridge and, well, just everything about it. She emerged a vibrant young woman, competent and ready to find some exciting path to take her along to whatever she might do next.

And then, last weekend, Kirstyn arrived in Charlottesville to cover a shift as Cecil’s caregiver. It took but a glance to comprehend his frailty and, with words unspoken, the child became the parent. Each morning, she followed the sunrise to deliver her dad for treatments. Questions from the doctor came to her. Medications, vital signs and blood counts dominated her focus and caused her to take up against recalcitrant behavior. When she caught Cecil huddled under a blanket one night, shivering from the onset of fever, she scolded him. “What are you doing, Dad? Do you want to go back to the hospital? Take that stuff off.” Then she snatched the wool hat from his head and removed the blanket. Throughout the next day, she plied him with fluids. “Don’t argue with me, please. Just drink your water.”

If I look over my shoulder, I can still see Kirstyn dancing in the sprinkler. We still wrap ourselves around her life as we make decisions that will guide and protect her. When I look straight ahead, I see a beautiful woman who has started down the path away from us. It is her life now.

And, though that hurts in spots tucked away beneath the surface, it is among the greatest joys a parent will have. Our little girl has turned big.

View from the Cottage

When Dorothy and Toto took off down the yellow brick road, it was their last hope. They needed to find magic at the other end or they would be forever lost.

The tornado that’s been twisting over me and Cecil has lasted for ten years. When hope was all but gone, we came upon the road. It wasn’t yellow and it wasn’t brick, but there was magic at the other end. Not smoke and sound effects behind a curtain, but medical technology and stem cells from the umbilical cord of a newborn infant, all of it unfolded by a team whose professionalism and dedication leave me speechless. 

A stem cell transplant ain’t milk and cookies, as Cecil puts it. All I can say is his team did it up right.

He left the hospital Thursday. For the first time in a month, he walked outdoors. There were no IV lines traipsing from his body, no tubes down his throat and no needles digging into his hip for marrow. He felt the sun on his skin, smiled at the warmth of it, then made his way to where he had to go…the Cottage.

When we learned he would need to stay close to the medical center for two months after discharge from inpatient, I set about finding the right place for him to recuperate. It couldn’t be ordinary or even pretty good. It had to be the sort of place that takes your breath away, a place that soothes anything that comes upon it. It had to be full of life from deep within.

When I saw the Cottage, I felt I’d found the place from which Cecil would come back to me.

Deep in horse country, set in the middle of pastures and rolling hills, the Cottage has views that cause you to stop and gaze. There are flowers and birds and woods and a blue sky that yields only to sunlight. Tall grass waves at your knees while you wander through fields, the breeze whispering across your face, the scent of lavender drifting with you as if by design. Everywhere you look, there is peaceful beauty.

Though our time here will be enriched by fine things, removed from the pace of life catching us up, it will be riddled with complex battles that have not yet been won or lost. Cecil’s white counts plunged over the last three days and we are desperate to know why. Stem cells from the infants are taking on the wicked witch, but she is powerful and they are young. We sit amidst the chaos and wait, ruby slippers at the ready. When ‘Little Cecilia’ waives her magic wand, we will tap the slippers together, three times, fifty times – whatever it takes – because the best view from the cottage will be the one down the drive and back along the road. There is, after all, no place like home.

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I’d like to thank those of you who have supported my blogging about Cecil’s transplant. It has been helpful to put the experience into words. I will continue to update on his progress each Sunday when I post, but I think it’s time to move on to other topics. There are so many things to think about. I hope you will visit TigerBird Sunrise each Sunday morning and join me in the discussion. Have a great week.

Labor Pains

In my March 25, 2012 post, Babies to the Rescue, I spoke of the two infants whose umbilical cord stem cells would be intravenously introduced into my husband’s body, with the hope they would engraft and produce a new immune system for him. Inasmuch as Cecil’s own defenses had been depleted by Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and the treatments he underwent to put him in remission, the babies’ cells had become his last hope. 

April 3^rd was an exciting day. The Babies (as we had affectionately come to call them) were to be brought on-board. While friends and family followed through a Facebook group page, Baby #1 was brought into Cecil’s room and introduced. You could all but hear a cheer ring out from around the country. That afternoon, Baby #2 came on-board. Another cheer. It was Day Zero…of what would be a one-hundred day ordeal. The waiting began.

We learned the babies were both girls. One’s blood type was B+ and the other’s O+.  We called them Miss B Positive and Miss O Positive.

From then until now, Cecil’s liver has wavered. His appendix has come out. He’s suffered one fever of undetermined origin after another, each accompanied by a new round of diagnostics, each followed by more drugs being pumped into the lines that make entry through his juggler. His lungs have become compromised. His blood pressure has gone up and then down. His gut was infected. He was weak. He was nauseous. There was no appetite. It has been a rough ride.

Then, Day 13 came along. The babies’ stem cells had engrafted and begun to build an immune system. We had new life.

By Day 15 there was a rash, one that looked like something was eating him alive. It seemed the Babies were attacking Cecil. Flickers of hope and optimism extinguished as quickly as they had appeared. As it turns out, though, the rash indicates that the Babies’ cells are cleaning house and, as long as they don’t kill the Host in the process, he is on the road to recovery. Though the rest of us have been white-knuckling it through all of this, Cecil has shown grace and unyielding spirit. 

I'm sure it has been a difficult role reversal for him to be the patient. As labs come in, Cecil is in the bed, but then he is gathering his Johnny and pulling his IV pole over and crawling out to review test results, interpret indications…and to tell his team what doesn’t make sense. He banters back and forth with them in their own language and, at times, actually directs the course of things.

Cecil loves being a doctor. He has been fascinated by medicine since he was a boy. He grew up with three brothers and a sister on the family’s hundred-and-fifty acre ranch in Brownfield, Texas, best described as flat, dusty and barren land in the middle of nowhere. They had geese, pigs, sheep, chickens – you name the animal, it seems there was a family of them on this ranch. 

 

The kids moved irrigation pipe and picked cotton. The boys also branded cattle and, whenever they could get away with it, blew things up. It was a childhood to be remembered.

Cecil’s father was the only doctor for a hundred-sixty miles to the south and a good sixty miles to the north. He made house calls and frequently disappeared into the night to tend to one emergency or another. Cecil would hear the phone ring and he’d be waiting at the door to head out with his dad. One story in particular comes to mind this morning.

Cecil was about thirteen at the time. He went with his dad to the hospital and made himself available near the operating room, hoping this might be the time he’d get to go in and watch. His dad stopped to talk to another doctor, then walked by without looking in Cecil’s direction. The weight of disappointment came swiftly. But then, from just at the door to the forbidden suite, came the words Cecil had imagined for so long, the kind of words that transform a boy into a young man.

“Well, come on, son. Let’s go.” His dad pushed open the doors and walked through. Cecil caught his breath and followed his father in.

Inside the scrub room, his father stripped off his shirt. Cecil did likewise. Then came the pants and the socks and shoes. Cecil stood quietly in his underwear. The nurse disappeared and came back with green scrubs, shoes and booties. Finally, there was a hat and then a mask. Cecil felt like a doctor himself.

At the sink, he and his dad scrubbed. They kept scrubbing, and then they scrubbed some more. Cecil waited for his dad to say it was good enough; his skin was getting raw. They worked in silence, the father and the son. The son copied the father’s every move and he memorized every moment.

After they’d been draped in gowns, the nurse brought gloves. Cecil’s dad slid into his with laser accuracy. Cecil got three fingers into a single hole. A second pair was brought. He tried again. And then a third time. Finally, he got them on. “Don’t touch anything,” the scrub nurse warned him.

Cecil’s father led the way into the operating room. Lights were blazing over the patient, who was draped on the table. She was large. Cecil thought she was bloated, like his calf had been last year. He figured they were there to let out the gas.

As he approached the table next to his dad, who now seemed more like the doctor than his father, Cecil’s nose itched. He scratched it with his hand. Without looking up, his dad intervened. “You’ll have to go stand in the corner, son – away from the patient.” He kept working. Cecil was devastated, but there was no time for self-pity.

The O.R. nurse handed over an instrument. Cecil stood on his tiptoes to see. His view was blocked, but he could tell his dad had just cut the patient open. Cecil’s heart pounded. He wanted to see more. He stretched and leaned this way and that. Suddenly, the nurse walked over to him. “Hold out your arms.”

Puzzled, Cecil complied. The nurse laid a towel across his outstretched limbs. He didn’t say a word. Seconds later, at the table, his father passed something bloody to the nurse. She turned and crossed the distance to Cecil and laid the bloody thing into his arms, then returned to the operating table without speaking.

Cecil looked down into the face of an infant boy. The baby opened his eyes and looked up – an indescribable moment for each of them. One would never remember it; the other would never forget.

And now the stem cells of Little Miss Baby B+ or Little Miss Baby O+ are duking it out with bacteria and viruses, and who knows what else, to save Cecil’s life. One of them will carry the day and become Little Cecilia. She will have embarked on life, and then given it, without realizing the miracle of either event. Cecil, on the other hand, will never forget that he owes each breath to the gift of an infant, like the bloody bundle that opened his eyes and looked up all those years ago.

The Fourth Wall

When I looked in the mirror this morning, a pale and strained face looked back. Bags and dark circles, no make-up. The dirty hair limped to either side. It was a lifeless face of no distinction. But, in here, none of that matters. In a hospital, you don’t care what you look like, and neither does anyone else. You check your sence of social norms at the door, along with your pride, and enter a world removed, where life passes by on the outside and doesn’t look your way. 

My husband, Cecil, has been in the stem cell transplant unit for two weeks now. He has several weeks left to endure. He sits in a bed with a big picture window before him, but he cannot touch what lies beyond the frame. He can see birds visiting trees, but he cannot hear them sing. Leaves dance on their branches, but no rustle makes its way to his ears, and no breeze blows across his skin. He cannot feel or sense or soak up the inspiration of the out-of-doors. Cecil can only sit within his four walls and imagine or remember what he cannot have. It’s the fourth wall that makes the difference. Though this one is benevolent, it completes the isolation, nonetheless. 

For Cecil, life has been reduced to the space in which he is confined. Life is disturbingly small when you are removed from most of what makes it large. In some ways, it’s as if he has been caged up and locked away; as if we are catching a glimpse of what the feds had in mind for him when they tried to put him in prison for the rest of his life.

Just the past two weeks have changed him. How quickly it happens. He is absent from his life. What involves him is here and now, not out there and not what went before. Those things become irrelevant. The same goes for the people in his life. They move forward with the changes that come at them each day. It doesn’t take long before his life, and theirs, have turned different corners and gone their separate ways.  

When Cecil was fighting off the feds, I swore up and down that, even if he were convicted and sent to prison, it would not change us; we would always be the same. I see now how naïve that was. The process of incarceration, by its very nature, does not allow connection. The inmate must forsake the bonds that once nourished him. He must, in fact, let go of his sense of self if he intends to survive. That part begins right away. 

When the feds raided Cecil’s office, they read him his rights, slapped on a pair of handcuffs and delivered him to the jailhouse. An hour earlier, he’d been a doctor seeing his patients. Now he was part of the justice system.  

They came in through the basement of the jail and rode up to an interior hallway. A guard ordered Cecil to sit on a bench, to which he was shackled with a chain that went from his wrists to a hook between his legs. From there, another guard led him off to have his mugshot taken. The inevitable shower while being watched by a stranger followed, then Cecil hurriedly put on the blue pajama pants they handed him. He accepted the blanket and pillow, and dragged the flimsy mat to a cell that would be his. Bright lights drenched the common room just outside the cell. A constant drone filled every space. The windows were at the ceiling - small rectangular inserts of glass, so encrusted with dirt they might as well have been made of wood.  

Early the next morning Cecil was accosted by another prisoner who tried to take the watch I’d given Cecil for our anniversary one year. Others looked on, but no one intervened. It was up to Cecil to set his own course. He got up off the floor, where he’d slept, and shoved the bully into one of the bunks, snarling into the guy’s face, “I think I’ll keep it.” 

It took four days to cut through the prosecutors’ posturing and chest thumping, so Cecil could be released on bond. While the lawyers wrangled in court, I visited Cecil in jail. The elevator doors closed behind me. When they opened, sterile air that smacked of anything but home blew up into my face. There were no smells. No fabric. Lights buzzed overhead.  

Heavy doors to my right clicked open when armed guards pushed a button from behind bullet proof windows. Through the doors, the room was small and without decoration. On the left, a row of chairs sat close together, as though joined in a common experience. Each faced the same sheet of glass, a conspicuous divider between those who were free to go and those who weren’t. On the other side of the glass sat a line-up of men, each distraught and struggling for composure. Walls around them, guards, guns. It was a cage, and they were the encaged.  

Cecil was among them. His hair hung in separate strands, filth somehow already having made its way to him. His face was rigid as he lifted the phone to talk to me. There was so much to say, but neither of us had the heart to say any of it. For a while, we sat and looked into each other’s eyes. We managed small talk and then a guard indicated my time was up. Already, the divide had begun. 

I couldn’t touch Cecil, so I pressed a kiss from my fingers to the glass and got up to leave. When I turned back, his hand was pressed against the kiss. In his eyes, I saw anger and fear. I smiled at him, lingered a few seconds, then disappeared through the heavy doors that slammed shut and locked noisily behind me. 

All of this did such violence to who we were, and it was just the intake process. Imagine where it would lead over time. Imagine life in prison.  

For five years we did battle. For five years, I pictured my husband lying in a darkened cage – alone and desperate – the years of his life escaping him. Thanks to a jury that saw the government’s case for what it was, that ultimate travesty did not make its way to us. But it so easily could have. 

I look up at Cecil, now fighting a different battle. He is confined within four walls, outside of which birds sing and leaves rustle. But, this confinement is different. The tubes and lines running into his neck are giving life, not sucking it from him. Those in control of the process are trying to save him, not knuckle him under. And when it’s over, he will be enriched instead of depleted. The fourth wall will come down and he will pass through to the outside.  

Life has its rough edges. Cecil and I have been snagged by more than a few of them. We have been cut and bruised, and we are slightly bedraggled. But as long as we can feel the wind, life will be full.

Delicate Beauty

The last twenty-four hours have been long. A stem cell transplant travels an unpredictable course but, once you commit to it, there is no turning back. The ‘easy’ days of chemo and radiation are behind us. We’ve now entered the infection, rejection and graft versus host stage; we hope to avoid them all, but must be prepared for any one of them.

 Yesterday, infection made an appearance: high fever, weakness, the shakes. The medical team took more blood cultures to find out what kind of infection has set in. Meanwhile, monitor alarms cried out all night, nurses came running. More bags hung; more vitals taken; more meds loaded into the lines. Cecil is on triple antibiotics and we now ready ourselves for the scary part of the journey.

It’s been a long time since I’ve taken things for granted. I used to accept the gifts of love and happiness, freedom and good health, as if they would always be here. I know now how easily they can slip away. I am saddened to think of the days I would move like the wind through my daily business – assuming, without thinking it, that my tomorrows and somedays would be endless.

When the feds came knocking to take my husband away forever, then when death stood in line behind them, I started to look at things differently.  

So, now, when he asks me to bring him something from across the room, I run to get it instead of snotting off with, “Do I look like Stepin Fetchit to you?” As he fights to stay alive in his hospital bed, I stop and smell his dirty clothes rather than toss them with emphasis into his hamper.  

Needless to say, I am ruminating a lot about the notion of marriage. How many people do you run across with whom you would plan a lifetime? Someone who will hold your hair back while you toss your cookies into the toilet, and love you no matter how bad you look or how wretched you smell. This is a person whose absence makes the bed feel empty, and without whom all the money in the world would be pointless. 

Now, here I am, all full-up with an appreciation for the beauty of marriage, and I must leave my husband’s bedside and go to work where I swim in the blood bath of marriages that have failed. I am a divorce attorney. It sounds so scheister-ish. Though I don’t cheat and lie and steal, it is my job to make the other guy look bad. So, that’s what I do: she’s a stinko mother; he’s a control freak, and he lies. It’s a dirty business. 

To get where I need to go with a case, I must become my client’s best friend and, I dare say, the devil incarnate to the other party. I usually don’t care about that second part because, before we’re done, I most often see the opposing party as someone who will stoop as low as need be, and say whatever sounds good, to get what he or she wants. It is a Me, Myself, and I experience through and through.  

As we work a contested divorce case, I need to know about their finances, their flaws, their sex lives. Once we cross those hurdles, the details come more easily. I hear about the small things that make a marriage go bad: He doesn’t listen. She gets sarcastic when they fight; he walks away. She always wants everything her way. One of them is a neatnik, the other a slob. One likes to save money, the other spends it like there will always be more where that came from.  

I read their emails and their text messages to each other, words and feelings flung into cyberspace, missing the point, flaming the cinders that linger angrily, waiting to burst into raging flames that cannot be contained.  

When the gloves come off, there is no end to what we might expect. A sign in my office says “It’s not who you marry that counts, it’s who you divorce.” If only the lying and the greediness were as bad as it gets.  

Once committed to the process, most divorce litigants can justify almost any kind of conduct. My personal favorite is when they pretend to be afraid for their safety and take out a protective order to get the spouse out of the home. 

It’s all so sad, and so destructive. These people once loved each other enough to bring themselves to the edge of a future that waited for them. Somewhere, somehow, they turned…away from, and then against, each other. I can’t help but think it would have been less painful if one of them had become less controlling, less messy, more understanding of quirks, or more respectful of the differences between people. Had they looked into their partner’s eyes and seen the kindness, the humanness, the vulnerability…maybe they would have found a way to appreciate what it was that brought them together in the first place.

Instead, a disturbing number of disengaged, or disenchanted, spouses go looking for a ‘bull dog’ attorney, and set in motion a process they will learn to hate long before it has ended. If only they could appreciate the destruction brought about by the “I’ll see you in court” approach before they marched so defiantly into it. This process tends to bring out the worst in even the best of them.  

So much so that, when I take in a new client, I try very hard to weed out those with the ‘all for me’ attitude. I like to represent the good guy. I’m sure other attorneys say the same thing, but, I swear, they would have to be delusional to actually believe they got the clean end of the stick in some of these cases.

The other afternoon I was driving along a back country road. The sun was low in the sky. Its warm slivers cut in and out through the trees as I passed, striking my face again and again. This was not the sort of sunlight in which to bask and drift off. There was an energy to it that made me sit up and take notice.

I started thinking about my cases – so many of them; so many marriages that don’t make it. What happens? My marriage has been through several of the challenges that make it onto the list of things most likely to cause divorce, but Cecil and I have grown stronger together. We found a way to make it through the storm without jumping ship.  

He whispered in the darkness late last night “Will you cuddle me, I can’t stop shaking.” As I crawled in and wrapped myself around him, I understood the meaning of For Better and For Worse.