miracles of science – Page 6

Category: miracles of science

life and how to live it

Posted on March 6, 2008 by wrekehavoc

today, BC and i watched a Diagnosis X where a healthy young long island guy suddenly experiences gastrointestinal issues and paralysis. finally, a doctor realizes he has guillan-barre which is an autoimmune illness not entirely unlike the ITP i had two years ago. his immunoglobulins were shot, like mine, so they start him on the magical IVIG, and he starts to improve and live a better life, although it takes him a year or two to re-learn how to walk. which he does. thank G-d.

of course, once i saw that the dude had an autoimmune problem, i started to get a little nervous. when they started him on immunotherapy, i started to tear up. sometimes, TV hits a little too close to home, and i feel so terrible watching people go through things like this. i remember all too well how scary it is when you’re body is going through a revolt and you feel helpless to stop it.

it’s like the flashback that never really leaves you.

enter BC, just as they’re hanging the guy’s IV bag. she sees me all teary.

BC: mama, you really shouldn’t watch these shows with me if they make you so sad.

me: honey, i’m ok. (sniff sniff) i just get a little sad watching someone go through that. you know, people die from this sort of thing. and he’s getting treated with the same stuff i get. i just hope he gets better.

BC: is this like what you have?

me: well, sorta. its a different problem, but it’s autoimmune, and its one of those things that just sneaks up on you and makes you sick and you never knew what happened.

BC: (with insistence) but you’re not going to die.

me: no, honey. i’m not.

cartoon network is looking better and better to me these days.

she blinded me with science

Posted on February 28, 2008 by wrekehavoc

BC has a big science test today. we’ve been reading about the sun, the moon, the tides, matter, molecules, and atoms. she even drew me the little H2O drawing that we did in beginning chemistry. in 10th grade.

BC is in third grade.

i love the way the teacher writes out a plan of attack for studying. each day, we have been studying from a sheet; and each day, we add a little more, then a little more, then a little more. i hope this sort of thing rubs off on madam, as she clearly doesn’t seem to be a person who wants to study because, to quote her, i know this stuff already, mama.

it’s nice to be doogie howser, but you still need to study, darling.

girlfriend seems to be heavily interested in science these days. i’m secretly glad of this, as i somehow never got jazzed much about it. (in fact, i must say that i have probably learned as much about earth and rotation and revolution in this little study exercise as she has.) her TV faves include untold stories of the ER, diagnosis X, and of course my personal fave, trauma: life in the ER — with occasional interruptions from the shows about people having babies, which she likes, too.

while i am secretly glad that it moves her away from some of the crappy cartoons she is prone to watching, i often wonder whether i should be more concerned. girlfriend doesn’t care about watching actual bloody surgeries. and she gets irritated when i start to weep, especially when we watched these two egyptian twins get detached from each other’s brains.

yesterday, we watched a show where a western NJ boy (yes, of course, all magical things happen in NJ) got med-evac’d to UMDNJ in scenic newark because he sawed off two fingers in shop class (moral: mamas don’t let your babies grow up and take shop class.) i couldn’t watch as the kid showed his hands. girlfriend watched with keen interest.

mama, she always reminds me, if you can’t handle it, you should really leave the room. later, she asked me what the words in front of the show meant.

oh, i replied, you mean “viewer discretion is advised”?

yep.

uh, viewer discretion advised means i should use MY discretion over YOUR viewing time, sister.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IlHgbOWj4o

girlfriend

Posted on February 14, 2008 by wrekehavoc

dearest BS,

i’m probably going to be hooked up to an IV while you’re reading this, doing my best to stay awake during my 5-6 hour monthly marathon of IVIG goodness for my CVID. not exactly a romantic way to spend the bulk of valentine’s day, but on the other hand, it’s my best present i can give to you: more time with me. see, i know i’m just the perfect wife.

my cooking skills are impeccable.

my plumbing and laundering skills are astonishing.

and what’s more, i’m just the best. mother. ever.

how did you ever get so damn lucky? now if only i could actually purchase, er, i mean, if only santa was a mind-reader and could get you the presents you wanted, we’d be all set. hey — give santa a break and a clue next year, k?

in the meantime, i’m doing my best to be healthy so that i can be the bane of your existence for as long as i can be.

please do the same.

love,

your girlfriend

p.s. the comic book guy lets the girl drive the car to safety. just pointing it out. he’s in the car; she’s driving. what an idea!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgo6dFWY6sE&rel=1

things that make you go "hmmm"

Posted on February 2, 2008 by wrekehavoc

the four of us made our way through macy’s cosmetics area last night on our way to dinner at Ted’s. my third grade reader grrl, BC, looked at a bottle she passed.

mama, what’s better than buttocks?

WHAT? i replied, wondering where the hell that came from. (is it a trick question?)

that bottle. it says better than buttocks.

i took a look. and giggled. uh, no, honey. that would be better than botox.

reading is fundamental.

jeopardy! and you may ask yourself, where does that highway go?

Posted on January 31, 2008October 16, 2014 by wrekehavoc

i know, i know. i’ve been negligent in the whole jeopardy! department. life happened, y’hear?

remember i mentioned that BS gave me a world almanac? i never cracked that baby open in all the months i had it, which were a few, considering the taping didn’t happen until the end of august/beginning of september (to be aired in early december, no less.) i was working, i was exhausted, and i was not interested. pity i couldn’t have changed places with BS. he would have made a smarter contestant than i did.

anyway, BS and i made it out to sunny CA and realized merv griffin (and that clip is a must-see) had heaquartered his show in a sh**hole. hollywood is not exactly the garden spot of america. (at one point, when i was eating lunch with the crew, BS went for a walk outside. he heard gunshots. he came back inside. but i’m getting ahead of the story here…) we stayed elsewhere (north hollywood? who remembers) and crossed over on mulholland drive to get to the studio, which was then located in the middle of downtown hollywood. then, we separated. due to stringent studio rules, we were not allowed to see or talk to each other. off he went, and off i went.

i spent some time with the contestant coordinators and the other contestants, talking about how the day would go. they taped five games per day, two days per week. contestants would be picked at random. if i made it past the third game of the day, i would be fed at the canteen with the rest of the staff. and no one, not a soul, would see or talk to the great and powerful wizard of oz alex trebek until they were playing the game. we had a chance to try out our buzzers and write our names. we even played a few questions just to test out the buzzer. i was heartened by the fact that i was fastest on the buzzer. (yippee. i excel at something for once.)

we practiced our entrances, and i was then slightly disheartened to learn that i had to walk in on the slipperyshiny floor in my hells heels and step up onto a box! all contestants had to be at approximately the same level, and i come up short in the height department. crap. i’m a klutz, and this required concentration and coordination. i went from fear me, fastest buzzer girl to fear me, i may take you out when i try to enter the studio in these shoes in about 2 minutes. flat.

so i settled in to a nervous day. fortunately, i found a nice lady (unlike some of the nervous freaks who just made me sick to my stomach) to sit and chat with named linda, and we settled in in our little, dark, segregated corner of the audience and waited for our names to be called. they weren’t. not for game one. not for game two. not for game three. we ended up eating in the canteen, which i swear was outside, but memory fades and i’m probably delusional on that. i don’t even remember what i ate.

i lost my buddy linda to show four, when she became champion. and then, show five. i was called.

showtime…

fifty years

Posted on January 25, 2008 by wrekehavoc

on january 25, 1958, my parents married. (that’s 50 years, for those of you who are a little slow in math.) i’ve seen the pictures – my mom looks gorgeous and polished, my dad looks handsome and strong. my grandmother had a fever, but she finished sewing pearls onto my mom’s dress, and the proverbial show went on. my aunt barbara looks like a pretty bobbysoxer, and my aunt sandy looks like a china doll. it’s vintage late 1950s stuff. oh, and there’s a mysterious lady in red who shows up in photos, and no one has a clue who she is. and no one ever will, i suppose.

people might say, oh, why did they marry on a weekend when you bump up against superbowl sunday? of course, there was no superbowl sunday when they married. they did, however, have people with crazy nicknames, like dad’s friend bunny who introduced my dad to my mom. (bunny would be a man, by the by. i never met this person, as he faded out of the picture long before i came along.)

and i look at the pictures; and i wonder if they knew on that day that they’d still be married 50 years on. so many of my friends’ parents divorced, but not my parents. my parents made it through endless car trips and temporary relocations to places like oklahoma city (not exactly an inviting place for jews in the early 1960s). my parents made it through two bouts of breast cancer. my parents made it through various kids’ phases: the anarchist cookbook phase, the vomiting on planes and cars and other peoples’ white sweaters phase, the what do i do with my life now that i quit law school phase. among numerous others.

these are not things you tend to think about on your wedding day. i can’t recall what the hell i was thinking about on my wedding day beyond my fondest hope that the DJ would not play anything by madonna and whether or not i looked okay. (i didn’t. i am probably one of the uglier brides out there.) i do remember my best friend warily eyeing a bee that was close to landing in her cleavage during the ceremony and wondering whether i would ever be as composed as she was. (to this day, i’m impressed that the chick didn’t flinch. murphy – you are one tough bee-yotch. and i say that with love.)

but your wedding day is only one day. what really matters is the day after that, and the day after that, and beyond. if people focused the sort of energy they do on their weddings onto their marriages, then maybe a few more wouldn’t be so easily discarded. obviously, some unions cannot last for so many good reasons, and they shouldn’t; but i look at my parents, and i see two people who probably never even knew that divorce was an option. they’ve been working with, around, and through each other for most of their lives. and in spite of each other — and because of each other — they’re still going strong.

this weekend, we celebrated my parents’ 50th anniversary: my bobbysoxer aunt (and uncle), my brothers, our respective families, and me. my mom looked gorgeous and polished, my dad looked handsome and strong. some things don’t change, even in 50 years.

thank G-d for that.

🙂

jeopardy!: and you may ask yourself…well… how did i get here?

Posted on January 22, 2008December 9, 2014 by wrekehavoc

in the beginning, i never wanted to be on jeopardy. i know, that sounds really disingenuous. but it’s true. i mean, i was a huge fan of the show — i’d been watching it ever since i would toddle home from preschool and watch the stellar art fleming read the answers. (i know, i know. i was a very strange preschooler. but it was better than watching dark shadows, which was also on in the afternoon and which scared the bejeebers out of me.)

maybe i was destined to be on the show. my mom tells me that she was selected to be on the show in the early 1960s. but, as my hero junie b would say, too bad for her. she was preggers with my middle brother larry, and she really couldn’t risk going into labor on national television. (just proving my childhood contention: larry always does ruin everything. first jeopardy. then, we had to get rid of the cat because of his asthma. buzzkill!! hehehehe, seriously, just kidding there, lar. really. i love you even if you’re politically on the wrong side of many issues.) so maybe subconsciously, i was doing this for my mother.

the truth is, newlywed me was homesick. i missed my family, i missed new jersey (okay, you can stop laughing now) (really), and i did not yet consider the DC metro area home just yet. (that wouldn’t happen until last year. maybe.) but i also knew my BS was not really interested in schlepping up I-95 for yet another weekend of family fun.

but then, the epiphany: they were holding a massive cattle call at merv griffin’s old casino in atlantic city at the same time as easter AND passover. BINGO! BS was a jeopardy fan — couldn’t we go, try out, and then drive up the coast to see our respective families? of course we could. so we drove up, took the ten question test, passed it, received the date to return for a longer test, and went on our merry way to visit our families.

only, too bad for BS. he had to go on travel on the return date. so he never got to try out further. now me, on the other hand, i did. and, weirdly enough, i was able to try out at the same time as my dad, who also passed the 10 question test. so augie doggie and doggie daddy drove off to AC together, swearing they would pretend not to know each other so that no one would ever think we were cheating. which we didn’t. and couldn’t. we stayed far away from each other as we entered the big testing hall and took the test.

both of us passed.

they then made us go elsewhere so that they could observe our personalities and how quickly we could think on our feet. as we waited in the hall, we still did not speak to each other (i’m neurotic). that was, until, i tried to make small talk with one of the other potential contestants.

me: hi, i’m wreke. and you are?

personality-deficient freak: did you know that burma is now called myanmar?

after a few of these perverse little exchanges, i walked over to my dad, thrust out my hand, and introduced myself. daddy, i said sotto voce, these people are scaring me. can you please just stand near me and pretend we are making small talk? and because my dad is the best dad on the whole entire planet, we pretended to meet for the first time until they called us into the room.

we had to stand up and play a pretend game of jeopardy. we had to talk about what we’d do with the money if we won. (i believe i told them i’d send BS to phillies camp. still waiting, right honey?) and then we had our pictures taken and were told that we’d be called within the year if they wanted us on the show.

the end. or so i thought. see, a year passed, and i didn’t hear from them. not until one day, when a woman with whom i had worked the year before came running down the hallway. hey, she said, out of breath, you’d better call geraldine and find out what the hell is going on. i overheard her talking to someone about you and jeopardy and i heard her tell them you didn’t work here anymore.

geraldine was the very sweet but not exceptionally bright receptionist in my old office. i had moved to a different office during the year; but unfortunately, jeopardy still had my old number. i booked up the stairs to geraldine. gerry, i said, panting, did someone call for me?

oh yes, she answered in her drawl. i told them you don’t work here any more, but i took their number. she handed the scrap to me. i found a payphone (government building; can’t call on your taxpayer’s dime, you know), called back, and they told me to show up the end of august. bring 5 changes of clothing. and it’s all on my dime.

honey, i screamed to BS on the phone later. guess where we’re vacationing this year? hollywood!

the next day, that romantic guy bought me a world almanac.

give blood

Posted on January 4, 2008 by wrekehavoc

one of my oldest friends, wah, has moved back into the area from scenic wisconsin (motto: hey look — another cow!) i am so thrilled beyond belief that she’s in chevy chase (even though i’m not.) today, we were going to try an exercise class together — something called nia, a sort of meditation, stretching, and dancing kind of experience which my friend adores, especially since it relieves some of the agony and pain she has from a condition. i’m all about that earthy-crunchy old fashioned spirituality stuff, so i’ve always wanted to join her. and we were going to go this morning but alas! wah had a flare up and the poor girl was in serious pain. another day. (feel better, wah!)

so back i went to the community center to do my BFL workout. as i walked in, i noticed that there’s a red cross blood drive going on. i looked at the woman at the sign-in table. she looked at me. i continued to look. she continued to look back at me. i finally snapped myself out of it and walked over to the locker room. damn, i thought, one more thing i can no longer do.

see, BS and i used to give blood all the time, so much so that you’d think we were deeply concerned about the vampire community. i gave at my workplace, he gave at his, it was just something we did. something easy that really helped people. i always loved talking to the people i’d meet when i went at work. once, while i worked at ED (motto: education is a state and local policy area, but somehow, here we are!), i ended up giving blood and chatting with Senator Rockefeller’s daughter, Valerie, in the cot beside me.

we gave blood on our anniversary. (i figured we were happy and this was one way to share it with someone who needed a little happy in his life.) the funny thing about giving blood with your spouse is that you pretty much are forced to have a conversation. it’s hard to hold a magazine (though believe me, BS tried), and you can’t exactly walk away while it’s happening, so it’s actually a perversely solid bunch of uninterrupted couple time. and you get to toast each other afterwards with oreos.

i even remember when we had a day off, the day after hurricane katrina. we were going to go to six flags, but OOPS – it was closed. so we figured, what the hell — we’ll donate (cos they’ll probably need more blood thanks to the hurricane) and then go out to lunch. there we were at PF Changs afterwards. the server noticed that we had bandaged arms. he asked us if we had just donated because of katrina. we said yes. he excused himself, then came back a few minutes later. my manager and i would like to thank you for your public spirit by giving you a free appetizer. well, woowee! that’s better than the free cookies and juice the red cross gives out!

but now, i can’t do it anymore.

see, i had a transfusion when my platelets decided to run off to brazil. without that blood, i might not be here, annoying you with my blather. (no one say yay about that. i’m lifting weights now, and i’m strong enough to smack you silly.) and now, i get IVIG infusions for CVID, which are ::drum roll please:: gammaglobulin, a blood product. so no one wants my blood anymore. it bums me out, because this is one of the easiest public service things anyone (over 110 pounds!) can do.

so think about it today. (not you, dee. you’re about to drop two puppies.) and hell, find a blood drive here, at your workplace, or through your local hospital. you’ll be doing a good deed. and maybe your blood won’t be the blood that saves my life, but you can damn well be sure it will save someone else’s. i’ll never know who gave the blood that saved me from total brain bleed-down. but i’ll always be eternally grateful.

and maybe i’ll have to find a new way to contribute… maybe organizing something like this.

wile e. coyote. supergenius.

Posted on December 11, 2007 by wrekehavoc

i suspect i am not the only person out there who wonders whether my brain is completely full of information and incapable of admitting more without letting some of the matter, important or unimportant, go.

i wonder about these things, especially at this time of year, because i simply cannot figure out where things have gone. it is holiday time, and i have officially faked myself out. two of BS’s presents, bought a little while ago, were put away in my usual BS Present Hiding Spot ™. Only, too bad for me, as junie b would say, cos they are now officially M.I.A. the kids often play around my official hiding spot, but BC, who would be on the ball for these sorts of things, has no recollection of seeing said items. and i know i saw them last week when i first wrapped a chanukah present for BS. so i probably put them somewhere else so that they’d be supertopsecretsafe.

boy. i’m so smart. so incredibly, freakishly smart. (grrrr.)

i also noticed that a pair of jeans i bought online are missing. they’ve been languishing in a box in the closet, waiting for me to put them on when i finally admitted that i would be comfy in that size and would be ready to venture forth and get them shortened. they’re missing now, too.

i suspect that jimmy hoffa is out there somewhere, using BS’s presents and wearing my g-ddamned jeans.

kids books i loathe: the giving tree

Posted on November 13, 2007 by wrekehavoc

kids books i loathe week is completed with a classic that everybody seems to love. everyone except for me, that is. in fact, i would have to say this is the book that sends me over the biggest cliff. i would never, ever advocate banning it. but jeez oh man, i hate this book with a passion.

i know, i know. the giving tree is a tender story that talks about loyalty and devotion. silverstein keeps it open-ended so that you and your child can have a conversation about being good to one another. selflessness. that sort of thing.

but you know what? i think a little too much selflessness is foisted onto parents, particularly mothers. and we are often the readers of this book, and we’re the ones who get the message thus strewn upon ourselves. i know plenty of mothers — myself included — who would put limb and life and liberty at risk simply to ensure the happiness and well-being of their child. now, this is good. and this is not so good.

you know. put the air mask on yourselves, people, before you put it on the children.

i have seen and been the woman who whittles herself down to the point where there is nearly nothing left for my partner, my kids, my world. what good are you to everyone if you’re a shell of your former self?

and that’s why i get so effing mad at this book. it sanctifies the effing tree. what an amazing, giving tree. it gives and gives until it can barely give anymore. and of course, no one appreciates it until its too late.

fuck that.

appreciate me now, while i am here to hear it. enjoy me now, while i can still join you in your laughter. don’t wait til i’m dead. don’t make me a martyr.

and pick a different book out for me to read to my kids for that matter.

The Giving Tree