Category: Annie

The Post in which E disrespects a Founding Father

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I love history. I try to learns as much as I can about the past by reading different varieties of history books. I am an avid reader and the last 6 years or so, I have been into mostly non-fiction. I feel that reading about our past, helps us understand our today. Whenever I’m reading a political biography, a former president or political figure, I am struck by how similar things are to now. As I am reading certain situations, I think, yep that is happening today. I literally could insert names and it would be a news article from today. I’ve learned that human nature doesn’t change. We go in circles. We think we are super progressive, but we are just living the same thing over and over again with different players and different means. Alexander Hamilton might not have had twitter, but you know what he spent all his time doing? Writing letters. Sometimes anonymous, sometimes signed, sometimes set up to look like it was from someone else. They would be posted in newspapers. That’s how the political storms played back and forth. Jefferson vs Hamilton writing anonymous editorials back and forth. Hamilton’s children said sometimes they wouldn’t see him for days. He was locked up in his office writing letter after letter after letter. Not just to newspapers but to friends and such. We have always needed something to do with our hands. Knitting, cards, crossword puzzles. Now it’s the phone. The phone is incredibly addicting, but my point remains the same about human nature.

I don’t limit myself to political history. I also read books about certain disasters or time periods. I am fascinated in general by history.

I try to pass this love onto my kids. My A girl might not remember the date of my birthday, but she knows probably about 80% of the presidents and all 50 states. Knowledge is power, so they say.

The nice thing about living in PA is that there are so many historical places to visit. In the last year in a half we’ve been to Gettysburg, Mt Vernon, Philadelphia, DC and more.

When we are touring through different places I try to educate A as we go and tell her facts about the different places. I am always happy to see what she has learned and it’s fun to see her take an interest in history as well. It being one of her favorite subjects at school now. Second to Art.

When we were in Philadelphia about a year ago, we were trying to visit the US mint. We all really wanted to see it. We had already visited the firefighter museum, and liberty bell, and independence hall. When we got to the mint, unfortunately it was temporarily closed until further notice.

We started to walk back to the main historical square. Walking back we took a different road than we came. We saw a pretty church and connected to it was a cemetery. A and I read on the plaque that this is where Benjamin Franklin was buried. There was a group crowded around his grave on the other side of the iron gate and a tour guide was talking to them about Ben Franklin. If you have ever been to his grave, you know the tradition of people throwing pennies on it. I don’t really know why. I did hear that it cracked the old grave from all the pennies, and they had to replace it. But I didn’t hear why they did it, because as he was explaining it, I noticed some of the tourists eyes in the group looking down in my direction, sort of by my feet. I looked down to see what they were looking at, and I saw my son, E, stealing as many pennies off the grave as he could get. His little arm sticking through, stealing them, putting them on the ground by his feet and repeat. I was horrified. I pride myself on making sure that my kids behave in important situations and if they don’t, removing them. With the fence, I didn’t think that we had anything to worry about about so I wan’t as attentive.

I grabbed his hand away apologizing quietly to the group so I did not interrupt the tour. I tried to put as many pennies back on the grave without making too many noises or cracking it again, because that was the last thing I needed right then.

Eric and I exchanged a look of mutual embarrassment. Like in, didn’t see that one coming, E stealing from Ben Franklins grave that is. I asked Eric if we could go in the cemetery to get a closer look, but sadly, he told me that you had to pay to get in. Not one to be deterred by honesty and already taken to thievery, E let go of Erics hand and took off running into the cemetery at lightening pace. I ran after him as fast as I could. He started running toward the group gathered around B. Franklins grave and I started to run faster. I grabbed him right before he got to the pennies again, thankfully. But as I was running, I heard the tour guide say, now lets have a moment of silence for Mr. Franklin in honor of all that he has done for the great city of Philadelphia. When I grabbed E’s arm to get him out of the cemetery, he started shrieking at the top of his lungs. E clearly did not respect B Franklin or his contributions to the city. Eric had to help me with him because he was very angry, so the two of us had to haul him out while the tour group did their best to ignore this disrespectful, unpatriotic family of four.

I am sure our disrespect and thievery was the topic of many dinner tables that night. Luckily they did not know that we are from Harrisburg. A and I decided that as citizens of the capital city of PA, it is our duty to be good examples to all the other cities in PA. We definitely were not doing our job that day.

Next time we go to Philadelphia as a family, we will be better.

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Spleen Groupies

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After Thanksgiving, I was tired. I thought I was just making up for lost sleep from the prior week with family in town. But, no matter how much I slept, I couldn’t overcome my fatigue. I would bring my kids to school and then go back home for a nap. I would then sleep until my alarm would go off at 2, to start getting ready to pick the kids up. Even after all this rest, at 2 pm in the afternoon, I still was so tired. I could have slept even longer. This went on for several weeks.

I was tired driving. The drive to my sons school, 30 mins there and 30 mins back was dangerous. I would fade. I was worried about falling asleep at the wheel. At the gas station one afternoon, pulling in, I misestimated the depth of the turn and hit one of the poles. I started having my husband take the kids to school for me because I felt it wasn’t safe for me to be driving. He usually has to be at work an hour before we get the kids to school, so he had to miss meetings in order to do this, but I didn’t really know what else to do.

One afternoon, I woke up and I could not get out of my fog. As I was walking around the house trying to wake up, trying to find a way to get out of this fatigue, I remembered something. Like almost from a past life. I am anemic. My blood must be low. I have a blood disease.

When I was 19, after years of fatigue and sickness, my body started to shut down. My mom took me to the hospital, and it was a good thing she did, because my body was dying. Upon admittance to the hospital, I was told, another hour and I probably wouldn’t have made it. I didn’t need to be told this. I knew my body was shutting down. I could feel myself fading, and I had to make an effort to continue. 

After many months of testing, I was diagnosed with a blood disorder. Spheroctyosis. This means that a large portion of my blood is misshapen. Instead of the flexible disc like shape the red blood cell should have, mine are like over inflated balloons. At the smallest nudge, they are destroyed. My body had tried it’s best to overcompensate for this up until my hospitalization, but it stopped. A case of mono made my body weaker. This caused me to catch just about every typically benign virus under the sun, and in my weakened body, they were in essence killing me. My body was not able to produce blood to make up for the deficit any longer. 

When they first tested me, they thought my panels had produced false positives. They didn’t think it was possible to have that many viruses in your body. Steroids helped my blood to produce in rapidity. My body was finally able to heal and fight the infections. My spleen was removed several months later. A spleen helps to fight sickness by destroying misshapen blood cells. My blood cells were being destroyed, because even though they were healthy, albeit fragile, they were not the correct shape. These were the ones that actually made it to the spleen and were not destroyed just bumping around. 

Luckily, not all my blood is round spheres. Only about 75%. Without a spleen, I need many vaccinations to guard me against certain infections. But without my spleen, my blood cells are not constantly being destroyed. 

I have lived fairly healthy since my spleen was removed. Even without my spleen, my body still has to work hard in order to produce extra blood cells. They are still destroyed in my body, just not as much. 

It’s funny because after living so many years healthy, my mind has almost forgotten that I have a blood disorder. All of the memories seem as if they belong to another life. Except for when I smell medical tape. I was at the doctors office waiting for my physical when I smelled medical tape. My heart started beating rapidly. My watch was going off to warn me about my spiking heart rate. They took my blood pressure. Normally having such low blood pressure, that I black out when I stand up, it was rocket high. The body remembers where the mind forgets.

My blood disorder is rare. 1 in 250,000. My kind is even rarer. It is usually genetic. Mine, is a spontaneous mutation. That occurs in 1 of 5 cases. 

Because my case was so unusual, and because I was being treated at a teaching hospital, my case naturally excited my doctor. ‘Would I like to donate my spleen to research he asked me excitedly?!’  ‘Sure..’  What else would I do with it? 

He wrote a paper about my case, and informed me regularly just how interesting my case was. 

At appointments, he would make sure that I took notes, so I could understand everything about my rare illness. In my being a normal human being, I looked away from his paper once, and I was scolded properly for not caring about my illness and taking responsibility to learn about it.

Six months post op, after the paper was written and published, I was at a follow up appointment. ‘Can the Dr bring in a student?’ the nurse asked me after taking my vitals. I don’t mind, I told him. Bursting through the door shortly after was a very excited student. ‘I am so excited to finally meet you!’ She exclaimed as she shook my hand. ‘I have heard all about your case! Your spleen, I can’t believe it was really 8 times the normal size. Do you know how rare your case is? I can’t believe I am actually meeting you, we just have heard so much about your.’

I sat kind of stunned as I realized I had acquired a fanbase. And an apparent groupie, who had somehow convinced the doctor that she would be useful at this appointment. She wasn’t. I guess I can’t blame her though. It was an interesting case. My spleen was 5 pounds. It had displaced my kidneys. She I am sure went on to become a very successful doctor. 

To follow through on my original story though, lots of b-12 shots and folate later, I am feeling less tired. An appointment with a hematologist scheduled, and it’s amazing how something that was dormant for so long feels like it never left me.