Fish Tales...Sepia Saturday

Fishing has been a part of my family's life for generations. If a man had a boat and a fishing pole, his family would not go hungry. But fishing was much more than a means to put food on the table - it was almost a religion, a quest, an addiction. A man could test himself against the water and the fish. If he were feeling brave or adventurous, he could test himself against the Atlantic Ocean, out beyond the bay. No matter that the boat was small or the swells huge, because the big fish were out there, waiting to be caught.

This is my father, Peter, with his pride and joy, his first boat.

This is my grandfather Pete, doing what he loved best - fishing on the bay.

Peter and Pete showing the catch of the day to Susan.

A good day on the water, and a good day's work.

A beauty, almost more than a man can lift.

Two brothers and a son - three men and a boat, a spark plug for bait, 

and a 40 pound rock fish to show for the day.

My cousin Lee, who grew up to be a boat captain, a harbormaster and a master fisherwoman.
Like this photo of her, my earliest happy memories involve water and catching a big fish.

My dad taught me to dig for worms, bait a hook, be patient for a bite, reel them in slow, clean them and cook them and enjoy eating them. I caught my first fish when I was five. I remember. It was something. Yes, I remember - hot sunny days at the quarry, long days rocking on a boat, quiet days on the lake, fishing pole in hand, bait on the hook, waiting for a bite on the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays, and the waters of the Delmarva Peninsula.

The fish are much smaller now, as the waters are overfished and the pickings are slim. But we have our photos and our fish tales to tell. We remember, and that is worth something.

Post inspired by the Sepia Saturday series.

Warm Fuzzies and Small Miracles

First, the fuzzies.



Baby Pandas. Doesn't get much cuter than that. If you want to feel all gooey inside, go to Zooborns for more cute babies.

So, on the home front, winter continues to hold us in her grip. But. There are small, subtle changes to appreciate, like noticing that it's no longer pitch dark at 5pm and being grateful for the daylight.

The soundtrack to our lives is no longer the dry hacking barking cough we've listened to for three straight unrelenting mind numbing nerve wracking weeks. The sound of the quiet and the joy at returning to something resembling normal is almost impossible to describe. It is nothing less than a small miracle.

We were scheduled to see a speech pathologist Tuesday morning because the ENT said it was our best hope to stop the cough. We waited four long days for the appointment, and when they called the day of to reschedule due to illness, I did what any responsible, strung out mother would do. I cried. I whined. I said you are our only hope, when can we come? A few phone calls later, we were in that day at 5pm. An angel named Cathy stayed late to see us, and I'm not lying when I say I love her. She jumped right in. Showed us a model of the throat and all it's mysterious parts, explained the damage the cough was doing to the cartilage, said it had to stop right now. She said simply, the more you cough, the more you cough. Get it? Your brain is stuck, and you have to make it stop making you cough.

She took Em through three different options, including tiny coughs or throat clearings, breathing exercises to relax the throat, and counting to see how far she could get without a cough. She made Em talk and sing and breathe and relax and sip water and get up and walk and breathe and count and ahem and breathe and before the hour was up, the cough went from continual to 30 seconds apart to a minute to three to a small quiet noise and it was nothing short of a minor miracle to the exhausted parents who watched it happen. (Who had found all these techniques online and had tried them, but not as forcefully, convincingly or assuredly as Cathy, who said the most important ingredient was wanting more than anything for the cough to stop. There's something to be said for professional competence and authority, and the inability of a child to listen to a parent!)

The elation of this breakthrough was marred by the emotional breakdown that ensued when daughter was told she needed to go back to school at once, back to everything, back to her life, and be forced to control the cough, because the less she coughed, the less she would cough. She was petrified to be so far behind in her classes, afraid she'd be embarrassed, afraid her friends wouldn't miss her. I'm estimating it took 5 hours of crying to actually make it through the doors to the school the next day, but she did it. And she was fine. She came home happy and almost back to normal. And she is coughing less and less and less, and the silence is music to my ears.

This parenting gig has never been what I imagined. It is more complicated, mysterious and confounding than anything I have ever done in my life. The teen years are even more complicated and precarious as I remember the train wreck that mine were and try not to let the past repeat itself. All I can do is try, and try some more. And be grateful for what is, and what isn't.

Thanks for sharing this stretch of the journey with me, for offering up kind comments, suggestions, words of encouragement and understanding. I am grateful, thankful and humbled over and over again. Full of warm fuzzies inside, even as the snow falls outside.




XXOO

What's New & Mysterious

Well, it's been quite a week. Thanks for all the concern and kind thoughts for my daughter. She is still coughing, still miserable, but otherwise healthy, except for bloating and mood swings from steroids. We are at a very mysterious and perplexing place with the diagnosis. After scoping her throat, the ENT doc determined the cough to be neurogenic, also known as laryngeal spasm and vocal cord dysfunction. Google mania also determined this to be post viral laryngeal neuropathy. In short, she is stuck. Doc said he's seeing more of this, particularly in young patients. More google-fu reveals it is most often seen in young, athletic, intelligent, previously asthmatic or allergic reaction, near onset of menses females. Bingo.

That's the good news. They know what it is. The not so good news is the treatment is anti-depressents usually given for neuropathy, and I'm not going there yet, or speech therapy for breathing control. We see the speech therapist on Tuesday, and by then, she will have coughed nonstop for 20 days. Usually, it is an intermittent thing, like recurring hiccups, but she has always been an overachiever.

She just woke up and I hear her coughing and I promised homemade, healthy waffles. Just wanted to share what I know and say thanks again, for the hints, the help and the kindness. Especially to Michelle, for offering her love and expertise and helping to guide me through this maze, and keep the panic at bay. Yes, the universe is abundant. And mysterious.

Here are some pictures from the past few weeks, the world outside my door. My little camera is refusing to focus lately, and the batteries won't hold a charge, so like my brain, the images are a little fuzzy. But they tell a story anyway.

Stay warm and well out there.

What it looks like at my house

Outside, 5 new inches of snow, made crusty by freezing rain.

Inside, we are ready for this morning's breathing program and meds.

Nebulizers, inhalers, vaporizers, antibiotics, steroids and cough medicines, oh my. The stuff in the baggie on the right is the never mind/didn't work stuff, which combined cost slightly more than the orange inhaler, which costs - after insurance - $230 per tube, which is the winner in the You Have Got to Be Kidding Me category. A close second is antibiotic 2 of 3, which rang in at $170 dollars because there is no generic. All told, you're looking at just under $1000 in prescription medicines from the last 12 days, who knows what the doctors bills will be. But get this - we have Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance, which we pay for, because we are self employed and self insured small business owners who are supposed to save the depressed economy. Hah. I would like to pass a job killing bill to fire some ignorant politicians if I were able.

But here's the thing. The money part is irrelevant in the big picture. She is not better. At all. No change, two weeks later. Today we go to the hospital lab to get swabbed for whooping cough because it's going around. Even immunized kids are getting it. But I'm thinking this is not whooping cough. It doesn't fit. But nothing else fits either and what do I know besides what I read online. Three doctors and a pulmonary specialist have no other ideas to stop the non-stop coughing - and by non-stop I mean every thirty seconds or less, all day and whenever she stirs at night. Poor thing is sore and hoarse and cranky. I'm helpless and clueless. I just try to keep little girl from going crazy from both the coughing and the boredom and hope time heals whatever the hell this is.

That's the news from here. Nothing good except that things could be worse and thank goodness they aren't. I read online about people breaking ribs from coughing, coughing like this for months, a hundred days. My girl, who is not so little any more has had episodes like this for the past 5 years, as her lungs take great offense to viral invaders, but she's always gotten better within days of treatment. Now we are into weeks and likely immuno -suppressed from the steroids and I am living in high alert mode, scared she's missed so much school and equally terrified to throw her back into the germ pool. I want to bubble wrap her and keep her safe, once I get her well.

And so it goes this winter at my house. Stay well out there. And thanks for listening to me whine.

Again.

What it sounds like at my house

Cough cough. Cough cough. Cough cough cough.

For 8 straight days and most of the nights.

My 100 pound, 13 year old daughter had a sore throat last week.

Two days later she started coughing. Non stop. Until she gags and retches.

We've had xrays, doctor visits, inhalers, steroids, two antibiotics, every cough syrup they make, with and without codeine, steam baths, controlled breathing, vaporizers, back rubs, you name it, nothing works. Nothing.

Eight days later she is still coughing non stop. A week of school missed, with midterms looming. No appetite, no energy, little rest, sore muscles, no voice.

It is the hardest thing I do as a mother, to try and stay calm, to reassure myself that there is nothing else that we can do but wait, and to be vigilant that she is getting enough oxygen and has no fever. But I am at DefCon 4, Orange Alert, and I have listened to her cough so long I can barely stand it.

Which makes me feel awful, because I can't imagine what she feels like.

Official diagnosis, pnuemonia, organism unspecified, acute bronchitis and cough.

We've been here many times before, but this is the worst bout yet. I'm trying to see through this and visualize her breathing easy, and sleeping. She keeps saying I'm sorry, Mommy, and that makes me feel awful too.

I give it two more days then I'm planning on freaking out. I'm hoping the new antibiotic can keep me from going there.

I don't know how moms with chronic, very ill children do it, I just don't. I never knew how weak and worthless and helpless I really was until I became a mom. I guess everyone just does what they have to, even if that means just leaving the room for a minute so you don't have to hear your child suffer, so you can come back in and offer what feeble comfort there is to give.

So far, I'm not liking this year at all. And I wasn't that fond of last year.

So that's what it sounds like at my house. Cough cough. Cough cough cough.

Cough, cough. Cough cough. Cough cough cough cough cough .... aaaargh.