Constant Coughing or First Word?

Let me start this off by saying, I am not trying to be one of those people that has a health complaint every time you are around them.  No, I just have a health complaint that I would like to keep to myself, but unfortunately affects everyone around me.

See, about a month ago we traveled down to Florida.  It was sunny and hot everyday, most days getting into the 90's.  And as things usually go in that kind of weather, I caught a cold.  OK, I can tell that you are confused, here is what happened.  One night we went out to eat, and whatever it was did not agree with me, so I was up until the wee hours of the morning dealing with that night's dinner.  And as anyone with a baby knows, you certainly are not going to be able to catch up on your sleep in the morning, because the baby doesn't care how late you stayed up, he just knows he is hungry/wet.  The next night, I was looking forward to some restful slumber when the weather radio went off stating a tornado was in the area.  In the area of the country I spend most of my time in, I would have turned on the TV for a detailed report and if need be, pulled out the futon in the basement and dragged everyone downstairs until the danger was over.  Unfortunately, most homes on the Florida coast do not have basement and if they do they are called indoor pools.  My wife, being very supportive, decided not even waking up to the loud alarm next to her head would be the best course of action.  Not wanting to push everyone into a closet (the only interior room in the house we were staying at) I decided to check out the situation and move everyone in the safe spot only if the situation warranted. What I found out is that in Florida, where several sports teams are named after weather, they apparently don't have anyone at the TV stations that actually knows anything about weather in the middle of the night.  After only being able to find a tiny square of a weather map in the corner of the TV that amounted to about four pixels, I decided to just stay up until the Tornado Warning expired to make sure we were safe.  That left me up until the wee hours of the morning once again.  The next few days were spent preparing to come back home and driving the eighteen hours to get back home, which after it was all said and done, left me very run down, and with a strange tickle in my throat.

So, a few days after getting back from our pre-summer Florida trip I was in full nose dripping, wet coughing, hell.  I was kind enough to share this illness with my wife, who never seems to appreciate the gift of sickness.  Within a few days, my cold had disappeared except for a little headache that would not let up.  My wife wanted quicker relief and went to see our family doctor, who told her that she had developed a sinus infection.  Upon hearing this, I was a little worried that my "headache" was really a raging sinus infection like my wife's.  I called the doctor and told her I was feeling fully recovered except for the headache and she prescribed some antibiotics to clear things up.  Pretty soon the headache was gone...and an annoying, constant, irritating cough developed.  Not like the one before where random pieces of lung seem to be flying out of your trachea, this is just a cough that sounds  like the cough people do when they aren't really sick, but they are calling in sick to work, except this cough is real and relentless.

Here is where I am today, nearly a month later and feeling pretty good, just sounding like a guy faking a cough constantly.  And the best part about it, anything extra sweet, salty, or tangy, causes it to get worse!  The past two weeks, friends have asked me to come to their places of business to help them with projects, and in return they feed all the people that helped out.  The problem is, I am afraid to eat around people, because invariably the cough gets worse, and if there is anything to get you uninvited to future gatherings, it is sounding like you have the plague around people while they are eating.  So while everyone else is socializing and having a bite, I am running off to a vending machine and nibble/coughing in a hallway somewhere.

Well, today I realized how much this is really affecting my life.  My son, being six months old, is just now trying to verbalize and mimic actions and sounds that he experiences.  While sitting with him and feeding him, I had a coughing fit, and he looked me right in the eyes while I was trying to compose myself...and coughed some fake sounding coughs.  Now coughing isn't out of the ordinary for him while he is enjoying his bottle, because in his mind, he is very hungry, and trying to shotgun five ounces of milk in one second is the best way to stop his hunger pangs.  In reality, trying to suck that much milk into his stomach that quickly leads to choking, coughing, and spitting up all over me, a lesson I have had to learn the hard way.  After his cough we just stared at each other, he with his little grin on his face, while I try to figure out if he drank to fast or was he making the same sound daddy was.  The grin he gave me was very similar to the grin he gives me while we sit there and make fart noises at each other for hours on in.  You know, that cross-between-laughter-and-accomplishment type of grin.

This is why I am frustrated, not because of the constant hacking, or having to eat my meals alone in a dark closet so people won't fear infections from me, it is the effect this may be having on my impressionable young son.  No longer do I wonder if his first word will be "mommy" or "daddy".  No longer am I worried that his first words will be one of the phrases yelled frequently at the dogs ("Daisy, quit licking your butt!") or the words he hears daddy yell when there is a stupid driver in front of him.  No, I am frustrated today because I am afraid that the noise he has been hearing most the past four weeks will be the first one he verbalizes.  And in his little memory book, I just don't know how to write down the spelling of "hok-hok-hok-heh-heh-kuuuuurrrrrrkkkk-ptah".

The Best Gift I Have Received Throws Up On Me...

When you are about to have your first child there are tons of tidbits of wisdom that people will tell you.  I gladly listened to everything people told me making mental notes along the way.  Having just made it six months with my new best friend, I feel I am becoming quite accustomed to this new life.  Some of the things people told us were about the negative aspects of having a child.  I think the big factor in this for us, is how badly we had wanted a child, how long we had been trying, and finally after the cancer/miscarriage/fertility treatments how much we went through before we were successful.

One thing we heard over and over again was how exhausted we would be.  Now, I will admit we aren't as well rested as we were six months ago.  I can't remember the last time we were able to just sleep in as long as we liked.  But I certainly wouldn't call it "exhausted".  One thing we have going for us, is our child has been an overnight sleeper since we brought him home from the hospital.  I think the shortest he ever slept overnight was maybe four hours when he was first brought home.  The other reason I don't think I am tired is I enjoy the time I get to spend with him.  Think of something you really enjoyed, like for me going to Walt Disney World, for you it might be reading my blog...if it is something you really had fun doing, you get whatever sleep you can and do it again first chance you get.

The other very cliched comment is that you will never know how much love you will have for the baby.  Waiting until forty-one to have my first child, trust me a lot of anticipation and love had built up.  I love my little guy a lot, and that love started the day my wife walked out of the bathroom with a pee-soaked stick.  What has surprised me is just how much I like being around him.  Even from the beginning when all he was doing was laying there and messing diapers, I cherished every second with him.  Now I will say this.  He seems like a very happy baby and everyone tells us he is a happy baby.  That certainly helps.  Even when changing a diaper he looks up and smiles and either grabs my arm or if I am careless enough he will grab the clean diaper and play keep away with me, which is apparently very funny when you are six months old.

But then again everything seems to be funny to our six month old.  A hand full of someone else's hair is freakin' hilarious!  Rubbing bare feet on daddy's head or whiskers is also a great source of amusement.  The phrase "peas and apples"  is the greatest joke ever told, ranking right up there with "The Aristocrats".  I have no idea why "peas and apples" induces uncontrollable laughter, but I think it's pretty obvious that he has his daddy's sophisticated sense of humor.

The other side is, I am probably one of those obsessive and over-protective parents.  When you have gone through your own health scare you realize just how precious and fragile life is.  Someone told us the other day that kids aren't that fragile at all, all three of theirs rolled off the bed at one point as babies.  That led to a conversation after we left that person about how after the first roll off (or at the very least the second roll off) wouldn't you take precautions to prevent future roll offs?  This person claimed there was no harm done...but there's one we think the jury is still out on.

I may have given my son his first real electric guitar this week as well (which means I did give him his first electric guitar).  Now I know what you are thinking, "He's six months old, he can't play an electric guitar" and you are exactly right, that is why his is half the size of a normal one.  And since it is difficult for him to strum and hold down the strings, I even brought out a thing that automatically moves the strings for him, so he can just focus on the fretboard for now.  See, doesn't sound near as crazy now, does it?

What I am getting at, is this is the greatest gift I have ever been given.  We waited a long time for him and went through a lot to get him.  Even when during a diaper change he accidentally peed in his face, which literally scared the crap out of him, all I could do was clean him up and laugh.  Being spit up on twice a day, doesn't bother me, I just add the clothes to the huge pile of other garments he finds creative ways to soil.  In other words, even the bad times are some of the best times of my life, so you can imagine how great the good times are.  And hopefully by next week we will be playing our guitars together...

Cancer Scare Number 2

When I was a teenager, we lived six houses down from the community pool.  Every summer day was either spent poolside, or windowside waiting to see if the storm would dissipate so we could go to the pool.  A little bit later, I became a lifeguard at that same pool.  After doing that for a few years, I spent a summer working outside at a State Park.  And while all this was going on, I would take the occasional day job at a local farmer, or my friend's farm helping to bale hay.  What does any of this have to do with anything?  Well, I don't remember using sunscreen at all.  I am sure I did at least a few times, but I certainly don't remember it. At least I wasn't as bad as some of the girls I lifeguarded with, that used Crisco for a week.  Now you might think I am saying that just to be funny, but I am dead serious, they broke out the Crisco shortening and slathered it on, and I am sure you will be surprised by this, the next week they had sun poisoning and had to stay indoors for several days (meaning those of us who did NOT use Crisco had to pull double duty on the lifeguard chairs/sun).  As I grew older, bad habits with sunscreen certainly didn't improve.

That leads to today's topic.  It takes me about four hours to mow our lawn.  The first mow of the season, the sun didn't seem too bright or hot so I didn't think much about sunscreen...until I started burning, but by then I only had an hour of mowing left and it seemed silly to stop in the middle just to put some on, after all the damage was already done, right?  Well, over the next few days of painful and cold showers, I notice a raised  bump on my arm that didn't go away.  After having my experience with testicular cancer I determined the best course of action would be to ignore it and see if it went away.  After a month I started getting worried.  I looked up information on some medical websites that told me I had approximately 17 minutes to live before that bump completely took over my body.  Don't get me wrong there is some good health information on the internet, but a lot more horrible health information.  A search of any malady will lead you to results from  certain and impending death, to "just ignore it and lay your lifecrystal upon whatever hurts".  Somewhere in the middle lies the actual good information, and you have to figure out what that is, and if you knew what it was you wouldn't be doing a blind internet search for it to begin with.  I won't say where my advice falls on this spectrum, but it is probably near the ends.

After consistent (but correct) nagging from my wife, I decided to call my oncologist to see what dermatologist he recommended.  Have you ever heard of those restaurants that you have to wait three or four years to get a table?  Dermatologists' waiting lists are slightly longer.  Luckily, because of a cancellation (or death, I didn't want to ask) I was able to get an appointment just one more month away.  The whole time I am waiting, I am torn because although I want the bump to go away, I don't want to go to the doctor after the month wait and say, "Well, it was here and it looked really ugly, but then it got small and disappeared yesterday."  But I didn't have to worry, the bump stuck around.

Finally, the day arrived for the dermatologist visit...literally one day after we got back from a Florida beach vacation.  Walking into a dermatologist's office really tan feels much like walking into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with a quarter of a bottle of Rum Jumbie (I imagine...).  When I finally get taken back to the doctor, they give you a paper blanket (which is slightly smaller than a Kleenex) and tell you to disrobe.  See, just because a patch of skin hasn't been exposed to the sun, that doesn't mean you won't still get skin cancer there.  So the doctor checks everywhere...everywhere!  In the movies, when you see the doctor walk in the room and the patient is naked, there is usually some boom chicka wow wow music playing.  The real situation has no music, and is a whole different experience (which is good because I didn't want a pizza boy walking in the scene too).  Basically, you stand there while the doctor looks over every millimeter of your body occasionally poking or tugging at things while wrinkling her nose.  The whole time you have to fight the urge to make excuses on why you have abused your skin and been too tan in some areas, or too pasty in others, or too flabby in others, and remark on how cold it is in the room.  After feeling like you are a rental car being inspected to be turned back in, the doctor starts talking again and gets out a marker.  She points out various anomalies and explains what they are, what causes them, whether you need to keep an eye one them.  It was very informative.  For instance, now I know that there are such things as "penis freckles" that guys can get as they get older...I have probably said too much.  Moving on!  The next step is the marker.  Feeling much like the guy who passed out way too early at the party, the doctor starts drawing circles and "x"s and who know what else.  After getting dressed, she said, "This one I am going to freeze off and these two I am going to take."  Happy to have my clothes back on (and not to have any penis freckles marked), I didn't really stop to think what "going to take" meant.

The freezing was nothing.  A bit of itchy, burning type feeling, but no biggie.  Then, I found out what "going to take" meant for the other two.   First, they stick a needle next to the thing they are taking to numb it up.  Then they start shaving that thing down until it is either gone, or they have a big enough sample to test (which as near as I can tell requires you to shave down to the bone).  For the one on my arm, it was a breeze.  Slight stick, a little pressure, and a band-aid.  The other was right next to my eye.  Now the local anesthesia they gave me, not only made things go numb, but it caused my eye to blink uncontrollably.  We are talking like the little light that lets you know your hard drive is running type of uncontrollably.  Then they take the razor thing  NEXT TO YOUR EYE, and after giving the medication to cause spastic twitching they say, "Now hold still..."  I have had much more painful procedures, and much longer procedures, but this was definitely the most annoying in my life.  I am told I am free to go, with one eye open and the other neither remaining open or closed, giving me all the depth perception of walking with a strobe light.  Thinking "Safety First" I thought I should probably wait it out in the lobby before I try driving with "strobe eye".  "How long does this last?", I ask.  "It will wear off in about two or three hours.", was the reply, like it was no big deal to wink at everyone within a five mile radius for the next 180 minutes.  I decided to just drive carefully home, and whatever I do, don't get out of the car.  Hungry, I just pulled into a White Castle drive-thru, because I figured at White Castle a guy winking furiously would still not be the most memorable character they will see that day.

Luckily, I had an oncologist appointment the next day.  I say "luckily" because two weeks earlier I had a CAT scan, so when I received a clean bill of health from the oncologist I knew regardless of my skin results, it hadn't reached my lymph nodes and my blood tests were fine.  At first, the skin samples didn't bother me.  But the longer it took for the results to come back, the more scanxiety set in.  In the two weeks of waiting, I used sunscreen religiously.  I used it almost as much as I checked the mailbox, email, and phone messages waiting for the results to come back.  Finally, the letter came in the mail that said "benign (non-malignant)", which made me laugh because if you don't know what the word "benign" means, will you know what "non-malignant" means?  Maybe they should say "benign (you don't have cancer)" because that is all people want to understand about that.  

So, a good scare to wake me up.  But since part of what I do for a living requires me to know about "rems" and "rads" and all that good stuff, I know that radiation (yes the sun is emitting radiation) builds up over a lifetime, I know that my careless youth means I need to be even more careful now.  If there is something good that came of out this scare, it's that I am taking my lessons learned and applying them to my six month old before the damage starts.  So what if his skin is so pale it's almost clear, one day he will thank me for it.  

My First Father's Day

Well if you weren't able to guess already, we were able to get pregnant.  The swimmers we had frozen before I had chemo apparently thawed out just fine.  However, my "friends" (and I use that term rather loosely) were quick to point out that they could have given me any sample and I wouldn't know the difference until the baby comes out.  After all, you go the the "bank" they give you just a regular insulated coffee mug with a little test tube inside with your name on it.  It seems like for as much as we paid for me to look at their dirty magazines and practice a little self abuse, they would come up with something a little nicer than some cheap looking insulated coffee mug like you get at trade shows for free from vendors you never heard of.

We were actually visiting at my parents' house when we found out the swimmers reached their target.  My parents were overjoyed, which is surprising because people normally have totally different reactions if somebody shoves a urine soaked stick in their face.  It was at this point that it dawned on me that I don't know nothing about birthing no babies.  The coming months were filled with me cramming my head with everything from how to change diapers to how every single thing your child touches, eats, sees, smells, and hears will do irreparable damage to it and make you a bad parent.  So, I will admit, I am one of those parents who is double checking every little thing that comes near my child to make sure it has passed a thirty-four step inspection.

The other thing I didn't know about babies, was apparently you need approximately 43,560 square feet to hold all the items that your new baby will absolutely not be able to live without, use once, then outgrow, and need to be stored for any future babies.  And while we are discussing things I didn't know, when you are buying stuff for a new baby, everything made previous to the point that you arrived at the cash register at the baby store, is very dangerous and should be burned and the ashes locked in a safe and the safe thrown in the ocean (safes are located in Aisle 4 and you don't want to get a used safe).  Personally, I think the baby industry (and there is definitely a baby industry) and the Consumer Product Safety Commission get together twice a week to declare everything that babies had before now, is harmful and must not be used under any conditions.  Which makes perfect sense, otherwise all those cribs, highchairs, and bottles we all grew up on, and apparently survived, would still be in use today, meaning we would not need to buy new ones.  When you tell people you are going out to purchase said new products many older people (i.e. people that bought baby products last year) will say "you can just borrow mine" and you respond "they (whoever that is made up of) say that is unsafe now" and the response is "well it never hurt (insert name here)".

We went through all of the doctors' appointments where you listen to sounds that mimic a cow trotting through mud and pictures that look more like a black and white radar scan of an approaching cold front than any sort of mammal, but yet you still get choked up and excited.  And then there is the time that you stare at the screen, trying to see if the jet stream is going to cause a Nor'Easter when the nurse looks at you and smiles and says that "jet stream" is actually a penis.  Oh the feeling that goes through a future dad when he first sees his son's jet stream.  Already I was thinking of all of the tools I would be buying him and all of the time we would spend working on cars together (although, that probably would have been the case if we were having a girl too).

I will admit, as the big day approached I got more scanxiety even if a scan wasn't imminent.  I had waited so long for a child that I was so paranoid something bad would happen before I would be able to meet him.  And let's face it, less than a year before, I had lost my job, got cancer, and we had a miscarriage in a matter of a couple of months, so I am not unfamiliar with bad luck.  But after a lot of anxiousness and praying we finally were told to check into the hospital.

For anyone unfamiliar with labor, I will try to explain what happens.  You rush to the hospital where your wife seems to be in a lot of pain and there is a lot going on, but on the outside nothing really seems to be happening.  While all this is going on, every single person that is on your hospital floor will walk into your room, shove his or her hand underneath your wife's gown and loudly shout out a random measurement ("6 cm!", "80%!!", "10/6!", "less than 12 parsecs!!").  I think even the kid that delivered our food shouted out "THX1138!" before she left.  All I know about these random numbers and measurements was the baby was still bigger than that.  So, after close to a day of "labor" that only seemed to produce an exhausted wife and goop that I wasn't sure was pre-baby goop or left over lube from the constant measuring, the doctor gets down and looks like she is trying loosen an oil filter on a Honda and says,"Well, he's not going to fit, but you can still push for another hour if you want."  Although I liked our doctors there, that has to be one of the dumbest statements I have ever heard in my life!  As you can imagine, my wife was over the whole push-measure-push-lube-push-measure-measure-measure-push routine.  So it was off to surgery.

I walk into the operating room after they had prepped my wife and I see her laid out on a table, tubes here and there, a curtain, and a line drawn across her stomach.  The doctor said, "You can stand here on this side of the curtain as we cut or..."  I don't remember anything after the "or" because I really didn't care what was on the other side of the curtain as long as I was on that side of it.  I was even more glad I had chose that side after the procedure started.  I don't know what they were doing on their side of the curtain, but on my side of the curtain my wife was being pushed and shoved around on the table like she was the little girl from the Exorcist (minus the head spinning around).  Finally the shaking stopped and they walked around the side of the curtain with...a purple baby.  The comments my "friends" made about switched samples are running through my head and I search my memory for any purple family members (although there was that one distant aunt...), but after a quick wipe down he became the most beautiful, non-purple baby I have ever seen.  Any doubts of grabbing the wrong coffee mug at the sperm bank, were gone for good when one pediatrician at the hospital told us that our new baby was tongue-tied and this would lead to a lifetime of speech impediments, difficulty eating, crossed eyes, sloppy trumpet playing, inability to make friends, receding hairline...basically he was going to turn out like Quasimodo without the musical ability.  This caused a huge smile on my wife's face and mine.  Not because we wanted my son subjected to a lifetime of being a social pariah, but because I am tongue-tied and although sometimes I may have the problems the doctor foretold, it is not from being tongue-tied.  It was like a little sign from God saying "See, now you know for sure he is your son."

In fact, I think every single part of that experience was a blessing.  I used to think Father's Day was just another holiday where you give people stuff (or realize you forgot to buy stuff to give to people until the last minute).  But today I have had to hide my emotions as I played with my son, thinking about how much happened to get him here and how hard I am going to fight to be around as he grows up.  And one last thing on being a father after having testicular cancer/chemo, the procedures and processes involved in making this happen are very expensive.  I had contacted Livestrong during our efforts and received a long list of organizations willing to help make our miracle happen, many of them offering their services for free.  The earlier you contact these organizations the better, as many want to help from the very start.  Luckily for us, we were able to have our miracle without needing to use these organizations.  But, we are keeping all of the doctors' bills to show him anytime he asks for anything expensive.