A Kick-Ass Fairy: A Memoir

by Linda Zercoe

  Now that I was over the shock of not having a job, I felt decidedly discriminated against in the way things went down at the end of my employment. I met with an attorney, who said that this could be a case of discrimination based on a “known medical condition.” He described the many steps that were involved and explained that we would be fighting my former employer’s legal department as well as their outside counsel, basically making me David against BofA’s Goliath. He mentioned the American Civil Liberties Union and an Americans with Disabilities group that might help in this matter on my behalf.

  After giving the situation some time to roll around in my head, I decided not to proceed. The first reason was that this was not how I wanted to spend my precious time. Second, I thought the stress would be unhealthy. And finally I thought that since, business wise, San Francisco is a small town, a lawsuit might affect Doug’s and my future careers. Still, although the stress probably would have killed me, I also thought it might have been a healthy way to deal with all the rage. What do you do with all the rage?

  Meanwhile, I became a full-time mother, complete with a master schedule filled with child-oriented activities. The scale was tipping into the male domain of Cub Scouts, karate classes, boys coming and going, classmate parties, boys’ gifts to buy. Kim’s activities, in addition to everything that she had been doing before, also now included evening drama classes, PSAT prep, and study skills classes. Also, since I didn’t believe that teens should “hang out” at the mall or in town, since it could lead to nothing but trouble, I insisted that Kim start a part-time job at the local senior center for a couple of hours a day after school. An added bonus of all this activity was that Kim had plenty of opportunities to practice driving us around on her learner’s permit.

  I soon found out why my mother would hit the imaginary brakes and hang on white-knuckled to the door of the car while cursing under her breath when I was learning to drive. I’d always wanted to blindfold or strangle her. Now I knew firsthand what it was like to be perpetually trapped on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. I wondered, And how is this good for my health? How did other parents do it? I found screaming at the top of my lungs helped—slightly.

  Doug and I called a truce and went to Kauai using frequent flyer miles and hotel points. As I had anticipated, it was wonderful. This was a new island for us, much more quiet and peaceful than Maui. We had a chance to talk about a lot of things. We decided I could plan to take Kim to Europe for her upcoming sixteenth and my fortieth birthdays the following summer, and I would ask Nancy if she wanted to join us. We also discovered that I had feeling again on the left side of my chest around the mastectomy scar. It didn’t look pretty but this was certainly an unexpected surprise, and a gift. Who knew ribs could be a turn-on?

  After our vacation, I quickly discovered I was now a member of an entirely new community. We lived in an area that was relatively affluent. Many of the wives I knew had the privilege of staying at home and raising the children, while many of the husbands were executives that traveled quite a bit or worked long hours. All of these women were very intelligent and had lives that were filled with their own activities when they weren’t focused on their children. It seemed as though everyone played tennis, was a member of a country club or some civic organization. Even though I already knew many of them from my book group and various neighborhood activities, I had no idea where I would fit in.

  When I wasn’t maintaining the house, I was doing laundry, shopping for food, paying bills, picking up after the children, or driving them somewhere. For many years, our nannies had done much of this, so it was new to me. But it didn’t take me long to realize that it wasn’t any fun. I worked from morning until night and still had no time for myself. I wasn’t paid, in either money or thanks. The job was boring, not intellectually challenging. I had little time to shop, and I felt guilty about spending money now anyway.

  For so many years, my work had helped to give my life meaning. It was a huge part of my identity. In working, I felt valued and challenged, and was socially engaged. As the autumn matured in all its Bay Area brownness, I began to get more involved in my children’s schoolwork and activities. It wasn’t long before they realized that their type A personality mother wasn’t any fun and began asking me when I was going back to work. If only it was that easy, I thought.

  My exit package from my former job included career counseling. So I made an appointment to see what it was all about. After a barrage of personality and interests tests, I learned who I was—at least on paper. The tests showed I was a leader, intuitive, sensing, introverted. Introverted? I had just been through years of being out on stormy seas, fighting for my life, and I knew I certainly wasn’t an introvert. I assessed that the tests were picking up on my current tendency toward reflection and perhaps the chronic depression from sorrow and grief. I decided to scrub the entire process and revisit it in the spring, thinking that maybe with time to heal, mentally at least, I wouldn’t be depressed or introverted—blue on paper. I concluded that the career counselor’s summary and the accompanying color-coded pie and bar charts weren’t really who I was—at least not by nature.

  When I had a few spare minutes, I continued working on my dollhouse. I started making dates to have lunch with some friends that I enjoyed spending time with, thinking I should take the time to get to know them better. Before you knew it, my calendar was filling up. I volunteered to help teach reading in Brad’s class, since I had never really done this before. I became a class field trip coordinator and chaperone. I volunteered to work in the school library.

  Even though I was busy with outside activities, I was still spending more time inside my house than ever before—at least conscious time. I hadn’t been there that much since we moved in other than recovering from one thing or another or just sleeping. I decided I really liked the house, even though it needed work. I liked lighting the fireplace—we had never thought of lighting it before. My house was becoming home, my home, after living there more than three years.

  Since the cancer, I had a regular schedule of follow-up doctor’s appointments. By October, I was down to a quarterly schedule of tests, visits, and more frequent Port-A-Cath flushes. I still wasn’t sleeping well, continuously having symptoms of a bladder infection, or “bladder irritability” as they called it, and still extremely agitated emotionally. Every time they did a urine culture, it came back negative for infection. I didn’t know if I was suffering from the aftereffects of the breast cancer ordeal (post-traumatic stress syndrome), my new identity crisis, hormone fluctuations, or what.

  My oncologist’s office group had a PhD who was a therapist. I met with him. He suggested, after listening to my litany of symptoms and complaints, that I was depressed and I should see a psychiatrist, who would be able to prescribe antidepressants. The psychiatrist was handy with the prescription pad and prescribed an antidepressant and something to help me sleep at night. I needed a pill to get through the day and a pill at night to counteract the day pill so I could sleep through the night.

  I kept thinking of the lyrics of the Jefferson Airplane song “White Rabbit”:

  One pill makes you larger

  And one pill makes you small

  And the ones that mother gives you

  Don’t do anything at all

  The fact that this was what my life had come to made me even more depressed. I began to think about how much of my depression was situational, hormonal, chemical. Was there a difference? Could a pill fix all of these things? I doubted it. I thought, Why wouldn’t I be depressed? Wouldn’t anybody be under the circumstances? I decided to just keep busy and to spend as much time as possible staying involved with people. I became a member of the “ladies who lunch” crowd.

  I was fortunate. I had many friends to spend time with, time that I really enjoyed. Now that I had more time to spend with her, my friend Clara was fast becoming another soul sister, in addition to Nancy, Lyn and my sister Alane.

  Clara and I had met a few years before when
her daughter Diana and Kim became close friends in middle school. Clara was a native New Yorker, a true Manhattanite, down to her fondness for black attire, serious glasses, and comfortable shoes. She’d moved to California with her husband and two daughters within a month of when we did. She was a retired history teacher, a prolific reader, and a consummate volunteer with a strong interest in politics. She was such the opposite of me in many ways. She was hot when I was cold. She was very touchy-feely, a comforting shoulder, a raft in the storm. I was a whirling dervish. She kept the home fires burning. She was a thrower; I was a saver. She was practical, a planner. I was a scatterer of birdshot.

  I also had my other friends from around the country to talk with on the telephone, and of course, my family. Instead of feeling sorry for myself, I tried to focus with gratitude for all the blessings I had in my life. I made lists every day of the ten things that I had to be thankful for. Each new day I tried to come up with ten different things. Within a week it really worked to shift my mind out of the continual funk.

  I decided to host a thank-you luncheon in the form of an English high tea for the people who’d helped my family during my illnesses. I researched the brewing of tea, bought books on the tradition of formal afternoon tea, planned a menu, baked breads, and made everything from scratch. I filled the house with fresh flowers, made calligraphic place cards, and had sugar cubes with flowers on them. I called Clara to come early when my aggressive menu of tea sandwiches wasn’t coming together fast enough. Cheerfully, she threw herself into the assigned tasks while soothing me with a humorous story.

  The tea was so much fun. Alice, the March Hare, and the Dormouse weren’t there, but the Mad Hatter might have been. I was learning that having a purpose or project was positive for me mentally, and it limited the time I could spend brooding.

  My father instilled in me a deep appreciation for music. I knew music could evoke feelings of happiness, sadness, joy, or tears. Singing was a release, and dancing was a euphoric. I believed that music was the poetry and dance of the soul and one of the most divine gifts for humanity. Listening to music always helped to make me feel better, so I made it a point to remember to spend my days at home listening to the music that made me feel good. Music also helped lift my spirits out of my funk.

  I went about my busyness with a Walkman strapped around my waist, listening to music, even when my family was home. It was an effective tool for avoiding family skirmishes. I would put the Walkman on, but not turn it on, just so I’d appear engaged. It trained me to allow others to work things out for themselves. I started learning how to check out and think about myself just a little. I now understood the attraction of my father’s music room and his weekend headphones escape.

  By November, my bladder symptoms had still not abated. I felt the same pressure I had when I was pregnant, but I knew that wasn’t possible since Doug’s vasectomy. I had a pelvic ultrasound and was told by my gynecologist that there was a large fibroid on my uterus about the size of a small lemon, equivalent to a sixteen-week pregnancy, once again confirming that I really wasn’t crazy. Even though he assured me that fibroids were usually benign, all I could think was, Another growth—and since when did normal apply to me? He recommended a myomectomy, a surgery to remove just the fibroid. He didn’t think I should have a hysterectomy; I didn’t need to lose any more body parts.

  I decided to get it over with and behind me as soon as possible. I was scheduled to go in in early December, three years almost to the day since finding the first lump. This would be my ninth surgery since then. I started getting worried about what was wrong with my body. Why was I continuing to grow all these tumors?

  I went to the hospital for the pre-op consultation, which included signing a consent form. Reading the consent, I was appalled to find out that the surgery of removing a “normal” fibroid could possibly include a hysterectomy, removal of the bladder, ovaries, rectum, and colon. I was upset. I told the nurse that I wasn’t signing the consent since my doctor had not discussed these possibilities with me and I would need to talk with him personally before I would sign.

  Shortly after I got home, the doctor’s office called me to say that the surgery was cancelled since I wouldn’t sign the consent.

  “I’m still planning to have the surgery but I can’t sign a form noting ‘informed consent’ if the doctor hadn’t discussed any of these possibilities or scenarios with me. Please have the doctor call me this evening to discuss these things.”

  “OK, but your surgery has already been removed from tomorrow’s schedule.”

  What a nightmare. I had been treated badly before, but this was insane. I wasn’t being difficult—the doctor hadn’t done his job. Having a history of the unlikely happening, I wanted to be sure that I wouldn’t wake up the next day to more than I could bear. I wasn’t prepared to lose all of my pelvic organs to cancer.

  I called Clara and told her what was going on. She tried to assure me that this was probably just a misunderstanding and that everything would work out just fine.

  I explained, “The situation is already tainted. How am I supposed to trust this doctor during the surgery if he failed in his duty to discuss with me the contents of his ‘informed consent’?”

  “Maybe it was just an oversight.”

  Why wasn’t I able to be reasonable? I was a mess. I thanked her and told her I would call when I knew anything. Meanwhile, all my childcare arrangements were on hold until this doctor called.

  Finally, about 7:30 p.m., he called and he was angry. I explained that he never discussed these possible scenarios with me and I needed not only for him to explain the likelihood of these things happening but that I wanted to have a say in how many body parts could be removed.

  “This is a boilerplate consent for uterine surgery, and I can’t proceed unless I have your permission to save your life if you start to hemorrhage,” he explained.

  He assured me that he didn’t foresee any of these things happening. What he didn’t know was that my friend Terry at the Wellness Community had died from misdiagnosed metastasized cervical cancer, and this was all I could think about since I read the “boilerplate.” We agreed that he would see me in the pre-op before the surgery to go over the consent form.

  My decline of confidence would never have occurred if he’d done his job right in the first place. I’m sure he thought I was crazy. Nonetheless, I decided to proceed, knowing full well that he would soon be removed from my list of doctors. At this point, I thought one mechanic was just as good as the next. I decided that, for me, it took more than surgical ability or specialized training to be worthy of my team. While I appreciated the skill involved, too many times it was evident to me that there needed to be substantial training on how to connect with the person known as “the patient.” Unfortunately, so far in the journey, doctors who could connect were exceptions, not the standard.

  In the morning, signing the consent went off without a hitch, while the gynecologist stood by my side answering all of my questions. I was wheeled to the OR and woke up with a catheter (not explained previously) and a new incision (crooked). No hysterectomy. I was discharged the next day. I recovered very quickly, amazingly so. And my bladder symptoms, with the associated feeling of fullness and pseudo-pregnancy were gone.

  At the post-op appointment, I learned that they had found two fibroids. The smaller one was just a fibroid, a benign tumor, not uncommon, but an anomaly nonetheless. The large one was abnormal. The doctor also informed me that the pathology on the larger mass had already been sent to Stanford for a second opinion. The upshot was they all concluded that this fibroid was a “symplastic leiomyoma.”

  “What exactly does that mean?” I asked.

  “It’s a rare case of a fibroid gone bad but not enough to be considered a sarcoma, uterine cancer.” Since this had been completely removed, the treatment was over and the chances of it recurring were rare. Again I heard rare. What the heck was going on here? Why was my body growing so many different tumors—
cancerous, benign, not quite cancer, precancer, rare?

  I decided to put all of this out of my mind and focus on creating the most special and happiest family Christmas we would celebrate in a long time. I thought that once again it was time to count my blessings. After all, I was still kicking and not in the throes of pain, doom, or despair for the first time in four Christmases. I baked breakfast breads, made candy and cookies, went full bore on the Christmas decorating, and listened to holiday music all day long. I handed out specially wrapped homemade cheer to friends and neighbors, even sending out holiday cards with the first (and only) annual family newsletter. And the cash registers were ringing.

  Brimming with the spirit of Christmas cheer, I thought, I like being home. Was it a case of “There’s No Place like Home for the Holidays”? No, it wasn’t. It dawned on me—I liked really knowing what was going on in my daughter’s life. When I kissed Brad at bedtime, I realized that just yesterday Kim was this small. Where had the time gone? I was happy and grateful (most of the time) to be spending this time with them. I enjoyed being involved in the classroom and their activities. Maybe it would be OK to just stay home and be a mother, just a mother. Why shouldn’t they benefit from the best of me instead of only seeing me when I was exhausted from working all day?

  But the elves were very busy buzzing in my ears that holiday. Wait, what about your career, your dreams, your goals, money? No, what about time for yourself, time to be the kind of mother you want to be, to be there when the kids came home to ask each of them, “How was your day, darling?” Why can’t you just be? Why do you have to be anything? Why can’t you just be happy with who you are—right here, right now?