So I did as I was told. And about ten minutes later, my backside had been numbed by a local anesthesia and a needle was sliding down through my body, through my bone, and into my marrow (which, thank you very much, was not at all affected by the anesthesia). The whole thing hurt like hell, and I cried and cried, empathy for Deenie growing and growing as I remembered her mortification at being fitted for her brace and my own disgust that no one would tell her what was going on.
No one told me what was going on, either, at least not until the test results came back. Here, my memory fails. It may have been weeks that I waited. It might only have been minutes. To me, it seemed a lifetime. But when the results did come back, my mother was called out of the room and given the news, and the relief in her eyes when she returned told me plenty.
The fear, I learned later, was that I had leukemia. The bone marrow test confirmed that I didn’t have cancer, and after a few more tests, my significantly-less-than-verbose doctor rendered his diagnosis: idiopathic thrombocytopenia purpura.
And that is? I asked.
A blood disorder, I was told.
Not exactly the wealth of information I was looking for, and so, like Deenie investigating her own scoliosis, I went on an information hunt of my own. In today’s world, this would be no problem. Back then, that meant schlepping to the main branch of the public library and the science library at the University of Texas, then poring through books and trying to understand the medical lingo. Ultimately—through a combination of my own research, questions to the nurse, and specific questions to the doctor fed through my mom—I learned that my ITP was an autoimmune disorder in which my own body made antibodies against my platelets, essentially attacking them. The cause was unknown, thus the term “idiopathic.” I learned that the disorder was chronic, that it might go away when I got older, that it was the result of my body filtering out my antibody-covered platelets through my spleen, that platelets are what makes your blood clot, and that the bruises on my legs were blood clots that had formed very, very slowly, having to rely on my minimal supply of platelets to do the work normally done by a whole crew of the little guys. Worst of all, I learned that without treatment, I could hemorrhage. Possibly to death. Since that didn’t sound good, I welcomed whatever treatment came my way.
Like Deenie, I had some answers. And like her, I wasn’t crazy about them, but I was happy to finally be informed.
I still hoped that the treatment would be a simple shot or prescription. I also remember thinking about the book and about the brace Deenie had to wear. I hated wearing braces on my teeth, so I was glad my illness was in my blood. Surely no one at my school would see that I was ill. Like Deenie, I first anticipated that I could keep everything a secret. After all, when the prescription made my bruises go away, all the evidence would be hidden. (In point of fact, it took over a year for the largest clot to dissipate and fade.)
Again, though, it turned out that I had more in common with my literary friend than I’d anticipated. My prescription was for massive doses of prednisone taken over a long period of time (years, it turned out, since my ITP did not correct itself quickly as happens in many cases). And since my less-than-verbose doctor didn’t warn me or my mother about the side effects of the drug (especially in such large doses), I didn’t expect the acne that popped up on my face and back. I didn’t expect my periods to stop. I didn’t expect to develop cataracts or have to guzzle Mylanta at the ripe old age of fourteen. And most of all, I didn’t anticipate the effects of salt. My face soon ballooned to the point where I was unrecognizable. Simply a round, doughy Pillsbury girl. And if you think that is fun in high school, please think again.
Like Deenie, I hated the way I looked. Unlike Deenie, I couldn’t have taken off my doughy, round face under any circumstances. I was still me, though, and I told myself that my friends wouldn’t care. Deenie had learned that, right? When she’d decided to keep her brace on at the party instead of changing into the cute outfit she’d brought with her, she was trusting her friends to be there for her. And her trust paid off.
I held that literary reality close to my heart, and, in fact, it came true. My friends were nothing but supportive. And while they will now tease me about my chipmunk cheek days (my face is back to its angular lines and has been for years), never once did they say a mean word during our school years. Even better, they were quick to come to my defense against any moron who did make fun.
I took the medicine for years, finally successfully tapering off without my platelet count dropping during my first semester of college at seventeen. Those years in between were hard, but I had Sally J. and Deenie and my nonliterary friends and my family helping me through. Once I was used to the meds, I slipped back into fantasy again, becoming a world-famous scientist and solving the mystery of the “idiopathic” part of my illness. I made up wild causes and fantasized that my blood had special properties that aliens wanted, and that in order to save the world, I had to save myself from the invaders. In other words, I took a page from Deenie and Sally J.’s books and turned an unpleasant situation on its ear, entertaining myself with fantasies spun from my own medical misfortune.
When the doctor did tell me I was done with the meds, I thought of Deenie again. She ultimately left her brace behind, too. As far as I know, Deenie got to leave hers behind permanently. My illness came back with a vengeance after my first semester in law school. I had no bruising this time, so I wasn’t expecting it; I’d simply gone in for a routine check. As it turns out, I had essentially no platelets. My blood wasn’t just clotting too slowly, it wasn’t clotting at all.
This time, the treatment was surgical—removal of my spleen (and, therefore, the major component of my immune system, which was doing such an excellent job of filtering out all those misplaced antibodies and the platelets to which they were attached). And because the situation was apparently so serious, my doctor insisted I go to the hospital right after our appointment. I begged for him to let me take my civil procedure final exam first, which happened to be scheduled for the next day. And so I went from sitting for an exam to lying on an operating table.
At that point in my life, my head was more filled with personal jurisdiction than with my childhood literary friends, but Deenie and Sally J. were still with me. I know because, following Deenie’s lead, in that short period (and instead of studying for my exam) I looked up everything I could about the surgery. And in the style of Sally J., I spent the week of recovery in the hospital making up complex stories in my head. Stories that always starred myself.
I’m happy to report that the spleenectomy “cured” me. I no longer have a decent immune system, and my body still makes antibodies against my own platelets. But since my spleen isn’t there to filter them out, the little platelet guys still do their job, albeit with antibodies clinging tenaciously to them.
It is possible that other organs will take up the slack left by my spleen’s absence, but it’s been years, and so far that hasn’t happened. We did hold our breath when I was pregnant, since pregnancy can, in fact, induce a temporary case of ITP.
I was fortunate, however, and sailed through the pregnancy just fine. My platelets were monitored, and so were my daughter’s. She’s now four and shows no sign of having inherited her mommy’s misguided immune system.
I know, however, that since it is idiopathic, it could show up in her, and I tend to freak a little when I see bruises on her legs. Our wonderful pediatrician understands and gently reminds me that kids bump into things and get bruises. And even while he reminds me of that, he keeps his eyes open for any unusual bruising and performs a platelet test if something seems amiss.
I hope and pray that she never has to face any sort of unpleasant medical situation. For that matter, I hope and pray that she never has to face anything hard in life. But, like a fourteen-year-old self-prescribing vitamin K, I know that is naive and unlikely. And, truthfully, it’s not really what I want for her. Hard situations help us to grow, and I know she can make it throu
gh anything. Why wouldn’t she? After all, she’s got her family, and as she grows, she will have more and more friends. And, you can be sure, once she’s old enough to read and understand, I’ll make sure that my daughter has literary friends like Sally J. and Deenie to help her along the journey.
National best-selling author Julie Kenner’s first book hit the stores in February 2000, and she’s been on the go ever since, with more than twenty books to her credit. Her books have won numerous awards and have hit best-seller lists as varied as USA Today, Waldenbooks, Barnes & Noble, and Locus magazine. She writes a range of stories from sexy and quirky romances to chick-lit suspense (The Givenchy Code) to paranormal mommy lit (Carpe Demon). Her first young adult novel—The Good Ghoul’s Guide to Getting Even—was released in spring 2007. Visit Julie on the Web at www.juliekenner.com.
It Wasn’t the End of the World
Kristin Harmel
When I read It’s Not the End of the World for the first time, I was in the fourth grade. Poor Karen Newman, I thought. Sure, she was lucky because she was already in sixth grade (and everyone knew that the sixth graders ruled the elementary school), but her parents were getting a divorce! I didn’t know anyone whose parents were divorced. How awful, I thought. But it would never happen to me.
Sure, my mom and dad fought a lot. Dad would work late; he’d come home and only half listen to the things we had to say; my parents would snap at each other, and I’d go watch Mr. Ed or Get Smart reruns on Nick at Nite and try to tune them out. Sometimes they would take it out on me, and I’d fill my diary with things like, “I think Dad hates me,” or, “Mom yelled at me for no reason.” But then we’d go on a family trip to Disney World or to see my grandparents in Massachusetts, my parents would both smile at my brother, sister, and me, and I knew everything was fine.
Poor Karen Newman. But my parents would never get a divorce, I remember thinking confidently as I read about Karen’s parents splitting up. After all, my mom had never thrown a mocha cake on the floor just because my dad complained about the icing. My dad would never yell at my mom because my sister spilled some milk. My mom had never screamed at my dad for getting home too late for dinnertime, even though they never really talked to each other and often seemed to dislike being in the same room. So, they must be happy, right?
The summer after fourth grade, we moved to Florida. That’s where Karen Newman’s family was going to move at the end of the book. But they were moving there because her parents were divorced and Karen’s mom wanted a fresh start. Not my family. No way. We were moving because my dad had a great new job. And besides, Mom and Dad had been happy during every trip we’d ever taken to Disney World. And Disney World was in Florida. So it only made sense that once we were living in Florida, they’d talk to each other more and start getting along again, right? Divorce wasn’t even an option.
At least that’s what I thought.
But divorce wasn’t an option for Karen Newman, either, was it? Like me, she watched her parents fight and convinced herself that it was no big deal. She felt the tension that pervaded their home and internalized it. And so did I.
But still, I didn’t see the signs. Divorce was something that happened to other families.
At first, Florida was great. Well, as great as it could be when my new fifth-grade classmates were snobs who snubbed me because I dressed like a dork. But I didn’t see Mom and Dad fight very much anymore. Sure, I felt tense all the time for reasons I couldn’t put my finger on. And, actually, Dad was never really home that much; he’d come in from work after we had gone to bed and be gone by the time we got up in the morning. But they must be getting along, I thought. It’s not like I heard them argue. And the complete lack of talking to each other that I couldn’t help but notice on the weekends? Well, it just must be that they got all of their friendly talking out of the way at night after we had all gone to bed. It couldn’t be that they had run out of things to talk about altogether. And it definitely couldn’t be that they just didn’t like each other anymore.
Dad came home earlier than usual one night midway through fifth grade. Great, I thought. We’ll finally be able to have a family dinner together! Maybe we can even go out to eat. What a treat that would be! But instead of having a great family meal like we used to, what felt like a long time ago, Mom and Dad asked me, my seven-year-old sister Karen, and my four-year-old brother David to come sit with them in the living room. Okay, I thought. Maybe we’d all sit down and play Candyland together or something. Great!
“Kids,” my dad began somberly, looking at my brother, sister, and me. “Your mother and I love you all very much. But we’ve decided to separate.”
I think my heart stopped for a moment. My jaw dropped.
No.
No.
It couldn’t be happening. Not to my family.
“What does that mean?” asked my panic-stricken sister, looking from my father to my mother.
“It just means that Dad and I have some problems we need to work out,” my mother explained kindly, making eye contact with each of us. Or at least I think she was making eye contact. My eyes were welling up with incredulous tears, so it was hard to see. “This has nothing to do with you three. We love you more than anything in the world. We both do.”
“You’re getting a divorce!” I exclaimed. I couldn’t believe it! My parents were just like Karen Newman’s! And I hadn’t even seen it coming!
“No, honey, right now it’s just a separation,” my mother soothed.
“But where will you go, Dad?” I asked. I looked at my little brother, who was too young to understand. But he was following the conversation with the wide eyes of someone watching a high-paced tennis match.
“I’ve found an apartment close by,” my dad said.
“But we’ll never see you!” my sister wailed.
“Of course you will,” he responded. “I’ll be right up the street. We’ll see each other all the time. I’ll take you to dinner one night a week. And we can see each other every other weekend.”
I just stared. One night a week? Every other weekend? It was just like Karen Newman’s parents! And her parents got divorced soon after her dad moved out.
No, I decided. I would not let that happen. Not to my parents. After all, I’d seen their wedding photos. One of them was still up in the living room. Look how happy they were! That couldn’t just go away! Could it?
I mean, sure, Karen Newman had tried to get her parents back together, and it hadn’t worked. But maybe she just hadn’t tried the right things. So in the name of research, I went back and reread It’s Not the End of the World. Okay, so Karen’s plans seemed solid. For example, bringing her diorama home from school so that her dad would have to come over and see it, thereby running into her mom and remembering how much he loved her? Pure genius. The one flaw in the plan was that in my class, we weren’t actually building any dioramas at the moment. I didn’t have any bait to lure him home.
Okay, Karen Newman Plan #2: Pretend to be sick so that Dad has to come see me, thereby running into Mom and noticing her stunning beauty and sparkling wit. This plan, too, was flawed, though, as Dad was a doctor and Mom was a nurse, and they could spot a faker a mile away. They were on to me the moment I held the thermometer up to the lightbulb in an attempt to simulate a fever. Hmm, it didn’t work for Karen Newman, either.
Okay, on to Karen Newman Plan #3: Get Mom and Dad back together on their anniversary. Surely they couldn’t help but remember how in love they had been on the day they got married, right? They had just forgotten, but I could remind them, and everything would be fine. Unfortunately, that plan crashed and burned, too. It seems that two people who are in the midst of dissolving their marriage don’t really appreciate it when their eleven-year-old daughter fills the house with Happy Anniversary banners she prints out on the computer. Karen Newman’s plan failed similarly. I should have known.
I can’t even count the number of times I read and reread It’s Not the End of the World. That’s be
cause when you’re eleven and your parents are splitting up, no one realizes that you might have some real adult questions that you don’t exactly know how to ask. Even though my mother did her best to explain the divorce to me and answer all of my questions honestly, there were some things I didn’t know how to put into words. Will Dad stop loving us? Will he forget us when he moves? What will happen to us? Will we be poor? Will Dad try to take us away from Mom? I didn’t know how to ask those things. But Judy Blume did. And through Karen Newman, she told me the things I ached to know.
The divorce hit me hard, just like it did Karen. Karen was in sixth grade when her parents divorced, and so was I. Why did Judy Blume choose to make her that age? I’ve always thought it’s because that’s the worst age to go through a divorce. You’re old enough to absorb the tension around you and to grasp the basic undercurrents of the situation. But you’re young enough that no one actually realizes that you know exactly what’s going on but don’t know how to ask the questions gnawing at the back of your mind. Karen Newman was the only other sixth grader I knew who was going through a divorce that she didn’t understand, didn’t want, and didn’t know how to stop.
But Karen Newman made it through. And that was important to me, because it meant that I could, too.
I often wondered through the years what happened to Karen Newman, or rather what would have happened to her if she were a real girl rather than a figment of Judy Blume’s imagination. There’s a singular solidarity to the children of divorce, especially those of us who go through such a thing at a highly formative age, and I like to think she and I would have been great friends.
Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume Page 12
