Thank You Letter to the Oregon Health Plan

I couldn't do it without you.
I wouldn't be celebrating health without your coverage and comprehensive care.
You were with me for the natural births of both my daughters.
You were with us for our first visits to the emergency room, a burst ear drum and a second degree burn.
You were there for me again when our federally funded subsidized private insurance ended.
You've caused me grief and cumulative hours on telephone hold and piles of paperwork and terrible frustration losing it, but you were there for me for my girls.
And even when you let me go, you were still there for my daughters.
Yet most importantly, you gave me the option to choose intensive, comprehensive therapeutic medical care for my daughter when I needed it most. You gave me a path to restore my daughter's health without fighting for it or making it more difficult than it already was.

And OHP, I can honestly say I don't think I could have done it without you. If I had had to reconsider, grovel or beg for support to have access to the diagnostic lab work, day treatment, counseling and support group therapies that we needed to support our medical diagnosis, I would have. But at $750/day for eight solid weeks and four more months of ongoing appointments, I doubt anyone else could have supported us as easily as you could. When grocery bills doubled and flared and work was often a struggle or impossible, you gave me the stability to streamline my challenges and let the system care for the health of my child. You are the system that works, the system that makes it possible for working citizens to pursue medical care for their children without worry for the costs of consultations, co-pays, deductibles and endless billing.

You are a big part of the reason my daughter got a clean bill of health this week.
With your presence, I successfully confronted a mounting range of intermittent symptoms of disorder, symptoms that defied patterns and intensified at alarming intervals. Symptoms like social isolation, hair loss, appetite confusion, constant coldness, relentless athletic drive, food elimination, exhaustion and inability to reason. Symptoms that together careened toward hospitalization after more months than I can accurately count.
You provided access to the medical care team that confronted these symptoms with me.
You continue to provide access to the practitioners who will bridge that engagement with disorder and keep us in remission.
Thank you.

The Victory Candle, part 2

I had a victory this week. A victory of an unexpected girth.
Not so long ago, I posted a question to my social media circle that ballooned with both productive and critical responses. I considered removing it multiple times, but I didn't because of stubborn commitment to myself. I didn't because I had done the very thing that several responses seemed to suggest I surely hadn't taken the time to do - answer the question for myself. Of course I had already carefully considered it. If I hadn't, I would have asked a different question. I would have asked how people would answer a question for me. Eventually, though, I accepted that people were compelled to try to solve my problem.  As a result, my love language came back to me.

I asked my circle:
If you needed to add $200 to your monthly income immediately without adding a third job or changing your job, how would you do it?

It was a real question I was trying to answer for myself.
I knew I would be stretched and inspired to think more deeply with the input of how others might tackle it for themselves. You know, like checking game slots for an unclaimed coin, looking into the corners of all the coexistent minds around me. Yet I found myself explaining a lot of reasons why their unsolicited suggestions for me didn't work for me, and that didn't feel good at all. One suggestion stumped me. It capitalized on a skill I possess, enjoy, and was reasonable as well as possible. I was initially confused why it didn't appeal to me.

And then I realized, this thing that I enjoyed was too sacred to me to turn into a profit. It was too sacred to turn into a profit because it respected my love language that makes me joyful to have the power of giving to others. It's because this thing, my garden, is my breathing space, my place to go for space and the one from which I can give freely and joyfully what I have grown there. To profit on this space felt wrong and defeating. And then....naming that was a kind of liberation. A victory of the highest kind. A solution within a problem. My unsuspecting victory.

As I packed up a couple lbs of tomatoes to take to work, I realized I could joyfully offer a couple of garden produce baskets to local friends for a fee. My victory.
 
Whereas I didn't think I could take my garden produce and sell it rather than give away what I had to spare because it would rob me of the joy that brings, I found that I could accept new parameters of joy. My victory.

And so, my question may not get answered,  and my problem may not be solved. So often what we ask is what we need - and we can benefit from needing to learn something else.

The Victory Candle

Anyone who wants to be a superhero..... could just be a parent and meet the same demand and supply for extraordinary vision, strength and power. 

Do superheroes make mistakes? Parents sure do.
Parents are human. So are superheroes.
If there exists a parent who hasn't yelled when their child was already down, made a self-serving choice or been wrong, please get in touch. And if you have made it to their teen years without doing so, well, congratulations. If you're a guiltless parent of an adult, I'm officially skeptical of your honesty.

I can't name more than a handful of common superheroes. That phase never infiltrated my household. But I do have a lingering sense of two primary traits of superheroes - honesty and humility. As parents I think we have a great responsibility to tell the truth, including our own truths. That gets so hard when the cards are down. On a subconscious level, I think that's what I was after with the victory candle. Years and years ago I read an idea in a family magazine that adapted to my dinner table as The Victory Candle. The victory candle might be lit at dinner during the week and provide a doorway to reflecting on positivity and celebration. Taking turns to recount something that felt good or a challenge overcome in a formal setting was important for me to share with my girls. And it was honest. It measured our personal yard sticks of accomplishment - most often highlighting seemingly small things that most people would not see. Victories are things that others might not know to notice. Personal truths. Perspectives.

It can be so hard to admit when we are wrong. It's equally hard to admit when we are right with ourselves. That's humility, both ways. When things are both wrong and right, a lot of ugly can arise.
We grow when we own our ugly parts; I have many ugly parts. I have been in those dark places of exhaustion and frustration saying things I did but did not mean, and that is the humanity and humility in me. We live with our missteps, mothers, fathers and non-parents alike, always. We are superheroes

My super power is perspective. I fail every time to work with anyone who does not allow perspective. And it is the perspectives that walk into the light allowing for grief and anger their valued places in the human experience. It requires extraordinary vision, strength and power. It makes us superheroes.

How Asking for a 10,000 Raise Started Sinking My Ship

I didn't get the raise, and I didn't expect to.
But by coincidence, extra work and unexpected fortune, my income did rise by about $10,000 in the last year. And it turned out that while I knew that sum would be the first step to growing out of a very particular income bracket into which I had arrived and was just a hair beyond public assistance territory, I didn't imagine it would be as staggeringly paralyzing as it turned out to be.

You see, it is the case that between a dollar and the next lies the qualification for $350 in food assistance each month. Imagine the impact. The difference of a dollar adds up to the difference in thousands of public assistance. So that happened. Money that might be sparingly saved literally got eaten at the table.

There was an actual raise, a carefully crafted number that would preserve qualification for public health assistance or affordable health care. Neither change reared immediately, rendering a false sense of security.

And there was a surprise bonus. That was great fortune at the time, as it eased the burden of a pay drought and accommodated a change in work availability. Between the food and typical monthly expenses, it kept everything afloat.

When it all added up, there was the nearly $10K. The magic number that erased the magic.
I never foresaw it would erase the glorious and welcome ritual of a tax return. I certainly never anticipated it would require tax be paid. I failed to consider that sustainable income would quickly convert a few comfort dollars into a burden to be paid. In taxes alone, my $10,000 gain cost at least $2000.

Having more money, even just a bit more, costs more.
Enough more that I can only expect to keep having less.

Currently, I can't afford health insurance, as in I don't have the income beyond my existing expenses to pay that bill each month.
To be more specific, I could 'afford' health insurance if my daughters didn't wear braces or need an educational boost or cultivate musicianship, or if I didn't financially contribute to having those things.
If I don't pay for those things, who would?
Uniquely, I actually had all of those things along with health insurance until my income was deemed to high to qualify for the insurance. Subsequently, my income has been deemed grand enough to spare 40% of what is left after paying typical bills (housing, food, gas, utilities) for health insurance. With 92% of that income on the child-rearing ship, I'm sunk.

An Illness You Do Not Feel

Two weeks ago as Portland's record temperatures were ascending into the relentless 90s, I was in the mall shopping for sweatpants. Sweatpants are the daily dress code for the partial hospitalization program we enlisted to provide comprehensive, evidence-based  inpatient care for my 12 year old following a diagnosis of anorexia nervosa. The notion was scary, but being balanced by relief and information beyond the height of nerves and accommodations I realized I had been providing my daughter for nearly a year, it was also welcome. At the clinic we could expect a team of pediatricians, psychiatrists and therapists to get us aimed at remission - starting in less than a week after confronting the diagnostic reality of illness. We didn't love all the parts of the plan, but with the advent of eating disorder understood as a neurological condition, it's treatment is also often covered by medical insurance, including this clinical approach.

When every day slows to a therapeutic momentum, when you're 12 and you have an illness you don't feel, when healing doesn't feel right, when nobody can tell you when you can play freely again, when there's a new normal from here on out, when you miss your summer. When you are the parent with this child. When you want to apply logic to illness that defies logic. When most people have no real understanding of the complexities of your new normal's disease.

When you have an illness you do not feel.

That's what happened to us in the last two weeks. As lengthy as it was getting connected to the right resources, as hard as it was to accept a possible minimum scope of 8 weeks in treatment, as excruciating as it is to work therapeutically with a co-parenting adult who challenges my emotional safety with Olympian skill, I think the real work of this journey is uncharted and ahead of us yet. How do you heal an illness you do not feel?

In clinic, the first priorities are medical stabilization and weight restoration. They are a relatively easy buy-in cognitively, but then again, cognition isn't always functioning logically within eating disorder. Some patients struggle with this restoration. Some less. As I understand it, many take years to acknowledge illness because they don't view their disordered behavior as harmful. The goal of intensive therapy is remission of active eating disorder behavior through cognitive therapy and practice. It's a unique journey for every individual. It's not shameful to have disease like cancer or diabetes. Whoever heard of a child experiencing any kind of shame or judgement with such a diagnosis? Yet eating disorder isn't widely understood as the complex neurological condition that it is, so there's often an underlying assumption that environment has created it or people have chosen it. It's not shameful to have eating disorder either. But it's an exceptional challenge to bridge that misconception.

And it's an incredible feat to confront an illness you do not feel.

Sharing, pshaw.

It's not easy to share. And it's more difficult when you aim to share with someone who can't quite agree with you on the boundaries of sharing. I live with a teenager. I experience this challenge on a daily basis. Specifically of note, I share a bathroom, my favorite towels, my kitchen, and most importantly my food processor with her. Daily, I walk into my kitchen after leaving it with a dish-free sink to find dishes in the sink. And more often than not, that includes the food processor – that gem of a gadget (and my fanciest) that is ALWAYS easier to clean sooner than later. So not only is it harder to wash after sitting, it's not clean for my own use, and it takes up half the sink hanging about unwashed. I get really grumpy with this recurrence, probably because it seems so easy to me to accommodate my expectations. Of course, that's the key to making it through – realizing she has her own set of designs on how she cleans up after herself and she'd rather do anything than fit into my expectations.

I'm not a fan of making kids share. There's no way it feels good to share when someone is talking you into it and, quite simply, you are not ready to share. I believe it also sends a false message of making others feel better at the expense of one's own feelings. I'm a big fan of aiming for a solution that satisfies all involved parties, including solutions that honor input from all. At preschool I relish when that does not come easily – because in fact those solutions ALWAYS come out more cooperative and creative in the end. 

And yes, it's much, much harder in my own home.

If you have lived with small children, keeping all parties satisfied is a grand task. It takes practice. I finally got smart and aimed to meet my teenage daughter in the middle. It more or less worked. After I illustrated that it really is easier to wash the food processor if you at least rinse it clean before leaving it in the sink, she made the 'illuminating' remark she might as well just wash it right away. Aha! Self-discovered observation for the win. This stuff still works when the kids are 16.

A willingness to share is generally rooted in feeling one has possessed to a satisfying degree. I can admit, I will always want to find my food processor and at least one of my favorite towels available when I want. They are mine. I have a suspicion this sense of ownership is no different from the sense of ownership a child has over wanting to sit next to someone, give a turn with a flashlight, put out the stop signs or fill a toilet with paper towels. We want what we want. Sharing only truly works when it comes from the desire to cooperate. It's definitely not easy. Cooperation is better.

Up with the Sun

My dad is a very friendly guy. He says hello to everyone he passes on the street, and this morning in a neighborhood of my childhood it seemed many people even knew him by name. He pays no notice to if someone is wearing headphones and sunglasses and avoiding personal contact - he says hello anyway. And he almost always habitually shuffles me to the inside of the sidewalk when walking along.

What is stunning about this is that when I was a kid my dad was more of a disciplinarian, authoritarian presence. I was rarely in public with my dad unless we were in his public - trade shows, gun shows, and the crowded cave of his livelihood, a gun and surplus store. In these venues my memory of him is as a brash, somewhat surly, inflexible king of his domain. He was a bit scary and exciting to my friends, especially the boys I knew. It's an element of his personality which has shifted radically in the last few years, along with the acquisition of dementia and an Alzeheimer's diagnosis. It has occurred to me that I am losing my father as I knew him, but more interestingly I am gaining an adult companion.

Early morning may be my dad's best public self. Until now I hadn't slept at my parents' house in nearly two decades. These days, my dad rises early. Before the sun. It was nearly three hours later when I got up, and I found my dad fully dressed, reading the newspaper where he had already been poised for over an hour. I greeted him with a suggestion to go get coffee, and the spring in his step and cheerful, "Okay" that followed was so simply and honestly boy-like I was glad the impromptu invite were the first words out of my mouth. It wasn't the only time in twelve hours I realized how similar being with an aging adult is to free-ranging with young children. The attention to getting on my dad's own time was highly enjoyable and successful each time. I can count the number of times I have watched television before bed as an adult on one hand; last night I settled right into the sofa to join my dad in this nightly ritual (and had the lucid dreams to prove it - dreaming of a deftly disemboweled woman whose murderer was commended on her skill - stemming from an unsolved mystery show watched with my dad near midnight). I sat with him as he nodded on and off and the hour grew late, something that used to make me a little crazy because who isn't more comfortable in the quiet and comfort of bed? Heading out, I had a coffee destination in mind, though when dad told me turn to the left as we drove I followed his lead. He couldn't name where we were going, but it was clear he had a couple of ideas about where to land. When we got to a place he had in mind, the sign said closed (too early to be open). I parked anyway. We walked right in, were served and had coffee in the dim before the lights were up and the regulars (and his familiars from his years having daily coffee in the past) started streaming in. Although I got us out the door, my dad led every interaction for our morning. I was struck again by the importance of momentum, the support to get somewhere and the trust to let it be so. After coffee and a collection of "long time, no see" hellos from the fellow diner patrons, we took a morning walk to the river, my dad insisting on taking the uneven outer edge of the sidewalks. He was cheerful and distinct and communicating pretty clearly, which are things that often diminish as a day goes on.

The beauty of having no agenda and no distractions to draw off attention is that it's unlikely to be disappointed with how things go. I am often encouraging parents of young children in my work domain to follow a child's lead, to get on their time in our shared environment. It's a hard habit to nurture in our own home base environments, and it's most definitely a skill I have acquired with age. With my dad, on occasion he has goals but no words to describe them. Conversely, he also relies upon and even succumbs to the plans of others to conduct his days. It's hard to position oneself in the most supportive aspect to reach an agreeable lead. But I think when aging, and when mental acumen is consistently unreliable, the very best companion is one who can offer momentum but provide resilient companionship. I often wonder, will I know my dad is gone when he is no longer angling me to the inside of the sidewalk.

A Day in the Life of, er, Teacher Beautybutt

Once upon a time, Crazy Day at preschool was simply a day to wear crazy hair.
It's still a day to wear crazy hair, dress differently than usual, and for the past two years my 4 & 5 year old classes have REALLY latched onto the idea to make Crazy Day truly, well, Crazy. Most significantly, this has involved using an alternate Crazy Name for this one day, a name of one's choosing that anyone at school can call you on this day only. Most of the students come to school and announce their names to be written onto name tags with a lot of enthusiasm. There are typically some surprises, some funny choices, some sensational choices, and some taking on of each others' names. 

But the real 'excitement' this year was when the kids then asked me what my crazy name was. 

Naturally, I was crazy enough to ask them for suggestions. 

Here are 13 out of 18 suggestions that were made: 
Butthead, Poopyface, Buttcheek, Eyeball Head, Dinosaurs Everywhere, Butt Toilet, Butt Toilet Butt Head, Toot Toot, Tootybutt, Beautybutt, Teacher Toilet, Poopoo Butt Toilet Butt, Fancy Pants. 

Notice a theme? 

We have a lot of conversation around minimizing the intrusion of bathroom words, because they simpler aren't comfortable words for everyone. We have rules for where they can be said (in the bathroom, privately), and rules about calling people only the name they come to school with or is part of a complicit game. I know how much attention they pay this agreement because they exhibited PRECISE understanding of how and when these words are not generally to be used at school by offering them to me as my crazy name. Exactly one child adopted a name of this ilk for her Crazy Name for herself. But the absolute permission to be crazy, and give a sensationally crazy name to me was overwhelmingly powerful for most students. The thrill of crossing the sensational boundary was full of giggles and recognition of how the rules and social norms could bend with guided permission. The looks on their faces were priceless.

I thanked everyone for their fabulously crazy suggestions that day.

I sort of kind of really wanted to be Teacher Beautybutt for the day. But honestly, I hear my name a lot at school and although I successfully addressed a student as Butthead to her sheer delight all day, I suspected I'd live to regret laughing through any further mention of Beautybutt, not to mention risk a perverse favoritism. 

I took a stab at choosing my crazy name with a nod to their inspiration. 

Alas, nobody called me Miss Fizzlerumpus all day.

Just Doing It

Those days when you do the very last thing you want to do, and it turns out to spin you a new direction. Those days when you don't put off the thing that needs doing, and it introduces you to a game-changer friend.  Those days when you return a phone call that goes unnoticed in your messages for days and turns into a first date. Those days when it's completely inefficient or unessential to go get fresh ground peanut butter instead of stay in reading on a gray vacation morning, but then you go and you happen to meet a new source of happiness.

These things have happened to me on several notable occasions.

Once I turned down a street thinking, "Why not, I haven't driven home this way before," and I found my favorite letterpress print shop (Bartleby's Letterpress Emporium, now closed), at which I eventually purchased a most glorious broadside with all the right words on it.

Once when I coerced my daughter through the rain to a square dance she really did not want to go to, I bumped into an old friend from high school I had lost complete track of and really wondered about.

Once I called someone back that I didn't really know and didn't get my number from me and it spun out all kinds of pleasure.

Once I went to the grocery store for nut butter and water filters because my daughter really wanted to and passed by the volunteer shoppers filling carts from lists of people who can't do their own shopping, and my daughter really wanted to try it out.
So we asked about it. We got a crash course training, and we did it.

And that's how we became volunteer grocery shoppers. But we never would have been walking past a small army of slowly filling grocery carts at the grocery store on a weekday morning if we hadn't just done it. If I hadn't opted to aim for a bright spot of contentment and go to the grocery store for a few things that were not on the list, not urgently needed, and not my high priorities for the morning. And doing that brightened my daughter irrevocably.

We never really know when the people we meet or the places we venture are making memories that stick or planting actions with purpose or generating a chain reaction of smiles. Yet we never will know without just doing it.

Boys in the Bedroom

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HPV for the Dinner Table

Thank you for reading on.
Human papillomavirus is a group of more than 120 different viruses that are primarily sexually transmitted. Which means that any sexually active person can (and statistically does) get one or more in their lifetime. For the most part, these viruses go away on their own. Yet for such a strikingly omnipresent virus, the population is woefully uninformed about its reach. There are 13 serious types of HPV that have been shown to cause cervical cancer. Two of them cause 70% of all cases of cervical cancer: HPV types 16 & 18. They don't go away on their own.

Guess which ones I got.

Everything is going to be fine. There's plenty of protocol for cutting and scraping and biopsy to manage their presence and their pre-cancerous states.
I feel lucky. I happen to have health care and routine screening detected them. But lesions manifest in stages without rhyme or reason and progress at their own rates, so time is a real wild card with HPV.

Yet here's the thing: I'm pretty sure my experience was far from unique and it really makes me grumpy.  When I landed in the arena of HPV information overload, I did what I presume any angry, partner-less gal would do - I went for inquiry and edification. When something unexpected and infuriating happens to me, I need information. And I need to spread it around. It wasn't fun, but my coping mechanism included contacting past partners. There is absolutely no protocol for this, because unlike most sexually transmitted diseases, HPV is a sexually transmitted viral infection which most often goes away on its own, and male partners are very unlikely to have symptoms of HPV. On top of that, there is no standard screening technology for HPV in men. They can pass it along and be none the wiser. Think about it - for men to give it, they have to get it. While it is not likely that contacting past partners is going to identify who had what and when (because HPV is slow to show itself), that's no excuse at all for men and women alike not to know a thing or two about it.

I will admit, I was really hoping one of these guys would say, "Why yes, I knew my ex/partner/fling had HPV. I should have thought to tell you that."  No such luck. I was angry, emotionally impaired, and suffering inconvenient and invasive procedures. I really wanted men in particular to care. I communicated with half a dozen men between the ages of 35 and 55 including some past partners, and not a single one really knew much about HPV. They certainly didn't get how they had a stake in the game. And this bothered me a lot. Half of those 6 are fathers of daughters. And the way I see it, if you're having sex or parenting a child who will have sex, you oughta know your stuff. Half of the women I talked to had some experience with HPV. Half did not.

Ladies, we are in trouble when our own men can't share the cocktail party conversation about the inconvenience of this scourge. It affects everyone. It's also preventable, which is what the HPV vaccination campaign for all children aged 11 & 12 years old is about. I'm not crazy about the way this campaign is being conducted and tested on our kids, but I 100% appreciate the idea that it's a vehicle to get a transparent conversation going about this onerous  infection, and that the burden to making a change is shared between the sexes.

HPV can be talked about at every dinner table. It's that commonly experienced, it's that relevant.
Sadly, I feel that I lost at least one friend bringing the conversation around, and I certainly didn't come out ahead or appreciated bringing it to attention of another. I stand by edification. Serve it!

I Pay for Piano Lessons the Way Some People Pay for Haircuts

It's true.
I pay for piano lessons the way some people pay for haircuts
Monthly.
I pay for haircuts the way some people pay for vacations.
Yearly. Maybe.
I pay for vacations the way people pay for weddings.
Haphazardly.
And Always.

Many years ago (15), I dabbled in the wedding industry. I sewed a wedding dress as well as a few separate bridal party ensembles. The dress was a chore. It was pure silk; the bodice required challenging modification and the skirt and underskirts involved so much yardage of tulle I developed a very tangible appreciation for all-purpose petticoats. Everything was mocked up in muslin, multiple times. The bridal party skirts and dresses were the same - maiden voyages in dupioni and chiffon and organza and french seams. Not to mention ripped out seams, fittings, and frustrations galore. I faked it and made it, and realized I could charge all the more on the merit of the W word. I struggled a bit with the good fortune that came with the earning power of the W.  Ultimately I decided I wasn't (and didn't want to be) a skilled enough seamstress to take on the ultimate challenges of wedding couture. There are plenty of other people to take on that madness. Always.

Vacation is defined loosely in my lexicon - a week, a day, an evening, an out of the ordinary submission to some time without a high responsibility factor to others. And often, my vacation space comes as a gift from others. But I pay (with time and/or money) for vacations the way people pay for weddings:
Haphazardly - because it's the only way I can.
And Always - because the investment in a little break from the ordinary does one well.