Flei Paper: August 2010

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

GO MOMMA!!!

20 years ago today.... I was a little girl who had just been on her first major road trip.

My uncles, along with some family friends, my sister, and I had driven the 20+ hours from Phoenix to Houston. I had no idea what to expect. I was so conflicted b/c in my mind Houston, Texas looked like a city from an old western movie and yet I knew Mom was there because of MD Anderson Cancer Center, which is the best cancer treatment center in the world. And I had such a hard time picturing this big fancy hospital in the middle of a town made of wood buildings and dirt roads with horses.

Turns out Houston was a lot like Phoenix only GREEN. I'd never seen so many green plants and rainstorms in my young life. And MD Anderson was mind numbingly huge and complex.

And my mother .... was a pumpkin.

That was my first thought anyway. When she had left Phoenix she'd had SOME small amounts of hair left. Now she was completely bald and the medicines they'd given her had made her swell up a fair bit and turn a little orange. Clearly, my mother was a pumpkin.

She was in an isolation room. I could see her through double paned glass and talk to her via intercom. I couldn't hug her or touch her. No one could. The doctors administered drugs to her through long plastic gloves built into the opposite wall and once a week a person in a bubble suit could come through the air lock to clean her room. Everything that came in had to be sterilized.

After 3 days of radiation treatments where she received the same amount of radiation that you would have received if you were at ground zero Hiroshima when the bomb went off, Mom had no immune system left. The littlest bug could kill her inside of a few hours.

I remember watching the day of the transplant. We were all gathered around the window. Momma was SO so excited. She held the catheter line up for us to see as they pushed in 3 BIG fat syringes of bone marrow in through the tubes that came through the wall. She gave us a big cheesy grin and a thumbs up!

We went to check on my Uncle Mike (one of my mother's younger brothers) who was her bone marrow donor afterwards. He had 6 little round needle holes in his butt. 3 of them on each cheek. He told Mom that now he can really say that she was a pain in the ass. (In fact until Mikey passed away 2 years go, every year Momma would call him and thank him for saving her life. And every year he would say "I love ya sis. You're welcome but you're still a pain in the ass" lol).

That was 20 years ago. And I still bawl like a pathetic baby every time I really think about it. I have no words to express how amazingly grateful I am to God, to science, to the doctors and nurses and to my Mother for being a fighter and going to hell and back so that I could grow up with my Mommy. I would not be a live today if it wasn't for her.

In so many ways I owe who I am to my wonderful amazing mother. You could not ask for a more loving and accepting, caring and compassionate person. Don't get me wrong - she'll kick your butt up between your ears if you really need it, but only b/c she loves you. I think she has done a SUPERB job of balancing being a mother and being a friend and that is not an easy line to walk.

For better or for worse, hers in the voice in my head. I found that out when I went to college. She's the one I hear, encouraging me, chastising me, reminding me and helping me.

She hasn't always been perfect but I can say this: Whenever it has been pointed out to her that something she has said or done was not right or hurtful or whatever, she never, EVER did it again.

As a kid, shortly afterwards I presented a picture to her transplant physician, Dr. Anderson (who just happens to share a last name w/ the hospital), it said in big crayon letters "Thank you for saving my Mommy's life". I want to say it again. Preferably through a mega phone from the top of a tall building, on the 6 o'clock news and on the front page of every paper in the world:

Thank you to every one involved in making it happen. Thank so much for saving my Mommy.

20 years baby. Here's to 20 more and many, many more after that!!!

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Caleb 14.5 Months

First a note: Mommy has gone and got herself a Twitter. The account is similarly titled: Fleipaper. You can also search by my name: Ami Fleischaker, or my email address if you have it.

And now on to the stuff you really care about: Our darling boy is now 14.5 months old. He is bigger and more opinionated by the day. He's also increasingly adorable, funny, flirtatious, cuddly and wonderful.

The dance of "I'm Independent/I want my Mommy!!" continues. At times he does NOT want to be held b/c he is very confidently going off after some thing that has caught his eye and he gets TICKED if you try to derail his plans. Other times he'll have a FIT if I put him down when he wants to be held.

Caleb is randomly afraid of some things and completely fearless of things he probably should be afraid of. The other day I flipped on the blender to make a smoothie and he had a category 5 melt down until I shut it off, picked him up and rocked him for 5 minutes. But while initially fearful of the vacuum he'll now walk right up to it. Go figure.

He's also unintentionally hilarious. The other day he was babbling at the receptionist at the chiropractors office and she says to him "Hey! Are you speaking french?" to which Caleb replied in perfect english "Yeah!". It was adorable.

He's capable of saying "Momma" perfectly clearly but he doesn't often do it. He seems to prefer to say "Dadda" and sometimes I think he says it just to get a rise out of me when I'm chanting "say Momma!" As part of my efforts to get the message across I tried patting my chest and saying "Momma" then I pat his and say "Caleb". I've used his hand to do the same thing. Well, he's decided that this means when I say "Say Momma!" he should walk up and pat me in the middle of the chest. lol. Smart little stinker. So now we're trying to teach him baby sign for Momma.

We're making progress with small amounts of baby sign. We've been trying to teach him "All done" when he's eating and so far he can do the hand motion, mostly, and the other day he even got as far as "ah-dah!" It was really cute.

Mr. Caleb is an enthusiastic user of Mommy's cell phone, or really any cell phone he can get his hands on, which is most often Mommy's (Mommy is VERY grateful for the password lock feature on her blackberry). He does love to play with his toy cell phone. He pushes the buttons and then holds the phone to his ear and says "Oooh?!" and then babbles and laughs and trys to hold the phone with just his shoulder like Mommy does with hers. He'll walk around with it. Its adorable.

So far he won't talk to an actual person on the phone. When Grandma calls and wants to talk to him I'll hold the phone to his ear and he just lights up and smiles and leans in, then pulls away to look at it, and then leans in to listen again, and then pulls away and then leans it. Until he's finally decided he's done and ready to go do something else, like try to steal the phone away and push the buttons.

Caleb is also a BIG fan of books. He loves to bring me a book and have me cuddle him on my lap and read him the story. Of course right now "read a story" mostly means I point out the pictures and make imitations of the noises that the animal might make or similar hilarity. He finds this immensely amusing and consequently we read LOTS of stories, several times throughout the day.