Topic: A Risk

The biggest risk I have ever taken was the day that I sent away to the State for my original birth certificate. I always knew that I was adopted. There was never a time when it wasn't a part of me. Over the years I thought about my birth mother. I wondered if I looked like her. Did I have other siblings out there somewhere? Did she tell anyone about me? Did she wonder about me?  I was curious about her, but I had a great mom and dad, so it wasn't like I was propelled into action to find her.

After I became a single mother at 19, I thought about her often. More than anything, I realized how difficult it must have been for her to give a child up for adoption. I couldn't do it. I had gone through counseling and had planned to place my son, but at the last minute, I just couldn't go through with it. It made me appreciate what my birth mother had done for me even more. It was at that point that I knew someday I wanted to find her to let her know that I had had a good life and that she had done the right thing. I went about my life thinking of this elusive birth mother, but not doing anything to find her.

About a year after my mom passed away, I got online and registered with one of those organizations that match adoptees with their birth moms. A few days later, they contacted me and I backed out. What if she doesn't want to be found? What if I find her and she is some drug addict and only wants to get money or something else from me? What if she doesn't want me? 

So it was years later before I started exploring the internet again in search of her. Occasionally I would google my date of birth to see if it had significance to someone out there. Nothing important came up in the searches. 

It wasn't until my children were older that my desire to find her grew and pushed me into action. Working for an attorney, I decided to ask him for help. I knew that my birth parents had been actors. Catholic Charities had given my parents some information. Later I found out that some of the information was correct and some of it was far from the reality. Since the University of Cincinnati has a phenomenal theater program, he suggested that I start by looking at old yearbooks. I narrowed it down to a few years. Surprisingly, there was a woman in several of the photographs who looked a lot like my daughter, so I was convinced that this must be the woman who had given birth to me. Again I went to my boss and asked him if he could help me. He got on his laptop, looked into it, and discovered that after 50 years, the law in Ohio was changing and that in six months my original birth certificate would no longer be sealed. Well, I had already waited 50 years, so what was six more months?

When the date came, I waited a week to get the paperwork that I needed to fill out and send away. I'm not sure why I was worried about it, but I didn't want to seem too anxious. Finally, I filled out the paperwork and got copies of the required identification, mailed it off to the State of Ohio.and promptly forgot about it.

A month later, I got up one morning and looked at the mail on the counter. I had been out the previous day and hadn't seen it then. There was a thick envelope from the State. My heart raced. After all of this time, I was finally going to have a name.

Now I had the information in my hand. I figured that once I had the birth certificate, I would have to do more investigating. I was certain that she had gotten married at some point and therefore would have a different name than when she had me. Reading this document was just going to be the beginning. I would have as much time as I needed to get used to this, to find her, to decide how to contact her, and to prepare myself for rejection. I always told myself that I just wanted to let her know that I was okay, but if I was honest, I wanted to have a relationship with her. Despite this, I had to be ready because she might not want anything to do with me. 

As I opened the brown envelope, I wasn't sure that this was worth the risk. I could get hurt, but I kept going. There were several papers inside with various information. She had named me! That must mean something. I was important enough to her that she gave me a name. Not all birth mothers did that. Next I saw her name. Well, I didn't know her. I always wondered if I would-if she was some random person who had been in my life and we just didn't know that we were related. Then I saw another form that she had filled out. It included her married name, address, phone number, and email address. I knew where she lived. In fact, I was about to go somewhere that was near it. The last item in the envelope was still another packet of papers. On these she had information regarding her medical history. In addition to that, there were the names of her three children. I had three siblings, a sister and two brothers. Somehow I had always felt that I had siblings out there somewhere and now it was verified. There was also a checked box stating that she wanted to be contacted. 

Relief came over me. She wanted me to contact her! I had the information to do it. I had taken a huge risk, not just by sending away for my birth certificate, that was really the easy part, but by opening myself up and taking a chance. All along I feared that I would be hurt in the end. There was no way that I could have known how worthwhile taking this risk would be. There was also no way to know how exciting the adventure that was waiting for me would be when I made the bold move and called her on the phone two days later.

A Risk

A Risk

Whenever I’m faced with a decision that involves some risk I always ask myself what’s the worst that could happen if it doesn’t go well.  I’m not a financial risk taker.  I’m not a big gambler and I only wager what I can afford to lose.  I don’t risk physical injury.  I drive the speed limit and always wear a seatbelt.  If I see a big dog roaming unleashed that could possibly bite me, I find a safe spot. 

When I was in graduate school we did this team-building bungee jumping exercise and I opted out.  The only other member of the class who sat it out was a man got around in a wheelchair following a diving accident.  I reasoned it out.  The worst that could happen was that I’d get hurt.  The best that could happen was. . . I couldn’t think of a single compelling reason to make the jump.  I knew I was risking people thinking I was a wimp and that I wasn’t a team player, but that was a risk I was willing to take.  So Hugh and I watched everyone else jump.  He told me he was glad he had a really good excuse not to jump.   And when we got ready to graduate a few years later one of the ladies in my class told me she admired my decision not to jump.  She told me she didn’t really want to jump but she was worried about what people would think. 

What will people think of me?  Now there’s a risk I’m willing to take. 

I realize as I write this that my life has been a series of risks.   I live in risk.  I embrace it.    

Every time I get on stage and sing or act I’m risking rejection or being laughed out. 

Every time I post my response to one of these blog topics I risk opening myself up to criticism or judgment. 

Every time I share a picture of myself without a wig covering my bald head I risk offending people. I have alopecia, and I can’t help that I’ve lost my hair, but I am aware it makes some people uncomfortable to see a bald woman. 

Every career switch has been a risk, and I’ve made many in my nearly thirty years in the work force. About a year ago I left a job where I was at the top of my field to take an entry level job with a company where I’d dreamed about working for years.  I took a pay cut and also went from being a manager to being managed.  I went from making major decisions to having to get authorization for even a few minutes of overtime. 

Every time I’ve entered a new relationship I’ve risked being hurt.  I got married in 2017, and it wasn’t for the first time or even the second or third time.  But I decided it was worth the risk to allow myself to love again.   I also risked the judgment of those who responded to my happy news with, “Really? You’re getting married again?!” 

I’ve decided what things are worth the risk. Not everything is worth it.  I won’t risk my life or my physical or financial health.  But some things in life, namely, artistic expression, freedom to be my authentic self, following my dreams, and true love, are always a risk worth taking.

 

A Risk

The biggest risk I ever took was in the context of my job.

I was in the initial year of working at my first real doctor job after residency, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. I saw patients in the clinic four and a half days a week and I also took care of my patients that needed admission to the hospital. Naturally, as someone fresh out of residency, I was somewhat unsure of myself.

One day I was in the ICU taking care of Robert. He was 68 years old and got admitted from the ER the day before. He had a little chest pain and was put in the hospital so we could rule out a heart attack. At the time, this involved getting a series of blood tests every 6 hours to look for elevations of certain enzymes found in heart tissue. So far Robert was ruling out just fine.

While I was there talking with him, he got out of bed for something, I don’t recall what now. Suddenly he collapsed completely without warning! He didn’t give any sign of being in any distress at all. He had a monitor on his finger showing what the concentration of his blood oxygen was. Normal is 95-100%; his oxygen was suddenly in the low sixties. He was grey, gasping for air and looked as terrified as I felt.

My mind was racing, trying to figure out what had happened. A stat EKG showed no evidence of a heart attack. Then I remembered that Robert came to the ER straight from a 14 hour bus ride. Also, he was a pretty big guy and these factors made me suspect that he was suffering from a pulmonary embolism (PE). A PE is a blood clot that forms in one of the body’s deep veins, usually in a lower leg, that breaks off and travels to the lungs. A PE of sufficient size can completely keep blood from entering the lungs for oxygenation, and is fatal. Robert’s size and recent prolonged bus ride were two big risk factors for a PE.

But at that time, treatment options for a PE were pretty limited. The treatment for a large PE, such as I suspected Robert had, was immediate cardiothoracic surgery to physically remove the clot. In a patient who wasn’t crashing, the treatment was immediate administration of blood thinners. In any case, the usual course of events involves nailing down the diagnosis with a CT scan.

However, in our little rural hospital we had no cardiothoracic surgeon, the nearest was two hours away. And that day there was no radiologist available to perform and read a CT scan. And Robert was looking worse by the second.

It crossed my mind that I did have clot-busting drugs available. They were relatively new at the time, and there were very strict guidelines for when they could be used. They were only approved to break up clots in coronary arteries as well, they weren’t approved for pulmonary embolisms. Also, I recalled the time in ER during my residency when a 75 year old man was having a heart attack in front of our eyes. The attending doc explained to the family that while this patient was too old to qualify for the clot-busters, they were the only possible option for this patient. The family chose to give the medication, and the patient ultimately suffered a fatal brain bleed.

But again in this case clot-busters were the only possible option immediately available to me, short of  initiating an ambulance transport to the big hospital two hours away and letting Robert die on the trip. But he was going to die either way. I hurriedly explained the situation to his wife and got her consent to push clot-busters. I gave the nurse the order to administer the clot-buster, then prayed.

During the absolute longest two to three minutes of my life, I watched Robert slowly pink up and saw his oxygen climb steadily to the mid-nineties. By this time he had been sedated and intubated so I couldn’t tell what his mental status was. I was a little worried that his oxygen had been low enough long enough to harm his brain. At any rate, I called the ambulance and we transported Robert off the the tertiary care hospital.

Robert did just fine from that point on, however. He came home a couple of days after his admission to Marquette. A heart catheterization in Marquette demonstrated completely clean coronary arteries with no evidence of any disease so it appeared my diagnosis had been correct. 

I stayed in Michigan for several more years before switching to Urgent Care medicine, long enough to be able to watch Robert enjoy his grandchildren growing up. I always wondered if he was the reason I got in to medical school. His outcome was certainly worth all the hard work and heartache and debt. But I took a big risk that could easily have turned out differently.

A Risk

Author: Chris Dunn

Risk… Risk is my foe - a foe who can only be thwarted with the tool of eternal vigilance. Don’t move a heavy box through a tight corridor until you’ve walked the route to clear it of obstacles. Don’t mow the lawn until you are certain it is free of uncutable debris. Turn all pot handles inward. Always cut away from yourself. And for god sake move that glass away from the edge! If you watch me long enough, you’ll see that my entire life is spent perceiving potential risks and proactively preventing them. Even when I’m not involved, I’ll run over an point out a potential hazard – one of the few instances where I feel confident to talk to complete strangers. I even set my parking break every time I stop my car, hill or no. “Why? Are you setting the break?” People ask. “You’re not on a hill.” So! Does it hurt the car to have a little extra security? No. So mind your own business nameless, faceless example person!

So far in my life this risk prevention strategy has been a rewarding practice. While it does decrease certain, potential story avenues, like skateboarding fails and skydiving mishaps, the savings in medical bills alone is well worth it. My stories tend to be more cerebral and observational – odd anecdotes about things and people misplaced or out of context. I don’t have a “hold my beer” story to wow the crowd with the time I actually survived a fill-in-the-blank. So, I come to this week’s writing practice a bit stumped. Sitting by the keyboard with a wealth of helpful advice for the would-be, foolhardy thrill seeker, but not much in the way of a tale of my own.

Then the phone rings. My friend, James, has a flat tire just around the corner. Do I happen to have a tire iron he can borrow? Of course, I have a tire iron. I have all the tools needed to deal with a flat. That’s how you avoid getting a flat tire, being prepared. By the time I arrive to assist, however, a good samaritan has lent them a much more versatile iron than my own, one with multiple size wrench heads and levers for better torque. Even so, they’re only able to get four of the five lug nuts off, and James winds up having to call AAA. “I guess you can go,” he says when it becomes obvious my tire iron is only usable as a hammer and even at that insufficient to the task. “I’ll go as soon as I can get my tire iron back.” Because that’s just the sort of oversight that’ll leave you stranded on the highway at midnight wondering what happened to that tire iron. It was just here!

With Mary on her way to pick up the kids, AAA on its way to help James with his tire, I wandered home with a sudden recollection. My first car, Scarlett, a 1992 Nissan Sentra was a tank. I drove her for 16 years and eventually gave her up just because it was time for a change. In 2008, I upgraded to a nearly new 2006 Nissan Sentra I dubbed Cobalt. Cobalt has served me well ever since, but at the outset, he had issues - particularly with his tires. Whenever I would hit a curb – even the slightest graze, mind you – that tire would go flat within 24 hours. I’d slap on the spare, take it to the shop, only to have them tell me the tire was fine, just mysteriously flat. My inner, risk watchdog told me to just swap out all four tires and start fresh, but the me who controls the finances just bought a newish car. There wasn’t new tire money in the budget. You’ll be fine. Just drive carefully, don’t hit any curbs for a while. And that’s how you find yourself on the side of I-75 during morning rush hour, your car pulled as far off the road as you feel comfortable with though still fearing it may tumble down the embankment at any moment. All your efforts, still leave your butt hanging perilously close to cars whizzing by at impossible speeds. 55 MPH is so much faster when you’re outside of your car rather than in it. Adrenaline gave my hands extra strength as I torqued off the lug nuts and swapped on the spare, all the while listening to the heavy I-told-you-so sighs coming from the judgmental part of my brain.

My old driving instructor once told me. “Don’t worry. Most drivers don’t want to hit you. If they hit you, that’s going to ruin their whole day.” Largely due to this adage, I feel, I went unstruck that day. I tossed the flat tire in the trunk, dropped my ass back in the driver’s seat, and waited for traffic to slow and let me back in. While I sat there with my blinker on, the finance guy came out and gave his report. Surprisingly, he had found a way to move a few payments around. It would eat into our cushion, but we could afford the new tires. As long as nothing went financially wrong for the next few months, we’d be fine. I decided to take the risk.

Topic: A Memorable Meal

One memorable meal that comes to mind is one that I prepared myself.

Despite being raised working in a restaurant, by young adulthood I actually knew very little about cooking. I had learned to cook breakfast but that’s about all. When I got out on my own my diet consisted of a lot of bland processed frozen foods.

That all changed when I got my job in Saudi Arabia. I had a roommate who liked to cook, and he also liked spicy foods. He taught me how to make a few dishes and I started loving spicy foods as well.

Dating is forbidden in Saudi Arabia. It’s illegal to be out in public with a woman one isn’t related to. An exception is if you’re with a married couple - they’re considered adequate chaperones. I was lonely and I heard about cooking classes offered by an Indian lady, Aruna. She and her husband Arvin hosted weekly cooking lessons in their flat. Their flat was also a hotbed of dating activity. So I figured taking some of her classes would be an ideal way to safely meet women in Riyadh. I signed up for a course in Italian cooking.

Aruna was an excellent teacher, and soon I was confident in my ability to prepare a wide variety of delicious Italian dishes. While housesitting for one of my married friends, I decided to host a dinner party. I would ask one of the ladies I had met in the class to be my date. It would be safe to have it in mixed company because there was little risk that the dreaded muttawa (religious police) would raid the married folks’ compound. 

So I invited the lady and several of my friends for a feast. I prepared a wonderful minestrone soup, a salad, Italian green beans and an awesome pasta dish for the centerpiece. This was cannelloni with both béchamel and tomato-cream sauces. The cannelloni dish was particularly labor-intensive. I had to make the ricotta cheese filling from scratch, and I made my own pasta from scratch as well. Then I rolled the cheese into sheets of the pasta. The tomato-cream sauce took hours, and required putting the tomatoes through an extractor to end up with a silky smooth sauce.

Everyone showed up on time and the first courses went extremely well. Everyone was complimenting me on my prowess as a budding chef. Then things sort of went awry when we began eating the cannelloni. For some reason the pasta rolls seemed kind of chewy and almost cardboard-like.

Everyone was very polite and still complimented me when the meal was over, but I was crushed. I went back to Aruna’s for the next class and asked her what might have gone wrong. She tilted her head and asked me in her lovely, lilting accent, “For how long did you boil the pasta?”

Holy shit! I had totally forgotten to boil the pasta. So we had eaten homemade ricotta cheese wrapped in raw pasta, accompanied by two exquisite sauces. The worst part of the whole ordeal was explaining to my date what had happened. She said, “So you’re going to med school, huh?” 

I’ve never forgotten to boil the pasta since.

A Memorable Meal

It's funny, isn't it? How many hours, minutes, seconds of our lives we spend wishing we were somewhere else or doing something else or further along in life or a career...we cannot rightly put a number to them. I have had such lively meals whether at parties at my parents 'house back when we were all younger and healthier, and alive. The house smelled of Christmas, with the pine smell of our live tree, the fireplace smell that only a real fire can bring, and the smell of homemade food wafting through the air. The atmosphere was that of joy and openness, of a family whose members were truly happy to be surrounded by one another and their friends.

There are  also the meals that remain in my memory as bittersweet: the last meal where our grandmother could eat and swallow, before having a trach vent implanted; the anniversary party we threw for our parents on their 30th, not realizing how drastically our lives would change with our dad's heart diagnosis the next; the meal when we toasted with Matt's parents and mine (with fake wine) the baby whose ultrasound we had seen that would never be held in our arms.

There are celebratory meals, like wedding receptions and rehearsal dinners and engagements. There are dinners with friends through the years. There are the many date night dinners of new love before we were engaged or married. There were casual times of "having a cheese" or cooking club creations. Always, without fail, the wonder and blessing of the meals were as much in the company as in the food.

My family always saw meal time as a tool, lovingly carved and used creatively as a force for shaping opinions, morals, and the love of one another's presence. We debated politics and religion and shared stories of our days. Today, I am so grateful that my little boy feels that magic in everyday meal times ( he sure as heck barely eats, so at least he inherited the philosopher gene).

Out of all the many types of meals that have left forever footprints on my heart, the one that always makes me laugh, is when Rach (my sister) and I, both still single and in our late 20s/early 30s went out late one night after work. We owned a home together, two actually, and we shared dogs and friends as well. We loved the same tv, traveled together, and had many of the same opinions and senses of humor. We were at Fridays or some such late night dining option, and having ordered two cheesy, delicious, calorie laden appetizers, we started to talk. At the same time. Saying the same things. Again, we tried to take turns. Again we spoke the same words in ridiculous and flawless harmony. One final try, and we then said, of course simultaneously and through tears of laughter, "let's just not talk." We didn't for quite a while, almost the whole meal (which for anyone who has met us, you know that is a long time). We ate with the kind of ginormous stupid grins that only those wo have not had the shit kicked out of them by life yet could enjoy. Those were the smiles and laughs of two best friends and sisters who had the world at their feet and their dreams shined brightly like stars in the darkest and clearest of skies. So were the thoughts so shared, the bond so strong, and the beings so in sync, that never could an errant thought come betwixt the two or reduce the glee. So was youth and open, honest comradery. That laughter and bond remains a sustainer of my soul in darkest times and a cheerleader in times of triumph, but the innocence in that carefree evening lingers only in the memory of my heart, where it can still be felt and held and cherished, while never completely being within reach. It is there, just the same.

Topic: A Memorable Meal

Meat Sauce & Military Coups

Milan, Italy: the last stop of our whirlwind three and a half week excursion backpacking through Europe. By this point, it didn't matter that we didn't speak Italian; not knowing Dutch, French, or German hadn't caused us any problems thus far, and Italian was at least a *little bit* like Spanish. I'd booked an AirBNB with an indoor hammock as we boarded the train in Venice, looking forward to a few days of rest and relaxation before our long flight home. If I was lucky, I figured I would be able to swing back and forth in the hammock, my feet in the air, and a large beer within reach.

Milan was a great final destination for our adventure. After navigating the bike paths of Amsterdam, the streets of Berlin, and the canals of Venice, and walking at least 10 if not 15-20 miles every day, we were grateful for a city with an easy metro system. Two of the main train lines provided a loop around the city, with others stretching into the suburbs. We spent two of our remaining four days wandering around the city aimlessly. With two days left to go, we had one last goal in mind.

One last authentic Italian meal.

Ristorante Da Oscar was so small and so authentic that it was easy to overlook when walking down the busy streets of central Milan. From my cozy hammock, I had perused online reviews until I'd found what I was looking for: a neighborhood establishment that didn't cater to tourists. Surely there we would find an authentic Italian meal. I quickly made a reservation for two for 9:00PM, placing my phone on one end table as the hammock swung left, grabbing my large bottle of beer as I swung back to the right, and settling into the lull of the hammock.

"Should we dress up?" Jake asked. "This is probably our last big meal before we head home."

"Why not?"

Although we'd been careful to load our backpacks with only the essentials - and much of our trip was planned around visiting abandoned amusement parks, coal mines, and military bases - we had both made sure to pack something "nice" for the occasional dinner. Donning our finest, we walked to the local metro station and caught the first train heading toward Milano Centrale.

"It looks like we can get off at the central station or go one stop further," I said, "but the walking distance is the same."

"Let's just get off at the central station," Jake said. With a plan in place, we settled into the bustle of the evening metro traffic, counting the stops to our destination. Finally, with one stop to go, we gathered near the door of the train, waiting for it to pull into Milano Centrale. As it did, all of the lights in the train went out. The doors opened, and a voice came over the loudspeaker. Everything they said was in Italian and we couldn't understand a word of it, but it became clear that everyone had to get off of the train.

The metro line runs through the basement of Milano Centrale, a massive train station in the heart of central Milan. We had visited it earlier in the day to photograph the beautiful internal structure and achitecture of the building - and to hop on their free wi-fi for a few minutes. As we exited our train that night, we followed line after line of people up the four flights of escalators to the main floor of the train station. Outside, military spotlights shone brightly on the train station, with local police surrounding it and alarms flashing.

"What is going on?" I asked Jake.

"I have no idea."

It was at that moment that my phone started buzzing as texts from my mother arrived, courtesy of the train station wi-fi. Are you okay? I just saw that there is a military coup in Istanbul. You're not there yet, are you? She asked, as though I would have received her messages as she sent them and been able to reply. If you haven't flown to Istanbul yet, you need to change your flight. I was looking at the American Airlines website and there are flights from Milan to Chicago for $650. Flight #AA123... My eyes quickly scanned the texts as my feet followed Jacob away from the train station and in the direction of Ristorante Da Oscar.

"Looks like there's a military coup," I said.

"Where?"

"Istanbul."

"Oh. Is our flight cancelled?"

"Not yet, but I guess we should keep an eye on it?"

"Definitely. Do you think that's why they kicked everyone off of the train?"

"I guess? But isn't Istanbul kind of far away?"

We mulled over the possibilities, arriving at Oscar's just in time for our reservation. From a tiny table in the corner, we watched as Oscar, an older, burly, grandfather of a man, emerged from the kitchen to chat with nearly each guest, the walls covered in odd tributes to Mussolini. It seemed as though everyone knew one another, and as dish after dish appeared from the kitchen, it was clear that we'd found what we were looking for. In fact, the gnocchi was so good that we went back the next night - and then high-tailed it to the airport to figure out how we were ever going to get back home.

Topic: A Memorable Meal

Author: Chris Dunn

It was a ham sandwich. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but they say hunger is the best spice. I whole-heartedly agree, and would add to that adage, the sauce of serendipity.

We’d been on the train for hours, Euro-railing through the old country with my travel companions Kit and Drew. We were about half-way through our 30 day excursion and in the process of putting Spain and all its amazing sights behind us. We’d had a great time, visiting friends, wandering drunkenly through the Ramblas, visiting the wine country near Seville, eating paella on the beach in Valencia. It was a truly wonderful trip, but we still had so much Europe left to see. So it was with restless hearts, we set our sights on Italy and boarded the next available train out of Barcelona.

The upside of having a Eurorail pass is you can board any train to anywhere, the downside, you aren’t promised a seat. As a result we spent the trip sitting on the floor at the back of the train talking with a manic Irishman who claimed to be Macaulay Culkin’s cousin. He was so fuckin’ happy to see us. Said it was just so nice to finally have a chance to speak fuckin’ English. It was his favorite adjective. Everything was fuckin’ amazing and fuckin’ fast or fuckin’ stupid. The word had no sexual denotation whatsoever. He used it as an intensifier, like ‘very’. Later we would dub him, Fuckin’ Fenton, but at the time we happily shared our floor space next to the bathroom and the back door of the train. We passed the hours exchanging our Spain stories with him and informing drunken train wanderers that they had reached the ultimate back of the train. “No mas!” We would insist, but most still had to go look out the window to prove it to themselves.

It was about 3 hours in that we realized our dilemma. We were very hungry, and had no cash. In fact, we had very diligently made a point of spending every last peseta we had, so we could to avoid the exchange fees. This was long before the Euro and every country insisted on their own currency. The scant few coins we could scrape together barely constituted a dollar. In going through our bags and pockets - flipping passed traveler’s checks which wouldn’t be useful until we could hit a bank or a currency exchange – I found a single 20 franc note, worth about $4 at the current exchange rate. It wouldn’t get us much, but anything looks good if you get hungry enough. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t do us any good for at least another 4 hours when the train passed over into French territory. We filed the 20 francs away as a last chance contingency and continued to scrounge for coins in our giant backpacks.

Five hours later, bleary-eyed and very hungry, we hopped off the train in Perpignan, desperate to find something to buy with our precious franc note. From a tiny stand, we managed to purchase a pair of ham sandwiches and couple warm cokes. Not bad for four bucks! The sandwiches were exceedingly basic: a single slice of ham on a buttered French roll, but the roll was fresh baked and the butter was so sweet and salty. The ham was practically an afterthought giving just enough substance to make it a meal. They tasted so good, we were torn between wolfing them down greedily and savoring every morsel, especially since there would be nothing else until we reached Marseilles in another six hours.

Our hunger appeased, though not sated, we boarded the train and tried to sleep now that we had some food in our bellies. But when sleep didn’t come, we passed the hours rocking to the rhythm of the rail and sharing our impressions of how fuckin’ awesome those sandwiches were!

Topic: A Party

Mom’s Last Party

My mom’s parties were legendary.  Every year sometime between Christmas and New Year’s Eve she’d have a get together at her house.  She’d invite over a hundred people, and she’d make all the food herself. There would be platters of cookies and treats, veggie trays with exotic dips, multiple crockpots with meatballs “from around the world”, bruschetta, baked brie en croute, liver pate, giant seafood salad in a big shell-shaped bowl, homemade guacamole, and endless bowl of punch so lethal that mom printed up a warning label for her guests.  My parents hosted this party nearly every year of their 50+ year marriage.  Once, according to Dunn family legend, they even cashed in a life insurance policy during the leaner years before mom became a lawyer, to finance the party. 

Every year for my birthday mom would offer to throw a party even once I was grown with kids.  She’d prepare a sit- down dinner for me and a dozen of my closest friends.  She’d let me choose the menu.  Nothing was too daunting for her—crab soufflé, baked Alaska, standing prime rib roast were just a few of her specialties.  When she learned that crème brulee was my dessert of choice, she bought a set of ramekins and a culinary torch specifically, so she could make it for me.   

She’d plan cast parties at her house for her community theater buddies when she was well into her seventies.  About 30 cast and crew members would arrive at her place closing night around 11pm, and she’d have everything waiting.  There would be a crockpot full of pulled pork, homemade coleslaw, buns from the North College Hill bakery, a fruit salad in the fridge, and homemade dessert bars.  Her basement fridge was full sized and was always stocked for a party-water, soft drinks, and assorted alcohol.  She was the most thoughtful hostess I’ve ever met.  If a guest was going vegan or gluten-free she’d accommodate their dietary restrictions without being asked.  When family members decided to get sober she’d have their preferred non-alcoholic drink on hand at all times.  For those of us, like me, that weren’t sober, she’d always have a bottle of Bacardi, and Diet Coke for mixing, behind the basement bar. 

She loved planning parties almost as much as executing a successful event.  When it was time for my parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary, a lavish catered event with a guest list of over one hundred people, she instituted a party planning committee consisting of me and my younger brothers.  She had spreadsheets.  We had assignments.  This party was even bigger than the annual Dunn holiday party, so we had to hold it at my brother’s place.  It was June 6, 2014, and yard had been transformed.  Balloons and lights were hung in the yard.  My son’s band was set up on the deck and played a set list that she ordered.  The garage was turned into a bar with as many selections as most local pubs.  The yard was scattered with tables covered with yellow tablecloths.  There were places to sit or stand and listen to the music.  She had a photo booth with props.  There was a big screen tv set up in a tent which featured a slide show of Dunn family pics over the years interspersed with Dunn family trivia questions.  One of the questions was, “At the end of this year, how many Dunn family Christmas parties will have been held?”  The correct answer was fifty.   For this party, mom and I made appetizers, but in a rare move of accepting help, she opted to have the entrée catered.  She shopped around until she found a caterer that was up to her exacting culinary standards.  For any event with her name on it, the food not only had to look good, it had to taste good, memorably good.  People would talk about her parties and a specific dish she had featured years later. 

Mom got diagnosed with a particularly aggressive cancer in the fall of 2015.  Multiple myeloma was such a cruel bitch that she took away the Dunn holiday party of 2015.  I offered to help make it happen, but her heart wasn’t in it.  She let me cook Thanksgiving dinner that year, one of her favorite tasks, provided she got to “coach” me while I did it.  I had to make the glazed onions, the mashed potatoes, the whole deal while she watched me, making suggestions and giving me directives in what had become her  thin, always tired voice. 

On February 12, 2016, my siblings and I were called to the hospital.  She had just signed up for hospice.  They had done an MRI of her brain earlier that day and the lesions from her cancer were everywhere including her brain.  She was pretty high on morphine and she was still talking to us.  She made us all stand at the end of her bed and my brother’s girlfriend took a picture of us.  Then she said, “Okay, funeral plans. . . “ 

Mom had her final party planning meeting right there in that hospital room.  She wanted us to use Hodapp Funeral Home.  “They do a nice job,” she reasoned.  She wanted a funeral Mass at St. Vivian’s.  I would sing “Softly and Tenderly” and my niece Sammi would sing “Ave Maria”.  She rushed through all those details, so she could get to what mattered the most to her, the wake, mom’s last party.  We would have it at the house and everyone would be invited.  She told me, “I know you think you’re going to make all the food, Bridg, but you’ll be too sad.  Call those caterers that did the anniversary party.”  She told us to spare no expense.  Her wake had to be classy.  We would have plenty of booze, especially plenty of Dewar’s, her favorite, on hand. 

After that burst of funeral plan energy mom lapsed into altered levels of consciousness.  The next morning when I arrived to accompany her home the only things I heard her say were, “Oh Jesus”, “Oh shit,” and “Where’s the fucking morphine?”  After a bumpy ambulance ride home, and we got her set up in her hospital bed in the living room, she looked around puzzled and said, “Where’s hospice?”  What she meant was, “Why am I still here?” 

Mom didn’t speak after that and she died quietly at 5:46 P.M. in her living room on Valentine’s Day 2016 with my dad on one side and me on the other.  My daughter and my youngest brother huddled together on the couch in disbelief.

A week after she had planned her last party, we got to execute her plan.  At her packed out funeral mass each of us kids took a turn sharing about mom, ignoring the suggested five-minute time limit. My youngest brother Marty went last providing the invite to the wake right there in the middle of St. Vivian’s church:

“I want you all to know one more thing I learned from her. . .Irish hospitality.  Tonight, OUR house is open to all of you and your friends.  Please don’t feel you are not “close” enough.  Understand that this is a celebration, not a solemn event.  A celebration of her life, her legacy, and her story.  Dress comfortably, bring nothing but a smile, and let’s give HER the party she deserves.”

And we did.  It seemed like everyone mom had ever known showed up at the house that night-even my ex-husband, neighbors from where we lived back in the seventies, law school cronies, her community theater family, actual family, so many people.  My siblings and I started off in the basement bar and passed around a bottle of Dewar’s drinking a quick toast to her memory.  The catering bill was pretty steep, but we had endless hot hors d’ oeuvres with wait staff keeping everything rolling.  Neighbors brought an array of homemade desserts.  The party went on in the wee hours of the morning.  It was probably one of the best parties I’ve attended.   People joked that it was a shame she was missing this great party.  She would have loved it they said.  But she didn’t miss it.  She was there.   

Topic: A Party!

I used to love parties. Back then, “party” actually meant “distort my perception of reality”, as much as possible and by any means possible. The example that comes to mind is an after-work pool party one evening at the Days Inn where I was a desk clerk at age 19. I had 10 hits of blotter acid. I had taken one, to mighty fine effect, when I was pushed into the pool. To my way of thinking at that moment, the only logical course of action was to immediately eat the other 9, before all the active ingredients washed away. I think I saw God, who told me to stop doing acid.

With age it gradually became obvious that most people seemed pretty content with reality as it presented itself to them. They went to parties to socialize and enjoy the company of friends and family.

This was a problem for me. After I stopped doing all those mind-altering things I found out that I’m painfully shy. So I got to where I just avoided party-type gatherings whenever possible.

Then I met my wife. She’s totally extroverted in every possible way. This meant that I was going to have to get used to going to gatherings whether I felt like it or not - she goes to all sorts of things.

One of the first functions I attended was a family get-together, a birthday party for her brother. I was nervous because I knew I would meet her siblings, her dad and a lot of her friends. I decided to wear a t-shirt of which I’m particularly fond. It says, “How Dare I Wear This Goddamn Shirt In Front Of Your Fucking Kids?” I figured it would sort of break the ice.

So we walked into the party and I immediately felt immensely self-conscious. It was that goddamn shirt. I felt that all eyes were on me. Everyone was very nice and everything but I couldn’t tell if they disapproved of the t-shirt. At any rate we had a very nice time.

Afterward, Bridgid reassured me that everything was fine and that no one had been offended. Her family is very liberal and open-minded and very difficult to offend. But I still wonder if maybe I didn’t go a little too far.

Topic: Party

Author: Chris Dunn

Each year I would descend the stairs flanked by my brother and sister, our hearts giddy with anticipation. Our sense of wonder and excitement had nothing to do with the typical reasons of the season. Santa had typically come and gone day’s earlier. This time we came to view the carnage. Bowls of chips gone stale, half-drunk cocktails, overflowing trashcans, and every so often an unconscious family friend passed out on the couch having “fallen into the punchbowl” the night before. The air stank like a bar, heavy with the twin odors of alcohol and tobacco. The punchbowl would be dry, the hors d’oeuvres consumed down to the crumbs, the meatball sauces congealing in cold crockpots, their prized morsels long ago exhausted. This was the aftermath of the Dunn Family Christmas Party, formerly a yearly vigil and now a vacant hole in the midst of my holiday season.

Those early years were the best, or I assume they had to be since, my siblings and I were shuffled upstairs once the first few partiers had arrived. We’d huddle in our beds and listen as the mayhem built up below, certain that we had been kicked out of paradise once again for the crime of our youth. As a child, I always assumed that the places where I was forbidden had to be the place to be. The images I formed in my mind to coincide with the sounds bubbling up from below were likely far more entertaining than reality could actually be.

As years went by, we would be allowed to stay up later and later, and even after we had been exiled we discovered that we could often sneak down to stare in wonder from the stairs at the chaos these previously staid and mature adults got up to. Dancing, yelling, making out, carrying on, eating, and drinking, drinking, drinking. The center piece of the DFCP was always the Boston Bay Fishhouse Punch – essentially a mixture of rum, brandy and sugar cut with champagne. It packed a wallop! I remember one year, I saw one of my mother’s work friends seemingly asleep in a chair. I tried to rouse her by helpfully blasting a sharp note on my father’s recorder right in her ear. She woke up and I was righteously and thoroughly chastised. At the time, I felt I had been wrongly disciplined since I was only trying to help, but with age came wisdom and a knowledgeable guilt I can never forget. Asshole kid! Leave the poor drunk people alone!

Eventually, the Dunn’s graduated from townhouse to actual house, and as the saying goes, with more house comes more responsibility. I believe it’s something like that anyway. In addition to being given stewardship of all party coats, we were permitted to invite a few guests of our own – provided of course that we stayed upstairs and did not cause trouble. I think this actually served a dual purpose I missed as a child. My friends were my parent’s friend’s children. They made me feel like I was getting a perk, when in fact I was merely saving several families the hassle of finding sitters. We’d spend the night sitting on the floor of my parent’s bedroom, playing trivial pursuit and daring each other to steal drinks from downstairs. One year we all got fairly tipsy when we over indulged on a bottle Blue Nun. The last time I saw Steve Grey, the heart-throb of my parent’s hippy commune days, he came up and sat with us on the floor. He said he just needed a break. There were just too many “old people” downstairs.

As years wore on, and I moved out, attending the DFCP became more of a chore. The Pit Crew didn’t have the same attachment to it that Karl and Drew did. Sure we were allowed now to drink the alcohol, but the raucous days were behind the affair. We would come and find a corner in the basement or the porch – wherever smoking was still allowed. We were now far from the 70s! I watched as my niece and nephew turned our coat check duties into a business wondering why I never thought to charge a buck or two.

Over the years the crowd morphed from hippies, to Amcodes employees, to North College Hill Democrats, and - in its final incarnations – a giant cast party. The latter years didn’t hold the same magic for me but there were still moments. The time Bobby fell in the punchbowl and helped Bridgid learn one of her long-time friends was gay. Or the time I managed to convince my crew to hang around long enough that we closed the place down, and I got to sit with my mom on the kitchen floor. I remember she was crying, but said she wasn’t sure why. “I guess, I’m just so happy,” she said.

Later, when she got sick, there was actually a debate. Maybe just a small affair... Maybe we don’t stay up so late… Maybe we cook all the food… But in the end, it was not to be. The impact of the pronouncement, “There will be no Dunn Family Christmas Party this year…” was blunted by the severity of the underlying cause, but from now until forever, the weekend between Christmas and New Year’s won’t pass without me feeling a painful vacancy.

Topic: Illness

Illnesses can be tricky things. I have to deal with that fact daily in my job. It’s always important to consider multiple possible explanations for the condition a patient presents with. And once I experienced a sort of misdiagnosis personally.

I had just moved to Albuquerque in October of 2008. I was settling in to my new job as an Urgent Care doc reasonably well. But then I started to experience nausea on a daily basis. Sometimes it was mild, sometimes it was severe. I never had to vomit but I sure felt like it. I had no fever, no change in stool, no change in appetite, no other symptoms at all. Sometimes I even had to miss work because of it.

One morning it was particularly bad but I simply couldn’t miss work. After I got there one of my partners began to quiz me. I revealed that almost a year before coming to Albuquerque I had to get a stent in one of my coronary arteries. “Holy Shit!”, she said. “Your stent may be blocked!” To be honest, I hadn’t considered the possibility of my coronary artery disease causing the nausea, though nausea can be a sign of a heart attack. She made me get an EKG which showed some modest changes, though nothing consistent with an acute blockage. But she called the ambulance anyhow and soon I was on my way to a downtown hospital.

In the ambulance I reflected on the fact that I been a really lousy, non-compliant patient. I had been diagnosed with diabetes 5 years earlier and never really took the medicines I was prescribed. And I was prescribed several other medicines after the stent, which I also didn’t take. In the ER the doc asked why. I told him I was very depressed and unhappy and I supposed that was my passive way of committing suicide. “GODDAMN IT WHY DID YOU TELL ME THAT?!!”, he erupted. “Now I have to call a Psychiatry consult! You knew that!” Actually that hadn’t crossed my mind but before Psych arrived the Cardiologist showed up.

The Cardiologist took a history, looked at my EKG and offered me the choice of a stress test or a repeat cardiac catheterization. I chose the cath, since I knew that cardiothoracic surgeons frequently operated on people who had had a normal stress test the week before - in other words, the stress test could miss a blockage whereas a catheterization would let the Cardiologist see my coronary arteries directly.

So I underwent the cardiac cath. And to my surprise, my stent had gotten blocked - it was 99% occluded and I could have had a heart attack at any minute. Actually I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, given the fact that I hadn’t been taking the medicines I was supposed to. The Cardiologist speculated that the blocked artery, passing close to my diaphragm, may have been provoking the nausea. 

I had to spend that night in the hospital. I was on a morphine pump for pain control, which usually is unnecessary but in my case I woke up while they were clamping my femoral artery, which caused the worst, most visceral pain I had ever felt. The Cardiologist promised me if I let them finish clamping the artery he would give me whatever I wanted for pain so I went for the gold standard. I don’t know if you’ve ever had to have a narcotic pain medication but the way they work is such that you still know you have pain but you don’t care.

Anyhow after a day or two, I was back at work. They wanted me to take a week off but I didn’t want to just sit around my condo. And - the nausea came right back when I returned to work. I was really frustrated.

Finally it dawned on me that I hadn’t had my vision checked for years. It turned out that my glasses prescription had changed drastically due to my untreated diabetes, and after I got new glasses the nausea resolved. So in my case a misdiagnosis may have saved my life!

EPILOGUE: Psych visited me after the cath. I assured them that I didn't actually want to hurt myself. She said she would visit me again before I left the hospital, but she never came back. So either I reassured her sufficiently, or she gave up on me, not sure which. At any rate, my mood is now great!

I have subsequently had 2 more cardiac caths, with stent placement, despite complying with my meds. So I think I just tend to block off arteries easily. 

My diabetes is under excellent control now. Glycohemoglobin is a lab test that shows how one's blood sugar has been running over the last 3 months. Normal is between 4.0 and 5.6. My glycohemoglobin is now 6.2; for well-controlled diabetes it should be less than 6.5. Mine had been as high as 13! My excellent endocrinologist figured out that I actually have something called Cushing's Disease, in which one's adrenal glands are too active. This causes excess cortisol production, which leads to high blood sugars. She gave me a medicine to suppress the excess cortisol & my sugars are great now.

Illness

Illness

“Pregnancy is not an illness.”

I had this statement drilled into my head when I began serving in management roles in my thirties.  If you were interviewing a prospective employee it was and still is illegal to ask about children or pregnancy or marital status. 

But when I learned that I was pregnant in the summer between my junior and senior year of college at Miami University, I was treated as if I had contracted a fatal and highly contagious illness, more like a plague.  I was a leper.  Miami U in Oxford, Ohio likes to be known as the “Yale of the Midwest” and boasts the highest number of uniform red brick buildings in a three -mile radius in the county.  Okay, I’m not sure about that last fact.  I made that up, but if you’ve ever been to Miami U, you know that’s it’s not implausible. 

I had big plans for my senior year.  My junior year roommate and college bff were going to get an apartment off campus.  We were moving out of the dorms where we had spent the first three years.  I had landed a sweet extracurricular gig helping run the student film series at the “Res”, a student union type building which housed study rooms, an auditorium, snack bars, a book store and even a tiny bowling alley. 

I was single, 21 years old and home at my parents’ house for the summer. I was working as a server at a Pizza Hut and saving up some cash so I could help furnish our cool off campus apartment that fall.  And sometime in June or so I learned that I was pregnant.  I knew who the father was.  He wasn’t a Miami student.  And it didn’t matter.  We weren’t together.  When I told him, he offered to marry me. It was 1986, and single motherhood wasn’t anywhere near as common as today.   I considered getting married, but ultimately couldn’t do it.  I knew that if I had a miscarriage, I’d want a divorce.  A baby wasn’t enough of a reason to get married. 

The baby was due in January of 1987, and my big glamorous senior year of college was supposed to start in August of 1986.  I was already showing by that time.  I didn’t move into the off -campus apartment.  I not only didn’t run the film series, I didn’t even make it to any of the films.  Instead I lived at my parents’ house and scheduled all my classes on Tuesday and Thursday.  I worked on the off days.  I went to childbirth classes with my mom.  I was the only unmarried woman in the class. 

I went to doctor appointments at the clinic where they charged based on a sliding scale.  I was still on my parent’s insurance.  Prenatal care was not covered.  Ironically, abortions were covered, but that was never an option that I even considered.  It did get back to me that some of my classmates at Miami had questioned, “I don’t get it.  Why doesn’t she just have an abortion?” 

When I walked around campus wearing a denim maternity jumper with a pink polo shirt underneath, students stepped out of my way and stared when I walked past.  They looked at me as if they had never seen a pregnant woman before, and when I looked around campus at the hundreds of students milling around I couldn’t really blame them.  I didn’t see another pregnant woman on campus that entire semester. 

I had saved my physical science elective “Physics 101” or something like that for senior year.   I really regretted having put it off till senior year when I saw that class was in a big auditorium with tiny desks, the kind with the desk part that you flip up and then sort of fold down over your lap.  By September I couldn’t fit my big pregnant belly in the desk.  They set up a folding table for me on the floor in the front of the auditorium.  I tried in vain to get there early so I didn’t have hundreds of pairs of eyes on me as I waddled down to the front.  I was usually late.  The morning sickness was pretty relentless for the first two trimesters.  Invariably I’d have to pull over on the 45-minute drive up state route 27 and throw up.  The first time it happened I got out of the car and a police officer stopped to check on me.  He looked incredulous when I told him I was a Miami student, a senior at that.  Apparently, the good officer had never seen a pregnant Miami student either.

I didn’t look like a Miami girl.  Actually, even before I got pregnant I didn’t fit in with the beautiful preppy Miami image.  The pregnancy just made me feel like I stood out even more.  I’ve never felt more alone in a sea of people than I did that semester.  My feet got too fat for my shoes and I wore oversized loafers without socks.  My mom tried to help me feel less freakish.  She made me a beige corduroy maternity jumper.  She reasoned that it looked kind of preppy.  So, I wore the denim jumper on Tuesdays and the corduroy jumper on Thursdays. 

By the time finals rolled around I was in the final stretch of the pregnancy.  I had heard the baby’s heartbeat and gotten to see the ultra sound.  I had started to get excited about the prospect of being a mom.  It wasn’t what I had planned for my life but it was happening regardless.  I remember sitting all alone at the Res drinking milk and trying to eat something healthy for the baby.  No one talked to me.  People just stared at me and their eyes seemed to say, “What the hell are you doing here?!”   

Even people that knew me walked right on by without speaking.  Maybe they didn’t recognize me.  Maybe it just didn’t fit with their paradigm.  How could there be a pregnant student in their midst?  No one even asked when I was due or if I knew the baby’s sex.  I didn’t know for sure, but  I knew I wanted a girl.  I knew I had the same right to be there getting an education as any of them.  I knew that even though I’d have to take the next semester off because of the baby, I would finish. I would get my decree and I would be a good mom.

When no one else talked to me I talked to the baby.  I patted my belly and I’d feel her kick back.  And then I didn’t feel so alone. 

Epilogue-Alison Remembrance was born January 28.1987.  I returned to school still as a commuter in the spring of 1987 and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in English Education from Miami University in May of 1988.   

Topic: Illness

Author: Chris Dunn

The hardest time was at Christmas. I don’t think the nurses realized the bitter irony of tuning into Warm 98’s holiday play list. I’m sure they only had the best of intentions, but as the upbeat songs about hope and love in the holiday season washed over the rows of cancer patients and their family attendants, I felt forced to look around and wonder if I was the only one who could see how sad it all was. My mother sat beside me, tube running from hanging bags of fluid into the needle stuck in the back of her bruised, purple hand. She seemed oblivious to both the irony and the music. Most likely, due to her poor hearing, she couldn’t make out the more than a slight background buzz. I left her to her reading, seeing no point in disturbing her with my clever insights, since cleverness centered around the contrast between the happy music and the sad reality of cancer. Typically the radio was tuned to a classic rock station. And let’s be honest, would “You Can’t Always Get Want You Want” be any better?

I should be saying, what’s wrong with a little positive thinking? Mom had been on an upturn since getting out of the hospital. Her mood had improved, her mobility was better, and she had even regained the bite of her trademark, acerbic wit. The medicine seemed to be working. Why not hope for a happy holiday season?

We’d been coming to the TriHealth Cancer Institute for months, every Wednesday. Most days the treatment and office visit would take upwards of four hours. We would time them and keep a record of which nurses were fastest, and which ones could find her veins without too many painful sticks. Mom had refused to get a port installed, for easy access. I think that seemed to much like giving in, like if she accepted that intrusion, the cancer had already won. Getting a new stick each time for the IV, it was like she was just going in for a procedure, a procedure, which like every other doctor visit she had endured before in her life, that would eventually end so she could return to making plays and throwing parties. She had no way of knowing that she would be coming here for two more months. Just as I had no way of knowing that I would quickly follow helping her care for her illness with assisting my father.

It’s been effectively three years for me at the THC. The nurses know my face. The doctor has his goto jibes for me which he uses to establish a rapport. My father will only need trips once a month, and most of his fall closer to two than four hours, but still – three years of the cancer ward is hard. I can only imagine how it must be for the poor nurses. Day-in… Day-out... Helping people through the hardest time of their lives until one day they just stop showing up. Everyone there works hard to make the mood as light as possible. That’s how I know their intent is only to lighten the mood.

That first Christmas, I found myself looking from my dying mother as she nodded sleepily against the book about to drop of her hands, then around the room filled with people hooked to bags slowly dripping life-saving poisons into their graying bodies. Most of the patients had care givers sitting beside them to bring them a box of juice or a supportive smile, but others sat alone, under the glaring lights, nurses rushing back and forth. “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” came on the radio, and I had to laugh to keep from crying.