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.