Brotherly love and marriage

The Royal Wedding has left me thinking quite a lot about brothers and sisters, and the tangled, loving, vengeful relationships that often exist between them. I watched Prince Harry with his twinkling eye and red hair whisper to his brother and the bride walked down the aisle with her sister following in the wake of her train and a royal marriage.

My own boys terrify me some days with the force of their affection and loathsome, oafish behavior toward one another. They truly define love-hate relationships. Like salt and pepper I cannot imagine them without the other, but there are so many moments where I wonder if they will both survive to adulthood without killing each other in a lightsaber duel or wrestling match. The truly disconcerting part is the way Nicholas appears to revel in the torment of his younger brother, Henry. If only he put as much time and effort into homework or housework as he does in plotting and pursuing his brother's breaking point.

Yet, when there is a moment that they are apart they look for one another to tell each other something, play action figures together, discuss Star Wars for the 5 millionth time, vex their mother in the car while she is driving and making useless threats against their persons. As impatient and irritable as they can be with one another, neither of them would want to do without the other.

I wonder if this is the true training ground for success in life and marriage relationships. The forced learning of how to simultaneously want to kill and protect, love and loathe another person to the death.  The learned behavior of how to be a team against outside forces that would destroy you:  annoying neighbor kids, bullies, parents and bedtime. The ability to celebrate and cheer for the success of another wholeheartedly.

There are so many things I'd like to do better as a parent, things I wish I had known, wish I had done differently, wish I could get a do-over on as a momma. But one thing I think I am doing right is forcing brotherly love, togetherness, family time, and forgiveness on the boys. "I know he is a pain in the butt-just go to bed and start over tomorrow." "Stop tormenting your brother." "Because he came to your performances last year and it's your turn to be supportive of him."

Like so much in life children learn more by observance than our words as parents. I forgive the boys, I apologize when necessary, I start over, I make amends. In other words, I demonstrate to them what it means to be in a loving, flawed human relationship. The vows couples take before marriage are the same kind we should take in all family relationships:

• For Better or Worse-stupid boyfriend, bad perm, stealing my boyfriend, when you fart in  front of the entire church, forget to zip your fly up, or fall down at your ballet recital.
• Richer or Poorer-and this doesn't just mean money-when things are going well and you are flush with optimism about your life I've got your back, when things are at their lowest and you need help in off the ledge I've got your back.
• In sickness and health-I'll nag you to finish your antibiotics, get a pap smear/mammogram, wear a condom, and when you hit 50 I will force you to make a double date with me to get colonoscopies.
• To love and to cherish-I will appreciate your obsession with Star Wars, turtles, Ben 10, and later South Park, blondes, Guinness on tap, and World Cup Soccer. I will appreciate that if I am ever in need of a quote from an obscure galaxy far far away-you will supply me with it readily.
• Til death do us part-lovers may come and go, friends may come and go, but I am forever. I will stand with you when you get married or divorced, bail you out if necessary, check you in to rehab, go to AA with you, remind you why that girl is no damn good for you, and cry with you when she breaks your heart again.

Just as with all sibling relationships I am sure William and Harry, Kate and Pippa have had their trials to get through to a place where they can enjoy and celebrate one another without jealousy. But today there was no jealousy on display as one brother watched another marry in a worldwide circus the woman who will eventually be Queen.  The other sister, walking behind as her sibling's dreams came true looked every once as radiant as the bride, every bit as thrilled to be a spectator and not the center of the world's attentions.

Harry and Pippa will never have as glamorous a wedding as their siblings, but they will have something more dear, the knowledge that no matter where or when or what their brother/sister has their back, come rain or come shine and all along the way since childhood their sibling has been preparing them to be a committed, loving spouse.

mother in law

What a phrase, "Mother in law." It sounds sour, almost bitter, or perhaps that is because like my aversion to the use of stepmother, our society has come to connote ugliness with mother's in law. I was 18 when my own mother died, and over many years came to call  my dearest friend/sister Denise's mum, Mom Cormie. Knowing her and watching her and her husband Donald's marriage inspired me in so very many ways and made me believe in happy endings, even for me.

Then I got married and I got a mom, dad, two grandmothers, two sisters, a brother, and numerous extended relatives. Quite a shock to the system for a person who had been content to build a little family out of friends, but a welcome one. As a child, I never knew the joys or woes of extended family. My only living grandmother I met exactly twice, she was drunk the entire time we visited, and the tension between her and my own mother was palpable, even to a child as young as me. I imagined what it might be like to have a Daddy, to get to go shopping with a Grandma for an Easter dress or have a Grandpa fix my bike.

I longed for ridiculously large family gatherings where someone drank too much, burped at the table, or otherwise embarrassed their mothers. So when I married into the Morfeld clan I got that, I got obnoxious sibling relationships and the stress and strain of 20 something year old children and parents reestablishing relationships as adults. I became pregnant after Erich and I were engaged and met with out parish priest, but not before the actual vows, oops. To say I was humiliated about having to tell my soon to be in laws about, "my condition," would be an epic understatement. I was mortified, I knew how disappointed my soon to be mother in law, Mary would be in us, and frankly, I wasn't pleased with us or our libidos either.

But we got past it, and forged ahead, and got married. I loved them all, but they didn't belong to me, they were Erich's family. I felt like the police negotiator sometimes, trying to be a bridge between my often contentious husband and his family-but then I gave birth, and everything changed.

Mary, who had been reserved in some ways, sat holding my first born, her first grandchild, at the foot of my hospital bed, and looked up at me with tears in her eyes and said, "Oh Patti, this is so wonderful. I just couldn't imagine this." I felt the ice melt in my own heart, because I knew he wasn't mine or hers, he was ours. Common ground in 8 pounds and 6 ounces.

Time hurried along, I became pregnant with our second child so that they would be close companions, gave birth to Henry, and then like the spring wildfires in Texas, our lives became an inferno of grief and pain. Her son, my husband-dead at 31. Her grandchildren, my children-fatherless. How? Why?

Mary has always been an avid learner and teacher and so was Erich's dad, Dale. When I decided to return to college right away, I knew their support would be a given for me, and it was.   Mary and I survived on Henry that year-his sweetness and need for us kept our hands occupied, our hearts lightened, if only for a sacred moment. But the loss of a child is a wound that never heals. Long a practicing Catholic, Mary embraced the customs of old fashioned Catholic grief and began wearing all black, praying and meditating with committment. It's interesting for me now, because I never asked her what she prayed about, I can assume she prayed to understand, to hurt less, to heal. But those would be my prayers.

I know though that after a year of grief and prayer, work, finishing her PhD, and caring for Dale-she changed. She pushed through it, she still carries the wound to be sure, but it is part of her now-it doesn't define her or her life, but her willingness to slog through the pain has allowed her to see more in others and herself that I think she ever saw before.

I finished college, went to work, and hit a lot of potholes-most of my own making. I lived with her and Dale for a time and then ran away and tried to make it "on my own." I didn't. But, when I prayed and finally reached bottom, I realized that I didn't have to do it alone. No one was asking me to be Wonder Woman-there was a place for me to go to, I only need ask.

When I wrote and asked to come home, to bring the boys and live and work and get my shit together I was welcomed, but it was after the move that I realized that she had truly become my mother when she told me,"It occurs to me that you have never been a day to day part of a family. Made mistakes and been forgiven, wrecked the car, broken curfew, and still been loved. I don't think you understand that you will always be welcome here."

She was right. I have been blessed by many dear close friends I consider my relations over the years, but I never set up a family living arrangement with them and now at 39, I finally got it.

I am remarried now and she is widowed. We are separated by miles and the distance has been a painful adjustment. Our late night talks, her encouragement for me with the boys, her devoted example as a grandmother is lacking face to face and while I will see her soon, I know the visit will be too short.

She continues to surprise me and I think even herself by all that she continues to learn and the ways in which she has grown. I think the loss of Erich left her believing if she could survive that-she could survive anything and she might as try it all. What better example could I have in a mother? How grateful to call her mine.

Why?

"I have no special talents.  I am only passionately curious."      -Albert Einstein

Why?

The eternal question of all humanity can be whittled down to one three letter word. Why? We add all sorts of things in front of it...

1.Why can't I eat all of the M&M's and get on the loop the loop roller coaster?

2. Why do I have to wear underwear?

3.Why can't I have sex before marriage?
4. Why can't I have a pony?
5. Why does his family get to take a neat vacation and we are staying home and going to the zoo again this year?

Now of course if you are a parent the why is almost always followed by,"How come? When? Where? Why not? What if?

The reality is that these questions never go away...we just get trained to stop asking for fear of being seen as irritating, nosy, pushy or some other less than ideal person. We allow that curious part of our human nature to be stifled by the onslaught of propriety and yet it is the very act of questioning convention that has led to every discovery humankind has ever made.

To be sure there is value in teaching and learning the timing of questions-it's OK to ask why Aunt June doesn't like Uncle Bill anymore-but not very empathetic to do it at the dinner table when they are seated across from one another.

It's OK to ask why your cousin isn't circumcised-let's just wait and discuss that when we are not at his birthday party.

I have struggled with my eldest son over learning the when and where of asking-but as aggravating and embarrassing as some of his questions have been I am still grateful for his curious nature because I believe it can serve him well if he uses it for good, not evil.

I have wondered recently if our society as a whole has become so complacent with bite-sized pieces of information from the internet and television that we no longer expect or look for "all the details."

Where would we be as a species if Galileo had said..."ocean, sky, edge...nah, nevermind."

The Wright brothers,"eh, we can walk"

Madame Curie,"Good lord, get rid of that blue bread!"

It's those souls who have been willing to risk embarrassment that have led humanity out of the Dark Ages and pushed, prodded, and agitated the human race of every generation.

The cure for boredom is curiosity.  There is no cure for curiosity. 
 ~Dorothy Parker

It's also those who were willing to say,"Why?" that have pushed for change in every conflict, every time a dictator has been defeated it was because a group of people were daring enough to say, "Why?"

As science and technology give human beings more opportunities to explore the boundaries of discovery these kinds of questions are even more important to prevent abuse and destruction-not to prevent the discoveries made in labs and experiments around the world but to have a full dialogue about the consequences of science and it's results.

As a nurse one of my greatest frustrations has been watching family members of patients demand all sorts of invasive and difficult treatments for patients who have limited life expectancy with or without the procedures. "Do everything you can." Many times, my experience has been that when we do "everything,"  we leave patients who are already miserable in more distress prior to their deaths and are typically not successful at prolonging their lives. Why?

Because healthcare professionals are scared of being sued, and because in some facilities where interns and residents are learning their craft, they need experience managing complex patient cases. What's most disappointing to me in these moments though is that so many of my colleagues in health care have become so impressed with our ability to use science and technology to prolong life at any means that they have stopped asking whether or not we should.

Asking questions and forcing difficult conversations about end of life and critical care is terrible, difficult work-but the rewards for patients, families, and our overtaxed healthcare system would be immeasurable.

Too many of us allow the world to spin on without every taking the chance to ask,"Why?" That question alone could help change the world, or at least your part of it.

So in the spirit of Why questions here are mine for today:
1. Why would you come to chemotherapy barefoot when you know you are at an increased risk for  infection?
2. Why doesn't the American public care about the mess in the Ivory Coast?
3. Why do people watch WWE?
4. Why would you own a Prius and chain smoke Marlboro Lights in it?

Nothing earth shattering, just a little random thought process. So your mission today is to ask a question you've always wanted the answer to-and ask more than one person. When you get the answer-tell someone else and pass the information along.

"Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton asked why." 

~Bernard Baruch

Church Giggles and Cowboys

I am a hospice nurse...when I tell people what I do for a living I typically get this type of response,"Oh my gosh you must be an angel, I don't know how you people do it, etc." Add on top of this the fact that I also care for pediatric hospice patients and I typically get elevated to sainthood before people have an opportunity to find out about my potty mouth.

In some professions people get to take fancy trips for conferences, go play golf with clients, etc. I get invited to funerals. Lots of funerals...big funerals,little funerals, impromptu funerals, city funerals, country funerals, funerals of every religious and nonreligious type, and then there are the funerals for children. Ugh...there is nothing quite as depressing as a funeral for a child. Unless it is one of those funerals I like to call, "giggle worthy."

These are the funerals that lead me to have inappropriately hysterical reactions that typically include stifled giggles and crying due to the perversely odd or eccentric goings on at what most of us believe should be solemn, moribund occasion. To begin with, the child in question was only a couple months old and had been born with a panoply of congenital defects that were incompatible with a healthy life. She never went home from the hospital and was only on hospice services for about a week prior to her death. She had large, loving family and the funeral was held at a small funeral home chapel.

The casket was wee tiny and pink and the baby was dressed angelically with a small rosary draped over her tiny hands. I paid my respects and sat down amongst the other mourners. It is relevant to mention at this point that I was the lone anglo person in the chapel and the only English speaker. Other than that it appeared to be about the usual for a funeral.

And then the gentleman who was providing the singing for the service stood up and everything usual went out the window...or should I say, "La ventana." Due to the large latino congregation it was safe to say there were an equal number of infants and toddlers to adults. All in various states of dress from the toddler brother of the decease dressed out in full cowboy regalia to the diaper clad amigo on my left. But I digress, back to the singing...

The gentleman singing appeared to be hovering around 80 years and carried an old rosewood guitar solemnly to the front of the chapel and began to strum it with no apparent direction. I noticed just as he opened his mouth to sing that there were only 4 strings on the 5 string guitar, but he did not allow that to deter him from bursting in to "De Colores" at full voice at which point every person under the age of three in the chapel began to cry, howl, or sob along like some sort of bereaved chicano wolf pack.

It must be said that I tried really really hard not to laugh, I even forced myself to stare at the deceased to try and avoid mirth...but as he continued to passionately sing, I began to giggle, discreetly of course. The song ended or he gave up because he was tired of being drowned out by the wolf pups and he took his seat.

The chaplain stood and began the funeral and out of the corner of my eye I noticed the woman next to me rifling through her diaper bag with the kind of desperation that means only one thing. Poop. Sure enough, within seconds I caught the scent of the diaper clad bambino on the floor between us as the flowers on the coffin began to droop. God bless her, necessity being the mother of invention she found a diaper and a baby wipe and since she didn't want to miss the service, plopped down on the floor in the aisle and changed the diaper...and nobody noticed.

Nobody but me of course...at this point my giggles had subsided and I was now fighting back stinging tears from the stench and hoping my overactive gag reflex would not resurface. She finished her work-which quite frankly was amazing-she cleaned the entire surface of that child with one baby wipe-it was like watching da Vinci paint the Sistine chapel with a set of Prang watercolors...I was duly impressed and she thankfully excused herself to deposit the gag inducing diaper in a trash receptacle.

We had now arrived at the scripture readings and the crowd was getting restless...lots of wiggles, stern looks from the mamacitas, etc. Except for the parents of the baby we were there to mourn...they were entrenched in their grief and didn't seem to notice or be concerned by the fact that the previously mentioned two year old cowboy had started undressing in front of the casket.

Belt...off. Shirt...off. Pants...off. Diaper...off. God bless him he even removed his boots and put them back on after getting his pants off. At which point he grabbed the rosary out of his sister's coffin and began swinging it around his head like a lasso.

At this point I was chewing on my tongue hard enough to draw blood and thinking every morbid thought I could to stifle the belly laugh within when one of his older sisters got up and gathered his clothes and pointed sternly at the family pew where he marched in all his glory back to sit.

Another song, "Amazing grace" again with the crying babies, I have now been given a handful of Kleenex by a woman in the pew behind me who evidently thinks my shaking and holding my face in my hands are due to grief as opposed to mirth. Tears are now rolling down my cheeks and I join in with the other mourners and the crying babies and sing along as best I can in an effort to distract myself.

The service appears to be winding down and I have regained my composure when a late arrival makes his appearance. Uncle of the decedent. Walking sideways. Carrying an open can of Lone Star Beer.

At least he kept his clothes on.

Short Priests

Easter week and every person in Christian ministry is running like a rabid wolverine from one Holy Week activity to the next. In the Catholic Church the activities really hit the high point time wise starting on Maundy Thursday and running through the overnight vigil into Easter morn. It's amazing any of our parish priests are left standing on Easter night.

The Catholic media will bemoan the shortage of priests this week, and the church itself will want parishioners to add a few extra prayers on top of the liturgy for vocations to the priesthood. All nice ideas to be sure, but there is are a couple of glaring solutions to the shortage of qualified, hard working, spiritually devout priests in the Catholic faith...married people and...women.

I am not a scholar, I am a protestant turned Catholic that is a member of a very diverse and theologically liberal Franciscan parish. I do not portend to know all of the reasons and rhetoric that the Vatican continues to espouse as reasons for leaving the priesthood to single abstinent men. Frankly, I no longer care. The reasoning behind the omission of women and married persons from the full priesthood in the Catholic Church has ceased to make any sort of sense and hanging on to the fallacious reasoning associated with it will only leave the church whiteknuckling it into obscurity by the dawn of our next century.

What I do care about is the Catholic Church remaining vibrant, alive, diverse, and multifaceted. There is room for more than one kind of priest, and there is more than enough room for the thousands of people turned away because they are married or like me, female. They want to serve the church, they are willing to make the sacrifice of ministering to the flock and losing much of themselves in the process-but they are not willing to sacrifice the gift of marriage, their sexuality, the creation and blessing of family.

Much has been written about the sex abuse scandals that have devasted millions of lives and alienated millions of Catholic faithful and it should be acknowledged that pedophiles can be protestant too and that there are certainly ministers and religious leaders of every faith who have abused their positions of authority to take advantage and wound the most vulnerable of their community. I don't for a moment think priesthood causes pedophilia-but I do believe there is something inherently wrong in having individuals commit to a life of denying not just personality traits like greed and lust, but actual parts of their human makeup, in this case, their sexuality.

All mammals are sexual creatures and sexuality is an undivisable part of humanity. Not to be shamed or denied, but to be embraced, valued, treasured. I think denying this whole part adds stress and tension that is entirely avoidable, and places further distance between priests and those they minister to by making them less approachable, less able to understand the innerworkings of a sexual relationship.

I understand priests should be separated from those they serve based on their behavior, etc. But the reality is, having priests removed from the real emotional lives of those they care for leaves parishioners less apt to seek counsel, comfort, solution. Priests who are able to marry would benefit not just from having the emotional support and companionship of a spouse, but the balance of continuing to see themselves as fully human and part of the body of Christ, rather than the ones draggin the rest of us along.

As for women, well we chicks are a problem for the Vatican. Heck we were a problem way back before the Vatican in the days of Mary Magdalene. Women have, by and large been the ones keeping many small parishes open during the last several years. Nuns have been able to provide the eucharist (after it is blessed by a priest) in many parishes throughout the U.S., and it's women who run Catholic schools and parishes. It is predominantly the women of the church who clean the linens, manage the day to day operations, lead religious education, and...oh yeah-give birth to new parishioners.

In the days when the priesthood was established the role of women in society was markedly different. Women were not necessarily considered human, certainly didn't lead their families or communities, and were not given the type of education that led to a profession. One of the things I cherish about the Catholic Church is the fact that it has continued to evolve, albeit at a glacial pace, but as time and science continue to move forward the Church has acknowledged error in the ways scientists were disregarded and persecuted.

The Church has acknowledged the world is no longer flat and that speaking in Latin was antiquated in the setting of everyday mass for the majority of the world's people. With each admission and clearheaded, honest assessment the church has moved itself closer to its' people. Closer to acknowledging that just as all of humanity is flawed, all of humanity is capable of forgiving and forgiveness.

There is no true shortage of priests, there is a shortage of single abstinent men willing to be separated forever from those they serve and that is nothing to be disappointed about-but a dawning opportunity for the Church alive to reconsider rules that disregard and limit the power and purpose of the whole church and all of its' people to move closer to God. There are hundreds of thousands of people willing to serve as priests, they just need the invitation.

The Graduate

She looked a bit like a plucked chicken when she arrived on Planet Earth. Frankly she sounded like one as well-she was red faced and scrawny and she was my first real one on one experience with a newborn. She came a little early to what we now call, "A mother of advanced maternal age" the maternal in question was my college adviser, Nadia, and the baby girl she let me hold that long ago April day was a miracle for me then and now.

Nadia and her husband Ed are both academics with doctorates in Religion. They are brainy to the nth degree and they met and married amidst the heyday of their academic journey at Vanderbilt. I had never contempleted them being people who might actually want children and so the day Dr. Lahutsky called me into her office after class-I was not expecting a birth announcement-I was expecting a thorough ass chewing for the pitiful excuse for a term paper I had turned in. I was never close to being the scholar I could have been at age 20-not even in the ballpark, and I have no doubt, my lack of academic temerity was perplexing to Nadia.

To her credit though, she cared about me, regardless of my grades, and she extended herself to me after my own mother died midway through my Freshman year. She challenged me and what I believed, she fussed at me when I needed it, and on that day when she called me in to her cluttered office it was not to tell me what a poor specimen of the written word I had turned in, but rather to tell me, somewhat conspiratorially, that she was pregnant and would be needing a babysitter.

I was amazed, delighted, and thoroughly overjoyed that she had brought up the topic of childcare-with me! Good Lord I couldn't manage to write my way out of a box, but she wanted me to care for her child?

When the little chicken arrived I started going over to their house to sit and rock and feed and coo while her mom and dad went about teaching and researching. We developed a routine and over time I started singing "Sweet Baby James" to her as a lullaby-but I changed the cowboy to a girl and her name was Jean. By the time she could say my name she called me,"Pa" and she would request,"Cowboy" at naptime for her song.

She wandered the campus with me and as she grew older I would take her for outings in my car and become hysterical when she would sing along to her Father's oldies station. Roy Orbison was a favorite, and a three year old bellowing, "Mercy" at just the right moment in Pretty Woman can certainly make your day complete.

By age 6 she would tell people she intended to become a herpetologist, and most anyone who spent more than 5 minutes with her didn't doubt she could become one. I met and married my first husband with her as my flower girl and still treasure the little present she made for me on my wedding day.

But she is no longer that little chicken. She is all grown up, or at least well on her way, and about to graduate from college next month. She is brilliantly smart, poised, speaks Russian, will graduate with honors, and most important she is a lovely young woman who will leave her part of the world far better than she found it.

She hennas her hair, has had her heartbroken, knows how to curse and when not to, has traveled on her own to Russia, and knows from firsthand experience that she does not want to work at IHOP for the rest of her life. (I actually told her that before she took the job, but waitressing certainly does make the stress of college appear very appealing after a couple of weeks.)

What I like most about her though is that she is thoroughly and uniquely her own person. She likes herself and it shows. She exudes a kind of respect for her ownself that demonstrates to me that whereever the feminist movement may have missed the mark-we have made some progress in the years since her own mother graduated from college and had to push and prod her way into academia and overcome the sexism of her own family to become the mother she has been to Jean.

Jean and the other women she graduates with don't know a world without Title IX athletics, without women in every profession or leadership role, women who don't have to choose to have either a profession or a family. To be sure there is plenty of room for the world to continue placing women on equal footing-but for Jean and her comrades-they expect to be treated fairly and they expect to be treated that way regadless of their ovaries.

That alone gives me hope that the world can continue ever so slowly to change for the better and that one little girl, now a woman, will remember the journey her mother traveled to make it possible and one other girl who got to grow up taking care of her too.

"There is a young cowgirl who lives on the range, her horse and her cattle are her only companions, she works in the saddle and she sleeps in the canyons, waiting for summer, her pastures to change. As the moon rises she sits by her fire, thinking about fellas and glasses of beer, and closing her eyes as the dogies retire she sings out a song that is soft, but it's clear, as if maybe someone might hear. She sings, Goodnight you moonlight ladies and rockabye sweat baby Jean, deep greens and blues are the colors I choose, won't you let me go down in your dreams? and rockabye sweet baby Jean."

An entirely different kind of D Day

It's interesting working in the world of cancer treatment. Like so many things in healthcare and medicine the sexier ailments get the attention and it's hard to look around my clinic without seeing something with a pink ribbon slapped on it. The ribbons are so ubiquitious now I find them a bit disingenuous and prefer the t-shirts that say,"Fight like a Girl!" or "Save the Tatas!" Both very worthy sentiments. Especially if you have tatas or someone you love has tatas.

Because of all the funding and research though breast cancer treatment has become much more refined to the point that specific types of breast cancer has been identified and methods to treat them developed. Women have more options every year for how they can be treated, what kind of surgery they want to opt for, what kind of reconstruction they have (if any) and no one looks at them as if they just landed from Mars if they request a prophylactic mastectomy due to their family history.

All the advances though don't really address the frustration of having your body turn against you though, especially a part of your body that is so finely attached to your sexuality, femininity, and even your maternal abilities. For better or worse getting your first bra is a significant right of passage for a girl and so is the constant compare and contrast of breast size that begins about the same age.

I have a dear friend who went through a double mastectomy and reconstruction. Intense pain and a long recuperation left her questioning the decision to do the full surgery instead of a lumpectomy, but as she wryly observed many months later when it was time to get her new nipples tattoed on, " I'm going to get them light enough so if I want to wear a tshirt braless I can!" Since she had actually been to hell and back to get the new, sag free, bra less boobies I resisted the urge to call her a bitch and cheered.

I ponder myself what I would do if ever the big C comes to visit my set of tatas. My gut says I would not opt for reconstruction-mostly because the idea of taking out a foreign body and putting in a new one doesn't thrill me. But then I consider my husband and family and wonder if seeing me with a pretend bosom would be better than no bosom at all.

All this was called in to sharp relief one recent morning when I had a lovey 70 year old woman in my section. She was exquisitely turned out for her chemo treatment, hair (wig), nails, makeup, Talbots outfit with coordinating spring shoes, etc. Her daughter accompanied her and patted her hand while I prepared her for treatment, which in her case meant having her port accessed.

A port is a small device that is surgically implanted under the skin and allows quick venous access to a patients bloodstream while protecting smaller fragile veins in people hands and arms. Most patients who have a port have it in the upper part of their chest wall and when they come in for treatment we use sterile procedure and a large Huber needle to access the port. Once the needle is in we can remove blood for lab work, start IV fluids and prepare for treatment.

Ports are a Godsend for patients with nausea and vomiting and the nurses who care for them. No fishing for veins, X marks the spot and and allows you to start hydrating a patient immediately if possible. Completing the sterile procedure can be tricky sometimes because people have to keep their hands and clothing away from the area and there is a certain amount of jockeying to get in the right spot. Most patients learn to wear a button up blouse/shirt on chemo day, we pull a curtain for privacy and within 5 minutes all is well.

Well for Mrs. Talbots her treatment began with lab work and having her port accessed. She complained about feeling hot and then acknowledged she was having lots of problems managing hormones and that might account for her level of discomfort. Other patients came and sat in our section and Mrs. Talbot became progressively more irritable and disheveled as the morning went on,"Good lord no I don't need a blanket are you crazy it's like an oven in here."
Her daughter offered water and pats on the hand, and attempted to change the topic multiple times with no success. Until finally, the patient proclaimed, "THAT IS IT!"

Her daughter sat and gaped at her prim and proper mother while I hurried over to see what was going on. "I'm done," she said and she began unbuttoning her blouse. "Done?" I asked. "Yes my dear, I am done. I am no longer going to sit here and sweat, that guy over there is unbuttoned down to his navel and he (she pointed at the 22 year old surfer dude sitting bare chested in the next section) is half naked." "Ok, well what can I do to help you feel more comfortable so we can finish your chemo?"

"Hold these," and she handed me her prosthetic breasts. By the time her daughter had recovered the power of speech her mother was topless. "Mom, what are you doing? You can't do this, you just can't sit here naked." "I am not naked. I am topless. I no longer have breasts, hell I don't even have nipples-that guy over there looks like a walrus and I am sick of pretending to be all pretty and quiet. To hell with it, I no longer have any legitimate reason to cover up-so I'm not going to."

Her daughter sputtered, gasped, gaped, pouted and attempted to draw the curtain around her mother's chair. "Nope, you leave that curtain open or leave and I'll let you know when to pick me up." At this point the three other patients in my section (walrus, surfer dude, and retired baptist preacher) offered their subdued appreciation with a small round of applause and a "Right on Granny." I simply put her bra, blouse, and breasts in a pile on the counter and continued my work.

"But mother? What will people say?" Her daughter attempted reason, tears, and even bribery at which point my patient looked at her and said,"I am no longer following the rules for good southern ladies. If I want to misbehave I intend to."How liberating at age 70 to get cancer and finally free yourself from the idea that any part of your body defines who you are as a whole. Like Eve before the apple she no longer felt any shame in her body and there simply wasn't any good reason to cover up anymore for this Talbots girl and if someone didn't like it, well that was no longer her problem, it was theirs.

"Right on Granny."