Legend of the Ham Room

As I slide into the end of my 30s and head towards middle age, I begin to appreciate the stories that make up my family’s ridiculous history.  As a kid, you really don’t comprehend the great tales that make their way around the dinner table at Thanksgiving or over beers and dogs at a BBQ on the Fourth of July.    If you’re lucky though, the stories get told enough times while you age.  

This latest and greatest comes from the master yarn spinner himself, my father.  Growing up in Layton, PA…

Trust me, you won't know where that is unless you are from the area. 

Seriously…

OK, do you remember Silence of the Lambs?  

That house at the end?   Layton.

The tunnel that Clarice Starling and Jack Crawford go through on their way to the funeral home to inspect the body of the first girl killed?   Layton.

Can I continue?

OK, so, growing up on the farm in Layton, PA, my father’s bedroom was basically an icebox.   Before he came along, it was used to hang meat, usually pig, from the closet.  It had exterior walls on three sides of the room, so it kept quite cold in winter.    On January mornings, he would wake up, put on winter clothes and a coat and play in his room.   His room was a modern day nerd’s wet dream; a room that smelt of bacon.

My uncle, around 10 years my father’s junior, moved into my father’s room and it became his.  In 1980, when HE married, they renovated they the house to accommodate the styling of the latter quarter of the 20^th century.  This included redoing what had become known as The Ham Room.   My uncle’s belongings from his youth still resided in the room.  Odd ends and bits adorned the tops of dressers; a marble here, an interesting rock there, all frozen in time. 

It was summer and the room’s lack of insulation made it as cold blooded as a reptile.     Shirtless while he worked, combating the heat, he and my uncle increased the depth of the shelving in the closet, where pig carcasses once hung.  My father, not as svelte as he was in his youth, had the makings of a belly that passed onto his youngest, me.  After finishing, he spied a black marble, which he originally mistook for a cow’s eye due to its size.     The wheels began to turn in his mischievous mind.  He instructed his younger brother, now in his 30s, to go fetch my mother.    He often sent his brother on errands, as older brothers do, usually with devilish intentions.

He came down to the kitchen, where my mother was working on cleaning up from lunch or dinner, not sure which, and made up some reason to bring her upstairs to the ham room.  She obliged and climbed the rickety old steps up to the second floor.  She opened the door to the empty room where various tools and remains of carpentry sat.   My uncle said she needed to look in the closet, for whatever reason he invented.

My mother walked to the closet, and slowly opened the door.

There, in the top of the closet, was a large, stark white mass of something, with an eye fixated on her.  If filled the entire space in the doorway and actually crept out an inch after being freed from captivity of the closed door.   A scant of hair adorned the top and bottom right sides.  By definition, it could be a large scale, actual, hairy eyeball.  The blobulous eye-thing stared at her and for a moment, there was thought to be a blood curdling scream forthcoming.   Instead there was simply a sigh and “Oh, George!” that escaped her lips.   She turned and went back to her work, shaking her head in disgust.

This fleshy beast was simply my father, propped up on the shelf in the closet, shirtless, with his stomach hanging out.  His arms and his feet hidden on in either side of the door frame.  That onyx marble he found was positioned square in his navel like some kind of side show belly dancer from East Germany. 

How my father managed to wedge himself, shirtless, in the closet is a mystery.  How he managed to not succumb to the intense heat of a Cool Hand Luke style imprisonment is an amazing testament to his fortitude.   How the shelving managed to not crack and disintegrate from his weight is simply a nod to his carpentry skills.  Go dad!

And so it was the legend of the ham room was born.

November 15, 1944

There should be an email saying Happy Birthday. There should be an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen. There should be a brand new tea cup or some gadget she would love. There should be a card signed from a little girl. There should be a dinner at Persichetti’s or the Olive Garden. There should be a lot of things, other than sadness.

I’ve avoided talking about what happened back in April because it’s still rough. I’m having difficulty sketching out this post just because of the lump in my throat. But, it’s time.

On April 11, 2010 my wife’s mother died. She lived life the way most of us wish we had. She didn’t go jumping out of planes or pushing the speedometer to 106 mph just to feel the rush of flying on the highways. But, she lived life without fear. Fear of what another person might think about her clothes or opinions never entered her mind. When you get a 12 year extension on a death sentence you stop sweating the small stuff.

I first met my future mother-in-law on November 8th, 1998. That weekend had been the first official date I had been on with her daughter, my future wife. It was the kind of date that makes you wonder why she called me the next day. After all, I totally embarrassed her at the movie theater, laughing and literally slapping my knee at the comedy of The Waterboy. The fact that her daughter had punched me in the leg as I dropped her off was probably my only saving grace. She must have felt bad and called me up, asking me over. I didn’t know I would be having dinner with her parents as well. After all, I had never met them and was totally unprepared.

I remember meeting this little white haired lady with these bright red rimmed glasses. She had this spiky hair and round face, full of rosy cheeks. My first initial thoughts was that she was the offspring of Elton John and Sally Jessie Raphael, if that were possible. She puttered around the kitchen getting dinner ready while I took on the task of dealing with the aspect of meeting my future father-in-law. “Now, he’s probably going to want to show you his guns. It’s a scare tactic. He’s a farm boy.” My wife informed me before descending into the finished basement of her house, decked out with a living room, game room and full kitchen. Being the smart ass that I was, I needed to break the ice and diffuse any tensions that might take hold of my first official meeting with the parents. After introducing myself to her father, I took the initiative to say, “So, I hear you’d like to show me your guns.” The laughter alone made me feel 100% safer and dinner was a breeze.

As we became closer, I felt as if her parents were an extension of my own family, years before I had even asked my wife to marry me. That was five years later. But, over that time, I learned a lot about my future in-laws, including my wife’s mother.

I almost didn’t get to meet her. Just that last year she was fighting for her life. She was diagnosed with stage IV renal cell carcinoma. That would have been a death sentence for nearly everyone. Her only saving grace was that she had been giving that diagnosis while already opened up on the table. The doctors knew there was a tumor, but they had no idea what else was there. They proceeded and she was put into a study where a high dosage of a drug was given to her. She was literally taken to death’s door with her immune system, only to ring the bell and run away. She came back from the brink and you could never tell she had been sick.

I got my first real glimpse of the real character my mother-in-law was that first Christmas. The whole house decorated as if the North Pole exploded in their home. It was amazing. She would literally take off most of the month of December to enjoy the holidays and enjoy them she did. The day after Thanksgiving her husband would go to hunting camp for the next week while she’d decorate. I could only imagine the electric bill. Scattered around the house were reindeer, snowmen, elves, animatronic Mr. and Mrs. Claus, wreaths, bows, and the lights, oh the lights. It was like a shopping mall with no stores.

Come Christmas Eve, they would throw out a spread that would make you want to take a long winter’s nap. She took such great pride in presentation and everyone took home a party favor. She reminded you if you didn’t, too. Along with the food was a sing along of Christmas Carols. She loved a good party and loved the holidays, especially Halloween and Christmas.

Oh, we had our differences. There’s no doubt. But it was never anything that didn't get resolved quickly.  We'd argue over stupid things and sometimes I felt she but into stuff that didn't need adressed.    In fact, at first she even told my wife not to hang her hopes on me. “He’s not going to stick around. He wants to go to California.” Had I actually done that, I would have went alone. After the cancer in 97, there’s no way my wife would have moved away from her parents. We all try to deny the existence of our own mortality, as well as the mortality of our parents, but after going through what this family went through, my wife wanted every minute with her. But, I didn’t quite understand it. I couldn’t. My family was always there. It never mattered how far away I moved or how long it was between phone calls or visits. I accepted that my parents would be there when I did call. I took them for granted. But, I never took offense to the statement about the longevity of our relationship.  It probably made me a more mature person.

I stayed and I became a part of that family. My wife would tell you that her parents loved me more than they loved her.  I just think it was different.  We got along on a different level.  I understood her.  Of course, it was always easier buying her mom Christmas presents. I could spot a good gadget or tea cup that she would love. I mean, how many grandmothers did you know nearing retirement age that had a Sirius satellite radio in their car along with a docking station for her iPod? She loved little things that lit up or whirred. A Dollar Store pen that lit up and had a Santa or Black Cat on it tickled the hell out of her. She would go shopping for Christmas all year long and each Christmas morning the house was wall to wall, floor to ceiling presents. They could be little things that she picked up along the way or they could be the big purchases. She never disappointed.

Neither did the cancer. It put up a good fight. In 2006, she had to have more surgery and this was the one we thought was going to get her. She lost her spleen and some of her pancreas. She spent a week in recovery alone, though that was because of a administrative snafu. Still, I had confidence that she would be back. She didn’t disappoint me. She was now my mom, too. I was damned if I was ready to let her go. She just looked death in the eye, flipped him the bird, and told him to, “Eff off!”

Even after that bout, she never seemed to slow down. She could out and beat the best of the holiday shoppers. You could just see her shuffling around the mall with those dangly snowflake earrings, snapping her gum in frequent crackles. She’d come home with a sleigh full of purchases to wrap later, on the pool table. She’d fire up the Christmas music or put and put on a pot of tea.

She always tried new things, no matter what the consequences. She loved her cooking shows and would often make us guinea pigs to her culinary whims. It’s sad that I know who Paula Deen and Sandra Lee are. I could sit there and watch them with her simply because she enjoyed them.

She loved musicals, too. If it wasn’t Christmas music she would be enjoying a good soundtrack like the one from Chicago. I remember taking her to see the Phantom of the Opera when it came out a few years ago in movie theaters. Her taste in movies was a lot like mine, including taking her to see a James Bond movie, much to my wife’s chagrin.

And she was a good Grammy. I say that, not taking anything away from my own mother, but my mother-in-law had a style all her own. My daughter loved her and loved having her babysit her while my wife and I were at work. I had always hoped that she could retire exactly when she wanted to but unfortunately, after 15 years as in HR, her job was terminated due to redundancy. Also, the cancer had come back.

This was a new one. We had all gotten over having the stomach flu in February of 2009 and something about my mother-in-law seemed off. She would have trouble remembering things and would fight to find the right words. My wife knew something was up and told her to get checked out. She left work one day to go get a scan. Now, she had been through countless scans over the years because of her history, but not once had they thought to check her brain. There it was, a tumor, pressing on her brain, causing the confusion. It led her to stop the car at mailboxes and run through red lights. The doctor called before she had even got back to work, telling her to get to the ER in Shadyside. It wasn’t good. She called me and told me to pick her up and bring her straight to the house, so that her husband could take her while I made plans to get my wife and break the bad news.

The tumor was there and then it wasn’t. The week after St. Patrick’s Day, my mother-in-law went in for brain surgery and three days later, she was home. Afterwards, you couldn’t have known she even had a tumor. It was a piece of cake and she was home free, or so we thought.

Nearly ten years had gone by from the initial diagnosis to the second surgery in 2006. Now, it was just three years later for brain surgery. My wife was worried that her mom was running out of house money to play with at the table. Her mom had never seen the ocean and she’d make sure she’d see that. It wasn’t so much a bucket list for her mom, but for her. As we sat in the waiting room after surgery, we flipped through vacation guides. We didn’t know another obstacle would present itself before June.

Mother’s Day was spent in Shadyside hospital. My mother-in-law was riddled with pulmonary emboli. She had to be put on a high dose of blood thinner and we feared she wouldn’t be able to make the nearly 12 hour trek to the beach. We also found out that she had developed another tumor, in her only remaining ovary. But, since she was going to have to wait for a few weeks to have surgery, thanks to the clots, we decided that she should just go to the beach anyway, and we did.

I remember seeing her propped up in the back of the van, keeping her legs elevated. We’d make frequent stops for her to get up and move around. I wasn’t sure she was so keen on the logistics of planning and executing a trip like that. Yet, once she got there, she enjoyed the hell out of it. Vacationing in a nice big house, seeing the ocean for the first time, sleeping in, she loved it. Our last night there, after the car was packed and the house was checked, we noticed some leftover frozen custard that was just going to be tossed. So, the fondest memory I have of that trip was sitting in the kitchen, finishing off the last of the frozen custard with my mother-in-law. I asked her what she thought about this whole thing. She couldn’t understand why people went through all this trouble to go to the beach. The sand gets in everything. You deprive yourself of sleep. You fight over stupid things like maps and exits and directions. Then, I asked her if she would do it again, perhaps next year. She said she would. With that, we ate the last bites and called it a night.

Surgery to remove the tumor went like clockwork, like it always did. However, there was a new wrinkle. Her abdominal fluid showed signs of cells. It was determined that this was not renal cell cancer but ovarian. She would have to endure chemo. She went for six treatments over the next 18 weeks. The time over the year she should have enjoyed the most was nearly negated with vomiting and exhaustion and the loss of that spiky white hair. She began wearing a wig because she refused to not go out and do things, but the vibrancy that she had with walking around a mall or driving in her little car was diminished. She got tired more easily. She started to feel like fighting was pointless. She was tired. No more surgeries she said. I’m done.

Apparently, she wasn’t, just yet. 2009 was about as bad a year as you could tolerate. Brain surgery, pulmonary emboli, ovarian cancer and chemo would disgust anyone from wanting to see another year of the same. However, in March, after a full work up and scans, she was given a green light. She was, for all intents and purposes, cancer free. Another deal, another set of cards, and house money back on the table. We began planning another trip to the beach and there was general enthusiasm from her about going. We were looking to put the previous year behind us.

We had a lovely Easter dinner and enjoyed company. Then she started getting a headache. Now, this was a woman who could tolerate pain. On a scale of one to ten, it would have to be somewhere near 20 for her to complain but this was different. She went most of the week after Easter with the headache and finally went to see a doctor. They didn’t feel worried and sent her home. On Friday, April 9th, she enjoyed Chinese dinner at our usual restaurant and felt better. On Saturday, it was almost unbearable. My wife took her to the hospital. She said the pain was if someone had hit her in the back of the head with a baseball bat. She was totally cognizant at the hospital and rattling off all the medical information she had always had to recite when she went anywhere like that. Soon, everything worsened and they decided to life flight her to Pittsburgh. She went into a coma and they nearly lost her on the way.

This woman who had beaten cancer for 12 years. This woman who loved Christmas. This woman who loved her family and life with such a fervor was now gone. She was alive, but nowhere to be found inside. From what we can tell, she had an aneurysm. Her brain bled, filling up her skull, causing the flow of oxygen to cease. She could not breathe on her own and she would not wake up. They tried to remove the swelling, hoping to alleviate the pressure and give her a chance. It wasn’t enough, or it was too late. In any case, she was alive because she was on life support, until we said otherwise.

To actually hold the fate of someone in her hands, to make that decision is not something I would wish on anyone. I wanted her to fight. I wanted her to come back. She always had before. But not this time. We gave it the night and on Sunday, April 11th, we had to chose. There was no chance she would ever regain consciousness and even if she had, she would never be the same person we knew. I knew she would never accept that quality of life, not in a million years, but I didn’t want to accept the finality of it all.

On the way to the hospital, we had to explain the situation to our daughter. She was too smart to dumb down the issue and we didn’t want to use an analogy that would confuse or scare her about what was about to happen. We simply told her what happened and what was going to happen. My wife told her we were saying goodbye to grammy and that she was going to live with Jesus. My daughter asked if Jesus was a nice man. My wife said that he was and that he was the nicest man you would ever meet. My daughter said, point blank, “Well, good. Because I would kick him in the balls if he wasn’t.” You can only imagine the simultaneous laughing and crying that went on in that car. Somewhere, in the aether, I imagine a snort and a cackle, along with the snapping of gum.

We still went to the beach this year.  It wasn't the best trip we have ever had, because we were missing someone.  She would have enjoyed the trip, it was much smoother this year.  She would have loved seeing the wild horses.  She would have loved the house we had this year, with a great view of the sound.  She would have enjoyed the dinner we had at Captain George's.  She would have loved seeing her family having fun.   She would have loved to see alot of things.  She would have loved to see her youngest granddaughter's first day of school and first peanut butter paint job on our living room.  She would have loved to see her new kitties growing up fat and sassy, just like she would have wanted.  Still, she got to 12 years she would have never had and in that time she got to see one daughter graduate college, both daughters get married, another grandchild be born, the beach and twelve more years of Easter and Fourth of July and Halloween and Christmas.  She got to see her husband learn how to play bass and play in a band.   And now, you could say, she sees everything with a great vantage point.

It’s been seven months since that day and every day a new challenge faces us. How do we cook that? How do I fix that? What does this benefits packet all mean? The things we would always ask her are discoveries we would have to make on our own. Still we laugh and still we cry over the memories. Still, my daughter says she misses grammy and wishes she could be here. Still, I do, too.

Today is her birthday. She would have been 66 years old. She would have outlived us all if she could. With all her maladies and missing parts, she could have run circles around me. And regardless of how bad it gets, I plan on making sure this holiday is as magical as any, for her sake. I want the party and I want the glitz. It’s not to take the place of what she did, but to honor it. She loved a good party and that’s what life is, a party.

Eat, drink, and be merry.

Don’t forget to take your favor.

You Can Never Have Too Many Cooks In The Kitchen

There’s an old saying about too many cooks spoiling the broth. It can also be worded as having too many Chiefs and not enough Indians. Of course, I have no idea how you can connect Cleveland Major League Baseball to Kansas City professional football and relate that to cooking.

That was a joke…. Never mind.

Bad jokes aside, the idea that you need to have a small amount of management and an ample amount of direct reports is the idea behind those sayings. In other words, too many people in charge leads to discourse among how to best serve the project. But this isn’t about business, this is about actual food. This is about literally having too many cooks in the kitchen and I say, so be it. The more the merrier.

As my waistline will attest, I do have a small love of food, but will leave its preparation up to the experts. I am otherwise pretty useless in the kitchen. I am constantly reminded how I screwed up beans and weenies in a can. What did I know? I was trying to make it better. I was a bartender. We experiment, sometimes. [crickets] For the smallest part, I think my wife would just be happy if I remember to put stuff back in the fridge. Small steps, right?

But theOver the years, I have gotten better at it and on occasion I will even do some of the cooking. I’ll make French Toast, chili, grill dead animals and can make a pretty decent scrambled egg. However, in my life I have known many great cooks and I stand by the mantra that having too many cooks can never be a bad thing.

More than one cook can split up the workload. Just last night, my wife and father-in-law tackled kitchen prep inside while I manned the grill, outside. We had some leftovers from a birthday party cookout that consisted of a three beans and bacon dish, sausage stuffed banana peppers, hot dogs and hamburgers, which were reheated and pasta salad and fried green tomatoes, which were fresh. Now, as a grill warrior I am constantly working to improve how I can grill hot dogs, hamburgers, and steak and I have found that nothing bothers me more than having dried out burgers from putting them back on the grill. So, here’s a little tip for anyone who has left over hamburgers and wants to cook them up the next day.

There is an awesome spice made by McCormick called Grill Mates. I already love their Montreal Steak Seasoning one for…um steak. Whenever I get some steak for grilling, I use a combination of the Montreal Steak Seasoning and Meat Tenderizer before it gets on the grill and the add some black pepper once it’s close to being done. They also make a hamburger spice which is ‘effing awesome. But it also works if you are reheating burgers as well. Depending on the number of burgers you are using, grab a brownie or cake pan and add some beef broth, I use Swanson, and the Grill Mates Burger Spice. Put your burgers in and cover it with foil. Put it on the grill and just let it simmer. The burgers stay juicy and moist and the added flavor from the spice is kick ass. The beef broth idea came from my mom, another great cook.

So, while I’m standing outside watching meat cook, my father-in-law is inside slicing up green tomatoes, coating them with salt, pepper, and flour and frying them up. While he’s doing that, my wife is mixing up pasta salad and heating up the peppers and beans. Teamwork y’all. Yet, this was mostly food that was already made ahead of time. What about the food that needs to actually be cooked?

While I am primarily biased towards my own family’s cooking there were few things I would actually eat and didn’t leave my comfort zone all that much. For instance, before I met my wife I had hardly ever considered putting brown sugar into spaghetti sauce. I also did not eat chili before my father-in-law made me an addict. Now, I make it using his recipe and it is one of my favorites. Salad consisting of apples, raisins, walnuts and mayonnaise? No thank you… until I met my wife. Now, I could eat a whole bowl of Waldorf Salad, by myself.

Sadly, we are down one awesome cook this year. Dinner is bittersweet as my wife is beginning to learn how to cook all the dishes, her mother was so good at, in a trial by fire method. I will say that she’s nailed broccoli cheese soup. That was always something she had trouble getting her mother to make the way she liked it. Our gold standard was Ruby Tuesday’s but we don’t have one around here anymore. Holiday cooking will be equal doses of sweet and sour as that was always a favorite time of year for my mother-in-law’s cooking. Sure I had some of the best sweet potato casserole and stuffing at my family’s house for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve belonged to my wife’s family. Without the matriarch at the helm we will all have to figure out how to pull off some of the more excellent fare we’ve been used to.

To be fair to my wife, she had been taking on the duties of cooking for Halloween and New Year’s Eve ever since we moved into our home in 2004. But she always had an extra cook in the kitchen to help out and I know there will be times that she’ll unknowingly reach for the phone to call her mom. For her it was life and family. For me it was work. Her mom and I worked together and, up until last year, we’d email each other throughout the day about stuff. She had retired almost a year before she died and every day I’d relate some new tale of the office to her because she understood the culture. Like my wife reaching for the phone to ask for advice on how to make something in the kitchen I still have times where I wish I could email her or call her to tell he about the latest event. But we will move on, eventually, I guess.

Even though I am not one of the many cooks that should be in the kitchen, I still think we need to recognize that these holiday meals, that we loved so much, need to continue in her honor. I’d even be willing to learn how to cook some of them in order to keep up the tradition. I don’t think it’s an attempt to move on and forget someone who made a huge impact on our lives… and my gut. I think it’s a chance to honor that person’s memory by continuing what they did so well, if only as much as our expertise will allow. There will, of course, be some recipes and styles that will be lost because we didn’t take the time to get all the information before she passed. We had no idea it was going to happen. But we’ll experiment and test and try new things and along the way we may discover new ideas to pass on to our child and her eventual family. Well, I hope so. There’s just so many ways you can serve a slice of cheese and ketchup, which seems to be her favorite meal. Honestly, she doesn’t know what she’s missing, except the weight I’ve put on since I met her mother. What can I say? I love cooking and the cooks who cook so well.

Balloons For Kevin

I’m slowly beginning to be able to write this stuff down without going all completely kablooey. Eventually, I will put down something more substantial that really gives you the sense of what took place in our lives last month. I just can’t do it right now. However, because I am the unbelievable prick that I am and I know that my wife and her family can appreciate my sense of humor, even in the saddest of times, I feel I can at least share how I managed to cope with a pretty emotional event. More on that later.

Yesterday was Mother’s Day. Wow, thanks Captain Obvious. And I usually find an opportunity to at least visit if not spend the evening with my own mother. This year was a different. My wife just lost her mother the week after Easter and it’s been pretty rough. I’m not going to go into the whole back story, but my regular 4.2 readers know of what I speak. So, I took the munchkin up to see my mother on Friday night for a little Grammy Time. Then on Sunday we visited with her other Grammy, who is no longer here.

Now, I am nowhere near what you would call a churchgoer but for the sake of my daughter I talk the talk in order to kind of help with explaining what exactly has happened. She’s very smart and we would rather be upfront with what happened.

If we tell her that Grammy is sleeping but will never wake up she might be afraid to go to sleep at night. If we say Grammy had to go away and never come back, she might be afraid of us going anywhere without her. So, we were honest and told her that “Grammy had a boo boo that the doctors could not fix and she died. Her body is buried at the cemetery but the part of her that made her your Grammy is heaven now and that’s why we are sad because we can’t see her anymore.” She surprisingly gets it and understands completely what happened. But I don’t think she quite understands the feeling of loss and sadness she feels.

However, the kid is so her father’s daughter. On the way to the hospital to say goodbye to my mother-in-law we began to explain where Grammy was going. “Now, we are going to go say goodbye to Grammy. She is going to go live with Jesus now.” My daughter then looked up at my wife and asked, “Well, is Jesus friendly?” At this point I began to tear up because I knew that this was it. “Oh, yes,” my wife said, “He’s the friendliest person you’ll ever meet.” My daughter then deadpanned, “Good, because I’ll kick him in the balls.” Both my wife and I were simultaneously crying and laughing at honesty my daughter had with her intentions. She’s not even three yet. Now, this isn’t the first time she’s made that statement and for the life of me, I can’t figure out where she got it. My wife wanted to blame me but I live in a house with her and our daughter along with four cats, three of which are female and the one boy was neutered before we got him. Who the hell am saying “I’ll kick you in the balls” to?

We can always count on our daughter to provide a little perspective to the situation. And that’s why Sunday was another opportunity to smile through the pain. We had been planning for three weeks to go to the cemetery on Mother’s Day and release balloons with little notes attached. We were going to “Send them to Grammy.” Now, we prefaced Mother’s Day with ample amount of warning to my daughter that these balloons were going to be let go to fly up to heaven. She’s a balloon junkie and is very adamant about getting balloons. So, we figured there might be some resistance on finally letting the balloons go. But she did good. She even kept asking my wife if it was Mother’s Day yet because she wanted to “Send balloons to Kevin.”

At first we didn’t get it. Who the hell was Kevin? Of course, this malapropism was her thinking that heaven was Kevin but where she learned the name Kevin, I don’t know. But we kind of went with it and said “We’re going to go send balloons to Kevin, now.” So, as we stood there and released the balloons I found it hard not to find some humor in this moment. I thought about putting an email address on the cards attached to the balloons. Since they were made of Mylar they would probably last a lot longer than traditional latex ones, even at a higher altitude. I suspect they won’t make it very far and will end up no more than a twenty or thirty miles away before they hit something and end up tangled in a tree. But it would have been nice if the person who found these notes attached to balloons were to send a message. So, in that vein my sister-in-law said. “Who is going to write you, Jesus? Do you think he has the email address, Jesus@aol.com?” I said, “Of course, but the bastard will probably try to sell me Viagara.” “Yeah, I got spammed by Jesus. Oh, and now he wants to be friend on Facebook. Hey, everybody. I just poked Jesus. That and he keeps asking me to join his mafia.” Like I said, I can be a prick, but at least the humor can be appreciated. Now, if you excuse me, there is a lightning bolt coming towards me from the direction of Kevin’s. Avenge me, daughter. Go kick Kevin in the balls.

The Six Million Dollar Miracle

We can rebuild her – We have the technology.

That title is a bit of a misnomer. Not the miracle part, but the price tag associated with it. After all, in the 1970s, the operations that gave Steve Austin his bionic abilities may have cost around six million dollars, but in today’s terms, the actual cost attached to all of that hardware may put it closer to what the government gave AIG in TARP funds. However, to say that my Mother-in-Law was given, not only bionic parts, but a six million dollar cumulative price tag for all her surgeries is probably incorrect. In fact, they didn’t exactly add anything, more like they took pieces out. OK, I should have titled this “The Incredible Shrinking Woman.” Are these 70s and early 80s pop culture references doing anything for ya? Thought not. Well, then let’s just find the chase and cut to it.

I spoke before about my unwillingness to understand how someone can have faith in a higher power when all they’ve done is fight to keep death at bay. This time around, I think I’ll look a little more positive on the subject but I won’t give into too much praise of a higher being keeping her around. Here’s a quick rundown on what we’ve had so far.

In 1997 after a bout with a tricky case of pneumonia, she found out that she had a football sized tumor on her kidney. When they opened her up on the table, they wished that they hadn’t. RCC (Renal Cell Carcinoma) had metastasized into her lungs. They put her at stage IV and removed the tumor, along with the kidney, and an ovary. When I say “They wished they hadn’t” I mean that had they known what was going on inside her, they wouldn’t have bothered and told her to go home and be comfortable. But they didn’t. Instead, they put her into a study for an experimental treatment that would quite literally take her to death’s door in order to reboot her immune system. Consider it the Jurassic Park computer system method.

When I met her daughter, my future wife, she had already been through the treatments and come out with a clean bill of health, for now. All of the spots on her lungs had disappeared and she had been cancer free for a year. I have since learned that you are never really free from it, regardless of how well scans look.

Jump forward to 2006. For nearly 10 years, my M-I-L has had clean scans but a new spot showed up on her pancreas. Soon, the doom and gloom crept back into the thoughts of her family. Statistically speaking, for her to live past five years would have put her into a bracket of about 5%. I’m not exactly sure but I’ve heard various differences pushing her closer to a 1% bracket. But, now she had to endure more surgery.

After 12 hours on the table, the doctors in Pittsburgh removed part of her pancreas, and her spleen, making recovery a difficult process. She spent five days in recovery, more because of the lack of empty rooms than anything else, but she really didn’t look that good and being lumped together in that bullpen of other surgical patients didn’t do much for her recovery process. Still, she came out on the other side with no apparent tumors or other spots in her system. The pathology came back as renal cell cancer; her old nemesis had shot seeds into her system and found a new place to sleep.

The three years that followed gave her an opportunity to see the birth of another grandchild, my daughter. “Gammy,” as my little one refers to her, is pretty much an everyday fixture in her life as we only live a few minutes away and because of the renewed bond between mother and daughter, we see them often, if not every night. We even share the stomach flu as we all got hit with it on Valentine’s Day, providing more evidence that I should just skip holidays all together.

But then something happened. Gammy wasn’t bouncing back from the stomach flu like the rest of us. That missing spleen might have something to do with it, or it could be that something more sinister was going on in there. She began to have problems focusing. Headaches became an everyday occurrence. She started to seem confused and even stopped at a mailbox and drove through a red light. Something wasn’t right. My wife, ever the enforcer when it comes to medical issues started to harp on her about seeing a doctor and her coworkers even forced her to keep an appointment for an MRI in March of 2009. Before she made it back to her desk after the scan, the hospital had called her. She needed to go directly to the ER and consult with an oncologist and neurologist. She had a brain tumor. After the diagnosis, we all realized that these symptoms were noticed long before the stomach flu incident. At New Year’s she seemed distant.

On March 18th, she went in for surgery to remove the tumor. Considering her last surgery lasted 12 hours, we expected a long day ahead of us, but the doctors came out to see my wife and her dad after an hour and a half. What had gone wrong? Could they not operate? Was it really bad? After losing all color in the face, they were given the news. She’s out of surgery and they had already removed the entire tumor. The surgery was quick and she was out of the hospital in two days. A follow up treatment, of radiation to the area, provided extra defense in case they had missed something.

During her stay in the hospital, the announcement of her other daughter’s impeding nuptials provided a method for getting my in laws to go on vacation. In their 43 years of marriage, they had never taken one. So, in we decided to tag along with the newlyweds and get a house at the beach. It would be the first time my daughter and her Gammy would see the beach.

The trip almost got cancelled. My M-I-L started to feel shortness of breath and would get tired walking a small distance. She also developed a lump on her arm. While in the hospital to do additional scans of her abdomen, everything came together. Another mass was found and she was suffering from blood clots in her arm, legs, and lungs. She ended up back in the hospital over Mother’s Day weekend for treatment. An EKG showed a weakened heart and surgery was almost scrubbed because of her condition. If anything, vacation would be cut because of surgery to remove the mass that had now been found in her remaining ovary. Why she did not have a hysterectomy back in 1997 is beyond any of us. Soon, we had a new list of problems to address. Would she be strong enough for surgery? Is this renal cell or ovarian? Can her remaining kidney handle continued stress from the dye used in scans and another surgery?

Due to the EKG results, her surgery was being postponed for a month. The doctors did not feel that the tumor was dangerous enough to operate right now, so they felt they could wait. The blood clots were treated but they waffled on clearance for the trip. It was a 12 hour drive to the beach and she would have to keep her legs elevated and couldn’t sit for long periods of time. Having a two year old daughter would mean numerous stops along the way, so that wasn’t a problem. Also, thanks to my daughter, we needed to have a vehicle that could handle all of her things as well as ours, so we rented a Dodge Grand Caravan to make the trip. In a twist of fate, the blood clots nearly hampered but ultimately allowed for her to go on vacation. A trip, I feel, did wonders for her outlook and health. We had a three story house with lots of steps to climb, and a pool for her to exercise and relax in during the week. After we returned home, her multiple doctors all gave her a clean bill of health for surgery, citing that she was in better condition than she had been in months, perhaps years.

Skipping the Fourth of July was not an option my daughter shares a birthday with the adjoining day. A cookout/birthday party served as a celebration and feast before surgery. The following Thursday would be her latest date with the surgical blade. Because of the volatile nature of ovarian cancer, she could not be biopsied until after surgery. Running the risk of rupturing the tumor could escalate her into a higher stage. I had just learned that once you get classified as stage IV RCC, you keep that no matter how clean your scans are there was no sense in adding a high stage of ovarian cancer if it was possible.

After an hour and a half or surgery, she had been put into recovery. The gynecological oncologist sat with us in a room and discussed the procedure. He was used to see ovarian cancer on a regular basis and from what he saw, this was not it. There was a very condensed and compact area that was affected. There were no nodules or other infected tissue which suggested to him that this was indeed, renal cell cancer. Pathology could reverse that opinion but for now, we breathed a sigh of relief. When you have to root for one kind of cancer over another you start to feel like your rooting for one political candidate who is not as despicable as the other while still maintaining that they are both evil. When asked about the short length of surgery he said that it would have gone quicker, but they spent an hour cutting through a lot of scar tissue from previous surgeries in 1997 and 2006. At one point before surgery, my M-I-L wondered if they could just put a zipper in place instead of having to constantly cut her open since she’s becoming an old pro at this. I told her in recovery that the next time they ought to have it down to fifteen minutes. It could be like ordering a pizza. It’ll be done in 30 minutes or it’s free. Maybe you could start using a drive through for this. While trying not to pop a stitch from laughing at the lameness of my jokes, she said, “There won’t be another one.” I’m not sure if that means she hopes that this is the last time she’ll have to do this or that she feels that her luck has just about run out.




Think about it, while simultaneously keeping the Pittsburgh medical profession in business, she’s pared away about ever spare part you can imagine. How long before it’s something she can’t live without? She’s already a diabetic; she has OSA (Obstructive Sleep Apnea), hypertension, high blood pressure, and is prone to pulmonary emboli. She takes more drugs than the ballplayers listed on the Mitchell Report and the bands on Ozzfest. Sooner or later, she won’t be treatable. It’s not like she can take that amazing cocktail of drugs like she did in 1997. She was in perfect health back then. Now, she wouldn’t survive the extreme dosage needed when she first got diagnosed. Lesser doses may not be sufficient to rid her of more tumors.

Through all this, we have maintained that this is a chronic condition instead of a terminal one. Cancer has taken a heck of a lot of her body, but not her spirit. Approaching the back nine of her 60s has given her the frame of mind that she’s just playing with the house money and the deck has been getting colder as the time marches on. The Sword of Damocles is constantly hanging overhead waiting for her to exhale. One day, luck will run out and I hope that is well into her 90s or more as long as she can maintain a good quality of life. I know my wife will be devastated when the day comes and she wants every day she can get but she has to know that it’s not her choice and ultimately, there may come a time when she can’t fight. I’m just hoping that she goes twelve rounds with death before losing at Battleship, Clue, Electric Football, or Twister. Be that as it may, the fight rages on and she does not go gently into that good night. If there is a higher power, I think he’s just not ready for her. She is a force to be reckoned with say what you will about Mother-in-Laws; I think I’d like to keep her around.

Frankly, I think the medical profession ought to be asking her to do speaking tours. She’s beaten the odds so many times; I’m beginning to she’s unable to be killed. After all, her mother is in the upper half of the 80s and is still kicking it in an assisted living facility with an artificial hip, bouts with congestive heart failure, and some dementia. My wife also has a resilient nature as she’s come back from thyroid disease and MS to lead a normal life. So, to adjust for inflation, maybe my Mother-in-Law is the $30 million dollar woman, or perhaps just priceless.

A Job More Important Than Brain Surgeon

I haven’t been posting with my normal frequency. A couple of posts back I went into great detail about my Mother-in-Law’s diagnosis with a brain tumor. For any of those of you who are wondering, the prognosis is good. Let me start off by giving a big thanks and kudos to the staff and doctors of UPMC Shadyside. Anyone familiar with medicine and hospital care has probably heard of the UPMC Health System. Being a resident of the Southwestern Pennsylvania area, we have access to some of the most cutting edge technology in hospitals. Granted, there are bigger and more advanced facilities but we hold our own here. The care my Mother-In-Law received was excellent and the staff should be commended on their skills. I’d also like to send a big shout out to Wendy’s for their Baconator Combo Meal and PBS Kids Sprout, but more on that later.

Last I had stated, my wife’s Mother went through an MRI and was admitted to hospital for testing. Two days in the ER and two days in the Neurosurgery wing later, she came home and prepared for surgery. They had given her steroids to reduce the swelling which had caused the loopy behavior. Now, they were going to go in and remove a tumor, roughly 5 cm in size. She was going to endure about four hours of surgery, three to four days of recovery in the hospital and two weeks’ worth of home recovery before going back to work. Truthfully, that’s not too bad. They don’t expect any rehabilitation or adverse effects from poking her in the head. They’re were off on their estimates.

Now before you start to sink and think the worst, realize I said they were off on their estimates. I didn’t say how. It turns out she was in surgery for little more than an hour and a half and was awake immediately after. She spent Wednesday evening and most of Thursday in ICU recovery and then got moved to a room in the Neurosurgery wing. She came home on Friday. The only hurdle we have left to clear is the two weeks of home recovery. See, no doom and gloom.

While I can’t go into any great details about her experience I can give you a glimpse into what it is like as a spectator to the event. Because, as you know, it’s all about me. From my perspective, I’ve had to watch from the outside looking in on the ups and downs of my Mother-in-Law’s health issues. Only recently have I become a more active player but the recent events have been more of an exercise in child management than moral support.

When I got the call from my MIL, as she will be referenced here on out, I was sitting at my desk like always. I had been conversing with her cousin about her impeding MRI and she had mentioned about my MIL stopping at mailboxes and running red lights on the way there. She had been acting rather distant and confused for a month. She seemed meek and this is a woman that is a mama bear. She will knock you down and tell you like it is. For her to have this look of confusion on her face when trying to eat her dinner, you know something is wrong.

And the MRI almost didn’t happen. She had an appointment with her PCP and was planning on telling them everything was fine. My wife, a new mama bear on her way to full membership, was going with her to make sure they understood what was really happening. She helped to get the MRI in the works. Then, my MIL coworkers kept the wheel spinning when my MIL decided she was going to just cancel or reschedule the MRI because she felt fine. They forced her to go…but nobody offered to drive, unfortunately.

So, there I am twiddling away the afternoon when I got the call. “You need to go home now. I need to go to the ER and you won’t have a babysitter for the afternoon.” I didn’t really understand how it all worked. I just did what I was told. I left work, and started home. She called me on my cell and asked if I was on my way. I missed part of the message. Originally, I thought I was going home as her husband, our babysitter, was going to be on his way to pick her up for the trip to the ER. Apparently, I was to take her home, first. Luckily, I was only at the other end of the road her office is on and turned around.

In the car, she quickly tried to contact some people and seemed with it more than usual. I asked her if her or her husband had told my wife, yet. They hadn’t and I specifically told them not to. I would take care of it when I got there. My fear was that one of them would call and tell her on the phone while our daughter was in her presence. Knowing my wife, I was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to keep a straight face and her distressed look would upset the baby. Since our daughter is still less than two years old, she doesn’t quite understand what is about to happen but she does sense tension and despair and her empathic ability carries over into her mood. Her world was going to be thrown upside down and I wanted it to try and stay clear of the debris.

I dropped my MIL off and headed home. The three minute drive from one house to the other wasn’t long enough in my opinion. Here I was about to tell my wife that her Mother was going to the ER and that she needed to contact her oncologist and have him consult with a neurosurgeon. There’s no easy way to cram all that medical jargon into a more digestible chunk without sounding insincere or flippant. I practiced again and again how I would tell her. Not to mention, I was going to have to somehow deliver the bad news with a smile and upbeat demeanor so that my daughter doesn’t catch onto it. I decided to wing it as I pulled into the driveway. My wife was just getting out of the shower and was puzzled as to why I was there instead of her Dad. She had already sensed something was wrong and I immediately asked her if the baby was napping. Luckily, she had just gone down and my wife had every opportunity to act naturally.

She only caught three words out of my entire speech. “ER”, “Oncologist” and “Neurosurgeon.” Everything else was white noise. She began wandering around the house not making any logical motions. Putting things away that didn’t present any issue being out. Trying to get ready to teach lessons that she was going to have to cancel because she was going to go to the hospital. I asked her if she wanted me to take her or to stay with our daughter while she went. She needed me to be there so, I called my Mother to come and sit with the baby. While my wife called her students, I made every possible provision to ensure a smooth stay for my Mom because I didn’t know when we’d be back. I filled up the gas in our car so that if she had to travel, she had a baby seat. I moved all of the cats, their food and their litter box into our room. She’s allergic. I got out different foods and snacks for them to have for dinner and I started listing all of our cell numbers and what hospital we’d be at on the refrigerator.

Our daughter woke up right before my Mother arrived which is nice because she sees us first. That keeps her life simple and normal. We left for the ER and found out that there was some kind of mass on my MIL’s brain and that they needed to reduce the swelling first. This was the cause for her mental state. That state seemed fine to me as she and the nurse attending to her in the ER had a very upbeat and snappy banter about needle sticks, health care, and all around bedside manner. I don’t know if she was using humor and snarky comments as a defense mechanism but it worked. The nurse was laughing hysterically as were we.

After three more days in the hospital, my MIL came home with a plan of action. The surgeon was confident about procedure and she was scheduled for a Wednesday surgery. I took off work for the last half of the week and got the marching orders.

Wednesday: My wife and FIL were going down with my MIL for surgery. I was staying home until the baby awoke and then will transport her to my parents and join my wife at the hospital.
Thursday: My daughter had a doctor’s appointment, so I was going to be with her, then probably wouldn’t see my wife until late.
Friday: Everything was probably just status quo in recovery and I could go to work and then take over watching the little one while my wife goes to the hospital.
Weekend: Play by ear.

I did what I could to keep busy in the quiet of my house while my daughter slept. I fiddled with my computer, caught up on my DVR recordings and generally became bored out of my mind. Meanwhile, my MIL was having her head cracked open like a walnut so that they could look inside for something that didn’t belong. Once the baby was up, I fed her, packed her whole world into the car and left for my 40 minute drive to my parents. After running down the list of things I could remember, I parted with my daughter and headed for Pittsburgh. One thing I will share with you about this experience. I’ve acquired some new skills. I am now able to eat a full meal from Wendy’s, including a frosty, while driving 65 mph on the Turnpike. Previously, I had always required two hands to eat a Frosty. They require a fork. A straw just doesn’t cut it. I managed to be able to place it in the cup holder and spoon out the frosty goodness without dripping. Both Friday of the last week and today I had to grab my lunch on the go from Wendy’s and I have gained a huge love of the Baconator sandwich. I highly recommend picking up one…or three.

I got to the hospital around 4pm and sat with my extended family in the ICU family lounge. As I stated earlier, surgery was abnormally quick. It was the kind of situation where you think the worst. The kind where the doctor informs you that there was no way to do the operation because of the tumor or that she arrested before they could even get it all out. Seeing a doctor that quick is enough to make your stomach fall out of your ass. Luckily, it was just a quick surgery.

We were allowed to see her in ICU soon after and she looked like a reject from a punk show or someone that had passed out at a party before removing their shoes. Her hair was all messed up with red and yellow patches of color and there was marker writing near her temple. I couldn’t read what was written but in my sick and twisted sense of humor I asked if that was where they notated to “DO NOT CUT” or “CUT LEFT OF HERE.” She had a pounding headache which was normal but had very good cognitive skills.

My wife was a bundle of nerves and constantly needled the doctors for more information prompting my FIL to ask for some Duct Tape. I could understand her state of mind. She and her Mother are very close and ever since her first diagnosis of renal cell cancer in 97, she has become very attached to her. I fear one day it will be very, very hard. I just hope that it’s a situation where she goes in her sleep as a very old woman from natural causes. It’s never easy to lose a parent but this is a connection that transcends normal Mother-Daughter relationships. You have to admire that. One of the aspects of this family that I have grown to love is how Daughters take care of their Mothers, young and old alike.

Finally allowing her to get some much needed rest, we went to pick up our Daughter to get some normalcy in our evening. She was very good for my parents and my wife decided and her parents recommended that she needed to stay home on Thursday as nothing new was going to happen. No test results were going to come in on the tissue that was removed. She wasn’t going to have any changes in care. She needed to just rest and my wife needed to let her. She also needed to go with me to our Daughter’s doctor appointment as I am still a novice when it comes to handling all the particulars.

Come Friday, my wife was simply going in with her Father to help get her Mother home. This was a highly improbable event. After having major brain surgery on Wednesday, she was coming home on Friday. I understand that patient turnaround in a major hospital is essential to maintain, but I just couldn’t believe that she was cleared for this. Granted, when my wife was in for the birth of our child, she opted to come home a day early because she was ready to climb the walls. This was something she regretted as she really needed another day of recovery in a hospital setting. You live and you learn. However, cesarean births and brain surgery are two different matters, yet my wife was in the hospital longer than her Mother in this respect.

While my wife got her Mother settled in and cleaned up around the house in preparation for the inevitable guests and well wishers to arrive, I stayed home once again and watched our Daughter. Since I wasn’t going to be dropping her off anywhere it was just a Daddy-Daughter day and we watched television. First there was Zaboomafoo. Then there was Barney & Friends. Next, was Play With Me, Sesame. Finally, there was Caillou. My Daughter was enthralled and sat on my lap with her “Blangy” (Blanket) and her “BaJoose” (Bottle of Juice) during most of the block of kids programming. Otherwise, she was playing with her Mrs. Potato Head or other toys scattered about our living room.

By Saturday, things were returning to normal. My wife was slowly getting back into her routine. My MIL was slowly recovering all her faculties. And I was slowly recovering from all the junk food and Baconators I had been eating over the last week. Wanting to do something special for me in all this, my wife said we should go shopping and said it was time to get the Wii. This is the same Wii I have mentioned in Free Wii 4 Me: Parts One and Two. I finally got it and boy are my arms tired.

So, while I wasn’t an active participant in all my wife’s family drama concerning her Mother and the tumor, I played, what I felt was an equally important and vital role. Because sometimes, the biggest impact and contribution you can make in any stressful and complex situation is to just keep the status quo for the smallest of affected individuals. In any crisis there needs to be that one person who maintains a unified front, calming those who need it the most, even if it’s just being a chauffeur or a television buddy. That was me. You may be the brain surgeon, but I am the Daddy and that makes me more important here.