I submitted the following article for consideration to a new magazine called Voices that will come out next summer. I don't think I'm breaking any regulations for publishing it here since it hasn't been accepted. I've proposed this as a four-part series so if by some chance this first piece is accepted, you'll have to read the others in the magazine. If it's not accepted, I'll publish the other three articles here at a later date. For now, this is part one of A Life With "Ologists."
A Life with “Ologists”
Part One
By Mari Miller Burns
Stop me if you’ve heard this one. What do a gynecologist, oncologist, dermatologist, ophthalmologist, cardiologist, neurologist, urologist, pulmonologist, and gastroenterologist have in common? Me. I have had the pleasure of seeing each one of these specialists either for myself, my mother, or my daughter over the last 42 years.
We’ll start w/ my mom. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1968 when I was four and she was 38. Enter the gynecologist and oncologist. She had a complete hysterectomy, which she came through fine, but after she returned home, a blood clot travelled from her leg to her lung sending her back to the hospital. All total she was in the hospital for about four weeks. My main recollection during this time was confusion as to why I couldn’t see her. At that time, children weren’t allowed to visit patients on the floors, even if it was a parent. I was shuffled among family and friends while Dad worked during the day and visited Mom in the hospital at night. I remember falling asleep most nights on someone’s couch only to wake in my own bed the next morning. No one told me where Mom was, or what was happening to her. No one tried to reassure me that she would be okay and would be home soon. Maybe they didn’t think she would and didn’t want to get my hopes up. I think anything would’ve been better than my silent confusion. My sister was 10, but no one had bothered to tell her anything either. When I was finally allowed to see her, it was just a few days before she was released to go home. All I remember of that time is standing beside her bed sobbing because I had at last found her, and I couldn’t even sit on her lap or give her a hug.
At that time we had no health insurance, few people did, or at least it wasn’t something I recall hearing about. Maybe others did, and we were just too poor. Dad had started working for the city the year I was born, but either they didn’t provide health insurance, or cancer wasn’t covered. Mom made arrangements with the doctors and the hospital to make monthly payments. She always told me, “Even if you can only pay a few dollars each month, at least they know you’re trying.” I know friends, family, and our community helped out with monetary donations, and when I started school in 1969, my sister and I were given free lunch tickets. I always thought it was cool that I could trade-in my crinkled, used lunch ticket, and the school’s secretary would give me a crisp, new one. My sister was horrified. I guess 11-year-olds have more pride than five-year-olds.
The biggest impact Mom’s first cancer had on me was the difficulty I faced starting Kindergarten. I didn’t want to go. I was afraid that Mom would be gone again by the time school was out. Even though I only went to school every-other-day, I dreaded the days that she would walk me to school. On each of those days she’d leave me crying at the door of my classroom. She told me years later that she cried all the way home too, but my crying didn’t stop after she left. I cried for hours. I remember my teacher taking me in the back room where we kept our coats and telling me that I had to stop carrying on. It didn’t help. Finally, she asked my mom permission to spank me to get me to stop crying. Mom agreed. I only recall one spanking so I guess it worked, but I think for the wrong reasons. I stopped crying because I feared the spanking more than I feared Mom going away again. I can only wonder how that episode would’ve played out if someone had just sat my little five-year-old-self down and talked about what was going on with my mom and my worries and my fears.
If someone had talked to me, maybe I wouldn’t have felt like I had to be my mother’s protector. Since the blood clot had travelled from her leg, the doctors told her she was not to cross her legs. I don’t know how I knew this, or if any one charged me with this duty, but I was vigilante in making sure Mom didn’t cross her legs. I can recall times sitting at her feet and uncrossing her crossed leg while I listened to her talk about how she had to swallow radioactive gold and then lie on a table, turning every 15 minutes. I had no idea what radioactive gold was, but it sounded rich, and maybe my sister wouldn’t be embarrassed any more about getting free lunch tickets. The irony of that gold was that it’s probably what led to the leukemia 40 years later, but that’s for another story.
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