Personal Watershed Moment #1

On Sunday, the Sunday School teacher made the comment that in every person's life they will have moments where they will have no support from anyone--they will feel alone. She said that it is in these moments that we need to go to a place where we can converse with our Heavenly Father and we need to do it often. (1 Nephi 18:3) It is in our extremities where we meet and come to know God and ourselves. 

I'd like to tell you a bit about some of the things I have gone through and what I learned from them. In the social sciences, these are termed watershed moments. I don't tell you these stories because I feel the need for sympathy or because "I'm a victim"--as one "friend" accused me--but because this is what my normal life has been. It is what shaped me into the person I am today and I am darn proud of what I have achieved. Also, because it doesn't matter what we have gone through--you're life being different from mine IS normal. 

Here is one of my watershed moments.

In Fall 2000, I was 19 years old and studying Art History at Brigham Young University. I was getting A's and B's in all my courses and preparing to register for the next semester. I received a phone call from my parents sometime around mid-terms where they told me that my dad had just been diagnosed with Hepatitis C. They told me not to worry, everything was going to be fine, and he would be starting Interferon treatments in January.

I finished out that semester and went home for Christmas Break a few days after my 20th birthday. The day before I left to go back to school, I helped my mom give my dad his first injection of Interferon. We stayed up that night monitoring he's temperature and watching for any side effects so that we could report them to the doctor. When I got back to school, my roommates were behaving strangely. I would come out of my room from studying to find the kitchen door closed. Walking down the hall, I could hear them talking in the kitchen. Every time I opened the door, all conversation would cease. (For those of you who don't speak Girl--this is usually a sign that they were talking about you and had to stop talking about you because you walked into the room.) This happened so often, that I started studying elsewhere or just wouldn't come home to eat.

One day I got a call from my Bishop (the lay minister in charge of a congregation in TheChurch of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). He asked if he could meet with me. Now, there is something you should know about me: I am super naive when it comes to certain aspects of human nature and I don't see things coming, especially if they are things I would never conceive of doing to someone else. He informed me that the 5 girls I was living with had come to him because they were "concerned" about me and my well-being. I had to sit down and talk to this man I barely knew about my personal life and what was really going on with me. He told me I was not a normal girl because I think like a guy. (If being logical, analytical, and not overly emotional is a male dominant trait, I would like to point out that I was raised with 4 brothers.) 

He then told me that from what we had discussed about my personal and family situation there didn't appear to be anything to be concerned about and urged me to go home and alleviate my roommates fears. I didn't do this. I walked in to my kitchen, had one of my roommates tell me she meant well, that if it was her dad she wouldn't be as selfish as I, and would've left school to be there for her family. I didn't say a word, walked into my bedroom and shut the door. Let's just say I lost my temper just a tiny bit when she followed me into my bedroom to continue telling me what I should do. 

You see, what this "concerned" person did not know, because it was none of her business, was that my parents and I had discussed my quitting school and had decided that I should not allow my dad's diagnosis to disrupt my education. I left my apartment and went to a friend's to call my mom and tell her what had happened.  She and I talked about it for several hours; I decided to quit school and go home. I went home the next day, packed my things and left. I am not a confrontational person nor did I want all my professors, classmates, etc to feel sorry for me or treat me differently by telling them my dad had been given a death sentence a few months prior.

When I got home, my dad's skin color was somewhere between a lemon and a not quite ripe lime. And he couldn't stop itching but there was no rash. His liver doctor kept telling him it was just a side effect of the medication and to take Benadryl. By the end of the week the white's of his eyes had turned neon green. He went back to the doctor, who ran some tests. The doctor informed us that the pharmaceutical company was very interested in Dad's case because only 1 in 10 million have the reaction that he was having. Dad was in the hospital with severe encephalopathy before the week was out. 

The doctors would not tell us what was going on. They just kept saying that he was having a bad allergic reaction to the drugs and that they were giving him Benadryl in an attempt to stop the reaction. After watching Dad hallucinate for a few days, we were beginning to suspect that something else was severely wrong. One of Dad's clients told Mom to tell the doctors that she needed a detailed report of his condition. Mom did this and was told the same thing they had been telling her since Dad had been admitted. Dad's client finally told Mom she needed to stoop a little bit and do some name dropping. Those doctors and nurses moved faster than we anticipated when they were informed that a US Senator was inquiring after his health.

We found out how sick Dad really was when Mom rode in the front seat of the ambulance that transferred him to Methodist Hospital in Houston. The transfer order read: "reason for transfer: severe liver failure, coma, death." He had been in the hospital for almost a week and we were never told that he was in liver failure once. The doctors at Methodist immediately took Dad off of all medications and began to detoxify his system. You see, your liver is what cleans the waste from your body. When it doesn't work, your own waste causes your blood to become toxic and the organ affected the most is the brain. Dad was in Methodist Hospital for close to a month and when he came home, he was on the Liver Transplant List. The doctors told us that if he didn't get a new liver within the year, he would die and there was nothing they could do.

About 6 weeks later, my mom discovered a lump in her breast. Thankfully, the biopsy came back informing us that it was simply a calcium deposit and not breast cancer.

I am the oldest in my family. At the time all of this occurred I was 20. My siblings were 18, 16, 13, 8, and 6. Within a few weeks, I was listed in my parents will as estate executrix, legal guardian for any siblings under the age of 18 in the event that both of my parents should die, and I was listed as someone who could make medical decisions for my dad in the event that he was incapacitated and my mother was unavailable. Everyone else I knew was worrying about whether they would have a date Friday night and what they should wear. I was worried that I would be an orphan before I was 21 and have 4 siblings to raise. 

When I went in for counseling years later and told a therapist about this watershed moment, she said that when we experience a trauma there is part of us that is frozen at the age the trauma occurred. There is also a part of us that matures at an accelerated rate so that we can adapt to our environment. For me, she explained, socially I was frozen at 19 and would always be a bit behind others my age. But, she also said that in every other aspect of my life, I was forced to grow up and deal with many things adults don't deal with until they are in their 50's. In a way, she explained, I was experiencing symptoms associated with Post-Traumatic Stress but had learned to cope with it, which is something many people can't do. She told me as long as I retained my sense of humor and could laugh at myself, she considered me healthy and normal.

We are all asked to go through things that have the potential to break us. But we choose for ourselves how to react to those situations. I am not typically a person who blocks out the light and curls up in bed waiting for it to be over. I research the problem, find solutions, and get moving. If I'm not moving, learning, and doing I start to flounder. That is what works for me. It might not work for you.

I read books on surgical procedures for liver transplants so I would know what exactly was going to happen. I helped cook meals and did the family grocery shopping. I took my brother's to Little League practice. I did my best to help our home feel as normal as possible while we waited for Dad's pager to go off, letting us know that someone had lost their life and were giving our Dad their liver so that he could continue living. And we went on a family vacation so that we could have memories together. Life doesn't stop, not even for death and the dying.