One of the things I find funny about the studies that survey how many donor conceived children are happy and well adjusted is that I'm one of the happy, well adjusted ones. If someone had interviewed my mother at any point in my childhood or teen years (most of the studies gauge young children by their parents' assessments), she would have given them an honest and glowing portrayal of what a good kid I was. I got very good grades, never got in trouble, never did drugs or drank or had sex or skipped class or snuck out or even really disobeyed. I never received so much as a detention or a grade lower than a B+. I had never seen a psychiatrist or a therapist and therefore had zero diagnosed mental issues. I never lashed out at my parents with "I hate you" or used the knowledge that my dad wasn't related to me against him. I didn't even tell him I knew. I didn't express anguish at the loss of half my biological family or show even so much as a curiosity about them after my mother told me never to speak of it again. I was a good kid.
I'm a happy, well adjusted donor conceived adult now, by my own admission. I graduated magna cum laude from my university and then paid off my own student loans. My ulcerative colitis went so far into remission that my doctor thinks I must've been misdiagnosed in the first place. I am married and have a healthy, happy child, and I own my own home. I don't do drugs, I eat well and work out and -- let's be honest here -- look pretty good, and I dress like I live inside a Lands' End catalog. Anyone who only knew me from Facebook might think I'm a Stepford wife. Even my therapist -- assuming she isn't being facetious -- expresses wonder at how I came to be so well adjusted. I have all these things going for me, and I am NOT OKAY with anonymous donor conception.
I found my biological father, and I even have contact with my half-siblings. I know my full family medical history and hundreds of years worth of genealogy. I can think about being donor conceived without crying now; I don't have to shut it away in the back closet of my brain just to get through the day anymore. But I am NOT OKAY with anonymous donor conception.
It makes me wonder what the other happy, well adjusted donor conceived people are like up close.
Friday, July 15, 2016
Thursday, June 23, 2016
The Time My Mother Tried to Keep My Cousin's Baby
When I was seven years old, my eldest cousin Ellie had a baby. I had always been the youngest of the cousins, so I was excited for someone else to be the baby for once. When Wendy was close to a year old, Ellie let my mother babysit her for a few days. I'm not sure where Ellie was going or what she was doing, but she was still only twenty, a single mother, and needed some time off.
My mother and I had a grand time taking care of Wendy. I remember watching her eat dry Cheerios and playing with her and even showing her off at my elementary school when she and my mother dropped me off one morning.
Then Ellie came to pick her up one evening. She was smiling and seemed excited to be reunited with her baby. "I'm even twenty minutes early!" I recall her saying with a smile.
"Twenty minutes early and a day late!" my mother retorted, my first clue that she was angry or that anything was wrong. My mother refused to let Ellie in the house. Ellie seemed bewildered and nearly as confused as I was. My mother told Ellie that she was a day late picking up Wendy. Ellie disagreed and said she had come back exactly when she'd said she would. My mother got angry and insisted Ellie was late and unpredictable and an "unfit mother" (a favorite phrase of hers, as I recall). Ellie demanded her baby back so they could leave, and my mother refused. If anyone else was home while this transpired, I never saw them. It was just my mom and Wendy and me in the house and Ellie on just the other side of the front door. Ellie threatened to call the police, but I don't recall my mother's exact response beyond something along the lines of daring her to do it.
It was the '80s, before any of us had cell phones, and my mother wouldn't let her in the house, so Ellie had to leave to get help. She came back a little while later with two police officers who ordered my mother to hand over the baby. My mother explained how my cousin was an unfit mother and that she couldn't in good conscience turn a child over to someone like that, at which point the police threatened to arrest her. My mother decided that she could in good conscience turn Wendy over to the police though and they could hand her over to Ellie if they really wanted to, but she stressed that anything that happened to her after that would be on their heads and not her responsibility. I recall one of the officers rolling his eyes as he accepted the baby and immediately passed her to Ellie.
I don't recall what happened after that except that they all left. Ellie didn't invite us to babysit again, but if she held a grudge, she never let it show. She brought Wendy over regularly for the large family birthday parties my mother hosted almost monthly until years later when they moved to another state. I haven't seen either of them in person for years, but we're Facebook friends, as I am with most of my cousins. Ellie is nearly fifty now and posts a lot about her weekends at the lake and her love of Bernie Sanders. Wendy is my half-sister's age and has a family of her own. We share old family photos from decades ago and laugh about how we looked. I assume Ellie remembers that time my mother tried to keep Wendy from her, but I don't know if Wendy ever heard about it. We don't talk about my mother.
My mother and I had a grand time taking care of Wendy. I remember watching her eat dry Cheerios and playing with her and even showing her off at my elementary school when she and my mother dropped me off one morning.
Then Ellie came to pick her up one evening. She was smiling and seemed excited to be reunited with her baby. "I'm even twenty minutes early!" I recall her saying with a smile.
"Twenty minutes early and a day late!" my mother retorted, my first clue that she was angry or that anything was wrong. My mother refused to let Ellie in the house. Ellie seemed bewildered and nearly as confused as I was. My mother told Ellie that she was a day late picking up Wendy. Ellie disagreed and said she had come back exactly when she'd said she would. My mother got angry and insisted Ellie was late and unpredictable and an "unfit mother" (a favorite phrase of hers, as I recall). Ellie demanded her baby back so they could leave, and my mother refused. If anyone else was home while this transpired, I never saw them. It was just my mom and Wendy and me in the house and Ellie on just the other side of the front door. Ellie threatened to call the police, but I don't recall my mother's exact response beyond something along the lines of daring her to do it.
It was the '80s, before any of us had cell phones, and my mother wouldn't let her in the house, so Ellie had to leave to get help. She came back a little while later with two police officers who ordered my mother to hand over the baby. My mother explained how my cousin was an unfit mother and that she couldn't in good conscience turn a child over to someone like that, at which point the police threatened to arrest her. My mother decided that she could in good conscience turn Wendy over to the police though and they could hand her over to Ellie if they really wanted to, but she stressed that anything that happened to her after that would be on their heads and not her responsibility. I recall one of the officers rolling his eyes as he accepted the baby and immediately passed her to Ellie.
I don't recall what happened after that except that they all left. Ellie didn't invite us to babysit again, but if she held a grudge, she never let it show. She brought Wendy over regularly for the large family birthday parties my mother hosted almost monthly until years later when they moved to another state. I haven't seen either of them in person for years, but we're Facebook friends, as I am with most of my cousins. Ellie is nearly fifty now and posts a lot about her weekends at the lake and her love of Bernie Sanders. Wendy is my half-sister's age and has a family of her own. We share old family photos from decades ago and laugh about how we looked. I assume Ellie remembers that time my mother tried to keep Wendy from her, but I don't know if Wendy ever heard about it. We don't talk about my mother.
Saturday, June 11, 2016
There's Something Wonky in My Family Tree
Warning: This is long and might be completely uninteresting. It's also hard to make it make sense without visual aids, so it might be nonsensical.
tl;dr: I think my great-great-grandfather was either adopted or someone else altogether.
New Match
I got a new match on 23andMe not too long ago -- a 2nd to 4th cousin, the site said. Since the user name said TJCapello*, it became my closest actionable (i.e., non-anonymous and as yet unsolved) match on the site. I sent him the default "let's share DNA info and see how we're related" message, but -- as expected -- I didn't get an immediate response. His profile was new and contained no additional information.
I looked up the initials and refreshingly uncommon surname and, taking into account that he was male, I found his full name and location online with a quick Google search. I started drawing up a family tree for him based predominantly on his mother's obituary on Legacy.com (but also using pipl.com, Facebook, FamilySearch, and Ancestry), and I was delighted to learn three out of the four of his grandparents were Italian immigrants. I have only trace amounts of Southern European DNA myself and a tree filled with British and German names, so I focused my tree-building efforts on the non-Italian quarter of his ancestry.
Then I got another new DNA match, even closer this time -- a 2nd to 3rd cousin, it said. I quickly learned it was my previous match's sister (different surname, but Google knows all). Whatever my relationship to her is, it's the same one I share with him, so I figured I should be able to find our most recent common ancestors in the great-great-great-grandparent range or even closer (thank you, ISOGG).
I built out the English-sounding quarter of the Capellos' family tree until it should have intersected with my own. It even featured the surname Willis* like my own tree, and they lived in the Midwest, not far from another branch of my own family tree. But I couldn't find any overlap, despite my own Willis branch of the family tree tracing back to the 1600s.
I put this project aside for awhile, and I come back to it every so often. This wouldn't be an easy one to solve like I had thought. Either their family tree contains an error -- perhaps from an adoption or a non-paternity event -- or mine does. Or maybe that mysterious branch of my family tree that ought to lead back to New York where my great-great-grandfather was born really doesn't.
The Wonkiness
Recently I've started finding other DNA matches, on Ancestry this time -- all in Ancestry's "4th to 6th cousins" range, which tends to be a very loose estimate -- whose trees overlap with that same Willis branch that doesn't fit into my own. I've found upwards of five matches whose trees overlap in the same place, making them all second and third cousins of the Capellos, though Ancestry hasn't put it together into a "hint" for me yet because I sometimes have to draw up the family trees myself based on less detailed trees or user names alone. I appear to share about half as much DNA with those Ancestry matches as I do with the Capellos, which leads me to believe my family tree intersects with the Capellos' a generation more recently than it intersects with the others'. But that leaves me confused. Looking at their family tree, that means I'm descended from a Willis born in the early to mid-1800s. I already have all those slots in my family tree filled. I don't know how they could fit into my own tree.
That said, I don't believe any ancestor on my family tree is necessarily the right one until I have at least a couple separate (non-sibling) matches whose combined DNA and family trees support my data. The more distant the ancestor, the less possible s/he is to confirm. The more distant the cousin, the less possible s/he is to confirm. I'm in contact now with some cousins so distant that the relationship doesn't even show up in our DNA anymore, and I only feel confident of the relationship because of overlapping family trees and mutual DNA matches within those same family trees.
Logicking It Out
Here's the deal with the Willis branch of the tree in question: It shows up in several reasonably close DNA matches' trees, so I assume it is how I'm related to them. It's possible I'm wrong, but it's unlikely. In order to fit it into my own tree however, something currently in my tree must be wrong. First, I know the Willises are connected to my maternal side because my paternal uncle on Ancestry shares zero of those matches with me. I also have enough known DNA matches at this point to draw the conclusion that several specific ancestors on my tree must be accurate. I can verify my mother is my mother, I can verify her parents are my grandparents, and I can verify my great-grandparents too. I have enough reasonably close DNA matches backing up my data that I feel confident about six of my eight maternal great-great-grandparents. I even have an Ancestry "hint" that aligns another more distant cousin with ancestors of one of the two remaining great-great-grandparents (I feel less certain because it's only one match and a distant one at that). That would leave Jack, my great-great-grandfather who supposedly came from New York.
Jack is the brick wall of the mystery branch of my family tree. I have no DNA matches to support him, and many hours of research have yielded no indication of who his parents were, which makes it exceptionally hard to find DNA matches that would support him. His wife, my great-great-grandmother Emily, was from rural Illinois, within a 45-minute drive of the Willises. According to census records, she was twenty years younger than Jack and had their first child -- my great-grandmother -- when she was 28. They'd supposedly married two years earlier, but I have not been able to find a marriage record, though I found one for her first marriage easily enough. Lots of my ancestors crossed state lines to marry though, so I'm not even sure where to focus my search. Could Jack have been my great-great-grandfather but actually been adopted? I would think this more likely if he didn't claim to have grown up in New York, over a thousand miles from the family to which I'm trying to connect him. I could be wrong, but I don't think adoptees were moved that far from their birth families in the 1850s. Could my great-grandmother have been a non-paternity event (NPE), meaning Emily was impregnated by someone who wasn't Jack? If that is the case, I'm still not sure who my great-great-grandfather would be. There isn't one specific "most likely suspect" in the Willis family tree, either based on DNA or based on relative age and geographic proximity.
Next Steps
My closest DNA match on Ancestry whose tree contains the Willis line has several matches in common with me. A few of them also contain the Willis line, but several don't have detailed trees, nor are they related to the entire cluster of other Willis descendants, though they are related to each other. My next step is to build family trees for the ones who don't have them yet, or whose trees only have a couple of names, which is most of them. My hypothesis is that the ones who aren't mutual DNA matches with the Willis cousins will be related via an adjacent family line -- perhaps the Thompsons. Thompson was the maiden name of my closest Willis cousin's great-grandmother. If I'm right and they're connected via an adjacent family line, it would tell me which generation connects me to that family tree -- the generation containing both the Willises and the Thompsons (or whichever adjacent family surname) rather than an earlier generation.
In case you're wondering why I would put so much effort into something that matters so little, please understand THIS IS MY FAVORITE KIND OF PUZZLE. I have been waiting for something like this to happen ever since I solved the "who is my biological father?" puzzle, which was at most a 4-star difficulty on Dell Logic Puzzles' 5-star scale. I find few things as gratifying as solving logic-based puzzles, and solving this one will create an even bigger hint toward solving other genealogical puzzles, of which there are two more I've been working on for months. I've written about Aida, but there is another one I haven't even mentioned yet (she self-identifies as Cherokee, but her DNA is 99% European), and the solution to this Willis puzzle will help me towards solving both of them via deductive reasoning. In short, I'm doing this for fun.
*Not his actual name.
tl;dr: I think my great-great-grandfather was either adopted or someone else altogether.
New Match
I got a new match on 23andMe not too long ago -- a 2nd to 4th cousin, the site said. Since the user name said TJCapello*, it became my closest actionable (i.e., non-anonymous and as yet unsolved) match on the site. I sent him the default "let's share DNA info and see how we're related" message, but -- as expected -- I didn't get an immediate response. His profile was new and contained no additional information.
I looked up the initials and refreshingly uncommon surname and, taking into account that he was male, I found his full name and location online with a quick Google search. I started drawing up a family tree for him based predominantly on his mother's obituary on Legacy.com (but also using pipl.com, Facebook, FamilySearch, and Ancestry), and I was delighted to learn three out of the four of his grandparents were Italian immigrants. I have only trace amounts of Southern European DNA myself and a tree filled with British and German names, so I focused my tree-building efforts on the non-Italian quarter of his ancestry.
Then I got another new DNA match, even closer this time -- a 2nd to 3rd cousin, it said. I quickly learned it was my previous match's sister (different surname, but Google knows all). Whatever my relationship to her is, it's the same one I share with him, so I figured I should be able to find our most recent common ancestors in the great-great-great-grandparent range or even closer (thank you, ISOGG).
I built out the English-sounding quarter of the Capellos' family tree until it should have intersected with my own. It even featured the surname Willis* like my own tree, and they lived in the Midwest, not far from another branch of my own family tree. But I couldn't find any overlap, despite my own Willis branch of the family tree tracing back to the 1600s.
I put this project aside for awhile, and I come back to it every so often. This wouldn't be an easy one to solve like I had thought. Either their family tree contains an error -- perhaps from an adoption or a non-paternity event -- or mine does. Or maybe that mysterious branch of my family tree that ought to lead back to New York where my great-great-grandfather was born really doesn't.
The Wonkiness
Recently I've started finding other DNA matches, on Ancestry this time -- all in Ancestry's "4th to 6th cousins" range, which tends to be a very loose estimate -- whose trees overlap with that same Willis branch that doesn't fit into my own. I've found upwards of five matches whose trees overlap in the same place, making them all second and third cousins of the Capellos, though Ancestry hasn't put it together into a "hint" for me yet because I sometimes have to draw up the family trees myself based on less detailed trees or user names alone. I appear to share about half as much DNA with those Ancestry matches as I do with the Capellos, which leads me to believe my family tree intersects with the Capellos' a generation more recently than it intersects with the others'. But that leaves me confused. Looking at their family tree, that means I'm descended from a Willis born in the early to mid-1800s. I already have all those slots in my family tree filled. I don't know how they could fit into my own tree.
That said, I don't believe any ancestor on my family tree is necessarily the right one until I have at least a couple separate (non-sibling) matches whose combined DNA and family trees support my data. The more distant the ancestor, the less possible s/he is to confirm. The more distant the cousin, the less possible s/he is to confirm. I'm in contact now with some cousins so distant that the relationship doesn't even show up in our DNA anymore, and I only feel confident of the relationship because of overlapping family trees and mutual DNA matches within those same family trees.
Logicking It Out
Here's the deal with the Willis branch of the tree in question: It shows up in several reasonably close DNA matches' trees, so I assume it is how I'm related to them. It's possible I'm wrong, but it's unlikely. In order to fit it into my own tree however, something currently in my tree must be wrong. First, I know the Willises are connected to my maternal side because my paternal uncle on Ancestry shares zero of those matches with me. I also have enough known DNA matches at this point to draw the conclusion that several specific ancestors on my tree must be accurate. I can verify my mother is my mother, I can verify her parents are my grandparents, and I can verify my great-grandparents too. I have enough reasonably close DNA matches backing up my data that I feel confident about six of my eight maternal great-great-grandparents. I even have an Ancestry "hint" that aligns another more distant cousin with ancestors of one of the two remaining great-great-grandparents (I feel less certain because it's only one match and a distant one at that). That would leave Jack, my great-great-grandfather who supposedly came from New York.
Jack is the brick wall of the mystery branch of my family tree. I have no DNA matches to support him, and many hours of research have yielded no indication of who his parents were, which makes it exceptionally hard to find DNA matches that would support him. His wife, my great-great-grandmother Emily, was from rural Illinois, within a 45-minute drive of the Willises. According to census records, she was twenty years younger than Jack and had their first child -- my great-grandmother -- when she was 28. They'd supposedly married two years earlier, but I have not been able to find a marriage record, though I found one for her first marriage easily enough. Lots of my ancestors crossed state lines to marry though, so I'm not even sure where to focus my search. Could Jack have been my great-great-grandfather but actually been adopted? I would think this more likely if he didn't claim to have grown up in New York, over a thousand miles from the family to which I'm trying to connect him. I could be wrong, but I don't think adoptees were moved that far from their birth families in the 1850s. Could my great-grandmother have been a non-paternity event (NPE), meaning Emily was impregnated by someone who wasn't Jack? If that is the case, I'm still not sure who my great-great-grandfather would be. There isn't one specific "most likely suspect" in the Willis family tree, either based on DNA or based on relative age and geographic proximity.
Next Steps
My closest DNA match on Ancestry whose tree contains the Willis line has several matches in common with me. A few of them also contain the Willis line, but several don't have detailed trees, nor are they related to the entire cluster of other Willis descendants, though they are related to each other. My next step is to build family trees for the ones who don't have them yet, or whose trees only have a couple of names, which is most of them. My hypothesis is that the ones who aren't mutual DNA matches with the Willis cousins will be related via an adjacent family line -- perhaps the Thompsons. Thompson was the maiden name of my closest Willis cousin's great-grandmother. If I'm right and they're connected via an adjacent family line, it would tell me which generation connects me to that family tree -- the generation containing both the Willises and the Thompsons (or whichever adjacent family surname) rather than an earlier generation.
In case you're wondering why I would put so much effort into something that matters so little, please understand THIS IS MY FAVORITE KIND OF PUZZLE. I have been waiting for something like this to happen ever since I solved the "who is my biological father?" puzzle, which was at most a 4-star difficulty on Dell Logic Puzzles' 5-star scale. I find few things as gratifying as solving logic-based puzzles, and solving this one will create an even bigger hint toward solving other genealogical puzzles, of which there are two more I've been working on for months. I've written about Aida, but there is another one I haven't even mentioned yet (she self-identifies as Cherokee, but her DNA is 99% European), and the solution to this Willis puzzle will help me towards solving both of them via deductive reasoning. In short, I'm doing this for fun.
*Not his actual name.
Friday, May 20, 2016
Books Intended for DC Adults
There are quite a few children's books on the market geared toward telling your preschooler that s/he was conceived via donor egg or sperm, but I can't seem to find a book intended for the masses who learn they're donor conceived somewhere between adolescence and death. Isn't that odd?
I don't collect a lot of things, but in the last few years I have found myself collecting the few books on donor conception that take into account the perspectives of DC adults. I only own them because my library doesn't carry them and they're typically old and sometimes out of print. Lethal Secrets is a good one. I'm reading Experiences of Donor Conception now, which has different sections focusing on the major players in the DC Trifecta (donors, intended parents, and offspring). AnonymousUs has a lot of first person stories from the Trifecta too, and Alana edited together a "best of" sort of book from the site, so there's that. But I think there should be a "how to" book, with sections on "so you just found out," and "tips for coping," and "how to search, if that's something you might be into," as well as "other resources."
Such a book would be beneficial not only for DC offspring but also for any parents who want to tell them but think it might be too late when they reach out for resources and the closest thing they come across is The Pea That Was Me.
If you know of a book intended for DC teens and adults who are just now finding out they're donor conceived, please let me know. And if you don't know of such a book but have ideas about what else it should contain, please let me know that too. If there really is a void on the topic, I'd like to put something together and put it up on Amazon, even if the primary thing it says is,
I've found too many bewildered, newly discovered DC people reaching out for support on unrelated and tangentially related forums (I'm looking at you, most of Reddit) and, instead of empathy or validation, they get hammered with "you should be grateful to be alive" and "but you were WANTED" and "it doesn't CHANGE anything" and "think of the donor's PRIVACY!" There has to be a better way.
I don't collect a lot of things, but in the last few years I have found myself collecting the few books on donor conception that take into account the perspectives of DC adults. I only own them because my library doesn't carry them and they're typically old and sometimes out of print. Lethal Secrets is a good one. I'm reading Experiences of Donor Conception now, which has different sections focusing on the major players in the DC Trifecta (donors, intended parents, and offspring). AnonymousUs has a lot of first person stories from the Trifecta too, and Alana edited together a "best of" sort of book from the site, so there's that. But I think there should be a "how to" book, with sections on "so you just found out," and "tips for coping," and "how to search, if that's something you might be into," as well as "other resources."
Such a book would be beneficial not only for DC offspring but also for any parents who want to tell them but think it might be too late when they reach out for resources and the closest thing they come across is The Pea That Was Me.
If you know of a book intended for DC teens and adults who are just now finding out they're donor conceived, please let me know. And if you don't know of such a book but have ideas about what else it should contain, please let me know that too. If there really is a void on the topic, I'd like to put something together and put it up on Amazon, even if the primary thing it says is,
"Your feelings are valid,
you're going to be okay,
and you are not alone."
I've found too many bewildered, newly discovered DC people reaching out for support on unrelated and tangentially related forums (I'm looking at you, most of Reddit) and, instead of empathy or validation, they get hammered with "you should be grateful to be alive" and "but you were WANTED" and "it doesn't CHANGE anything" and "think of the donor's PRIVACY!" There has to be a better way.
Sunday, May 8, 2016
My Favorite Thing About Mother's Day
I think my favorite thing about Mother's Day is how many hits I get on my Mother's Day card posts like this one from people using benign and non-snarky search terms like "mother's day card from daughter."
And don't forget this one, which doesn't come up in Mother's Day searches but I think would make a fantastic card cover if you want to express your own sentiments inside:
Feel free to print your own. If someone asks where you got it, I simply ask that you credit "some bitch on the internet." Happy Mother's Day, Everybody!
And don't forget this one, which doesn't come up in Mother's Day searches but I think would make a fantastic card cover if you want to express your own sentiments inside:
Feel free to print your own. If someone asks where you got it, I simply ask that you credit "some bitch on the internet." Happy Mother's Day, Everybody!
Sunday, May 1, 2016
These Are the Stories Like Shrapnel
The memories that come to my mind now are older. I've covered most of the really ridiculous stuff from the last fifteen years, but the stories that made me therapist cry were the old and buried things I didn't even know were weird. Writing my post earlier today brought the following verses to mind:
These are the stories like shrapnel.
The digging brings anguish and doubt.
Perhaps they should've stayed buried,
But damn it feels good when they're out.
And it does feel good when they're out.
Spending My Childhood on Antibiotics
I complained of stomach aches a lot as a child, from as early as I can remember until I was in high school. As much as I loved seeing my friends at school and socializing, the idea of inadvertently doing something wrong or getting in trouble terrified me. I approached almost every school day terrified that I'd forgotten to do some piece of homework, or that something had been assigned during one of the many hours I'd spent zoned out and daydreaming without even realizing it, or that I might get scolded for something I didn't mean to do wrong. In hindsight, my stomach aches were probably a combination of stress and my looking for any excuse to get out of school. In most cases, my mother wouldn't let me stay home unless I could produce physical evidence that I was ill -- either a fever, which I ran only a few times in my life, or vomiting.
My mother took my temperature rectally until I was at least six. When I asked why I couldn't use the oral thermometer like everyone else in the house, she said I would bite down on it. I promised I wouldn't. I don't even know what the problem would have been if I had -- it was a plastic digital thermometer, not one of the old style ones made of glass and mercury. When I asked why we couldn't get one of the digital thermometers they stick in your ear at the doctor's office then, she told me they aren't accurate enough. I wonder now how much of her insistence on using a rectal thermometer was as a punishment for my daring to ask to stay home. I think it was at least a little bit punishment.
On the rare occasions that I was allowed to miss school, my mother took me to the doctor without fail. I remember her saying something along the lines of how, if she let me miss school, I wouldn't be allowed to just stay home and lie on the couch watching TV all day like she did in my absence. If I didn't go to school, by god, we would spend the day at the doctor's office. She wasn't going to incentivize my sicknesses by letting me lie around at home all day.
No doctor ever found a source for my stomach aches or proposed that they might be stress related. With few exceptions they told us instead that I had an upper respiratory infection and prescribed antibiotics. I also had strep throat a lot, for which they injected me with penicillin and I was allowed to rest at home for 24 hours without being treated like someone who was trying to get out of something. Getting a positive strep test was like winning a small lottery to me and always made me happy.
Once when I was eight or so, my mother found an open packet of Sweet Tarts candies on a file cabinet in the family room. I don't know how long it had been there -- it was a hoard house after all -- but she mistook them for antibiotics and got very upset at me for not taking them. "Those are candy," I explained. They weren't even mine. Dante might have left them there, but they were from one of the communal baskets of candy my mother left scattered around the house, so it's anybody's guess. I always took all my medicine though. It never would have occurred to me not to take a dose of the medicine she gave me, let alone leave them scattered on top of a file cabinet. To this day, I have never stopped taking a course of antibiotics before they ran out.
I was also about eight when I got my first vaginal yeast infection as a result of the antibiotics. My entire vulva felt like an inflamed mosquito bite, and it itched so badly I writhed on my bed and cried. I didn't know what was happening, but my mother did. When she took me to the pediatrician and announced that I had an yeast infection, the nurse asked, "Oral yeast infection, I assume?" When my mother said, "No, vaginal," the nurse raised in eyebrows in surprise. When she left the room, I asked my mother why she had done that. "Vaginal yeast infections are normally just from having too much sex," my mother told me. "But yours is from all the antibiotics."
She bought me Monistat antifungal treatment from the drug store later that day. I didn't need the vaginal suppositories, she said, just the cream, but she insisted on applying it herself. When I asked uncomfortably why I couldn't just do it myself, she argued that I wouldn't be able to see where to apply it. "I don't need to be able to see it," I told her. "I can feel where it itches." She denied my request and rubbed in the cream with her fingers while I laid on my back on my bed hoping she would stop soon. Not knowing how to explain the creepy, skin crawly feeling that was upsetting me, I told her, "I don't like it. It doesn't feel good." "It's not SUPPOSED to feel good!" she barked. "If you liked this, there would be something wrong with you!"
My mother took my temperature rectally until I was at least six. When I asked why I couldn't use the oral thermometer like everyone else in the house, she said I would bite down on it. I promised I wouldn't. I don't even know what the problem would have been if I had -- it was a plastic digital thermometer, not one of the old style ones made of glass and mercury. When I asked why we couldn't get one of the digital thermometers they stick in your ear at the doctor's office then, she told me they aren't accurate enough. I wonder now how much of her insistence on using a rectal thermometer was as a punishment for my daring to ask to stay home. I think it was at least a little bit punishment.
On the rare occasions that I was allowed to miss school, my mother took me to the doctor without fail. I remember her saying something along the lines of how, if she let me miss school, I wouldn't be allowed to just stay home and lie on the couch watching TV all day like she did in my absence. If I didn't go to school, by god, we would spend the day at the doctor's office. She wasn't going to incentivize my sicknesses by letting me lie around at home all day.
No doctor ever found a source for my stomach aches or proposed that they might be stress related. With few exceptions they told us instead that I had an upper respiratory infection and prescribed antibiotics. I also had strep throat a lot, for which they injected me with penicillin and I was allowed to rest at home for 24 hours without being treated like someone who was trying to get out of something. Getting a positive strep test was like winning a small lottery to me and always made me happy.
Once when I was eight or so, my mother found an open packet of Sweet Tarts candies on a file cabinet in the family room. I don't know how long it had been there -- it was a hoard house after all -- but she mistook them for antibiotics and got very upset at me for not taking them. "Those are candy," I explained. They weren't even mine. Dante might have left them there, but they were from one of the communal baskets of candy my mother left scattered around the house, so it's anybody's guess. I always took all my medicine though. It never would have occurred to me not to take a dose of the medicine she gave me, let alone leave them scattered on top of a file cabinet. To this day, I have never stopped taking a course of antibiotics before they ran out.
I was also about eight when I got my first vaginal yeast infection as a result of the antibiotics. My entire vulva felt like an inflamed mosquito bite, and it itched so badly I writhed on my bed and cried. I didn't know what was happening, but my mother did. When she took me to the pediatrician and announced that I had an yeast infection, the nurse asked, "Oral yeast infection, I assume?" When my mother said, "No, vaginal," the nurse raised in eyebrows in surprise. When she left the room, I asked my mother why she had done that. "Vaginal yeast infections are normally just from having too much sex," my mother told me. "But yours is from all the antibiotics."
She bought me Monistat antifungal treatment from the drug store later that day. I didn't need the vaginal suppositories, she said, just the cream, but she insisted on applying it herself. When I asked uncomfortably why I couldn't just do it myself, she argued that I wouldn't be able to see where to apply it. "I don't need to be able to see it," I told her. "I can feel where it itches." She denied my request and rubbed in the cream with her fingers while I laid on my back on my bed hoping she would stop soon. Not knowing how to explain the creepy, skin crawly feeling that was upsetting me, I told her, "I don't like it. It doesn't feel good." "It's not SUPPOSED to feel good!" she barked. "If you liked this, there would be something wrong with you!"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)