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May 2, 2013

Another Mole Removed & My Skin’s A Little Safer

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Three weeks ago I had my twice-a year skin check with my dermatologist. Twice a year? you say? Yes, twice. I’m one of the lucky ones who gets to have every inch of my skin checked twice as often due to genetics and poor choices as a child.

While I’m not graced with an alabaster complexion, we can safely call my skin tone extra light beige. Pale skin might have been all the fashion at some point, but it doesn’t hold up well to sunlight. When I was a kid, even though my mom made sure there was a bottle of sunscreen in my bag when she dropped me off at the pool each day for summer break, I didn’t wear sunscreen. I also don’t tan easily, meaning I spent most of my summers in various phases of the burn and peel cycle. My nose was permanently red during the warmer months, and remains redder than my other skin from repeated burning.

And let’s not forget my teenage obsession with tanning beds. After all, everyone was doing it, and I didn’t want to be the palest girl at the prom. Thankfully, I was only allowed to tan right before prom and no other time.

So with that kind of history, I’m a heightened skin cancer risk. Before my most recent visit, seven suspicious moles have been removed over the years. (Seven? I think it’s seven. I’ve lost count, truthfully.) Of those, all but one of the biopsies came back as abnormal. Not cancer, but displaying the behavior of cells that could become malignant. I haven’t missed a single one of them.

I wasn’t that surprised, then, when my dermatologist took a close look at a spot that had been growing on my back and determined that it might be worth getting a tissue sample just to check it out. I never argue with her on this – if she thinks it warrants a sample, grab the lidocaine and scalpel and get to it.

The wait for the results is such a long wait. It takes about two weeks, but I didn’t hear anything back as the two week mark passed. I finally called yesterday to get my results. When they called me back, the triage nurse thankfully started with the most important part of the news: cancer-free.

Yay!

Then he started into a long explanation of how the pathology report showed that the cells did have an unusual behavior, could turn into cancer at some point, etc. I’ve heard it all before, and I’m a nurse so I understand the basics of skin cancer, but let him keep explaining it as if it was my first experience. He noticed my silence and asked if I understood. I replied, “Oh, yes, I understand. I’ve had several other moles removed that came back the same way.”

He laughed and asked why I didn’t stop him during his spiel if I was an old pro at this. I still like to hear the reassurance, and I need the reminder that a little mole can be abnormal but harmless at the moment and deadly later, so it’s good to stay vigilant about getting them checked.

The doctor didn’t take all of the edges of this one, so I have to go back under the knife in a month to remove more. I really don’t mind. Any mole she excises that is determined to be abnormal but cancer-free means we won that battle. Parts of my skin considered trying to kill me, but I cut them out before they had the chance to act. The (mutated cell) terrorists don’t win today.

I willingly show the tiny scars on my back, arms and abdomen to my kids, explaining why I have them and why it’s so important for them to be safe in the sun. My mom WAS right – I needed to wear sunscreen, and I’m dealing with the consequences of not listening to her. And I make sure my two girls wear sunscreen and hats as much as possible, too. They don’t like it, but it’s not nearly as uncomfortable as cleaning & caring for a hole in your skin where a suspicious mole used to be.

Band-aid covering removed moleWhat? You don’t have Mickey band-aids in your house?

I wear sunscreen regularly now. I try to respect my British Isles heritage and avoid the sun. And I monitor my skin for any changes – new moles, larger freckles, changes to shape or color, etc. (Which isn’t easy when I’m completely covered in them and can’t remember if that spot on my leg is new or I just forgot it was there.)

Too many people die from skin cancer, and it doesn’t have to be this way. Even if you can’t play connect the dots on every inch of your skin like I can,  it’s still important to check your skin for any changes and make sure you see a dermatologist at least once a year for a screening.

Take five minutes to check your skin and set up a dermatologist appointment if it’s been awhile. Consider this your PSA for the week.

Filed Under: big issues, healthy living ·


Dec 14, 2012

What’s In A Name?

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Yesterday as I was driving the kids home from school, somehow the topic in the car shifted to names.

Mira: “Mommy, my teacher’s last name is the same as her husband’s last name.”

Me: “OK.”

Mira (suddenly sounding upset): “A friend in my class said that a family is everyone with the same name.”

Me: “Well, that’s not quite true…”

Mira (now more upset): “She said that if you don’t have the same last name as us, you must not be our real mom, and you must be a stepmom.”

Me: “WHAT?”

Mira: “That’s what she said. And it made me mad! But you’re our real mommy, right?”

Years ago when Aaron and I got married, there was a small discussion about changing names. I was in grad school at the time, expecting to make a name for myself in academia (hahaha), and I wasn’t all that keen about changing my name. Aaron was completely indifferent to the idea. He was OK if I took his last name, and he was OK with me keeping my name.

I wasn’t really trying to make a feminist statement with my last name. After all, it’s a paternal surname. But it’s the name I’ve had since birth, the name I graduated from high school and college with, and the name I had for the start of my career. I’ve had to spell it countless times, sound it out slowly when people mangled the pronunciation, and agree with hundreds of people that yes, it is an unusual last name. I’m acclimated to handling anything involving this difficult name now.

Aaron’s last name, while not as hard to spell as mine, is equally as unusual and often mispronounced. I didn’t feel like trading away one difficult name for another. I didn’t want to go through the hassle of giving up my public identity and changing every legal document to become a different identity that was still the same person underneath.

Besides, both of us felt strongly that a name wasn’t what tied a family together. A name is deep on a personal level but superficial when it comes to connecting with others. Your family are the people you love, including some who may share the same surname, but certainly not limited to that group. And names can easily be changed, while the person who carries that name remains the same.

We’ve had a few moments since having children where eyebrows were raised that I had a different last name. Most times a quick “we’re married, I didn’t change my name,” is enough to clear up any confusion. If needed, we have miniature, laminated copies of our marriage license. It’s not a big deal to most people.

I still answer socially to Mrs. hislastname and I don’t mind if I’m called that by others or receive letters addressed to that name. I’ve even said that if the name thing ever became an issue, I’d change my name if the situation required it. But for now my legal name is the same name I was born with, and there are no serious objections (from those who matter) to make any changes to that.

I never expected that a kindergartener would suddenly bring the issue to the forefront of our kids’ minds, especially in a school where there are so many families made up of different names, some married, some remarried, some not at all. Of all of the situations I imagined in my head, I never thought it would be the youngest generation making sweeping statements about what defines a family.

Mira was shaken by the declaration from her friend. She knows I have a different last name – which also happens to be her second middle name – and she’s never questioned it until now. I reassured her that we were just as much a family as any other family, and that having a different last name didn’t make me any less her mommy. My name may be different, but she still grew inside my belly.

She’s going back to school today certain that we are a family, and ready to tell her friend that whether you change your name or not doesn’t define how strong of a family you are. A woman changing her name or not is a personal decision that in no way reflects on the love she has for her family or her dedication to that family. Love bonds families together, not names.

Filed Under: being a mom, big issues, love, other people's kids, school ·


Oct 23, 2012

Politics On The Playground

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It’s no secret that the political atmosphere is about as thick as it can get at the moment. You can’t watch TV, listen to the radio, check your mail, answer the phone, or drive anywhere without having political ads in your way.

Even schools are getting involved with “Kids Choose the President” type events. This weekend Cordy and Mira told me all about their discussions of the elections at school. Cordy told me there is a website for kids to go to and choose who they would vote for if they had a say in picking the President.

I asked her what her teacher said about the candidates. Cordy rattled off some very basic information about how and why we vote, Obama being the current president and going for his second and last term, Romney being the challenger, two political parties with different ideas for ways to do things, etc. It was very non-partisan, and sounded like good information for the kids on how the political process works.

I asked Mira if she had similar discussions in her class. She then responded, “Mommy, I was told President Obama was a bad man.”

My eyes nearly popped out of my head. “What?? Your teacher told you that?”

“No, mommy, some of my friends said it. Their parents said he was a bad man who spent too much money and wants to hurt us. They said we have to vote for Romney, but I don’t think we want to do that, do we?” She then went on to say some friends have been saying these things for weeks now, with one child even making it clear that kids who like Obama aren’t good kids.

I’m really, really uncomfortable with this. Five year olds. Spewing political hate and propaganda to their five year old friends on the playground to take home and share with their parents. What parent thinks this is OK for their children to say?

My children have asked who we’re voting for, and we’ve told them we’re voting for Obama. They’ve asked several questions about why we prefer him, and we’ve always kept it high-level and age appropriate. We explain that each candidate has different ideas for how to be president, and we agree more with Obama’s ideas, so he’s our choice.

We’ve also told them it’s OK for others to have different ideas, and they’re not bad people because they think a different plan is better. Voting is how we all say which person and ideas we like the best, and the person who has the most votes gets to try out their ideas.

We’ve talked issues a little, too, but they’re too young to understand many of the issues at stake, so we keep it general and non-scary. We’ve also told them it isn’t polite to tell other kids they’re wrong about which candidate they prefer, even if someone tells my kids they’re wrong.

NEVER would I tell my child that a presidential candidate wants to hurt them or is a bad person. Who instills that kind of fear and hate into their children? It’s not OK to make children hate their president or fear the government of the country where they live.

What happens if Obama wins this election? Do these children spend the next four years having nightmares that their president will snatch them from their beds and hurt them? Do their five year old hearts harden towards the president and any who agree with him, turning them eventually into angry, prejudiced adults who can’t see any further than the rage and fear programmed into them?

I have no concerns with our school teaching proper government education to our kids (I respect those who have different views, but that’s not the topic at hand), but I do worry about what inappropriate opinions kids are bringing to school from home. A child telling friends that kids who like Obama aren’t good kids is the same to me as a child telling friends that kids who like Christians aren’t good kids. It’s hateful and divisive and shouldn’t be said at school.

In our home, we believe in the political process and want to make the idea of voting and choosing a new president (and other political offices) interesting and thoughtful for our kids, not scary and traumatic. Sure, I have much stronger political views online and in the presence of other adults, but around my kids that subject is reigned in. At their age, they need to learn about democracy and government structure, not about the negative ads, accusations, hate and gridlock that tries to tear down that system. They’ll be exposed to all of that too soon, sadly.

(Yes, they went with me to an Obama rally in 2008. Mira was just over a year old and Cordy was four and slept through nearly the entire thing. I would not take them to a political rally at their current ages, although I happily take them with me to vote.)

My daughters aren’t hearing attack ads – there are no political ads on Nick Jr, and I turn down the radio during commercials in the car. Our discussions are upbeat and positive so they will like the political process, not fear it. And even when teaching differences of opinion, we still point out that, even if we think differently from others, we’re all a part of the same country and still have to get along.

I don’t understand why any parent would knowingly teach fear and division with the topic of politics. Teach your kids about why voting is important to you and give them a general view of why you prefer one person’s ideas over another, but leave the hate out of your message and don’t scare kids. Instead, emphasize that there are many different ways to approach the same problem, and that in the end, we’re still all one people that need to work together for the greater good.

These are our future voters and lawmakers – let’s teach them to do a better job than we’ve done.

Filed Under: big issues, other people's kids, politics ·


Oct 4, 2012

Fighting Inner Demons and Zombies

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We’re several weeks into the new school year now, and for the most part it’s gone well. We had bus issues at the beginning, but since they readjusted the pick-up time in the morning, we haven’t had any problems with the kids arriving late to school. We’re still choosing to pick them up from school each day because no solution could be found to shorten the afternoon bus ride to under an hour and a half.

I had originally worried Mira might be challenging for her kindergarten teacher. She’s not only smart, but she’s clever and knows how to manipulate a situation to her favor. But so far everything has been great. She’s already gathered her own gang of friends, she’s progressing quickly with learning to read, and she claims she’s never had to move her name once on the behavior board. (If they get in trouble, they have to move their name to a different spot – the lower you go, the more privileges you lose.)

Cordy’s year has been a little more of a struggle. When the bus was running late and they were helping her deal with the anxiety related to that, she quickly picked up on the concept that if she had anxiety in class, she was taken to the special needs room where she got to swing and relax. So, like most kids would do with this knowledge, she’d fake anxiety to get out of boring class time and go relax.

I realized what she was doing very quickly and collaborated with her teachers to remove this as a reward. Now if she has to go to the special needs class, she loses computer time. With that change, her behavior immediately improved and she remained in class all day for the past few weeks. Other than her complaints that they’re only learning “kindergarten-level” math (can you tell she’s bored?), she’s enjoying school.

This week has been harder, though. I don’t know if it’s the weather change or the full moon earlier in the week, but she took a full step backwards in behavior. Unfocused, hyper, irritable – it’s been a challenging few days for her.

Then yesterday I received a call from the special needs teacher. A group of kids were playing “zombies” at school, and the play got a little rough. Cordy, trying to protect other kids from the zombies, grabbed a boy around the neck and left small scratches on his neck. There’s no way she meant to hurt him – the teacher said all of the kids were playing rough and that’s when they were told to stop.

But because Cordy had hurt another kid, school policy required her to lose her second recess and spend it in their behavior correction class. It’s a classroom with a behavior specialist in the room at all times, who helps kids work through better choices for their actions. Some kids spend most of their day in that room, others (like Cordy) only are there for a recess and hopefully never return.

For a perfectionist like Cordy, the world came to an end. That is where the Bad Kids go, which means she must be a bad kid. Unable to separate out the difference between a bad action and a bad person, she immediately became upset. Her teacher said she was crying in class and couldn’t focus on her schoolwork, so she was taken to the special needs room to calm down.

She told her special needs teacher that she should be “thrown away” or that we should “kill” her because she’s such a bad person. They were shocked at her reaction and didn’t know what to do. My heart ached to hear it, but I wasn’t shocked. Cordy often overreacts like this when she makes a mistake, and we have to walk a very thin line in discussing the problem with her while also protecting her ultra-fragile self-esteem.

No matter how often we tell her that everyone makes mistakes, and we learn from our mistakes so we don’t make them again, she still believes that a mistake means she’s a failure as a human being. Her inner voice – or inner demons, really – convince her that each mistake is THE biggest mistake she could possibly make, and she will never be able to right the wrongs or redeem herself.

Cordy did eventually calm down after her teacher repeated much of the script we use when she overreacts, and she served her sentence of missing second recess. But she was still upset when she came home.

I was fighting back tears the rest of the day. Cordy is our gentle soul who doesn’t understand why anyone would hurt someone on purpose. She internalizes every mistake as a personal failure, with even the smallest error on her part worthy of the most extreme punishment in her mind. It hurts to see her struggle and tear herself down so much. She is a smart, happy, and kind child who likes to please others, but no matter how much I try to show her that and praise her, she only sees her flaws.

Also, at the moment she’s still mostly unaware of what her classmates think of her, but I’m sure that she’ll find out eventually. How long will it be until someone calls her “weird” or a “freak” and it sinks in? How will we handle that? I love this kid with all of my heart, but I know I can’t protect her from the rest of the world forever.

No one prepares you for this part of parenting. What To Expect When Your Kid Navigates The Social World of Elementary School and The Happiest Elementary School Kid On The Block aren’t handed out at baby showers when we’re anxiously preparing to become parents. Add in special needs and autism, and it’s three times as difficult. My heart aches.

(And yes, I’m already starting to worry what’s ahead when puberty sets in and kids get really mean.)

Filed Under: Autism, being a mom, big issues, Cordy, kid logic, school ·


Sep 27, 2012

Health Insurance Hoop Jumping

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I was thrilled to find out earlier this week that a health insurance claim that had been pending for nearly a year was finally being processed.

Yes, eleven months and a week to process one claim. Crazy, right?

The claim was for a test I had done last October after my doctor was concerned with some odd symptoms I had recently experienced. She recommended an abdominal ultrasound to rule out ovarian cancer. (Spoiler: everything was normal, other than a slightly out-of-position ovary. Yay!) Trusting my doctor, of course I had the test done.

At that time we had only recently obtained health insurance. Since we were uninsured before that, we had a one year waiting period for any “pre-existing conditions” and when we signed up for insurance had to provide the names of any health provider we had visited in the last year so they could obtain our medical records to determine what pre-existing conditions we might have.

Since I had never experienced anything like this before, I wasn’t too worried. Our insurance sent a letter shortly after the test stating they needed me to sign another permission slip to obtain my records before they could process the claim. I authorized all of it again and considered it done.

Then I began getting letters from the outpatient center at the hospital where I had the test done, asking me to follow up with my insurance because the claim still hadn’t been settled. When I checked with my insurance, they told me they were waiting on my records from a grocery store clinic where I was treated for strep throat once. I again authorized them to send another request for my records, and also pointed out that these grocery store clinics couldn’t diagnose anything that would be relevant to the test I had done.

This entire scenario repeated two more times. Maybe three. I lost count.

Over the summer, I then received a bill from the hospital, telling me they had received three denials from insurance due to missing information and so would start the billing clock against me. I owed $2,097 for an ultrasound, and please pay within 30 days.

A flurry of calls to the insurance company started again, asking why this still hasn’t been processed. They told me they were still waiting on my records from my strep throat visit before they could declare that I wasn’t trying to get coverage for a pre-existing condition. I was so upset at this point. What did I have to hide? I signed away all of my rights so the insurance company could dig up any medical info on me that they wanted to – how was it my fault that the clinic wasn’t complying with their request?

I was angry and scared at this point. Angry that the processing of a claim could be held up due to a strep throat visit and angry that I even had to deal with a pre-existing conditions clause when we pay a large premium every month just to then have a $1000 deductible per person. (Well, it was $1000. It’s $2500 now.) And I was scared that the insurance company would continue to hold up the process and refuse to pay, which would leave us in the position of accepting the entire bill or possibly going into collections and hurting our credit score while we continued to wait.

The customer service reps at the insurance company were very understanding, I will admit. They agreed it was ridiculous and wanted to help however they could. Finally, last month one rep looked through the history of this claim and said, “You know what? I’m going to send this on to claims processing again, and I’ll put a note on it pointing out that the grocery clinic can only handle minor illnesses anyway. Let’s see if we can get them to forget this and get it processed.”

It took nearly a month, but then I looked at my online account and saw it had FINALLY been processed.

It’s not a perfect happy ending, of course. Insurance declared that the “allowable” part of the bill was only $964.62 and so that became the new total. Of that total, they paid $111.78 and left me with a bill for $852.84, the remainder of my deductible from that year. We’ll still have to set up payments with the hospital for that amount, but at least it isn’t as bad as $2,097.

What really drives me crazy is the new bill after the insurance processed it. Because I had insurance, the hospital is accepting $964.62 as the total bill for the procedure. But had I not been insured, I would have been responsible for more than twice that amount.

So those unable to get insurance are not only afraid of ever getting sick or hurt because they have no safety net in place to help cover those bills, but when they do need care they’re hit with a bill that is much larger than what the provider will get from someone with insurance.

I’m so glad that my tests were normal. I can’t imagine how much worse this would be had I been sick and needed treatment, all while trying to fight for coverage. And that’s WITH insurance. My experience is completely how the old system works – the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”) provisions that relate to this story have yet to go into effect, although I can’t wait until they do. Our daughters are already seeing the benefits from it, and I’m looking forward to those same benefits and protections.

I know there are good people who do good work at health insurance companies. But I still believe that a health insurance company cannot provide effective medical coverage of their members when they have profits to make each year and shareholders to please. It’s an unpopular belief to many, but I don’t believe health insurance should be a for-profit industry.

While I’d prefer universal health care, I’m willing to accept the idea of private, universally non-profit health insurance companies, where any profits beyond operating costs are rolled back into health education and research, programs providing new ways to encourage preventative care, decreased premiums and incentives for proper maintenance of health conditions. (This would be the nurse in me speaking.)

I know health care is a hot button topic during this election year, but I believe it’s far more than a talking point. Whether you’re a fan of the Affordable Care Act or not, I think we can all agree the old system is not effective and needs reform. I’m not 100% happy with the new system being rolled out, but I’m ready to give it a chance over dealing with the current one.

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Filed Under: big issues, me me me, money, politics ·