My Admissions

I am sitting in a hospital bed listening to the lady next to me cough, hack and vomit. I didn't expect to be here.  It's 4 am and in an effort to distract myself, I am watching Sex and the City and listening to Carrie Bradshaw's narration about Mr. Big.

My Mr. Big is in Vegas on a boy's trip.  I wouldn't let him come home.  Not for this.

It all started when my fertility doctor did an iron study for my upcoming IVF.  The numbers were bad.  My hemoglobin was 7 which means I'm in the danger level for anemia.  The anemia was a consequence of weight loss surgery two years prior.  The weight came off, but so did the iron.

On Wednesday I went to my hematologist appointment.  He was older but articulate and kind.  The first thing he said was, "You should not be able to walk around like this."  At the end of the visit, he assured me that we could do an iron infusion in office.

"It could push your IVF back," he said with a grimace.

"That can't happen," I told him with a firm smile.  "Let's get this handled."  My teeth were showing.

Later that evening, we dropped my best friend Tracy's daughter at a concert in Pomona.   We sat at a restaurant and ordered food.  My phone rang.  It was the hematologist.

"This is Dr. C.  You need to go to the hospital tonight.  I can't even do an infusion because your hemoglobin has dropped again below seven.  Go to the hospital tonight for a blood transfusion.  It's an emergency."

"What the hell?" I thought to myself.  I knew what the ER was like at night.  There was no way I was going.  Plus I had Pixies tickets for the next night.

"Ummm, no," I stammered back.  "I will go on Friday."

"Friday is too late.  You need to go now," he said.  "At the latest go tomorrow in the morning.  It's dangerous."

I hung up the phone and looked at Tracy and said, "Guess who's going to the ER tomorrow?  Adrian is gonna freak, but just think, I will be able to hold this over his head forever."

I called Adrian who wanted to jump on a plane.  I negotiate for a living, persuasion is my job.

I reassured him.  "I'll be fine baby.  I will just be there a couple hours."

There was no way I was going to let him ruin his trip. Adrian never went anywhere without me.  This was his first guy trip in years.  There was no way he was coming home.

At the ER the next morning at 8 am, I told the check-in nurse at San Antonio Hospital my hemoglobin situation.  She said, "They will check you in immediately."  Within five minutes I was in a bed being poked and prodded.  That was quick, I thought to myself.

More blood work.

The orderlies were all male and joked around with me.  I told them my hubby was in Vegas and they said I was a good wife to leave him there.

About an hour later, the ER doctor came into the room with a stomp and a hard pull of the curtain.  He looked to be in his late thirties with curly brown hair.  He wasn't smiling.

"This hemoglobin is ridiculously low," he said with a stern frown.  I looked back at him and smiled and tried to explain about my gastric bypass two years ago and my IVF process recently.  He held up his hand and went on.  "Why didn't you come in sooner.? You could have passed out and not woken up.  Do you realize that?  Was no one monitoring your blood?"

I was being cross-examined and I folded.

"I was in trial," I stammered.  "As soon as my hematologist told me it was urgent, I came in.  My primary doctor just told me to take my supplements."

The ER doctor looked at me with an open mouth.  "Trial?  Really.  Well trial or no trial, you should have been in when you got your blood work.  Your hemoglobin has now dropped to six.  Your doctors are incompetent.  I would have admitted you weeks ago."

He made me feel like an idiot.  I should have came in.  Why didn't I?  I gave him a sheepish grin and shrugged my shoulders and said with a sigh, "I know, you're right."

The doctor seemed mollified by my admission.  "Well, we're admitting you overnight.  You need multiple bags of red blood cells and iron."

By noon, I was in a hospital room.  They brought me some broth and jello.  My chart on the wall specified an all clear liquid diet.  I should have eaten breakfast and I would have killed for a diet coke.

The lady in the next bed coughed and vomited all day and night.  At one point, I pressed my emergency button for her because it seemed like she was going to choke to death.

The nurses were kind and efficient.  One of them told me that my IVF would never have taken with my hemoglobin so low.  Her statement hit me in the gut.  I had struggled through the IVF process for the last year and I could have ruined it all by forgetting the obvious.

I needed to take care of me.  Nothing else mattered.  Work and trips and concerts didn't matter.  The signs were there for me to admit that I could not do it all.  That I needed help.

And that this may be my only chance.

The World According to Me

It is midnight and I am writing while listening to the rat a tat tat of gunfire.  Gunfire from the video game my husband Adrian is playing.  He mutters to himself while he plays, "Finally getting some fucking kills," he says softly.

How does he expect me to sleep through this chaos?  At the very least, I should expect to wake up in a PTSD state.

This is my life.  I could go sleep on the couch but all I am wearing is a 16 Candles Jake Ryan t-shirt and underwear,  Plus, the dogs would follow me and bark at every noise.  And, did I mention that we live with my 80 year old mother-in-law?

And, we have been trying to have a baby for five years to no avail.  I see people in my job everyday that have multiple kids that they can't take care of.  All we want is one.  Just one child.  We would give that child everything.  Just ask our two shih-tzus who are spoiled rotten and loved to distraction.  Is it too much to ask for?

I still love Adrian more than ever.  

Adrian's hair is thick and black and he blow dries it in the morning arms out, elbows raised like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.  His eyes are the color of caramel and he has an endearing way of squinting into the sun with those eyes of his.  I tell him to wear sunglasses so he doesn't get crinkles, but he hates being told what to do.  Adrian is insanely stubborn like his mother, but soulful and sweet.  And, I feel safe when he's near.  Feeling safe is a big deal for me.  I haven't always felt safe but from the day I met Adrian 21 plus years ago, it was as if he was a warm blanket of comfort.  I yearned to be enveloped by it.

Plus, we still have fun.  Adrian loves music and concerts almost as much as I do.  The other day, a Police song came on the radio and we both sang it as loud as we could in the car in unison like two maniacs.

"I see you sent my letters back.  And my LP records and they're all scratched."

Call of Duty game aside (if I ever time travel, the first thing I will do is kill the COD creators), I am a lucky girl.  No one else could put up with my nonsense.  And I would not want anyone else to have to.  I may, despite all my complaining and whining, look back at these years as the best of times.

Am I crazy?  Maybe.  But remember, this is the world according to me.

Gravity II

Some might start the day by saying thank god it's Friday but I won't because I have a sad day ahead with my friend Felicia's funeral.  Really, I don't even want to get out of bed.  My preference is to stay covered up and warm with my dogs by my side in a cocoon of blankets and Shih-Tzus.  Hidden away.  

The funeral is not until this afternoon, but I couldn't bear to go into work today.  I had nothing on calendar and knew I would sit in my office and mope and get nothing done.  Instead, I am taking the morning off and watching TV and writing.  Price is Right and Let's Make a Deal are on my must watch list.  It is the best form of therapy.

No one likes funerals but I've had too many in my life.   I planned the funerals for both my dad John W. Mantz Jr. and my father-in-law Alberto Pelaez (who I had known for 17 years).   Funerals are mostly sad occasions that blur by, but there is always some glimmer of silver lining that peeks through.  My father's eulogy about our nights at the drive-in when I was little turned into one of the first stories in my memoir.  I hope today turns out that way.  And that it is not just the senseless tragedy I think it is for someone to die at 26.  That it all means something.

When I turned on the TV this morning, "Up Close and Personal" was on with Robert Redford and Michelle Pheiffer.  The movie is a romance and the Robert Redford character dies at the end.  I knew the ending but couldn't help watching all teary eyed.  After it was over, I switched to Sex and the City reruns on E and of course, the episode involved a funeral.  It appears that the universe is telling me that death is part of life. 

At the very least, the recent death of Felicia has made me realize that spirituality is one of the pieces missing from my life.  Wednesday was the beginning of Lent and when a co-worker walked by with ashes on her forehead, I dropped an F Bomb and rushed down to my mom's house to pick her up for the Ash Wednesday mass.  It felt necessary for some reason.

My mom and I sat in the small church on Arrow Highway in Fontana and the priest's homily talked about how love perfects faith.  It was a compelling sermon and during it, I kept looking at my mom and thinking of how hard she worked as a waitress when we were little.  How she and my father paid for our catholic school with their blood, sweat and tears.  And I remembered how she would take us to church every Sunday.  

When we got up to take communion, my mom saw her friend and told her, "I prayed that my daughter would come to church with me today and here she is.  It is a miracle."

Both my mom and I take my silver linings where we can.  Everything means something.

Gravity

I watched Gravity last night.  I needed to divorce myself from reality and lose myself in a movie.  Within minutes, I was lost in the stars and heavens of space and it was comforting.  The movie reminded me that there is a God.  There has to be.  Or at the very least, I need there to be one.  I'm selfish in that way I suppose.  Agnostics and non-believers please be kind and let me keep my faith.

This melancholiness was brought on by the fact that a friend died a couple of days ago at the age of twenty-six.  I am feeling tender.  If someone touches me, I will bruise.

This friend who passed reminded me a lot of myself at that young age (another way of saying that I saw pieces of myself in her) and I am sad for the loss of her possibilities as well as her friendship.  Her death made me see that we are all delicate plates on a shelf waiting to break.  Fragile, that is what life is.  And precious.  

In modern day America we numb ourselves with television, multiple games of Candy Crush, texting and Facebook.  It is easier to live life virtually than realistically.  Why do I blast punk music in my car and sing the whole way to work?  It must be to escape the drudgery of driving and the day to come.  Because face it, work is often monotonous and life is hard.  People die.  There are wars and famine and tragedies.

At work yesterday, I had no mask on.  My sadness was evident.  I am often sad and usually hide it under a facade of cheerfulness.  But I was too tired to pretend.  My hair was frizzy and I had no makeup on.  I sat at my desk like a zombie.  

Dammit, I am tired of pretending with everything.  I am tired of not seeking my dreams.  What the hell am I waiting for?  I have so many stories to tell.  All of them mine.

For years, I have hesitated to apply to a summer writing conference in Vermont that is very competitive.  I have been afraid that they would reject me.  Last night, I threw caution to the wind.  And somehow I knew it was meant to be because when I clicked on the applications page the deadline was March 1st.  I had no time to think, I just dusted off my writing sample and applied.

After I applied. I crossed my heart and looked up.  Into the heavens.

There is one.  

This is it or is it?

It pisses me off that the old saying, the one that says that youth is wasted on the young, is too true.  Most days, I want to throw off my suit and dance.  But I am old.  Not old old, but almost middle-age old and old like my back hurts old and I must go to sleep at 9 p.m. and wake up at 5 a.m. old and care about retirement old.

I cannot say that I did not have wild times because I did.  My sister Annie and I spent our late teens and early twenties living on our own in a two bedroom rent subsidized apartment in Upland.  We waited tables to pay the bills and went dancing four nights a week at IE and LA clubs.  We worked out every morning at an all woman gym called The Spa in Upland and ate vegetables and rice for lunch with no dinner as we preferred a liquid alcohol infused diet (we did not want to look bloated at the club).  All that club hopping was not in vain because I met my husband Adrian at one of these clubs and we have been together forever since.

My mid twenties were spent in school getting my Bachelor's degree in English Literature. My time at Mt. SAC in Walnut was the hardest.  I walked to work at the restaurant where I waited tables (it was blocks away) and Annie would drive me to school.  It was difficult but I was in my twenties and had all the energy in the world.  School was my solace and I was the editor-in-chief of the college newspaper and lost myself in the office for hours editing stories and doing layout.  I loved the smell of the papers when we picked them up from the printers.  My teacher and mentor begged me to apply to Columbia for journalism but I could not visualize it.  At some point, I lost my job and had to move back with my parents into a trailer park in Pomona for a year or two.  That is its own story but it made me more hungry to get out and motivated me to finish junior college and transfer.

After I transferred, I lived on campus at UC Riverside on top of a bar.  The rooms were called suites and had a shared kitchen common area.  My room was a little box that was only large enough to fit a twin bed, a small dresser, a desk and my little TV and radio.  I must have had posters on the wall.  I have always been a poster type of girl (my law office has framed prints from the New Yorker and Frida Kahlo alongside an unframed Sex Pistols poster).

I met two of my closest friends at UCR, Emily and Gina, who were also English majors. Together we ruled the school (sans Pink Ladies jackets) and spent our time drinking coffee or beer and laughing.  Emily (who lived in the college suite below me) and I were procrastinators by nature and routinely stayed up all night together writing our papers in my apartment.  Occasionally, we would all go out and I would stay the night at Gina's huge old house in Riverside where she lived with her two young sons.  I remember waking up and Gina would make me coffee with cream and bring it to me at the kitchen table where we would have soul sustaining conversations about life and art.  The possibilities seemed so open.  Like we could do anything or go anywhere or be anything.

My late twenties were spent in law school at USC.  To this day, I don't know how it happened.  I planned on getting a doctorate in English Literature with a focus on James Joyce and post-modernism.  And yet, despite these plans, I applied to law school at USC after taking the LSAT on a lark.  And I got in. And I went.  It was that simple.  It could have been that I was flattered and surprised that an elite law school would even consider this former waitress and high school dropout.  Looking back, I should not have been surprised, I had a 3.8 GPA and a decent LSAT.  Back in those days, I used to feel shame about my windy road to college.  Now I see it as an accomplishment and a kind of miracle.

I would not call USC Law a mistake.  But it is a choice I question often.  I am definitely more the bookworm type and may have been happier in academia.  Or as a writer on SNL.  I kinda wish I was Tina Fey.  (Not kinda. I do.)

My time at USC Law flew by like a movie on fast forward.  I was desperately poor my first year because I couldn't work.  I got a half scholarship but did not qualify for enough loans to cover my living expenses and I had to live with Adrian and his parents for the first year.  I commuted in a car Adrian gave me and used his gas card.

I remember counting change to cover breakfast at school (bagel and coffee) and coffee for lunch at Starbucks and Taco Bell for dinner while studying.  The financial aid office found me more money and I moved into an apartment off of Hoover and Adams street for my second year (2L) with my law school friends Bridget and Tiffini.  The rent was cheap, 1200 bucks for a three bedroom  We had wires coming out of walls and critter friends and only one bathroom, but the walk was five minutes to school.  Bridget and I clipped coupons and she cooked and we ate well.

By my third year in law school, my second year summer associate job funded me for my third year in style and Bridget and I moved into an apartment in Downtown LA.  At the time (circa 2001 to 2002), the downtown area was not the hip place it is now, but our apartment was lovely and spacious.  You couldn't walk outside at night because the homeless crowd would fight but we didn't care.

After law school, I moved to Texas by myself.  I was working sixty or seventy hours a week, but for the most part I had fun.  My amigas were two Latina twins from Brownsville, Texas (Celia and Cecilia). One was a talented writer and one was a lawyer like me.  I also hung out with a girl in a grad program named Lulu (who is now a professor).  We drank margaritas on the patio of our apartments on the weekends and chatted about our lives.

At work I had Nancy, an associate who was a year above me at the firm.  My favorite part of the work day was the daily coffee break where Nancy and I would go to Starbucks and recount "episodes" from the firm.  We even cast ourselves in the dramedy version of our lives should these "episodes" ever make it to the screen.  She was cast as Susan Sarandon and I was Drew Barrymore.  After work we would sometimes hang out at the Four Seasons drinking martinis and continuing the conversation.

It's funny, but I also remember spending a lot of time alone in Houston.  I had my cat Leopold and he would sleep with me but I would go eat breakfast by myself on the weekends after which I would catch a movie and go shopping.  I even went to a play by myself.  It was a small production of a James Joyce short story.  The play was staged at a tiny playhouse in the River Oaks area and I was the only one there solo (or it felt like I was).

When Adrian got into dental school in San Francisco I jumped at the chance to move.  I missed him and wanted to be closer to my family.  The partner that I worked for at the law firm was supportive and gave me a month off to study for the California Bar.  I moved to the Bay mere months after finding out I passed and took the first law firm job I could find.  

In San Francisco, Adrian and I lived in a five hundred square foot box of an apartment on the UCSF campus.  The apartment was up on a hill in the Twin Peaks area.  The bathroom was so small that I had to wiggle past the door.  Adrian and I started building our pseudo married life there.  He cooked two or three nights a week and we both cleaned. Adrian accepted the fact that I was cooking challenged and on the days he didn't cook we ordered in or ate out at one of the numerous restaurants.  After a year, we moved to a bigger apartment in the Inner Sunset area by Golden Gate Park and on the weekend we would walk around the lake and look at the ducks.  It was the best of times.

When my Dad died suddenly, I moved back home leaving Adrian to finish off his last year of dental school alone.  Looking back, it was an impetuous choice.  I didn't think.  I just jumped ship.  I felt that I needed to be home closer to my mom and my sisters.  Or maybe it was because I felt adrift and aimless. My accomplishments seemed meaningless.  All I kept thinking about were those seventy hour work weeks and that I hadn't spent any real time with my parents for five years.  And now my dad was gone.  I could not fix it.  It was too late.

Coming home was the right thing to do.  I know now that I should have waited for Adrian but if I had waited to move, we might have stayed in the Bay permanently.  We loved it there.  But our family was here in the Inland Empire.

And I don't think I would be where I am career wise if I hadn't left.  I might not be a public defender and instead could be working at a big firm and hating my job.  Life is too short to hate your job.

In another universe, there is a girl with curly hair who is probably still overweight and gazing out her high rise window at a Houston skyline while she slaves away late into the night.  Every so often she sighs and thinks about writing a poem or a story but she is too tired.

Ultimately, I am writing this to figure out how I got here, and where I belong.  It is obvious that I have been melancholy of late.  The same restlessness that has plagued me at various times in my life has resurfaced and I want to make the right decision.

To be continued...

Letting Go

I am not adept at letting go (or adept at not letting go).  Instead of shrugging the bad situations off, many of them petty and trivial things, I agonize over every slight or negative comment.

Some days I wish I could be one of those people that don't give a shit, but alas I am not.

This is not all bad news.  The positive aspect of my personality is that I am constantly reassessing and asking myself how to improve.  The problem could be that my job as a public defender is by its very nature confrontational.  And, I like to argue but I pay a price for it with my internal critique.  In Nora Ephon's "You've Got Mail", the Meg Ryan character laments that she always thinks of what to say after the fact which is similar to my dilemma.  I like to debate and argue, but I am always questioning my reactions and performance.  Perhaps it is the artist in me that wants to edit my life like I can the written word.  In other words, I want a rewrite.

And I know what you are all thinking while reading this, I am narcissistic.  Stipulate.

Maybe all I need to do is vent by writing and relieve the stress by exercising.  I always feel better after a good run and a good story.  In my self-imposed sobriety, exercise and writing are my new drugs (other than Diet Coke).

Tonight with rain falling from the sky, this is my outlet.

Thank you for listening.

Feminism Scheminism

I have always considered myself an independent woman.  I grew up blue collar and put myself through undergraduate and law school by waiting tables.  Feminism was just a term I heard thrown around by older white women.  Mom never used the term while I was growing up in the Inland Empire of the 1970's and 1980's.  Mom worked but it was because she had to.  She had no choice.

I always think about how hard Mom worked when I start to complain about my job.  You see, I know what it is like to come home from a ten hour day of waiting tables.  Your feet hurt so much that when you take off your shoes, you can't let your bare feet touch the ground.

Dad moved furniture and Mom waited tables for all of my childhood and most of my adult years.  It was a necessity to pay the bills.  We were what you called "bill poor".  There was enough money for food and vacations and an occasional Barbie Dreamhouse but my parents paid for that comfort with their own sweat, aching feet and backs.  When my 75 year old mom finally quit her restaurant job five years ago she was happy to leave it behind.

My parents' work ethic is the best thing they could have ever given my sisters and I.  It is more valuable than any money or property.  That work ethic is what got me through Mt. SAC Junior College and what propelled me into the editor-in-chief position at the college newspaper and what sustained me through my financial struggles while at UC Riverside and USC Law.

After graduating law school, I worked in corporate litigation at the big firms for six years with back breaking hours.  In Texas at Vinson and Elkins, I saw female partners and senior associates with deep circles under their eyes working seventy hours a week while trying to balance family.  I may have admired their cars (one had a Jaguar that I coveted) but I thought to myself, "Fuck that. I don't want to be them."  (Yes reader, I even cuss to myself.)

Before he died from the pancreatic cancer that caused my formerly hefty father to wither into a tiny bird, he told me, "I thought you went to USC so you could work less not more." Dad was right and after he died I made a change and ended up at the Public Defender's Office.

This morning I started thinking to myself, am I a feminist?  I may seem like one from the outside.  I kept my last name which my husband Adrian reminded me of this morning.  But that choice has more to do with wanting to keep a piece of my father alive more than anything else.  I work full-time as an attorney.  But I would rather not be working as a lawyer at all.  I love to write.  Writing is what I see myself doing full-time for long term happiness.

I don't have kids but it is not for lack of trying.  If God gave me the choice between working and no kids and staying home and raising kids, I would take the kids (even triplets) and happily stay home to raise them through their young years.  My point is, at this age if God gave me a miracle, I would not thumb my nose at the gift.  If that makes me old fashioned so be it.  It is not that I think you have to stay home to be a good mom, it is that I would want to.  And I am lucky that I have the ability to make that choice.

At this point, feminism be dammed.  I just want to be happy.