In which i discuss my mothering methods

I love my kids. I just want to go on record with that statement because I think since I make a lot of sarcastic posts about them, some people aren’t aware of how much I really love them. Having said that, it doesn’t mean that I don’t think that my girls aren’t bitches sometimes. They are. One of the things I miss about having a living parent is the ability to discuss my own personal history. When I think back on my childhood and especially my teenage years, I’m left with lots of unanswered questions. What was I like? How did my parents put up with me? What did they do when I was so obviously miserable and in pain? After all, watching your kid hurting is one of the most difficult things I have ever experienced. These are questions I have that I will never be able to properly answer. I can only surmise what they were thinking and therefore, try to adjust my parenting methods accordingly.




For example, when I was 19 I was miserable, angry and overweight. I had just finished my freshman year at Johns Hopkins University and had an apartment so I decided to live in Baltimore for the summer. The plan was to lifeguard with my best friend, who was also my roommate, and live in our brand new apartment. When I use the words “brand new,” I mean that it was brand new to us but it was actually one step removed from a slum. So we had planned on an amazing summer. I was really looking forward to it. Freshman year had been rough for me because I did terrible in school and my lifelong dream of being a doctor was looking bleak.



As summers went, this one was terrible. I lifeguarded at the club and the other lifeguards were okay but my manager was an incompetent asshole. I didn’t enjoy the job at all and my best friend somehow managed to work completely opposite hours than I did and we never saw each other. I was, in a word, miserable. So, I ate … and ate…and sulked…and ate some more. Of course, I gained a lot of weight and became even more miserable and eventually managed to get fired from my job for insulting the manager. (this is a common theme throughout my life but this was actually the FIRST time I got fired, but not the last). By the end of July, I was back home in North Carolina since I had no job in Baltimore anymore.



I was home for six weeks. I was horrible to be around and no doubt, terrible to my parents. In fact, my mother got such bad headaches that they did a CT Scan to see if she had a brain tumor. She didn’t. It was just the stress of having me around. I was such a pain in the ass that they thought my mom had a BRAIN TUMOR! My parents even took the entire family on a trip out West and I complained the entire way. Talk about being an ungrateful bitch! That was me.



So that’s the set up. When Keely was in first grade her teacher told me the following during a parent-teacher conference: “When kids are in school, they are on their best behavior so it’s not unusual for them to go home and act out. After all, if they can’t let their hair down there, where can they fall apart?” This statement has stuck with me for my entire life and I have found it incredibly useful as a parenting tool.



Kevin and I like to joke around about “public persona Keely.” This is the Keely MacDonald that’s the most incredible person I’ve ever met. She’s caring, funny, supportive and bright. She gives her friends pep talks. She compliments people. She is the glue that holds humanity together. We always say “do you think we’ll ever meet ‘public-persona Keely’ because she sounds delightful!” We felt, especially in her teenage years, that we got the sarcastic Keely, the stressed-out Keely, the mean and angry Keely. Kevin used to say to me, “I don’t know how you put up with her caustic remarks and mannerisms and the way she treats you.” I would respond by telling him my main parenting credo which was “IF my head isn’t killing me and I’m not going to get a CT Scan, then my girls couldn’t be as bad as I was. I gave my mom a ‘brain tumor’ so obviously, I’m better off than she was and I can put up with it”.



That’s how I always stayed calm. No matter what my kids were saying or doing. That rule has stood me in good stead. Now Keely, age 21, has worked through most of her teenage angst and while we still have our moments, she has emerged as one of the most delightful people I know. Andie reminds me of me. She can be moody, stubborn and mean but I know that she doesn’t mean it and that she both loves and needs me. After all, the flip side is that she is creative, funny, sarcastic and bright. We have some great times and Andie and I can really butt heads but I try not to take any of it personally. Having driven my own mom to a “brain tumor,” I just let their criticisms roll off my back.



Why am I writing about all this now? Since I’ve been “online” here in the blogging world I have started reading other blog posts. One such post was about an argument between two girls who were 9 and 11. The dialogue sounded so much like my girls that I was both mortified and amused. After all, my girls are 15 months apart and have such a love/hate symbiotic relationship that it’s created plenty of fireworks. At any rate, I commented to the “blogger” on Twitter that she was screwed and that those two girls were going to be major headaches and I used the hashtag on Twitter of #motheroftwobitches. This mother wasn’t pleased with the way I referred to my girls so I wanted to address that.



First of all, as someone with a bumper sticker that says “you say I’m a bitch like it’s a bad thing,” I don’t necessarily think being a “bitch” is so awful. Second of all, my girls can be both bitchy and bitches. That’s both a positive and a negative thing. Third of all, although I’ve only been on Twitter a few months, I have had a tendency to get in little Twitter wars with people. Sarcasm doesn’t come across very well in 140 characters. Sometimes, what I meant to allude to and what actually came out weren’t the same and the recipient of my Tweet has gotten offended. It’s a strange medium because there’s no place for subtlety or nuance in Twitter.



What’s my point? I think I lost it way back at the beginning of this entry. I suppose that my first point in that sometimes, you need to read between the lines to discover what a person really means. I also think that you can criticize and even make fun of your loved ones and still actually love them. There have been many times when I have “loved” my kids but not actually “liked” my kids. Fortunately, my kids have taken turns being the one I didn’t like so there was only one at a time. But back to my kids. Their hopes are my hopes. Their pain is my pain. Their successes are my successes. I suppose that my second point is that what you read on paper is only part of the story. My kids aren’t fully formed yet but I will say that honesty is the best parenting method out there. If my girls are bitches then hell yes I’m going to call them out on that. That doesn’t mean I don’t love them or even like them. I’m all for calling a spade a spade.



My kids are still works in progress and I won’t fully know for a long time, if ever, how I did as a parent. I will say that I wasn’t a perfect parent just as I’m not a perfect person. If my kids function in the world, can stand on their own and contribute to society in some small positive way, then I’ve done my job. And as to being the #motheroftwobitches, I love them and I wouldn’t have it any other way!

In which i discover that Keely is a Rodeo Clown

It was just a typical Saturday morning; Kevin and I got up, ate breakfast and then went and worked out. After we were finished, we went to our normal coffee spot and we were sitting outside on a balmy fall day enjoying a coffee, a scone and conversation. My cell phone rang and it was Keely calling from college.




Keely: “Mom, uggghhh, I feel terrible”



Me: “How was your dance last night?” (she had a sorority semi-formal the night before)



Keely: “I feel horrible, I’m hungover … and I think I broke my toe” (here we go!)



Me: “What? How did you do that?” (WHY? WHY do I ask these things?)



Keely: “I don’t know.”



Me: “You don’t know how you broke your toe? You must have been pretty anesthetized last night then. How bad is it?” (Anesthetized = shorthand for DRUNKER THAN HELL, but she’s 21 so …)



Keely: “Ugghh…it’s killing me, I can’t walk and it’s black and swollen. Plus I’m nauseous, and my head hurts and … hold on a minute Mom, Andie just got here. I’ll call you back”



I get off the phone and tell Kevin, “this is ridiculous.” Why is this ridiculous? First of all, Keely has broken her arm 8 times not counting the times she hurt it but it wasn’t broken. She’s also had 4 stress fractures, a few sprains and of course, the kicker is that last year she had “the biggest benign bone tumor in Duke University Medical Center history.” So yeah, that’s crazy! The second reason this is ridiculous is because just 5 weeks before I got a similar phone call from Andie saying:



Andie: “MOM!”



Me: “Andie, what are you doing calling me so early on a Saturday? Don’t you have tailgate?”



Andie: “Mom, I’m in so much pain…I’m dying”



Me: “Why, what happened?”



Andie: “I fell off the end of a truck at tailgate and I think I broke my arm.”



Me: “You FELL off a truck?”



Andie: “Yeah, at tailgate…I fell off the back of a truck!”



Me: “How bad is it?”



Andie: “It really hurts and it’s really swollen. I had to leave because the bass in the music was hurting my arm and I don’t know what to do.”



Me: (Huge sigh. This can’t be good if the BEAT is hurting her arm) “Can you take a picture with your phone and send it to me?”



Andie: “Yeah…hold on”



So, she takes the picture shown here:

And I look at it and I’m like “holy shit, that’s a mess” and I tell her to go to the emergency room. She tells me that there’s no way she’s going to the ER because it takes so long so I tell her to put it in a brace and drive home and I’ll call one of my MANY orthopedic friends on stand by to check her out. “I don’t have a brace” she says. “Really,” I reply, “then call Keely and see if she has a brace in her apartment.” (Of course she has a brace in her apartment. The kid’s had 8 broken arms! She collects them like people collect…what do people collect?) So, she comes home, we see somebody and YES, of course it’s broken. OF COURSE IT’S BROKEN!!! They put her in a brace (a different type of course so I have to purchase yet ANOTHER brace) with a thumb guard and tell her to get it re-checked in 3 weeks. (She doesn’t get it re-checked because well, she’s MUCH TO BUSY to bother with details like that. Let the arm rot and fall off and then call Mom and say “Mom my arm just fell off”). This was just FIVE weeks ago. She just took off her brace on Friday and this is now Saturday morning. Seriously? SERIOUSLY?



So yeah, I’m not particularly fazed but I’m in the “you must be fucking kidding me” part of the day. So Keely calls back.



Keely: “Mom, Andie’s here…my toe is killing me, my head is hurting and I’m nauseous.”



Me: “Put Andie on the phone.” (she does). “Andie, what does her toe look like?” (Andie’s pre-med, she needs to get used to this)



Andie: “It’s pretty swollen…and it’s black”



Me: “Ok. Take a picture with your cell phone and send it to me” (I’m still in the coffee place having my peaceful time with Kevin ruined once again by my kids. I mean really, I send them away to college and I still get this shit!)



Ok, I look at the picture here:

Yep, that looks pretty damn bad to me. You doubt me? I’m like an amateur doctor at this point in my life. Now I know that with a toe if it’s just broken, nothing much can be done but if the joints messed up, usually surgery is required so I tell them to stay put and call my orthopedic neighbor who is pretty goddamned sick of me calling his cell phone all the time. I explain the situation and after a huge sigh, he says to send him the picture. I forward the picture to him and he says to have her come home and get an X-Ray because it looks bad around the knuckle of the toe. (Wow! This is shocking! It looks bad? My kids? Jesus fucking Christ!)



I relay the information to the girls and Andie drives Keely home (we live an hour from their school) and I meet them at the orthopedic urgent care. The doctor tells me to have Andie’s arm X-Rayed as well to make sure it’s all the way healed since she removed the brace because, well because the brace was dirty and she was tired of wearing it. I mean, that’s as sound a medical reason as any, right?



So we’re at the Urgent Care place and they ask Keely how she hurt her toe. “Ummm…I don’t know” she replies. “Did you kick something, slam into something” the Physicians’ Assistant asks. At this point, I’m cracking up as Keely tries to hem and haw her way out of this. Finally, the PA says “Was alcohol involved?” Hahahaha…I’m cracking up and Keely replies sheepishly “Yes”.



Long story short, of course the toe is broken but fortunately, no surgery is needed so they put it in a boot. She needs to leave it on for 6 weeks! I have no idea how she’s going to get around campus but fortunately, after being on crutches for 6 months last year, this is nothing, and it’s kind of funny in a pretty sick way.



I take a picture of her foot in the boot (below)

and send out a Tweet that includes the picture and the following text: 8 broken arms, 4 stress fractures, 1 gigantic bone tumor and now this …



What do I get back? “Is this you over your lifetime, or your family?”

I Tweet back “One 21 year old child, all by herself”



Here’s the greatest Tweet ever from @hamletsmistress: “Is she a Rodeo Clown?” Here’s her link: Hamlets Mistress

HAHAHA. “Is she a Rodeo Clown?” We’re all cracking up in my house. I answer no, she’s not, but the Tweeter tells me that “You should tell people she’s a Rodeo Clown.” I can’t disagree with her. After all, it’s the only plausible explanation, isn’t it?



Any way, I just wanted to regale you with a typical day in the MacDonald household. They always start out with SO much promise but when one of your kids is a Rodeo Clown, things can go downhill rapidly.

In which we confer with Daniel

I think I’ve mentioned before that I have three children. My oldest Keely, can be described as an overachiever. She was always willing to put in the extra time necessary to raise her grade from a 98 to a 100. She strived for perfection, no matter how long it took. She certainly set the tone for the kids in our family. Andie, 15 months behind Keely in life but only one year behind her in school, didn’t want to be “the dumb MacDonald,” so she spent much time studying as well. Both of the girls achieved a great deal, got beaucoup academic awards and are both happily ensconced at Duke University. Daniel is my third child. He is a boy, and so has a whole different way of approaching life. We had a conference at his school last week and yes, I’m a little jaded as I’ve been through this before, but this conference was on an entirely different level.




At the private school my kids attend, the kids don’t get report cards. Instead, there is a conference with the student, the advisor and the parents. The student leads the conference and reviews his grades and goals with the advisor and the parents. Needless to say, because we’re very lucky, conferences have never been a stressful activity in our house. That’s not to say that we haven’t had our own trials and tribulations. We have. It’s just that this “academic” stuff is one of our strong points. I direct all credit to my husband Kevin as they have all gotten his work ethic (I’m allergic to working hard), his nose-to-the-grindstone mentality (so I get bored, WHATEVER!), and engineering mind (I am ridiculously good at art projects so get off my goddamn back). At any rate, conferences are usually just about going over the grades and on occasion, discussing what courses to take the next semester. (Don’t tell anybody but sometimes we talk smack about other people at these conferences. SSSHHH…it’s a secret. Teachers know all the scuttlebutt!)



The girls were all about business. Work hard, get good grades and go to a good college. Daniel is wired differently. Keely once told me that she thought we should just go ahead and double him up in science because “he was just going to do mediocre no matter what courses he took.” “What is mediocre?” I asked. “You know”, she replied, “like a 96 or something.” Yeah, so we’re kind of skewed like that.



At any rate, we were in this conference and we’re talking about MY BLOG. Yep. That’s what we’re talking about. The teacher reads my blog and we were discussing Keely week as Keely was one of her favorite students (of course she was. Public Persona Keely was in that class. You remember, the Keely who doesn’t actually live in my house but shows up elsewhere). Finally, Kevin said that possibly we should let Daniel discuss his grades. This is where it all went south. Daniel had a form that he was reading from with questions - pointed questions - that he “supposedly” answered so he could run the conference. I’m here to show you Daniel’s carefully thought out Academic Review:



1. Compare the overall grade for each class to the goals you have in mind. How are you doing so far?

Math                                        good
AP English Lang                      good

APUSH (AP US History)          ok, I want it to be 1-2 points higher

AP Chemistry                          good

AP Spanish Lang                     good

(Ok, so far so good. I’m not showing the grades here but we’re pretty happy and he seems to want a SLIGHT improvement in APUSH. It’s all good)



2. Look at the details of each grade. What are your strengths? Homework grades? Test grades? Quiz Grades? Papers or Projects?

Math                                        everything

English                                    essays have been good so far

APUSH                                     multiple choice

AP Chemistry                          math problems

Spanish                                   grammar



(Well Daniel, your Math strengths are EVERYTHING? That’s ok. This isn’t a very detailed analysis of where we could improve anything, is it? Am I missing something here?)



3. Where are your opportunities? How can you boost low grades? What steps could you take immediately to begin improving in one area?

Spanish                                    speaking, listening, essays, vocab, reading comprehension

APUSH                                      essays could be better



(Again, these answers seem to be lacking in details. Although you pretty much encompassed every aspect of Spanish, how could your APUSH essays improve? How could they be better? Are you going to enlighten your parents? How will you achieve these things? Why am I at this conference?)



4. Do you see any trends in the details presented in the Progress Report? Was there a point in time our grades changed one way or another? If so, what things might have contributed to that change? Are you very consistent? Why do you think that is?



My teachers like me. My grades are consistent because I do the work.



(Excuse me? My teachers like me? Was that somewhere in the questions above? Is that why you’re getting these grades, because YOUR TEACHERS LIKE YOU? You do the work? When? During half time of the football game? Ok, ok. It’s fine. Let’s move on)



5. Do you think there is enough information in each Progress Report to help you? What more would you like to know? Make a plan to get more information from your teacher!



Ms. Fung says I need to work at listening but I already knew that.



(Wait, if you already knew that have you considered getting EXTRA help? I don’t recall any discussion on this matter at home)



6. Make a plan! Write it out below and include at least three steps you will take.



Eat


Sleep


School



(Wait. WHAT? THAT is your plan? Eat, sleep, school? This is why you’re in private school? What? Oh Daniel…)



I just couldn’t stop laughing. If they had asked for Four steps I’m sure “play Xbox” would have been the final step. I’m not sure this is the three step plan they were looking for. I’m positive it’s not what I was expecting.



So, there you have it. Life with Daniel. His grades are excellent so it’s not really a worry, it’s just so different after having two girls who were concerned about every point. I remember Daniel telling Kevin and I when he was a freshman that he had a test coming up. We asked him the next day if he was going to study or if he was planning on “winging it.” His reply? “Don’t worry, I’ve already wung it!” It’s interesting adjusting to an entirely different way of thinking.



I’d like to write more but I’m pretty sure that we’ve covered the basics of the conference and … WAIT A MINUTE … it’s step one of the Three Step Plan: I have to go make dinner to Daniel can EAT!

In which i tried to be sophisticated

When I was 16, my aunt got me a subscription to Vogue as a birthday present. I think I’ve already mentioned that my mom was a “clothes horse” and was very into nice clothing. Every month, the new Vogue would arrive and I would look at all the beautiful women wearing beautiful clothing thinking, “that’s going to be me one day.”



Alas, I quit growing and never made it above 5’5” so my “modeling” career was over before it actually began. But I still loved Vogue, and eventually, I had a subscription to Bazaar as well. I determined that somehow, some day, I was going to be one of those sophisticated people walking around, just like in the magazines.



It’s ironic actually, as I was, and still am, a slob. I wear shorts and t-shirts. EVERY. DAMN. DAY. I have no compunction about wearing torn and tattered clothing. I rarely look nice unless I have to. If I go out to lunch, I will begrudgingly put on nicer shorts or a skirt, but I spend a lot of time avoiding that. On Saturday evenings when Kevin and I go out, I’m always complaining about how he looks better than me.



Now don’t get me wrong. I can look nice. I just choose not to. I feel that as long as I have the knowledge that I can clean up, why bother? I don’t really feel defined by people’s ideas of what “beauty” is. But occasionally, even I must dress up. It’s these occasions that kill me the most. My rule of thumb is that if I’m really dressing up, what the hell, why don’t I go ahead and put on makeup and jewelry. So when that actually happens, people are startled - shocked actually - and pretty rude.



Something usually comes out of their mouths like, “Oh my god Lynn, look how good you’re capable of looking” or my personal favorite, “You sure do clean up well!” At any rate, sometimes it’s worth it just to shock the hell out of people. Lately, people have been asking if I got my hair cut. “Yeah, about a year ago” is my response. It’s just that I put my hair back in a ponytail in the morning to go to the gym, run my errands like that and then go home and shower. I really don’t mind running around looking like shit.



After the shower, my hair is down, but at that point I really don’t see people anymore, so I suppose that nobody really knows what I look like.



Wait. I was actually making a point at the beginning of this story, and of course I got off on a tangent. The point was that when I moved to New York, I was prepared to get a sweet job, dress up in suits and become a “sophisticated” New Yorker. I had it all figured out. I would live on the Upper East Side, work at some major financial institution, have tons of awesome friends and go to bars and order Scotch. I knew Scotch was the “sophisticated” drink, and that’s what I was going to drink.



It all came crashing down when I didn’t get a job at a major financial institution and got a job at International Paper Company instead. I did have suits but they were irritating and uncomfortable so I changed out of them as soon as possible. But in perhaps the biggest blow to the entire “sophistication” plan was I COULDN’T STAND SCOTCH!! I hated it! Could it have been the horrible experience I once had with a bottle of Southern Comfort? I’m not sure, but the Scotch thing was out. Then I tried martinis. This was in the day before all that flavored crap so we’re talking THE REAL DEAL. Shaken, not stirred ... you get the picture. Nope. Couldn’t stomach that either. My boss gave me a Manhattan to try and ... DISGUSTING!



So there I am, living in New York, and still the same damn beer drinking girl that I was when I got there. I’m still a beer drinker. Love the stuff. But I have never gotten over the sheer disappointment of my inability to be a “sophisticated” person. Maybe in my next life!

In which we hit Vermont for Christmas

I just got of the phone with my mother-in-law, Allison, who lives in Vermont. I called up there because my husband has gone up to visit his family for 5 days while I stayed down here and manned the home front. She was just asking me why I haven’t been up in a while and I was explaining to her that I had to stay with Daniel, who is still in school, and dealing with the pets is such a hassle but have no fear Allison, eventually I will show up there again. When the kids were little, we used to go up to Vermont regularly and even spent two Christmas’s there. They were both unmitigated disasters which is why I have refused to go up to Vermont in the winter again.



I’ve actually been to Vermont in the winter 4 times, three of them with Kevin, and one of them before I met him and will be forever known as “the worst ski trip ever.” Of course, I haven’t blogged about that yet but trust me, it’s coming because it’s the most ridiculous story in the world.



Back to my in-laws.



Andie was a sickly baby. She was constantly having ear infections and bronchitis. She still gets ear infections and she’s almost 20 now. At any rate, we went up to Vermont in 1993 when Andie was not quite 2 and Keely had just turned 3. We usually stayed with my brother and sister-in-law when the kids were little because my in-laws had just moved back up to Vermont and lived in a tiny house. My brother and sister-in-law had four kids of their own so of course, there were plenty of toys and little people to play with. Now I’m from North Carolina and a cold day to me is below 30 degrees. To Vermonters, that’s a balmy winter day.



Andie had previously been diagnosed with asthma and was on a nebulizer four times a day. To say that this is a pain in the ass with a one year old is a mild understatement. The machine is really just a little compressor that turns her medicine into a mist so she can breathe it in and keep her lungs clear. You put a mask on her and she just breathes, that’s how it works. I bribed her with Skittles and if she sat there for 15 minutes with the nebulizer, she would get some. Of course, Keely being Keely (even back then), had to have HER Skittles too. So I was armed with lots of candy and we were going up to Vermont for Christmas to see the grandparents and cousins. We get there and there are 9 of us living in this house and it’s freezing outside so nobody can go out to play when Andie has a terrible asthma attack. Between the age of one and two Andie had six major asthma attacks and pneumonia so I knew what to do in the situation. I had to step up the nebulizer routine to round the clock, add in steroids (which makes the child crazy) and basically spend all my time holding her while she struggled to breathe.



Apparently, this wasn’t sucking enough because then Kevin got the flu. That’s right, the flu. So now, Kevin was sick as a dog, running a fever, laying around in bed and I was left dealing with a 3-year old and a one-year old who couldn’t breathe. Not being a particularly nice person, I got mad at Kevin for dragging me up to Vermont to see HIS family and then getting sick. So I was pissed at Kevin, taking care of Andie and just being your everyday basic bitch. Kevin was miserable but there’s no way I was going to take care of him because ... well no good reason, I just wasn’t doing it. Kevin’s mom (Allison) was trying to be nice to Kevin, I was being an evil bitch because it was crowded, freezing, Andie was sick, Kevin was fucking sick and sure enough, I started getting the stink-eye from Allison because she was angry with me for not taking care of her little boy!



I kept telling her that Kevin was an adult and would survive and what the hell did she want from me any way? Seriously, I’m not a nurturer. I’m a narcissistic, self centered bitch! This wasn’t part of the “let’s take the kids up to Vermont for Christmas to see my family” deal! At any rate, we got through the trip and I was incredibly reluctant to ever go to Vermont for Christmas ever again.



As you can imagine, this story has reflected poorly upon me in “MacDonald folklore” but hey, what did they expect? It was way more than I bargained for. If Kevin was looking to marry a “nice” girl, he fucked up LONG before this trip. We did go back to Vermont for Christmas one time after this. It was a FUCKING nightmare and I will never go back there in winter again. I would love to relate it to you but that’s a story for another day.

In which i discuss personal strength

How did you get to be so strong? How did you get so capable? I get asked these types of questions all the time and I rarely think about them. But today I did. My son was bugging me about pancakes, or the lack thereof, in the house for breakfast and it made me think of how my mom would have reacted to this whining. It wouldn’t have been pretty, I can tell you that. My parents’ methods of child-rearing were completely different than my own, for better or worse. They were all about being independent, self-sufficient and handling your own shit. At any rate, roaming down the random thoughts highway I remembered this question and today, I’m going to give an answer.



About 14 years ago, my mother inconveniently died. I say inconvenient, because it wasn’t actually my idea and I had plenty of questions that I had neglected to have her answer so I’m stuck wondering what my mom thought of everything related to her kids and their lives while growing up. Actually, she was an English teacher and just the previous run-on sentence was probably enough to kill her. At any rate, she died. And within two years my dad died too. Just to add to the greater joy in my life, in the midst of those two deaths, my son was kicked out of pre-school and then diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a mild form of autism.



I was floored - shocked actually – that all the idiosyncrasies that were my child weren’t “normal”. I wanted to cry on my mom’s shoulder and rail against the world but she wasn’t around. My dad wasn’t either so that only left Kevin, my husband, but when I turned to him he was crying too. So what do you do? When everything around you is falling apart and there’s nobody left to lean on, what do you do? YOU BECOME THE STRONG ONE. There’s no choice. You’re there, with three kids, a husband and a pretty difficult situation. Someone has to be Atlas and in this situation, that someone was me. So you pick up your burdens and you CARRY ON. It’s not that my husband wasn’t on board the situation, he was, but he already had a job to do and that job didn’t allow a lot of extra time for treatments, research and intervention ideas.



It’s always amazed me that people view that as incredible. I mean, what other options did I have? Things needed to be done. Life needed to go on. Methodologies needed to be researched. We had a MAJOR problem to deal with and someone (that someone being me) was going to have to step up to the plate. I’ve always been amazed that people ever think there’s a choice. There’s not. You just do what you have to do.



Over time, the more often you step up to the plate, the less scary the plate becomes. It’s that mentality that has enabled me to deal with my many family crises, as well as many situations that my friends have found themselves in. Calmness in the face of the storm is a trait that is very beneficial to have. And that trait can be honed, sometimes not by choice, but by necessity.



When I was growing up my older brother was hit by a car. It was a terrible accident, and while I won’t go into details, he ended up blind in one eye with a surgically reconstructed nose and years upon years of craniofacial surgery. He was 10 and I was 7 when it happened. It was a traumatic even that shaped my childhood and the ripple effects have never ended. I once asked my mom how she dealt with such a situation as well as two other small children at home. Her reply was “you deal with the situation you’ve been given. You can’t just drop everything for the one child who needs you because then you create situations for the other two children who are left behind. You need to find balance and it’s not easy. You just do what you have to do.”



So the next time you find yourself in a difficult situation, don’t think of it as a burden. Think of it as a way to spread your wings, show yourself that you too can be a pillar of strength. Believe me, it will change your outlook on the world.

In which i post my "New House Rules"

Today I would like to discuss my house rules. What are the house rules you might be asking yourself? About 8 years ago, we moved into our new house. At the time my kids were 13, 12 and 9 years old. The nerve center of the house was the “cubby” area which was the entrance from the garage. Each one of my kids had their own cubby which included shelves, coat hooks, and shoe baskets. On the opposite wall were more coat hooks as well as a “bulletin board” which contained things such as the schedule of extra curricular activities and other important information. The most important piece of information posted were my “house rules.” As time marched on, I added more and more rules thus ending up with the current HOUSE RULES ADDENDUM. These rules became something of a legend as we always had multitudes of kids hanging out at our house. So now, without further ado, I bring you Lynn MacDonald’s House Rules:

House Rules Addendum

1. All coats will be hung in cubby or on hooks!!! If you have multiple coats, FIGURE IT OUT … you’re all “A” students!!

2. All shoes will be put in cubby or in basket. You also have a closet!

3. All reference books will either be in cubby or kids computer room upstairs or in your own room. Kitchen island needs to be kept clear in case I get the URGE to COOK!!

4. All toys, Gameboys, and other accumulated junk will be kept in your own rooms or in the bonus room, basically OUT OF MY SIGHT!!

5. Knapsacks/Swimbags will be put in cubby or under the coats. Sports stuff should be put away properly and wet towels should be put in the laundry room. LAX/FH stuff should be in the garage.

6. All computers will be put in cubby. The kitchen is not a CUBBY!!

7. Kids will be responsible for keeping their own rooms and bathrooms clean. This means bringing down your laundry, taking it upstairs and putting it away in A TIMELY FASHION and especially PICKING UP THE GODDAMN TOWELS OFF OF THE FLOOR!!! Also, if the drain in the bathroom is clogged, report it IMMEDIATELY!!

8. The bonus room must be kept reasonably picked up and completely picked up weekly. Organize the “game area” when you’re done! This does not mean drop everything in a “huge” pile. IF YOU BRING FOOD UP TO THE BONUS ROOM, you are responsible for bringing down the dirty stuff and picking up after yourselves. YOU ARE ALSO TOTALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR GUESTS!! (See below)

9. All foods and plates, etc., will be cleaned up after every meal and snack. Children are responsible for themselves and their guests. Your mother, no matter how little you think she does, is NOT YOUR MAID!!!

10. The table area you ate at must be wiped up after consuming said foods. Sometimes this might require a SPONGE.

11. Cars should be kept CLEAN, tires checked, service lights, etc. Any problems should be reported to US!!

12. TV room needs to be kept cleaner. Fold blankets when done, remove shoes and don’t leave all your schoolwork and clutter in there.

13. Please treat those around you with RESPECT or don’t bother TALKING. A little silence wouldn’t kill you.

14. Weekly stuff: Keely: Litter box. Daniel: Garbage. Andie: Tucker.

15. NO BITCHING ABOUT DINNER! It will be served at some point during the evening. Have a snack if you can’t wait. If you need something from the store, a little advance notice would help.

16. Failure to follow the rules will result in confiscation of the any and all items. You will need to earn them back by doing extra chores. NO SERIOUSLY, either that or we could GROUND YOU!!

In which keely was Bambi

WRITERS NOTE: My editor, a good friend of mine, had an incredibly busy week as she was on a business trip. Instead of bombarding her with emails harassing her to edit this entry, I asked my daughter Keely to help me out. She edited this story and added a little flavor to it while doing so. Here was her comment to me that arrived with my email. “Some comments are meant to stay and some are my commentary whilst editing. You can choose whether to keep it or not. You're welcome.” Her editing was flawless and her comments were ... well, they’re Keely. See if you can figure out what they are. And now, without further ado, my story.

In honor of Halloween, which is this weekend, I must tell you a funny Halloween story. Or at least, I think it’s funny. Here’s a little background. I’ve always been a “MacGyver” type of person. That’s the type of person that jury-rigs a situation and fixes it until it’s “good enough” which is kind of my personal mantra (among others). I have always been about getting stuff done; doesn’t matter if it’s perfect, just so long as it’s DONE. Now as you can imagine, being married to an engineer means sometimes butting heads on exactly how things are done, but normally Kevin just leaves me alone and lets me run amuck.



One time, many years ago, one of our sets of wooden shutters broke. Kevin told me to get it fixed and I looked it over and figured out that I could fix it myself. So using a paperclip and a set of wire cutters, I managed to repair the wooden shutters. When Kevin looked it over it was in perfect working condition but you could see where I had fixed it. “What about that” he asked? Soon enough, a little dab of white paint was applied and voila “perfect set of working shutters”. So what’s the point? I’m all about getting things done in the easiest (or laziest) possible way.



So back in 1992, Keely MacDonald, the most awesome of my three kids, had just turned 3 and her sister Andie, who can only hope to be half as cool as Keely has turned out, was 15 months old. I hadn’t taken Keely trick-or-treating as a baby (as I think that’s ridiculous), but once you’re taking one out, you might as well take out the other. So Keely and Andie are going to go trick or treating. Now many of you who know Keely are thinking, “But wasn’t Keely a cat for every Halloween of her life?” The answer is… pretty much. Once Keely became a cat at age 5, she was a cat for EVERY SINGLE Halloween from there on out. She still is a cat when she dresses up and SHE’S IN COLLEGE NOW (NOT TRUE I AM BEING PIKACHU THIS YEAR)! However, when she was 4 she was Jasmine from Aladdin (Andie was Tinkerbell) and when she was 3 she wanted to be Bambi.



So, Keely tells me she wants to be Bambi and I’m not one of those “I’ll do anything for my kids” type of mom, so I’m trying to figure out how to accomplish it in the easiest manner possible. I’m explaining to my friends (yeah, I’ve got a few of them … or at least I did back in the day) how Keely wants to be Bambi and I’ll be damned if I’m going out and purchasing a Bambi costume (after all, this movie upset Kevin to the point of crying). A friend of mine tells me that her child was a wolf last year, and did I want to borrow that? So I check out the furry wolf costume and it doesn’t look anything like Bambi, but of course I don’t care and Keely is 3, so what the hell does she know? So I say, “Sure,” and I borrow the costume.



So, Halloween comes and we put Keely in the costume and she doesn’t look ANYTHING like Bambi: instead she looks like a little girl in a furry little costume, but I know I can rectify this situation. So I make a sign out of white paper with the words “I’m Bambi” written in marker and I attach it to the outfit. You see, Keely can’t read because she’s just 3 years old, but anybody who’s actually an adult can read (well, most likely) so when they see Keely they say, “Oh, so you’re Bambi?” Well, she’s thrilled because everybody knows she’s Bambi and I’m thrilled because I think it’s the funniest thing ever; she’s happy and I didn’t have to do shit, and I know we’re going to rake in the chocolate with this cute Bambi kid running around.



So, she goes through the night as “Bambi” and nobody tells her anything differently. She’s got beaucoup amounts of candy, which I’m stuffing in my mouth and it’s all good. I consider it an excellent Halloween on every level.



We were going through pictures a few weeks ago and I saw Keely’s “I’m Bambi” picture and I was thinking, “Is it possible I’m the worst mother ever?” I mean, who does that to their child? Looking back, I still think it’s funny and I realize that as long as she was okay, then I was okay, but I still can’t help chuckling when I look back at Keely, all happy, with her “I’m Bambi” sign out in front. Keely wasn’t a wolf in sheep’s clothing – she was a deer in a wolf’s clothing.



So, if you need some outside-the-box thinking or some MacGyver fixing, you might want to contact me. And the next time you think of buying a Halloween costume, just grab a marker and paper instead.

In which we took her home

We first ran into Keely at Wesley Long Hospital. I already told you the story of how her arrival created such an upheaval that it was referred to forever after as the “San Francisco Earthquake.” The date was October 17, 1989. She was the most beautiful baby we had ever seen so we decided to take her home with us. She was perfect and wonderful and fat. But then, she learned to talk. It took her quite some time to master the art of talking and almost no time at all to learn to talk back. She has become quite proficient at this.



But seriously, where to begin on “Life with Keely?” Keely is a challenging person to write about. Smart, witty, and clever, she can also be an incredibly exasperating person. So, what to say?



I suppose Keely has been raised in a rather unorthodox manner. She has been encouraged to be outspoken and independent. Our goal has always been to raise children that can function as competent adults in this dog eat dog world. As a result, Keely is quite capable of putting her nose to the grindstone and getting the work done. She is hardworking and diligent and often helpful to others who are struggling. She has a great sense of humor and can often be quite self deprecating. This good humor has served her well through many tough situations.



While Keely slinks around our house claiming to be the “least loved child” (which by the way, I assured her that her sister was), she actually manages to grab most of the attention. With her outlandish comments, she always has us laughing; if not with her, then at her. No seriously, AT her. She came in to see her father and I one evening as we were watching a history channel special on the San Francisco Earthquake. She asked what we were watching and we told her that the earthquake occurred on the day she was born. Keely’s reponse, “What day was it?” We laughed and laughed and laughed about it. That’s Keely, always good for a laugh. I’ve already told you about “do you know the city” and “the great yogurt robbery” so you can see that Keely is “quirky”, to say the least.



This is probably not a complete picture of Keely but she is a complex and interesting person with many, many great traits and I expect that she will be an adult that people will love to be around. She can make people feel better with just a few choice words. With her many talents and good humor, I am proud to call her my daughter.



So, in summation of the week that was “all things Keely”, I would like to inject a little humor by updating my “Top 10 Things I Love About Keely MacDonald” list. This isn’t a complete list of all the things I love about her, but you get the picture! Enjoy!

The Top 10 Things I love about Keely MacDonald

1.      She can tell the same story multiple times, and yet, each time the story gets a little bit funnier and you never get tired of hearing about it.


2.      Keely can hurt herself while sitting perfectly still. She’s broken her arm 8 times, had 3 stress fractures, tendonitis and that’s not including that silly little medical condition she had last year.


3.      While being robbed at gunpoint, she was more concerned about her frozen yogurt melting than about actually getting shot.


4.      She can’t tell the difference between and odometer and a tachometer and she’ll tell you about it … repeatedly!


5.      She’s never met a stranger. People are drawn to her.


6.      Keely is a loyal friend. Don’t mess with anybody she loves or you will definitely hear about it.


7.      She talks louder on the phone (and the rest of the time as well), than any other human on earth.


8.      Keely is a cat.


9.      If you need to be rushed to an emergency room, history has proven that Keely is your girl. After all, she’s had to rush people there twice already.


10.      Even though Keely talks all the time, she is an incredibly good listener.


11.      Keely tries hard to be the best, whether it is academics, swimming or even friendship.


12.      Keely is an incredible daughter and sister: loving and supportive.



13.      Keelys typical answer to a joke: “I don’t get it!”


14.      If you haven’t appeared in one of Keely’s photo albums, you don’t exist!



So, these are our Top 10 things we love about Keely. I realize there are 14 but just because I was a math major doesn’t mean I can count. In short, we are incredibly proud and honored that Keely is our child. She is a joy to all that know her and I am confident that someday she will make her mark on the world.

In which keely has a medical condition

DISCLAIMER:

I want to give you fair warning that this is a fairly long and serious blog entry so if you’re looking for HUMOR, my humor blog isn’t so damn funny today. Having said that, I approach even the most difficult situations with humor, so it’s not depressing either. In fact, I view the entire situation as a learning opportunity and perhaps you will too.






As I sit here at my computer I realize that I am constantly alluding to a medical situation that Keely had but have never actually explained it. Although Keely will kill me, I’m going to go ahead and talk about the situation since it hugely affected our year last year, caused me to take her to London for her birthday, and to be honest, could well be a major factor in her (and my) life going forward. So here goes.






First I need to give you a little background on the aches and breaks of Keely MacDonald. On my five page list of stories that resides next to my computer, this post will combine many of them. This might mean that I’ll run out of stories some time in 2011 but so be it.






Keely has broken her arms 8 times. You heard me right, 8 times. I believe I mentioned the first time that she broke her arm in “I’m not even worried about it” but unfortunately, that was just the beginning. In that calendar year alone, Keely broke her arms 3 times. Left, right, I’m not sure which, but it happened. Honestly, if I hadn’t had a multitude of “pet” orthopedic doctors on call, I would certainly have been hauled into court for child abuse. But they all occurred just by happenstance. One was falling off her bike, one was getting tripped during gym, and of course, the first one was playing tag across the street. These things just seemed to happen, especially to Keely MacDonald. She had a file a mile thick at the doctor’s office. At one point, I had a multitude of doctors’ numbers on speed dial. I once called a friend of mine on his cell phone and he answered and immediately said “Lynn, I’m in the mountains and nowhere near home; call so and so (his partner)”. I felt that he should have christened his house after “The MacDonald family” since we contributed so much money towards it.






At any rate, Keely had quite a few broken arms and that doesn’t include pulls, strains, sprains and stress fractures. That’s the set up for this post. Are you with me folks? Fast forward a few years and Keely is off to college at Duke University to start her freshman year where she proceeded to party, have fun, eat and occasionally attend class (my opinion, not hers). In January of 2009, she called to tell us that her hip is hurting and she’s having a hard time walking. She’d already had a stress fracture in her foot the previous fall so I, of course, ignored her and told her it’s probably due to the partying and the “freshman 15.” I felt confident that it would go away as time goes on.






She kept complaining, and complaining and by the summer she said her hip was really, really killing her. I was still not too concerned as she was out of school, working out really hard and losing weight. I figured it would all go away eventually but finally in June I relented and took her to see the doctor. They took X-rays and didn’t really see anything horrible so they told us it’s probably a hip pointer. What is a hip pointer injury? Basically it is an extremely painful, acute injury to the iliac crest of the pelvis. (Yeah, yeah, yeah ... stick with me here) It causes bruising in the muscles and the pain can be intense, even felt when walking, laughing, coughing or even breathing deeply. (I found this explanation on Google). Apparently, you can get it from a direct hit or a hard fall.






Of course, I know that Keely drinks and when Keely drinks Keely falls (actually, the child falls even when not drinking so you can imagine my complete and total lack of surprise) and Keely had hurt herself in January so we were happy that at last we had a diagnosis. We knew it wasn’t serious but the doctors told Keely she needed physical therapy to recover from the injury. It was all good. Keely was living at home, lifeguarding as her summer job, and undergoing physical therapy for her hip.






Soon enough it’s August and it’s time for Keely to go back to school so we transfer her physical therapy to Duke Sports Medicine at the Finch-Yeager Center on the Duke campus. This is a great place to be because all the physicians for the Duke Sports teams are located there and they are used to dealing with injuries like this. Keely continued therapy but alas, her hip kept getting worse and worse. She was in agony 24/7 but she continued to work out like crazy so I was still not particularly concerned because I figured, “how bad could the pain be if she’s working out so much?” (I feel a little bad about this in retrospect but hey, I’m a mom. Ignoring my kids bitching is what I do).






Finally, in early October I talked to our doctor here in Greensboro and we agreed that Keely should have a CT Scan when she came home for Thanksgiving break (November for you non-Yanks out there!) I told Keely to hang on for another 5 weeks and we would check it out. Meanwhile, her physical therapist wasn’t thrilled with how Keely was doing but she was glad we were going to check it all out soon.






Keely turned 20 on October 17, 2009. She proceeded to go out, get sloshed, go dancing and last, but not least, ride and fall off a mechanical bull. She had a fantastic time but by the time she rolled into therapy on Tuesday the 20th, she was walking with a major limp. The therapist took one look at her and said, “you’re seeing a doctor TOMORROW.” Keely told me about the appointment and I said, “I’m not coming down there tomorrow. Let’s see what the doctor has to say”.






Next day Keely showed up at the Sports Med center and they did an Xray. Before she knew it, she had 8 doctors standing around her making her walk up and down the hall, balance on one foot and other assorted things. They were all mumbling and talking to each other while they bossed her around. They scheduled her for a CT Scan and MRI the next day but Keely told them she had a test and would have to put it off until Friday. They agreed, and she went back to the dorm and called me. I, of course, was not happy when I heard that 8 doctors had watched her. If you can get one damn doctor to pay attention to you then you’re lucky so 8 is unheard of, and from a parental point of view, more than a little unsettling. The fact that they wanted a CT Scan and MRI as soon as possible wasn’t too thrilling either but the kicker was the “discoloration” in her pelvis that had she had slipped into the conversation. “Discoloration? What the hell does that mean?” I ask. She, of course, has no idea and tells me to just chill.






Keely goes and gets the two tests, all the while complaining that this was cutting into valuable study time, and an appointment was set up for the following Wednesday to meet with her doctor. I was definitely going down to this appointment because I wanted to know what was up. I wasn’t terribly concerned YET but having been through so many medical disasters (I’ll explain at a later date) the uncertainty of the situation was unsettling. The next Tuesday Keely gets an email from Duke Oncology confirming an appointment had been set up. She forwards me the email and I immediately have a massive heart attack. Talking about a WTF moment; WHY is Duke Oncology seeing my child? I had no idea but IT COULDN’T BE GOOD! Thank god we had a doctor’s appointment the next day at the Sports Med place and you can be damn sure that I was going to get to the bottom of all this!






We showed up at the appointment and the doctor was very serious and told us that Keely had a mass the size of her fist in her left pelvis as well as a stress fracture in her right pelvis. Very frankly, they couldn’t believe she’d been walking around, working out and living a normal life at all. “What kind of mass?” I ask. They weren’t sure yet but the odds of it being “cancer” were small. Of course, the odds of having the damn thing in the first place were about one in ten million so excuse me if I didn’t find a lot of comfort in that statement. At any rate, they didn’t deal with “masses” so we were immediately sent over to the Oncology department where of course, they did. One thing I’ll say about Duke University Medical Center, they move fast if they need to. Our appointment was in two days time and this time both Kevin and myself accompanied Keely to the doctor.






By now, they thought that possibly the thing is an Aneurysmal Bone Cyst, hereby referred to as an ABC. Knowing as many doctors as I do, many of them orthopedic guys, I was on the phone trying to find out everything about ABC’s that have ever been written. Being the Google queen that I am, no stone was left unturned. The problem is that ABC’s, the most likely scenario, are almost identical to several types of bone cancer so the fact that they didn’t think cancer was likely was not particularly soothing. As a matter of fact, the more I read, the more concerned I was getting. After all, we were talking about Keely MacDonald, the biggest trouble magnet on Earth!






We went to the appointment and met our doctor, Dr. Shalini Ramasunder. If I had searched a million years, I could not have found a more perfect fit for us and Keely than Dr. Ramasunder. She was young, fun, knowledgeable with an incredible bed side manner. More importantly, she watched Lost and had the exact same birthday as Keely, October 17th, which gave us some common ground to discuss. She explained that there was a very large mass in Keely’s pelvis and that she was amazed that Keely had withstood the pain. (I got a very dirty look here as I had been ignoring her pain for months). Not only that, but Keely needed to go on crutches immediately so that she wouldn’t have “catastrophic hip failure.” “What did that even mean” I asked? The femur would accidentally burst through the pelvis and Keely’s life would be essentially ruined. Well that sucked!






But unfortunately, there was a dilemma. The location of the tumor was in such a bad spot that they didn’t know how they could actually biopsy it without contaminating the entire area. This is apparently a big deal because if it is cancer, then not only would the tumor have to come out but anything that either the needle or the tumor had touched would need to come out. So, because the spot where Keely’s ABC was located was so rare, she would need to discuss the situation in “committee.”






What is “committee” you ask? It’s when the many different departments of doctors at Duke get together to discuss “complicated” cases and try to figure out the best way to handle the situation. Kevin and I weren’t thrilled that her case was so complicated and the fact that it made it to “committee” wasn’t as exciting as you would think. At any rate, a decision was rendered that they would attempt a needle biopsy which would require an anesthesiologist, a surgeon, a pathologist and a cardio thoracic surgeon on stand by since the tumor was located directly next to the femoral artery. Well, this was just getting better and better. I was actually starting to feel a little proud of Keely by just how fucked up this situation was!






The biggest problem with the test was that the only way to stop testing was if it was cancer. If it was cancer, they would stop all surgery and begin cancer treatments. They wouldn’t do any surgery until the cancer was dead (or you are, I suppose). Even if the biopsy was clear, it didn’t mean you don’t have cancer. It just meant they had to go in and do major surgery and take out even more of the mass. If it was still clear they would remove the entire thing and hopefully, plug the hole with a bone graft. So, we had a game plan. Biopsy (hopefully no cancer), surgery (hopefully still no cancer), removal of stupid irritating tumor, bone graft to fix the tumor and then 3 months on crutches while the bone graft filled in.






Ok, that’s not so, so terrible I was thinking. We can handle this. We make a billion arrangements with the school (and shout out to Duke Special Services, you were awesome here). Meanwhile, Keely’s roommate had decided that Keely was making up the entire situation up for “attention” so as you can imagine, things were tense there. Her room was also on the 3rd floor and that was never going to work as Keely was already on crutches and navigating the campus alone was no picnic but stairs? Forget about it. Therefore Keely would need to change rooms for her second semester. Two girls, Kinsley and Ronnie, offered to have Keely move into a triple with them and they offered to help take care of her. This magnanimous offer would turn out to be a lifesaver so a little shout out to them as well. THANKS KINSLEY AND RONNIE!!






We also had to figure out handicapped parking, bathrooms, how to get to classes and therapy, basically the works. Her biopsy was scheduled for November 16th and arrangements had to be made for Keely to receive incompletes in her courses as we didn’t think she would be returning again before January. As you can imagine, it was a very fun time in the MacDonald household. It’s amazing how the domino effect comes into play with a situation like this. Keely has a sister at Duke and the sheer stress and worry about Keely was affecting her as well.






We went down for the biopsy where Keely promptly passed out after seeing the IV needle. This was going to be loads of fun! Kevin and I were talking to the radiologist who was going to be doing the needle biopsy. “Are you aware of Keely’s situation” we asked him? His reply: “I don’t think there’s a doctor at this hospital who’s not aware of your daughter’s situation.” And this was supposed to make me feel better HOW?






At any rate, they did the biopsy and the news was good: no cancer yet. We scheduled the surgery for November 23rd so we could yet again have a screwed up Thanksgiving break and take Keely home to recover. She was sore from the biopsy, the crutches were killing her, and she was under orders to get as much school work done as possible before the surgery. She had the end of the semester and her finals coming up.






We had our last pre-op appointment and we met some of the many doctors who would be involved in the surgery. Other than our orthopedic oncologist, Dr. Ramasunder, we meet Dr. Brigman, the senior orthopedic oncologist at Duke. This was a two person operation so they were going to be working as a team. They explained the procedure and told Keely that because of the large incision, she might lose all feeling down her left leg. Keely asked Dr. Brigman “does that mean if I get a mosquito bite on that leg, that it won’t itch?” He was speechless. It was so funny that he was completely stymied. Apparently, this is not the typical question asked about this condition. At any rate, we were all psyched to get this thing done and the tumor out of there. Keely had already been on crutches for three weeks and she was none too happy about the situation.






Day of the surgery. November 23, 2009, we showed up at Duke at an ungodly hour to sit around and wait. We live about an hour from Duke and we had to be there around 6:30 a.m. so we started the day out tired. We waited and waited and finally they called Keely back. They put in her IV, she didn’t pass out this time and then we waited. And waited some more. Apparently the first surgery of the day was running longer than anticipated so they were behind schedule. Finally they took Keely back there.






Some of the rest of this is heresay since Kevin and I weren’t actually in the operating room and we got the information second hand. Apparently, after giving Keely several loopy drugs, she proceeded to entertain the entire operating room telling them all about how her Thanksgiving was going to suck because she would be stuck in the hospital so wouldn’t it be great if they could all come and hang out with her. She told them about the shows she watched on TV, joked around with them, you get the picture. I was informed later that the entire OR was in stitches and that Dr. Ramasunder had never seen anything like it. No wonder they finally put her to sleep.






Finally, around 5:00 pm we were paged to the phone to talk to the doctor in the OR. The good news was that it wasn’t cancer, the bad news was that the damage was way, way more extensive than they thought. You see, they had told us that if the tumor had gone through her acetabulum (the cartilage that protects the pelvis from the femur), she would have been in tremendous pain and wouldn’t have been able to cope. As it turns out, not only had it burned through the acetabulum but it had created a hole the size of a half dollar. As a result, they couldn’t do the bone graft and couldn’t fill in the massive hole in her pelvis. The only option left was a “complete pelvic reconstruction”. Now that is a horrible situation because once you start down that road, there’s only so many years left before you can no longer fix the pelvis. Doing something like this to a 20 year old is a nightmare situation that nobody wanted to consider, and consider it they had - for hours. Finally, they decided to close her up and wait and see what her body did to handle the situation. After all, she was only 20. Of course, Kevin and I didn’t know all this at the time. We were busy celebrating the “no cancer” news with Andie over dinner.






When we heard the news we were pretty decimated, I’m not going to lie. They told us she would never run again, never do anything high impact, she would have to be careful for the rest of her life. Her pelvis was already beyond a hip replacement and no bone graft could be attempted at the time. She would be on crutches for 4-6 months (it turned into 6) and the long term outcome was uncertain. Not only that, but ABC’s have a 20% recurrence rate and considering we were talking about KEELY MacDONALD, we weren’t feeling so optomistic. So yeah, not a great day.






I’m going to gloss over how shitty this period was. I will say that it was an extremely painful operation for Keely and the little nerve-cutting thing on her leg was a painfully huge deal. We did get through the period with the child begging me to “kill her if I loved her.” It wasn’t a stellar month and to be honest, we’ve had better Christmas’. However, having said that there were moments of incredible humor even during her hospital stay. If I went into all the details, this post would be about 10 pages long and I’m not going to do that to you but I will say that Keely + Narcotics = some very funny moments. At any rate, she finished her incompletes in school (with A’s), went back to school in January for second semester and soldiered on although she will be forever known as “the girl who was on crutches all year.”






Looking back one year later, it’s all a little hazy. I think the brain does that to protect us so we can get on with our lives. We have an appointment on Thursday and we’re still not sure what to do with Keely. She is doing terrific right now; no pain, getting in shape, finally enjoying her life again. She will eventually have to have surgery because at a minimum she will have terrible arthritis. She’s also still at risk of “catastrophic pelvic failure” because of the massive hole in her pelvis. But she’s happy, optimistic, warm and loving and I wouldn’t trade her for the world.






When this started happening I told her “Keely, in the long run this will be the best thing to ever happen to you. Once you get through this, you will have the knowledge that you can do anything, be anything you want. It will be the benchmark that you compare everything to in your life. Life isn’t about what happens to you, it’s about how you deal with what happens to you. This problem, and how you react to it, will define you as a human being”.






Well, I know that this was long, serious and wordy but to understand me, my life, my kids, and very possibly this blog, it needed to be written. And by the way, if you get a mosquito bite on an area where you have no nerve endings YOU DO NOT FEEL THE BITE. Now you know!

In which keely doesn't really "know" the city

Continuing on the amusing anecdotes for “Keely week,” I will now regale you with a travel story. Here’s the set-up: Keely was in 11th grade and Andie was in 10th grade (I know, I know, family planning at it’s finest!) and the three of us headed up to Boston for a weekend of checking out colleges. The plan was to go to Brown University in Providence on Thursday and then head up to Boston to look at Harvard, Tufts, and Boston College on Friday and Saturday. We flew up to Logan Airport and I had rented a car from Hertz and we were good to go.



Since I had no clue how to get anywhere, I paid extra for Hertz Neverlost, their patented GPS system. I’m driving and Keely’s riding shotgun so she’s in charge of programming the GPS system.



Me:          “Keely, plug in Brown University so I know how to get out of here.”



Keely:       “It’s asking the state. I’m putting in Massachusetts.”



Me:           “No Keely, we’re going to Rhode Island first.”



Keely:       “Ok, it’s asking do you know the state and I’m putting in Rhode Island.”



Me:            (glancing over) “ … ok what are you doing now?”



Keely:        “Putting in ‘no’ ”



Me:            “’No’ to what?”



Keely:         “it says do you know the city and I’m putting in no”



Me:            “You do know the city, it’s Providence”



Keely:        “Yeah, but we don’t really ‘know’ the city”



Me:            “What? The city is Providence.”



Keely:        “Yeah, I know that but we don’t really know the city.”



Me:           “Keely, the CITY IS PROVIDENCE”



Keely:       “Yeah, but like when I get directions in Greensboro, I really know the city”



By now Andie and I are dying of laughter because Keely keeps answering “no” like if she knew the city (Providence) the directions would be “Keely, go to that Dunkin Doughuts at the top of the hill and make a right.” It was unbelievable. I could not stop laughing and thought I might actually die in the car. After about 10 minutes I told Keely, “just put in Providence and when they ask the street put in Thayer Street so we can actually get the hell out of Logan Airport and head towards Rhode Island.”



So there you are: life with Keely. And next time you get asked, “do you know the city?” I want you to think really hard “Do you KNOW the city or just the name of it?”

In which keely is robbed at gunpoint

Since we are going to be celebrating “Keely week” I feel I must share the quintessential Keely story. She actually told this story to some people while in London and of course, she tells it much better than I, but I know you’ll appreciate it. In our family, we have a huge list of what we like to call “Keelyisms”. Keely is a very bright girl who hasn’t a lick of common sense and tends to speak before she thinks. It’s from these two personality traits that some of the funniest incidents ever emerge and today I’m going to share one of them with you. I know if Keely were sitting beside me right now, she would be correcting me left and right about the details of the story but she’s not here so I’m on my own.



This incident occurred when Keely was a senior in high school 3 years ago. In our household, dinners were often staggered as people had various after school/work activities and therefore needed to eat at different times. Daniel and Andie both had after-school sports and would arrive home around 6:30 absolutely starving so wanted dinner ready at that time while Keely had swimming practice around 6:00-8:00 and would eat early and then go to practice. Often, the only thing we actually ate together as a family was frozen yogurt which was the big treat in our house. There is a dessert shop called Maxie B’s that we frequented on a daily basis. It had ice cream, frozen yogurt and baked goods and they were all delicious. On the day in question, Keely decided to be a champ and run by and pick up the frozen yogurt on the way back from swimming practice. It really wasn’t that far out of the way and didn’t take a long time so even though she had loads of homework to do, she agreed.



However, on this day Keely seemed to be running late and I was starting to wonder where she was when the phone rang and Keely was on the line.



Keely:      “Hi Mom”


Me:          “Keely, where are you?”


Keely:      “I’m still at Maxie B’s. I have to wait around for the police.”


Me:          “The police? Why? What happened?”


Keely:       “Maxie B’s just got robbed.”


Me:          “Oh my god!  Are you alright? What happened?”


Keely:       “Yeah, I’m fine. Here’s what happened. I was at the counter ordering our five desserts and some sketchy guy walks in, right?”



Me:           “Ok, right.”


Keely:       “… and I’m the only customer there and the two girls (the manager and a schoolmate of Keely’s who worked there) are getting my order together. The guy had been standing in the corner and he got of the phone …”



Me:           “ok and …”


Keely:       “…so the guy walks up to me and pulls out a gun and starts waving it around and says, give me all your money!”


Me:           “Oh shit!”


Keely:       "…and the manager (who’s a tough kid around 23 years old) says, NO!”


Me:           “WHAT?”


Keely:        “…so the guys waving the gun around and acting nuts and starts saying give me the money or I’m going to shoot this girl and he’s pointing the gun at me.”


Me:           “…pointing the gun at you?”



Keely:       “yeah, so …”



Me:          “Oh my God …were you freaking out?”


Keely:       “No, because I’m thinking … oh no… they didn’t even get to put the lids on my yogurts and they’re all melting …”


Me:          “What? Are you serious Keely?”


Keely:       “… so then the guy points the gun at my head and says to the manager, I’m going to kill this girl if you don’t give me the money.”


Me:          (I’m actually speechless at this point so Keely continues)



Keely:      “…so Pender (the schoolmate) is hysterically crying on the floor, I’m standing there panicked about my yogurt melting with a gun to my head, the guy’s yelling that he’s going to kill me if he doesn’t get the money and the manager tells him that there is a security camera that’s filming the entire thing and that he’s going to get caught and go to jail.”


Me:           (still speechless but I mumble) “ … and then what happened?”


Keely:        “…the guy freaks out and runs out of the store.”


Me:          “OH MY GOD! Do you want me to come over there?”



Keely:      (continuing on and ignoring me) “… but don’t worry mom, they put the yogurt in the freezer so it won’t melt before I’m home”



Me:          (dryly) “well thank god Keely because out of all the stuff you just told me, the fear of my yogurt melting was the greatest!”



Keely:       “yeah, and they offered to comp me the yogurt but I told them that it wasn’t their fault so I just paid for it anyways.”


Me:          “you did what?”



So that’s it. The police came and scolded the manager for not giving up the money. Kevin and I were livid that Keely was put in that position. You’re always supposed to give up the money in the till and you never endanger anyone over small change like that. As it turns out, the guy was on a huge crime spree and had robbed both before and after Maxie B’s but he got caught later that night and Keely became an instant celebrity.



When asked if she would ever go back to Maxie B’s she replied, “yeah, probably tonight” and she did.



So there you are. The kid was completely unphased by the incident and just figured that “hey, this is going to be a great story in my college applications!”



Yep, so that’s Keely. This story is just the tip of the iceberg and we’re going to enjoy an entire week of them. Stay tuned …

In which keely decides to make an entrance

I’ve decided that in honor of Keely Rae MacDonald’s 21st birthday (which was yesterday) I will be having a “Keely” week. If sharks can have their own week, why not Keely MacDonald so without further ado …



I know I mentioned earlier that I had easy pregnancies and had a difficult time gaining weight, which for me, was like hitting the jackpot. In fact, I had no morning sickness, no limitations, no nothing. However, around 8 months I did start having Sciatica problems. As anyone who has had this happen can attest to, this is not just a pain in the ass but in reality, a huge pain in the back. One moment everything would be fine and then the next, the kid would get on your nerve (literally) and no matter where you were, at least in my case, you would have to lay flat on your back. This happened constantly in the last month of my pregnancy with Keely, hitting me in the grocery store, Walmart, you name it! It was incredibly inconvenient.



So by 8 months I was starting to get a little bit irritable about the entire situation. On the day that Keely began knocking at the door, I woke up, went to the gym to go swimming, the only activity I could do at this point since racquetball was no longer an option, and then came home feeling sorry for myself and decided to eat a pound of peanut M&M’s. Of course, I was feeling kind of sick when I remembered I was supposed to meet a friend for lunch. Feeling nauseous the entire time, I finally made my escape back to my rented condo and lay flat on my back watching soap operas.



Before I knew it, I feel wetness and I start thinking, “Great! As if this doesn’t suck enough now I’m having incontinence.” I go to the bathroom, call Kevin at work, and announced that my life officially sucks. Kevin asked me if maybe my water broke? What? I was two weeks early and everyone was always telling me first babies are late so this had never even occurred to me. He insisted I call the doctor’s office and of course, they made me come in to get checked out.



Sure enough, my water broke and they told me to go directly to the hospital. I told them I couldn’t because I hadn’t even packed a bag and was in no way ready to have a baby! I went home, met Kevin, packed up my bag and off we went to the hospital. At this point, Keely decided to fuck with my life. She decided to just chill, painfully, on my spine. I think the only good thing that could be said for that evening is that Kevin, who always tells people that he’s 6’4”, was found to be 6’5”. It’s true! They made me walk around so long in the stupid hall that I was bored, and I measured him myself. At any rate, Keely broke my water, and then stalled. Nothing happened; except for some pain followed by more pain. Finally, they started pumping me full of Pitocin and sent in the anesthesiologist to put in an epidural.



Doctor:      “How can I help you?”



Me:            “I’d like to die.”



Doctor:       “Excuse me”



Me:             “I’D LIKE TO DIE!!”



Doctor:        “I can give you an epidural”



Me:             “Can you just inject an air bubble into my blood stream and kill me?”



Doctor:       “Ummm…I don’t think I can do that”



Me:             “Fine, just give me the goddamn epidural then.”



He did. I spent the rest of the night bitching at Kevin, calling him names, telling him that he would never touch me again. You get the gist of it.



Finally, at 7:02 on October 18, 1989 they put the most beautiful baby in the world on my stomach. All was right with the world at that moment, or so it seemed. However, Keely’s arrival created quite an upheaval; such an upheaval, in fact, that the event was referred to from then on as “the San Francisco Earthquake”. So there began the exceptional life of Keely MacDonald who, as always, likes to make an entrance. I wanted to introduce her to you because she has said and done so many ridiculous things that there will be many stories about her in the future. So until then …