Nothing's so bad...

I hate this damn plastic in my chest.

Why did I ever bother with reconstructive surgery? It’s left me with a wound that refuses to heal and an attitude so bleak, I don’t even like myself.

"Turn that frown upside down!" my husband the comedian tries to cajole me. But I’m not cracking any smiles for him or anybody else.

I would die, just die, to crawl in my big soft bed and snarl into my favorite position on my side. I’m sick of that ancient recliner I’ve been sleeping in for the last month. But nobody tells you that you can’t lie on your side with expanders in your chest. There’s no give to that plastic. You might as well have a couple of frisbees sewn inside yourself that poke you in the ribs and dig into your sides.

Oh for a nap. On my side. In my bed.

"It gets better," Deb and Terri promise. I’m sure it does. It gets better if the surgeon fills the plastic with fluid so that the edges become round and soft. But that doesn’t happen with a slow healing wound.

"It’ll be a while before we can fill you up," Dr. Montag warned.

If I could go back in time one month from today, I’d tell my surgeons, "Don’t bother with reconstruction! I’ll be happy with my boy chest."

And I would. Oh, I would.

"No, you wouldn’t," Deb says. "Once you get on track and have your fills, you’ll be glad you went for reconstruction."

It hardly matters now. The die has been cast, and I have no choice but to see the whole miserable thing through. But it galls me that Deb and Terri have been so patient and uncomplaining while I’m such a baby.

Sometimes I need to be shamed out of my petulant attitude. Sara Ockander, a friend of mine half my age and half my size, for that matter, reminded me how grateful I should be. "I’m sure you realize," she said, "how lucky you are that, in the middle of all of this, you’re not facing radiation and chemo like so many other women."

That brought me up short. I suddenly thought of an old Irish saying - "Nothing’s so bad that it can’t get worse."

The worst became a reality for a lot of good people in the last couple of weeks. A young man in Millard, Nebraska, marched into his high school and shot his principal and vice-principal. The principal, an energetic young man, will survive. The vice-principal died. She was a kind woman with a lovely family who’d had the unpleasant duty of disciplining a student, never imagining he’d return to take her life and his own.

Before she was even buried, tragedy struck in Tucson. It was the same sort of senseless violence, unfathomable and shocking. Six people are dead, including a beautiful little nine-year-old girl, the apple of her father’s eye. A young congresswoman lies fighting for all the rest of her life.

And right here at home, our family deals with its own tragedy. My sister Terri called this afternoon. "Did you hear? Brian’s brother died a couple of hours ago."

We sat grieving on the phone together for our adored brother-in-law. Brian’s brother had been rushed to the hospital last night with a perforated colon. It would have been treatable except that he had waited too long, and infection set in and shut his organs down. He was Brian’s only surviving relative from his immediate family.

Suddenly, a little irritating plastic doesn’t seem quite so bad. In fact, what seems most imperative is that my brother-in-law feels the comfort and love of family, even if it’s the family that came tagging along with Deb.

So many families have been torn apart this week. I’m grateful for mine. I’m grateful for my brother-in-law whose dead pan humor and devotion to my sister has endeared him to all of us.

And, even though I know it’s only plastic, there’s no denying I’ll be grateful when it’s gone from my chest.

And I can take a nap.
On my side.
In my bed.

Go to the Devil!

Note to self: Never write a blog after a three-day migraine. The
world is an infinitely better place when your head isn’t pounding.

It also helps to have a friend like Peg Ley. Wise and comforting, my high school typing teacher has always been an icon to me - and to about a million other former students as well. I visited her a few nights ago, snuggling into the deep leather comfort of her living room sofa with a cup of hot tea to boot. Peg is much the way I imagine Mom might be had she lived - ageless, beautiful, nurturing.

In spite of losing her husband and best friend of more than 60 years last May and suffering a heart attack herself, Peg refuses to be unhappy.

"How do you do it, Peg?" I asked her not long ago.

"Every day," she said with simple but eloquent resolve, "I choose to be happy."

Someone once said when you leave the Ley house, you always feel better than when you came. I departed from Peg’s house that evening feeling loved and contented. It didn’t hurt either that my sister Mary brought over chicken lasagna after I got home. Steaming, fragrant and brimming over, that lasagna spoke to me. It spoke to Tommy, too, who was still home from school on Christmas break. We looked at that beautiful pasta. Then we looked at each other.

"We have to save some for Dad," I said faintly.

In the same second, we tore into that lasagna as if it was our Last Supper. Tommy could easily have inhaled the entire pan, aluminum and all. I could have, too, for that matter. But Tommy’s a 280 pound offensive tackle. I was doing my best, however, to match him pound for pound on Mary’s lasagna.

Mary lingered for a moment before we devoured her dish.

"Have you heard any thing about your surgery date?" I asked.

"No," she waved her hand dismissively. "I’ve practically forgotten about it."

That’s Mary for you. Unlike the rest of us, she’s never once stewed about her annual mammograms.

"Who ARE you?" I once said in exasperation after she nearly forgot to schedule a mammogram. "How is it that you never worry about this?"

She was genuinely surprised. "Isn’t that why we have mammograms?" her eyes widened. "So that we can catch any thing early?"

To this day, I fail to comprehend that wise and sensible logic at all, and so do the rest of my sisters.

"I’ve just been in the hospital a few more times than all of you," Mary shrugged. "Things always work out."

It’s true. Mary started out her infant life with a prolonged stay in the hospital. When she was 36 hours old, her obstructed infant bowels required immediate surgery. It was a long time before she came home to us, and I remember falling in love with her the first time I saw her nestled in my mother’s arms. With scads of soft brown hair, she was tiny, beautiful and perfect in every way.

We teased her all her life that she was Dad’s favorite. But I think it was true. Dad was very protective of his little daughter who’d struggled so valiantly to survive her first week of life. In fact, we were all protective of our little Mary.

"I know I’m younger than she is," my sister Terri once told me, "but I always worry about Mary!"

Endless bouts with her sensitive kidneys sent Mary to the hospital several times, and I know my mother always feared Mary would be frail forever.

But she grew up into a beautiful, poised young woman with the carriage of a queen. She and her husband raised three gorgeous daughters, all who look uniquely like Mary and walk with the same regal bearing.

Often, we’ve been tricked into being a little overprotective of Mary. But there is not a stronger, more competitive girl in the world. I’ve been humiliated many times on the tennis court by my little "fragile" sister. In high school, she and a group of feisty, determined little girls, who still remain close today, managed to snare the school’s first state championship volleyball title.

And it was that same grit that helped her survive our mother’s death. Mary was 15-years-old when Mom died, and without complaint, she stepped into the role of chief cook and bottle washer.

"Little Mother," Mom tenderly murmured from her sick bed as Mary prepared meals and cared for our youngest siblings. The shy little dark-eyed girl who always hovered so close to Mom became my mother’s primary nurse. She bathed her, fed her, soothed her and often climbed into bed to hold her.

After Mom died, Mary mothered my two little brothers, Tom and Jeff, and became a pillar of strength for my grieving father. In the meantime, though, she was determined to be happy. Resuming her life at school, she enjoyed her friends more than she ever had before. And with that determined "Go to the Devil!" look in her eye that I knew so well, she earned a state volleyball championship gold medal.

My good friend Peg Ley and my little sister Mary are very much alike. Refusing to surrender to grief or worry, both choose to be happy. Every day, Peg chooses to attend a grief support group, climb on her treadmill, and engage with her legions of friends.

And my sister Mary, joyful and serene, nevertheless confronts the enemy, breast cancer, with the same steely look reserved for every opponent she’s ever faced on the other side of the net.

"Go to the Devil!" it says.

And I feel sorry for the Devil.

Dark Night

"The dark night of the soul."

Whoever coined the phrase?

Christmas was a lovely gift, but three nights later, I woke with a raging migraine headache.

The pain abated in the morning, thankfully. Deb, Terri and I were scheduled to see the plastic surgeon in Omaha. Terri was nearly ready for her final operation to replace her filled expanders with permanent implants, Deb was scheduled for her second fill, and I was getting my tubes out - I hoped.

Nothing in the world, not even a migraine, would stop me. I was sick of draining those vile tubes and carrying them attached to my body 24 hours a day. My head would hold out, I told myself, long enough to get those damn tubes out.

But it wasn’t 30 minutes after Deb had picked me up and we merged into busy interstate traffic that I felt the subtle throbbing in my head. Deb’s little daughter Sydney chatted companionably in the back seat, but I closed my eyes to her chatter and to gray forbidding skies and willed myself to still the pain in my head.
We had just turned off at Lincoln to pick up Terri when I felt the lurch in my stomach.

"Oh Deb," I gasped, "pull over!"

She zipped into a muddy drive near scattered business buildings, and I tumbled out of the car to be sick.

"Just get it all out, Cath," I heard the soothing words of my sister.

It was humiliating to be throwing up on the side of the road with busy cars passing and my 11-year-old niece gaping with wide eyes from the car.

"Oh, Deb, I’m so sorry," I moaned when at last I fell into the car. "I shouldn’t have come. I’ll stay at Terri’s, and you two go ahead."

"No!" Deb protested. "You came all this way to get rid of those tubes, and we’re getting them out." Deb completely understood my antipathy. "If we have to get a bucket at Terri’s and take it along," she patted my arm, "that’s what we’ll do."

Sydney offered words of encouragement. "Brandi and I throw up into a bucket all the time!" My sweet niece.

Terri was just as sympathetic, and as we sped off the last 60 miles to Omaha, I felt my stomach settle.

The three of us were ushered right into the same exam room at Dr. Montag’s, and it was a relief when Erin, the physician’s assistant, called me to be examined first.

"Those tubes are ready to come out!’ she chirped.  I took a deep breath as instructed, and Erin and another nurse pulled each tube from either side at the same time. But it wasn’t quite over. The incision on the left side of my chest wasn’t looking good.

"I want Dr. Montag to take a look at that," Erin said.

According to Dr. Montag, the incision wasn’t healing properly. "Hopefully, it’ll resolve itself," she said kindly, "but if not, we’ll have to go back into surgery and repair it."

A setback. And a migraine to boot. But Terri, to my astonishment, had boobs! It was miraculous to see. Deb, too, was coming along nicely and was ready for another fill. But after a few brief instructions, Dr. Montag said she needed to see me in a week.

I was happy for my sisters, but back in the car, I could only close my eyes and will my head and stomach to survive the ride home. On the way home, however, Deb received a text from her daughter Brandi. The husband of a former student of mine had drowned when the ice broke while he was ice fishing. The news was a cold shock, and we were all silenced.

After what seemed forever, I was home at last. Heading straight for bed, I barely acknowledged my family. But all night long, my head pounded, my stomach heaved, and I spiraled into a kind of despair. I thought about Bill, the young man who had drowned, and of two other good parents of families I had taught, both whom had died of cancer during the week. When fitful sleep came, I dreamt of my dead parents.  Only now they were young, and I was a four-year-old basking in the glow of my mother’s smile.  In the bizarre fashion of dreams, I suddenly witnessed the horrific suffering of small abused babies in the house next door, and even as a young child myself, I called out to God in my dreams.

Morning came after a long, long night, and my headache finally began to fade. But the weight of sorrow crushed me all day long. When Tommy left that evening to watch the Husker game at a friend’s house and John did his part time stint at the city library, I sat down to pray and say the Rosary, something I’d not done since before my surgery. Pulling out my old Bible, I searched for consoling words of comfort and asked God to help me.

The weight lifted a little, and that night I slept a dreamless sleep between my snoring husband on one side and the comforting nearness of Willy the Cat on the other. This morning, I rose shakily to eat breakfast for the first time in three days.

It was New Years Eve. During the night, a passing storm had covered the world with a soft blanket of snow.

The first thing I did was rustle through the pages of the newspaper to find the year end poem I always enjoyed by local columnist George Ayoub. Encapsulating the national and local events of an entire year, the guy managed to arrange it all in a poem. Every thing was there - the triumphs and defeats, the deaths of those well loved and the drama of those living who are not so loved.

"And bless, too, living angels, who make this a brighter world," George wrote. "May high they hold the flag of peace, bright, shining and unfurled."

It was a little Godly message. It made me feel better, those words.

I still didn’t understand sorrowing and suffering. After five and a half decades, I knew suffering helped us grow and to be kinder people. But how did the abuse or starvation of little children benefit anybody? How did a good husband and father struggling for his last seconds in the frigid waters of an ice fishing accident help anyone?

But in the words I’d just read, life marched right alongside death, and good and evil sat closely side by side. And every day, we still strive to find happiness after sorrow, triumph after defeat, and simple joy in the goodness of family, home and work. The only thing I have to pin my hopes on, it always turns out, is my occasionally struggling faith in God. It always comes back to that.

Today is the last day of 2010. It’s been a year of breast cancer and epilepsy. It’s been the loss of my good mother-in-law’s independent life and her children’s hope that she will adjust to her last days in an assisted living facility. Those hard decisions take big chunks out of all of us. But it’s been a year of healing and courage and hope for the future as well.

I don’t know how sorrow plays into the mix.

I only know that after death comes resurrection, and that God is here.

That’s all I know.

But for this last day of 2010, maybe it’s enough.

This Christmas

Some of my sixth graders sent home get well cards with my husband John.

One of them was written by a small boy I had just scolded the week before my surgery.

"I seen you at the mall, Mrs. Howard!" he chirped one morning.

"SAW!" I snapped. "You saw me at the mall."

His eyes rolled to the ceiling. "Who cares? Why do we have to learn this stuff?" he whined.

"So that you don’t sound like an idiot at cocktail parties," I said.

He groaned. "I’ve never been to a cocktail party in my whole life!"

"See?" I said. "Nobody invites idiots to cocktail parties."

He must have recognized a homemade get well card as his golden opportunity for revenge.

"Remember when I SEEN you at the mall, Mrs. Howard?" he wrote. "I SEEN you looking at shoes, and I SEEN your face when you SEEN the black ones. Now I wish I could SEEN your face when you SEEN this card!"

Another little boy, best friend to the mall rat, also penned a touching card.

"Thenks to you Missus Howerd I am the vary best speler in the hole middel schol. Are you a grat teecher or waht?"

These sixth graders really crack themselves up.

My operation was a week ago today, but it seems like another lifetime. I miss my students, even the smart alecky ones. And by God, they better be missing me. In spite of that, it’s been a good week. John rises early to ply me with medication and check out my drainage tubes. My son Tommy, with his grizzly bear paws, gently washed my hair the first day I was home from the hospital. Deb washed it again on Tuesday while Mary cleaned our house. Then they both presented me with a Christmas present - a Columbian fleece jacket with a matching hat, gloves and a fuzzy scarf. Deb arranged the scarf around my neck so that each long end draped over my boobless chest.

"See that?" she guided me toward the mirror. "Now nobody can even tell."

I’m lucky to have two sisters navigating the waters ahead of me. They know the answers to all my questions about draining tubes, the best way to sleep sitting up, and when to start the Milk of Magnesia. It turns out that starting it before a three-hour car trip home is never a good idea.

But to be on the other side, as Terri and Deb like to say, is an enormous relief, pure and simple. It must be a little like dying and waking up in Heaven.

I wasn’t exactly sure how the big unveiling of my new chest would occur, but it all happened in the hospital with very little fan fare.

"Let me sneak a peak at your dressings," the morning nurse smiled cheerfully as she pulled apart the velcro tabs of the corset wound tightly around my incisions.

And just like that, John and I were staring at my scarred chest. He didn’t flinch, and neither did I. It wasn’t so very shocking, really. It was just that every thing was gone except two horizontal wounds on the chest of what appeared to be an adolescent school boy.

"It looks good, Cath," John said.

My husband. He’s a terrible liar, but in that moment, he was the loveliest man I’d ever known.

Now that I’m home, I don’t like to look at my chest unless I have to. Sometimes, however, I force myself to examine it from all angles, and I am reassured that it’s still me - just a little bit less so.

While I sleep and rest and heal, I think of the kids at school. This is my favorite time of year. In English class, we always draw names for a gift exchange. Even the juniors enjoy the secrecy and delight of choosing a random name from the hat. But I didn’t have time for a gift exchange before my surgery this year.
And yesterday was Christmas Cheer, a day set aside for games and class competitions. My favorite event is the age old "Bat Spin", a relay race in which each student leans over to press his forehead against the end of a baseball bat and spins in reckless abandon. The kids then come up for air, dizzy and disoriented, tumbling into each other and colliding in confusion. Every year, I laugh until my sides ache.

But the best part of the day is Mass followed by the annual school Christmas pageant. Our seniors play the parts of Mary and Joseph and the angels. Some of the sturdier boys wear ancient bathrobes to portray the lowly shepherds, and there’s always a real Baby Jesus. Last year, Baby Jesus wailed piercingly on Mary’s lap until one of the shepherds, who in reality was the oldest brother of the infant, discreetly slapped a pacifier into Baby Jesus’ mouth. Even though the kids feel a little awkward donning angel wings and bathrobes, they sincerely try to portray the story of that long-ago miraculous birth, and their earnest reverence never fails to choke me up.

I missed out on all of it this year. Now tomorrow’s Christmas Eve, and I’m already sad that I won’t be squeezing into a church pew with John and Kenny and Tommy for Christmas Mass. Afterwards, Kenny and Tommy will join the rest of my sprawling big family at Joe’s house. My brother Joe, who reminds me so much of Dad, will greet everybody warmly at the door, and there will be singing and praying and eating and drinking and laughing.

But John and I will spend the evening quietly at home. At precisely 10 o’clock, my faithful husband will help me drain my tubes and change my dressings. Then we will wait for Kenny and Tommy to return home so that we can exchange our own gifts.

But I’ve already received my best Christmas present in the form of a phone call from Dr. Grange.

"Good news!" I could hear the smile on her face. "Your pathology report came back today - no evidence of any cancer at all!"

I was speechless for just a second, and then I thanked her over and over again.

"You’re welcome!" she laughed warmly. "And Merry Christmas!"

I sat for a long time cradling the phone in my lap. My sisters and I have never taken life for granted. We’ve learned to savor every holiday and graduation and wedding as if they might never occur again. But for the first time ever, I felt the possibility of a long future folding out in front of me.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. I will have missed out on all the school festivities, the beautiful Mass celebrating the birth of Our Lord, and precious time with my family. But Christmas will come again next year. And the year after that, and the year after that.

In the meantime, I will enjoy this quiet holiday with my husband and the cats. As it turns out, it’s been the very best Christmas of my life..

I hope it is for you, too.

Merry Christmas.

Peace for Cathy

For those of you who follow this blog, you'll know right away that it's not being written by its founder and CEO today. I'm Deb.

Cathy was blessed with a gift of writing.  Me?  Not so much. 

My siblings Tom and Mary, my stepmom Kris, and I headed for Omaha at 6:45 am.  We had no idea how the roads were going to be after the ice and sleet the night before.  I prayed before going to bed the night before that the weather would not prevent us from being with Cathy on her surgery day.  Cathy had been there for Terri and me every step of our journey. It would have been devastating to have not been able to send her off to surgery with a big hug and to let her know how proud we were. 

Thank goodness I didn't hear my cell phone ringing.  Cathy and John left for Omaha 45 minutes before we did this morning.  Cathy didn't care for the conditions and seeing cars and semi's in the ditches didn't help.  She called my home phone to tell me not to chance it.  However, my daughter Sydney informed her that we had departed.  That's when Cathy placed a call to my cell phone which I didn't hear. Good thing.
The interstate improved and Tom, our driver, got us all to Omaha safely.  But first we made a stop in Lincoln to pick up Terri, and for the rest of the way, we all wondered how Cathy was doing, what she was thinking, and how her spirits were holding up.  We couldn't wait to get to the hospital to see her before the nurse wheeled her off to surgery. 

As we entered her hospital room, she was smiling and seemed calm.  "Johnny", as she affectionately calls her husband, at least acted as though he really might be happy to see us.  John is just a big ol' teddy bear once you get past the growl. Even though he gets "Browned" out easily, his term for spending too much time with all of the Brown family, he makes Mary and me lunch every other Tuesday.  It's one of our favorite days.

Cathy was so relieved to see we had made it safely.  Amazingly, John said Cathy had slept most of the way to Omaha.  I was pretty sure she wasn't going to get much if any sleep the night before. 

"Were you talking about your world history class in the car?" Tom teased John.  "That'll put her out faster than any meds."

Seeing Cathy in that hospital bed was so surreal.  That had been me just three weeks ago and Terri three months before that.  We were so ready to get Cathy to this day and so glad it was finally here. Shortly she would be "on the other side" of this journey - the recovery side, the healing side, the side where a huge burden has literally been lifted off  her chest. 

Cathy looked so angelical lying in her hospital bed.  For those of you who believe you know Cathy with her warm smile, keen sense of humor, the sincerity in her voice and heart when she's talking about somebody who is ill or hurting, or the hundreds of rosaries she has said for so many - well, there's another side.  And now, after every family secret she's blabbed about me, it's my turn.

We were all growing up together in Denver when, one afternoon, Cathy helped my brother Rick, age 7, and me, age 5, into our swimming suits. 

"Walk on down to the convent," she told us. "The nuns got a brand new backyard pool, and if you just ring the doorbell and ask, they'll let you swim!"

Rick and I were excited beyond belief.  Our little legs carried us down that block so fast. We could not wait to jump in that pool!  A nun, covered head to toe with a black habit and veil as was the custom, answered the door and stared at us rather strangely. 

"We're here to swim in your pool!" we burst out.

That good sister looked at us as if we were lunatics

"There's no pool here," she regretfully informed  us.  "You need to go home now."

Then we heard the snorting. Across the street and behind a bush were Cathy, Joe and Mick, gasping for air because they were laughing so hard.

 Yep.  That was our sweet Mrs. Howard.

Cathy came through her surgery just as Dr. Grange and Dr. Montag had hoped.  There appeared to be no surprises, and everything went very well.  Cathy and John's youngest son Tommy was able to join us after his semester finals.  When Cathy was out of recovery and John, Tommy, and the rest of us surrounded her, I detected a new twinkle in her eye - a twinkle that indicated she knew how much she was loved.  But the biggest part of that twinkle was the freedom she felt.  She was finally free -not just of breast cancer - but of all the worry she carried for me, my sisters and herself.  Cathy always felt it was her mission to protect us from breast cancer.  As the oldest of  ten, she witnessed and comprehended the battle our young mom fought more intimately than we did. 

Cathy has been such a gift to us and others. I am so happy that she has given herself this gift of peace.  Welcome to the other side, my dear sister.  I love you so much!

Almost there...

The presents are wrapped, the laundry’s done, the bills are paid.

And Thursday is it.

I don’t have to go through with this, I think.  Maybe I’ll call Dr. Grange. 

“I’ve changed my mind,” I’ll say.  “I’ve decided to take my chances.”

She’d understand.

The trouble is I had to go and start this damn blog.  I’ve been milking sympathy from everybody I know for months.  Some things, like secret elopements and double mastectomies, you just don’t back out of.

My stomach is turning over like a baby in utero when it rolls over.  But I’m forcing myself to be calm.  I’m not losing arms or legs or kidneys or any thing useful.  I’m getting rid of a couple of pockets of fat.  Is that so awful? 

People talk about “losing your femininity” with the loss of your breasts.  But my boobs barely put in an appearance until I became pregnant.  Even then, I never used them to breastfeed.  The truth is, my boobs are nothing to write home about.

But Terri and Deb said something that saddened me.  They have no sensation in their chests.  It’s like your jaw, Terri said, when the dentist squirts novacaine in it.  You touch your mouth and feel the strangeness of your own skin, but it’s as if you’re touching another person.

I’ve realized, in the last few months, what I really like to use my boobs for is hugging.  It has been a joy to hold my husband, my sons, baby animals and heartbroken students close to me.  When I hug people I love, I suppose my breasts feel like an extension of myself.

But it’s a silly thing to whine about.  What would Mom have given to have 40 more years with her family?  Breasts or no breasts, I still have long arms, and I’ll use them to hug every member of my family all at the same time if I want to.

I’m putting the fear in a little compartment off by itself today.  Instead, I will think of my husband John and how he will fold his six foot, seven inch body into a tiny little hospital recliner to nurse me through the night.  I will think about Kenny and Tommy coming home for Christmas and all the Christmases to come with my grandchildren.  I will think about the 60 members of my family squeezing into my brother Joe and his beautiful wife Stef’s house, and how the little ones will belt out “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer!” with all their might, and how someone besides me will open up the Bible and read the tender story from the Book of Luke this Christmas Eve.  And I’ll think about next Christmas when breast cancer is so far behind my sisters and me, that no matter how hard we look, we can’t see it anymore.

That’s the secret to all of this.  You just have to think about the people you love.

So I will not be afraid.  My sisters, Terri and Deb, and my mother Patti have given Mary and me a great gift.  It is because of their breast cancers that we are allowed to have this operation. 

And having the chance to grow old is a pretty good Christmas gift.

I’m almost there.

Dr. Grange

It’s become a joke when we walk into the surgeon’s office together.

"Here are the Mary’s!" the receptionist crows.

Our mother and father, devout Catholics, named all my sisters and me "Mary" and our five brothers "Joseph". Except for one Mary and one Joseph, the rest of us go by our other names.

It’s caused quite a bit of confusion throughout the years, but never so much as when the four of us marched into Dr. Grange’s office armed with our medical records for our first appointment. When we’re traveling in a pack to the surgeons’ offices, we try to alleviate confusion by simply answering to "Mary". But Dr. Grange has tried hard to keep our names straight and always refers to me by my full name, Mary Catherine. The reason for that, I believe, is that both she and I are keenly aware of another Mary Cathryn.

Almost 25 years ago, before she was a surgeon, Dr. Grange was a young slip of a girl married to a boy who was four years behind me in high school. He eventually moved back to Grand Island after med school to join his father in the family optometry practice, and he brought his young bride with him.

Although Dr. Grange never knew me during that period, I knew who she was. I had always liked her husband and thought they made a beautiful couple. She gave birth to a son named Jack and then a beautiful baby girl named Mary Cathryn.

When Mary Cathryn was a few months old, however, she died tragically of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). I remember attending a wedding of a mutual acquaintance shortly after Mary Cathryn’s death. Dr. Grange’s husband, my old high school friend, introduced me to his lovely young wife, and I was painfully aware of the sadness in her eyes. I shook hands with her politely, but really what I wanted to say was, "I have a baby, too. I’m so very sorry." But I didn’t. It seemed to me that she was using every ounce of energy to hold her fragile self together.

They moved away after that. Dr. Grange made the monumental decision to enroll in medical school in Omaha.. I remembered little Mary Cathryn in my prayers, and I was saddened to learn sometime later that her parents’ marriage had not survived. We never saw any of them again after that. Until Terri was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Dr. Grange is currently a noted breast cancer surgeon in Omaha, and she came highly recommended to Terri. The first time all my sisters and I met Dr. Grange at Terri’s first appointment, I told her that we had been briefly introduced many years ago. She was still lovely and personable.

Last week at my pre-op appointment was the first time we had spoken to each other alone. She guided me through the pre-op exam and reassured me about the surgery. Finally, we just talked.

"I always notice your name right away," she smiled.

"I know," I smiled back, "because Mary Cathryn was the name of your little daughter. I still pray for her every day."

Dr. Grange was touched, and all at once, the doctor/patient formalities slipped away, and we were just two women who loved our children.

"I was only going for an hour to shop," she said, describing that day nearly a quarter of a century ago. A good friend persuaded her to leave her baby for the very first time for an outing to the mall. Another good friend offered to watch Mary Cathryn. "I was breast feeding," Dr. Grange recalled, "so I could only be gone for an hour."

But before the hour had passed, little Mary Cathryn was gone. Dr. Grange described the call, her arrival at the hospital, the face of her husband who had arrived first. "I wanted to lie down and die with my baby," she said.

But she couldn’t. Her two-year-old son needed her. "Jack doesn’t remember his baby sister," Dr. Grange said, "but he remembers the time when I was sad." Mother and son still share a powerful bond.

"I always wondered if Mary Cathryn’s death was the reason you decided to go to medical school," I suggested.

"It was," she said. "I couldn’t understand my own baby’s autopsy report."

During that traumatic time in her life, Dr. Grange suffered another tragic loss as well - the death of her closest sister, only 26-years-old, from breast cancer. Her life, which had only before seemed so certain and predictable as a young wife and mother, suddenly veered in a direction she never, I’m sure, could have possibly fathomed. But Dr. Grange sees the divine big picture in her dramatically altered life.

The fact that her baby died during that single hour when her mother left her seems, to Dr. Grange, like a merciful blessing from God. "I couldn’t have watched Mary Cathryn die," she said. And now, reflecting back on her remarkable life, she says she feels as if her baby was telling her, "Goodbye for now, Mom!" Mary Cathryn had completed her journey. Now it was time for her mother to start hers.

"My baby and my sister are my angels," Dr. Grange said. With the help of her two angels, Dr. Grange has saved hundreds and hundreds of women’s lives, my sisters’ and mine included.

Sometimes, in the midst of pain, we are called to change our fates. It can seem overwhelming, unthinkable. Dr. Grange embarked on her own astonishing journey because of a tiny baby called Mary Cathryn. Out of piercing sorrow was born the desire to heal. She healed my sister Terri. And my sister Deb.

It strikes me as no coincidence that our paths have crossed again. Dr. Grange was compelled to change her fate, and she is helping my sisters and me to change ours.

And somewhere, our angels are smiling.