The Lead Story

Normally, I keep the anonymity of my family pretty tight. It is not their choosing to be main characters in my blog. Today is an exception as my family put themselves in the spotlight.

This week, Jack wrote a story about the Boy's mental health challenges on his workplace's website. Mental health problems are now the leading cause of admission at Seattle Children's. The leading cause of admission used to be asthma, but suicide ideation, self-harm, and generalized anxiety and depression are now taking the lead. Take that, respiratory issues! And this change isn't because there is a new miracle cure for asthma. Are kids more depressed than they were a few years ago, or are we breaking down stigma so parents feel comfortable seeking help? Is the world with people connecting on a screen and not in person taking kids down? Has FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) caused depression? I have no idea, but clearly something is afoot.

When Seattle Children's saw their main cause of admissions changing, they made mental health treatment a priority. When one of the division chief's kids was a PBMU patient, the kid becomes the lead story for the newsletter, beating out Seattle Children's CEO's COVID-19 story.

Here is the full story, for those who are curious. 

Jack and the Boy were both very brave to be in this article which is fine and awesome. 

I have one problem with it, though.

The unwritten story: inequity. 

My family is fortunate enough to afford the treatment for the problem. After having a front row seat with my brother's mental health crisis for decades, I had the will to get it done. 

The poorest of the poor can get the best care at the world class Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. Want to send your kid to Wilderness Therapy for twelve weeks or a therapeutic boarding school (TBS) so they don't kill themselves and then hopefully rejoin to the world as a functioning human? Here is how you pay for it:

• Do you have a good job with great health insurance? Doesn't matter. Insurance won't pay for it.
• Are you rich? If yes, write a check and fly your kid to Utah, Colorado or Montana on a private jet. Maybe take it out of Billy's trust fund. If your kid has a trust fund big enough to cover the cost of all of this, it is likely mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, step-dad, etc. have enough funds to cover this without poaching the child's savings.
• Are you upper middle class? Dig into that money you were saving to send your kid to college. At the rate your kid is going now, they aren't going to college. "Retrench" and adjust how you spend your monthly income. Take that bonus and instead of getting a new Audi or Tesla, you have now paid for six months of boarding school. Italy or Thailand for vacation? Nope. Hello, Durgango, Colorado! (Which is actually lovely.) In the long run, this is going to be cheaper than the cost of having your grown-ass adult child live on your couch for thirty years.
• Even for families with means, sending kids back to the motherland is an option. Maybe you have a kind and gentle grandparent or aunt who lives out of state or out of the country who would be willing to love your kid back into recovery. I have friends whose cousins and siblings were shipped back to rural Michigan, Taiwan and India when their mental illness flared. 
• If you are not in the previous groups, feel free to mortgage your house or empty your retirement account.
• Don't own a house that can be remortgaged or have a retirement account? No extended family that is willing to help? Good luck.
• Are you a person of color? Pray to god your kid doesn't flip out when the cops are around. At best, your kid will be locked up in juvie. At worst...I think we all know what the worst is.

Add on top of the tuition extensive travel costs. I spent twenty-five days out of town between June 1 and December 31, 2019 for the Boy's treatment. Think: airfare, hotels, rental cars and restaurants.

If your kid in inpatient treatment, you had better get your own butt to therapy, so add that to your monthly expenses. Kids don't get to the "sleeping-on-the-couch-all-day" stage of life all by themselves. While I didn't necessarily cause the Boy's problems, our family contributed to them. 

Then there is the spiritual cost. I am in the process of rebuilding my psyche and soul as a result of this emotional trauma, and there isn't a price tag for that. 

Do or Die, and My Favorite Drug

Friday, I was having kind of a shitty day at work. I was the only one in the office from my team, which by itself wasn't bad, but it wasn't great, either. I was also having a rough time at home. The Boy was scheduled to come home from camp Saturday, which was good but also stressful. Jack informed me of work schedule for the rest of the summer and September, and it totally sucks. When the three pistons of work, kids and my marriage (notice I don't include anything about my own personal life in this list, because it doesn't exist) all down at the same time, it is it a huge drag.

I didn't pack a lunch on Friday, so I had to punt for food. I could have ordered from Peach and had something delivered, or I could have bought food from the little refrigerator we have in the lunch room. 

Fuck that, I thought. I want a burger. I trekked over to a Belltown pub.

"Do you want a seat at the bar?" the host asked as I was dining alone. The World Cup Brazil versus Belgium was on the three televisions behind the bar.

"Sure," I said. I sat next to a couple who was watching the game. Brazil was down 0-2. The woman's ninety-four year old mother lived in Belgium during World War II. The mother was watching the game from her home in Iowa. I didn't have the heart to tell this woman I was rooting for Brazil. 

Watching this game felt familiar. Two weeks ago, the Boy's soccer team played a tournament in Burlington where they played five games in less then forty-eight hours. The first three games were qualifiers, and the last two were elimination rounds. The Boy's team made it to the finals for their group. For the last game, the boys (young men?) played an equally matched team from Portland sponsored by the Portland Timbers, the MLS team. The Boy's team was sponsored by the Sounders, Seattle's MLS team. Civic pride was at stake.

Both teams played hard. I've never seen a youth soccer game where there was so much heart from both sides on the field. The ball went back and forth, the players charging and sweating and grimacing. Every kid was fully engaged with the game. Parents on the sidelines dropped their usual conversations about life and kids and vacations to focus on the match. It was do or die for both teams.

It was awesome.

So there I was, in a bar on a Friday, watching the same thing play out in Russia between two of the top ten teams in the world. There was no holding back, no doing "just good enough." To lose is to die. These grown men, among the best athletes out of 7.4 billion people on earth, reminded me of the Boy's team in that last game. The size of the audience and the number of people who cared about the game was different, but if you were a parent on that sideline in Burlington in June, it might as well have been the quarter finals of the World Cup.

I am so glad the world has found a replacement for gladiator sports in soccer. Instead of people actually dying, they just feel like they have died when they lose. Sports Illustrated reported that

"Neymar has admitted that suffering elimination from the World Cup with Brazil was the 'saddest moment of my career' and claims he is having a hard time 'finding the strength to play again'."

To paraphrase, he felt like he died. I am sure something in him did die--the dream that he probably had since he was a little kid that he would lead his country to a World Cup victory one day. The dreams of his country died, too.

But Neymar lives, and will play again, even though that doesn't diminish the pain he feels today.

Sometimes life sucks not because you just lost the big game, but because of the thousands of smaller details of your life add up and weigh you down. It isn't one, big, terrible thing like cancer. As a mom, it is the lack of control over everyone else's mood and schedule, being at their mercy, and having no way to escape.

And then my favorite escape came to the rescue...

This week, I am taking Claire-Adele to orientation at the University of Maryland. I have to take three days off of work for this, which I really don't have. I wasn't dreading this trip, but I wasn't exactly thinking of it as a full-filled, exciting vacation as the main gist would be how I am going to part with my first born and approximately fifty thousand dollars. Seems kind of lose-lose. I texted my old friend Kendra who I knew from Chicago who now lives in Bethesda, Maryland to see if we could get together. Kendra is loads of fun.

"Want to see Hamilton?" she texted me back. This summer, Hamilton is at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts.

Hell yeah I want to go.

"My husband said I should go with a friend, but he said I couldn't spend more than $300 for a ticket."

I was so excited I couldn't sleep Thursday night. Kendra and I both searched online. The cheapest tickets I could find for Wednesday night was $500. Ugh. I was still hopeful.

This morning when I woke up, Jack was sitting at his computer. "There are Hamilton tickets for $299."

"What?" I said, looking at his screen. Saturday, seats in the first row of Tier 1 were $500. The Kennedy Center must have dropped the price as the day of the show was getting closer. I texted Kendra. She wasn't there. Did everyone know about this last minutes drop in prices? If they did, these tickets wouldn't last. I bought the tickets. If for some reason Kendra couldn't make it, then I'd figure something out. For an hour, I sat waited for her text.

In the meantime, I had to two tickets to Hamilton for Wednsday night. The problem of getting rid of an extra ticket was peanuts compared to the thrill of having them. The escape is what I imagine what a shot of heroine is like, when it creeps into your veins, and nothing else matters except the high.  Jack and Claire-Adele were screaming at each about her getting her driver's license. Suddenly, I was less pissed off about Jack's schedule, about my son staying out super late last night, about the crap at my job. I was floating in my Hamilton glow, the anticipation of seeing it again.

Just as the grit in of life's gears was wearing me down, sometimes things fall in my direction. Two weeks ago, the Boy's team won the tournament with a goal scored in the last ten seconds. And Kendra can join me for Hamilton.

Keeping Up with the Crowd

Last night, the Boy and I went to see the Seattle Sounders FC play Dallas. Jack drove us to the Light Rail and we took the train down to Century Link stadium. It was almost one month since we went to the Copa America game. I can tell my progress since my surgery by my ability to ride the Light Rail. Going to the the Light Rail, I was able to walk down the three very long flights of escalators, a feat I hadn't been able to do before. Escalators are relatively easy because I can hold both handrails and I feel like I am moving fast just because the steps are moving beneath me.

When I got off the train, I was able to keep up with the fast moving crowd heading to the Stadium. I wasn't left in the dust, trailing behind mobility challenged senior citizens like I was before. I was able to navigate the inside of the stadium just fine. Only once did my son tell me to move faster, and that was when we were heading to our seats. We had seats in the lower front section, and we stood for the entire ninety minute game. I went to get dinner and water, leaving our seats, navigating the stadium for food.

One the way out of the stadium, we followed the crowd to the side exits. When we walked around, we realized there was a disabled exit at the center of the stadium. I didn't need it. I made it out fine. I passed an elderly couple. The woman was struggling to walk; her husband was holding her hand. I thought about how I looked so many times, and gave them a wide berth as we passed. I don't think I would have even noticed or paid attention to them if I hadn't had my surgery.

The Boy and I passed the disabled parking section right at the front of the stadium.

"These spots would be really hard to get out of with all of the people walking by," the Boy said.

"These people still haven't made it out of the stadium," I said. "If they are truly disabled, it will take them a while to leave their seats and make it back to their cars." I knew from experience.

The Boy helped me navigate the crowd. I didn't have to even ask--I think he has grown so used to helping me that he didn't even realize he was doing it. There was one section where we had to climb two flights of stairs to get to the Light Rail. One stairwell was further down, but didn't have a mass of people.

"Let's take the one on the left," he said.

"I'll have to go slow," I said.

We headed over to the open stairs. He climbed in front of me, going only as fast as I was going. Like the elderly couple we saw moments earlier, two people moving at a plodding pace are safer in a crowd than one person moving slowly. He stayed with me as we crossed the street. I was faster than him in moving to get on the Light Rail. I am a former Chicagoan who is used to standing armpit-to-armpit on a crowded train. Two months ago, I would have been afraid to get on a train where I couldn't get a seat. Now, I jumped on the most crowded train I've ridden in Seattle. I was worried I could fall, but that fear was smaller than it would have been last month after the Copa America game.

Two months ago, I wouldn't have done this, go by myself with the Boy. A few months ago, I never imagined I'd be normal again. I feared my entire exercise life and interaction with the public would be at the YMCA on the stationary bike. But here I was, out and about. The months of boredom and immobility are starting to fade in the rearview mirror. I still have work to do. I still can't run. Jack would like me to work with Evan so I can spring ten yards so I can get across the street. Soon, I think. Soon.

The Worst ACL Story in the World, and Athletes

In early May, about two months after my surgery, I heard the worst ACL story in the world. I was dropping my son off at his soccer try-out. As he was off warming up with the other boys, I was standing on the sidelines talking to other parents. Heidi asked how I was recovering, as she always does when she sees me. The parents on the Boy's soccer team have seen me every few weeks since the accident, except for when I was in hiding directly after the accident and surgery.

"How are you doing?" she asked, and I told her. I was still in the phase of using the disabled parking spots so I wouldn't have to walk too far. I was evaluating slopes versus stairs: which would easier for me to go up or down? Perrin, one of the other dads, told a story about his ACL tear and surgery, but then how he didn't go to PT and now he still limps.

"I am an example of what not to do," he said.

Another mom who I had never seen before and will probably never see again, was part of the conversation. She knew Heidi through their older sons. This women floated into my life for four minutes, told a story, and left. I happen to remember it because it was the worst ACL story I've ever heard.

"There was a girl on my daughter's soccer team," she said. The girls both played on the most elite team in the club for their age range while they were in high school. "This girl was really good, clearly one of the stars. All of the parents and kids on the team knew this girl was special and on her way to a top scholarship. Then she tore her ACL."

Playing soccer is a common way to tear an ACL, across all ages and genders.

"The girl had the surgery and she did all of her rehab. She worked really hard to get back in shape and was ready to play again. In her first game back, she was out there playing without a brace. I don't know why she wasn't wearing a brace, but she wasn't. Then, a girl from the other team plowed into her. The girl had her injured leg planted when the other kid crashed into her, and then she went down. She broke down into sobs there on the field. She knew she had re-torn her ACL. All of the moms on the sidelines were crying. We had watched this girl go through her first injury and work so hard to come back. It was so horrible."

That was the worst ACL story in the world. A young athlete's career was ruined not once, but twice. That girl will never get back her high school years playing soccer. To take one year off is hard, but two is horrible. No only is she not playing, but all of the other kids are getting stronger, faster and better skilled while she is on the bench. There is no way to be Pollyanna about this one--that was why all of the moms were crying on the sidelines. I start crying just thinking about it. We could say "At least it wasn't a permanent injury," or "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger," or "Maybe if Title 9 hadn't passed this girl would never have gotten hurt," but none of that makes this situation tolerable for that young woman who worked so hard at something she loved.

When I am at physical therapy, I see lots of athletes there. Most of them are duffers like me, who got hurt on the weekend or playing a rec league sport. But there are a few there who are professional, semi-professional, or college athletes. These are people for whom sports are a job, a profession, a potential livelihood, even if only as a scholarship that pays their tuition, which nowadays is not a small amount of money.

There is a young man where I got to physical therapy who is a football player in the European sense of the word. I don't know his name, so I'll call him Armando because I like the name Armando. He has a British-y accent, so maybe his real name is Alistair. I like Armando is better.

Armando plays soccer full-time. I don't know where, but I do know he tore his ACL. He is there every time I am at PT. He is usually smiling and chipper, hanging out without a PT at his side, working out in a self-directed program. Once in a while a physical therapist will walk by and tell him what to do next. When I first had my crash, there was another guy there who had a similar routine who I figured out was a professional football player (in the American sense).

I used to feel like such a slug compared to these super fit specimens of humanity who were recovering from the same injury I had. I--a middle aged women who was only moderately fit--didn't feel like I should be breathing the same as as these elite athletes. What if my mediocrity wore off on them? It would ruin their lives.

These guys kind of strut around the physical therapy room. They know they are stars. I added "kind of" to strut because there is a modesty about them, too. They don't at all seem arrogant because if they weren't injured, they wouldn't be there in the first place.

Now, as I am further coming along in my recovery, I am better able to understand what these people have lost, which is much more than I have lost with my ACL tear. I can understand a little bit, but I can't really imagine. My life changed with my injury, but it didn't radically change direction. I didn't lose my livelihood or my dreams. And yet, these men strut into physical therapy with what appears to me to be a healthy sense of optimism, working hard, like the modern warriors they are. Maybe these young athletes have a better sense of proportion than I do. Maybe they have sees the truly career ending injuries and are grateful they can recover.

I don't think all is lost for these guys. I read somewhere about the difference between elite soccer players and others is their decision making ability on the field. Many athletes--elite and non-elite--can have the same high level of conditioning, but the difference lies in how they read the ball and how quickly they can think. I hope that is the case for Armando, and that he will be back on the pitch soon.