9 Things My Mother Doesn’t Know About

Mother’s Day is here again, so Happy Mother’s Day to the 1.97 billion mothers out there. How is the number of mothers calculated? There are approximately 7 billion people on the planet. A little over half are women, and about 2.4 billion are of child-bearing years or greater. Of those 2.4 billion, 18%, or .433 billion choose not to have children, leaving 1.97 billion potential mothers.

Hence the above number of mothers but since I haven’t counted every one, let’s assume the number is a wild guess.

I lost my mother nearly 35 years ago and have now been without her longer than I had her. Every single day I think of her. Two years ago for Mother’s Day,  I wrote a post about a conversation with Mom  and decided to write about it again.

I think of all she’s missed in the 35 years she’s been gone. The other day I was shredding paper and my thoughts drifted to her and how she would have demanded to know what that horrible, loud machine was and what on earth was I doing?

Which led to more thoughts about all the things we have and take for granted today which we would have been unable to comprehend  back then, in 1979.

So, Mom, here’s a partial list, by no means inclusive, just nine things at which I think you would marvel:

Air bags – Remember when we used to drive around with no seat belts and the kids flopped around on the back seat? Well, no more! Now everyone has to be buckled in and the kids have to be in government-approved safety seats and there are big inflatable bags installed throughout the car that will automatically burst forth and protect you if you are involved in a collision. It could potentially break a few bones, especially in smaller people so kids can’t even be in the front seat until they reach a certain height/weight.

ATM machines – This is a good way for banks to cut costs. It eliminated a lot of jobs and people don’t go inside the bank much anymore, but we’re accustomed to it now. You slide a card in and money comes out. Although you really don’t need much money anymore, because everything is done with that card or others just like it. Everywhere you go, you slide cards and sign your name using a fat pen on a screen and it is always completely illegible.

Bar codes and scanners – Nothing has price tags any longer. Instead, the price is on the shelf where the item sits and each item has a code which is scanned by the clerk as he passes it over a little window which beeps happily when it can determine what the code is. Each code has its own price and knows if it’s on sale or if it’s BOGO. Everyone hated these at first, and didn’t trust them, but nobody ever listened to these complaints. So no one thinks about it any longer, it’s become a way of life.

E-mail – This is a new way of corresponding with people. We now write letters and messages to other people using a computer or even a phone (but we better not go to the phone part just yet). When you write an email it gets sent immediately to the other person who might get a little ding that announces its arrival. It used to be fun to get emails, but now most of them are advertisements and junk. Meanwhile, the Post Office is going broke because people seldom mail anything, so the price of stamps is regularly jacked up which makes people even more determined not to mail anything.

Mobile phones – These are phones without wires. Voices float through the air. There are things called cell phone towers erected all over which are ugly but necessary for this. The closest cell phone tower to where you are picks up your voice and sends it to a cell phone tower closest to the person you want to talk to. Then you talk, break up, ask the person to repeat herself, talk some more, break up some more. Then you usually say call me back, and try again. You remember those old phones we had in the 70′s? Those were actually much better quality and more reliable. But mobile phones let you take your phone with you wherever you go and you will never be in danger of being out of touch. And also, you can see who is calling so you can click the “ignore” button, which is empowering.

GPS systems – This is the new map. Instead of hauling out the Atlas which is all beat up from being tossed around in the trunk for a decade (and Missouri and Montana are missing altogether), we now punch or say where we want to go and a voice comes on and tells us what to do. Usually it is right. But not always. This can be on a mobile phone or some new cars have them in the dashboard.

Online shopping – Now we can sit at our computers and shop. You do know about computers, right? They had those back in the 70′s.  They used to be big, now they are small and sit on your desk or your lap. You use them to search and buy things. You select what you want to buy and then they ask you for the numbers on that card (see the ATM Machine section), and the charge goes through and they mail your item to you. Sometimes they use the Post Office which makes the Post Office happy. The only problem with this is the excessive amount of cardboard used, which has to be recycled. Oh, wait. You might not know about recycling. We didn’t do much of it back then.

Recycling – We now have to be very careful not to throw out some things. We have to return it so it can be reprocessed and used to make more stuff to be thrown out, er, recycled. This is so we can reduce something called our “carbon footprint” which really means we discard way too much trash and it is making a big mess of the world.

Paper Shredders – Now we have a thing called identify theft. That’s where bad guys find your SSN or your secret financial papers and use the information to hack around and steal money from you. So now you have to save up your vulnerable documents and then one day, finally, you must sit down and shred it all, feed it into a noisy machine which can chop it up into little pieces. It makes a big mess when you dump the shreddings, and fills up plastic bags which you then recycle (see “Recycling” above).

This has been just a sampling of technology and inventions and new ways of life that you’ve missed. I suspect you would have adapted to some of them, maybe most of them. And Happy Mother’s Day, Mom, wherever you are.

The End of Normal by Stephanic Madoff Mack

My daughter handed me this book and said, read this, it’s good. She doesn’t offer words of praise lightly so this was a highly regarded recommendation. I took it and read it, and was very glad I had. Like a lot of people, I had many preconceived notions about what the real Madoff story was, and then it went out of the news and I didn’t think much about it any longer.

Bernie Madoff is a shallow, conceited, self-centered liar who cheated his clients, many of whom were family and friends out of millions of dollars. I always had the idea that it may have started out as legal hedge fund, but then the returns diminished and Bernie had to bolster them up a bit to maintain his good reputation as a shrewd investor. Trouble is, the bolstering was the incoming funds of the newest investors. And then the financial crisis happened and Bernie’s investments were going the way of everyone else’s and he lied about returns and started paying off those who wanted out, with the money of the new ones who wanted in. Maybe that’s how it evolved, the book isn’t clear, but since it was written by his daughter-in-law, who had no insight into the financial dealings of Bernie Madoff, she may not have known either.

Mark and Andy Madoff had no connection with their father’s dealings. They ran a completely separate (and legal) operation but they were housed in the same building as the Bernie Madoff scam fund. When it all came crashing down, Bernie confessed to his sons and then turned himself in. That was the day that marked The End of Normal.

The sons were horrified, especially Mark, who never saw his father again. Mark was the more sensitive of the two brothers, and became horribly depressed as he was sued over and over, and tormented by the media such that he couldn’t go out his front door, but had to sneak out a back way. With cameras forever in his face, he seethed and despaired.

Meanwhile, his wife was seven months pregnant with their second child when the news broke, making a period in their lives which should have been very happy, anything but. The next two years were a volatile period of ups and downs in the marriage as they struggled to hold their family together and get back to some sort of average life. Mark was ruined by what his father had done; a poisoned resume ensured that he would have a very difficult time finding a job in finance, and the notoriety his father had caused would always haunt him. Many of his friends abandoned him.

Bernie Madoff is quoted as saying, “I don’t give a shit about my sons.” That’s the kind of guy he was. Pure evil. But his wife wasn’t, and neither were his two sons. His wife, Ruth, is still loyal to Bernie today. Mark had once demanded that she cut ties and publicly divorce Bernie but she refused, so Mark never saw his mother either, feeling that she had chosen a con-man over her own sons.

Mark’s wife stood by him to the end but it wasn’t enough. He attempted suicide once and was unsuccessful, having taken a lot of anti-depressants, which should have killed him but somehow didn’t. He was deeply embarrassed by it, and recovered for a time in a mental hospital. Afterwards, things seemed to improve.

But Mark was an Internet junkie and read everything he found online about his father and also the things people were saying about him and his brother. Things like, “the sons had to have known about it.” But they didn’t. The book makes this clear. It would have come out if they’d been a part of the scandal.

Stephanie was in Florida with her four-year-old daughter and mother, an “all girls weekend” which had been a gift to the little girl, a trip to Disney World. Mark texted Stephanie about a scathing article that claimed a back office employee was ready to help implicate the two sons and Bernie’s brother (also innocent).

It must have sent him over the edge, because he hung himself, with his not-quite-two-year-old son, Nick, in the next room, and his last pleas were emails to everyone he knew with a subject line of “Help” and “Please send someone to take care of Nick.”

To this day, Bernie Madoff appears to take no responsibility. At least he has never said as much.

But the book isn’t about Bernie. It is about Stephanie and Mark. It reads like a novel; how they met, how they married, their problems, their triumphs. They had a good marriage. It would have gone on and on forever. Both Stephanie and Mark thought they had found the love of a lifetime.

And then, December 2008. The End of Normal. What a great title for a book, especially given the content. It was engaging, a page-turner, well-written and I felt a real connection with both Stephanie and Mark. It was deeply sorrowful that a family could be so devastated by something completely out of their control.

During the last chapters, I found phrases like “at the end of the day” and “having said that” creep in. This was a definite drawback for me. Phrases like this are contemporary, the phrase-of-the-day, and will not endure. I was sorry to see it, because I believe it diminishes the excellent writing. However, I know that this is my personal pet peeve which may not affect others as much.

I commend the author for writing this book. It could not have been easy, but it will do one thing. It will strengthen the opinions of her readers, who will empathize with her and her husband. It will get her story out there, for the world to read, and to finally understand.

I highly recommend this book. It is educational, and deep, and very moving. I’d probably 5-star it but for those phrases.

 

As Luck Would Have It; A Bout With Breast Cancer

Since October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, what better time to tell my story, something I haven’t done for a long time. I don’t think too much about it any longer, for fear it will bring back all those old memories I’ve managed to store away in the back of my mind somewhere.

The title of this post may be somewhat misleading, if construed that there is anything about having breast cancer that can be considered “lucky”. But, in looking back on my experience, I can see that several things which happened to me can be considered to be happy endings as compared to what could have been a much more unfavorable outcome.

In July of 1996, I was having a bit of a problem with my internal thermostat. Hot flashes. My friends were going through the same thing and the way to get rid of them was ERT (Estrogen Replacement Therapy). I went to Dr. L. for this and he casually asked, “So, how long since you’ve had a mammogram?” Uh. He would have to ask that. Too long, I’ve been busy, my career has taken me from place to place, contracting here and there. He strongly suggested I get a mammogram, and surprisingly, I did, even though I am sometimes apt to ignore sage advice.

I should have known something was up when the picture-taker came back for a second shot, but I remained blithely unaware. Until Dr. L. himself called me with the news. They see something. I’m recommending a surgeon, Dr. C. You know when doctors call you at home the news is never good, right? And they call in person? And it’s after five? And it’s a Friday evening? And, he said, stop the ERT immediately. Do not take one more pill.

Okay, I did that. I made my appointment with Dr C. If it is the last memory I have, I will not forget how wonderful this man was. He was an older version of Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and a more knowledgeable, trustworthy, understanding doctor I have yet to meet. He didn’t make me feel like I was ever wasting his time, if I had more questions, then he was there to answer them. And if he sometimes kept me waiting for an appointment, I knew he was with another patient as scared as I was, and I never minded. It was so very important, at that very frightening, emotional time in my life, not to be rushed through my appointments, and more important, my decisions.

He had an assistant surgeon, or apprentice surgeon, Dr. A., a Paul Ryan “numbers” kind of guy who was also great — in a different way. He talked to me very honestly, with his statistics and percentages, which helped me immensely when faced with all the choices to be made. He did love his numbers.

I had some bad news though. I was Stage IIB. For some reason, Stage II is the only one they divide between A and B. It’s a “size matters” kind of differentiation. A is better than B. I had lobular carcinoma rather than ductal. Ductal is a little better news, it tends to be more encapsulated. Lobular spreads it’s tiny fingers of cancer goo in amongst all the cells, the blood vessels, the fatty material within the breast. The tumor was “poorly differentiated”. This is real bad. When asked what that meant, I discovered the tumor did not in any way resemble healthy cells. “Well differentiated” would have been much better. These are things we don’t know before breast cancer, that there are tumors that are “better” than others. Mine was pretty awful.

I had a lumpectomy in September, but it was the decision of Dr. C. that he didn’t get it all. He didn’t feel good about it, so in October I had a full mastectomy.

Then came the good news. My lymph nodes were not affected, which meant the cancer hadn’t spread. It’s funny to think of it in those terms today, “Good news! Your cancer hasn’t spread!”

And then, according to Dr. C., it was “extremely estrogen-receptor positive”. He said he had never seen one with such high markers as mine. What’s that? That doesn’t sound good! But it is. It’s very good news. The ERP tumors can be treated easier than estrogen-receptor negative. Again, see the above gallows humor about Good News Tumors.

Now came a period of indecision. Dr. C. recommended “precautionary” chemotherapy and five years of Tamoxifen, a drug that sucks out the estrogen from the female body so any remaining cancer orphans can’t grow.

I was okay with the Tamoxifen, but not the chemo. I just didn’t want to do it. It’s a personal decision for me. I have a real phobia about it, and I wouldn’t view those chemicals entering my bloodstream as a “powerful army fighting against a vile enemy”. I would view it as poison entering my body, which would probably be with me always and may have side effects that last forever.

I decided against the chemo. And then, of course, second-guessed my decision for enough time that I could safely say to myself that it was too late to change my mind anyway because if there were orphans left behind that the Tamoxifen didn’t starve, then they’d already be relocating themselves in my bloodstream, liver and lungs. Even my brain.

But they didn’t. I am a sixteen-year survivor. I have been diagnosed and treated, and have not had a recurrence in all that time. I suppose it could still happen, but really, I think the odds are it won’t.

So. Back to lucky. If I hadn’t had hot flashes, I’d never have gone to seek relief. Dr. L. would never have suggested a mammogram and it would have gone undetected for much longer. Lobular carcinoma is harder to detect, it has no real lumpiness that you can feel. If it had gone on longer, my lymph nodes would have eventually been involved, which would have meant that it had spread beyond the breast and could potentially be in my blood stream already, or in my other organs. Those statistics, according to Dr. A., are a whole lot worse than the ones I had to contend with.

Don’t let anyone tell you that early detection is not the way to save millions of lives lost to this insidious disease every year.

Now the cynical part. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Every month should be. You will see no pink ribbons on this post. It is my opinion that pink ribbons do nothing to further the “cure”. We have been hoping to find a cure for decades, but if we did, what would happen to Breast Cancer Big Business?

If you feel inclined to donate to the breast cancer cause, donate directly. To hospitals, to hospice, to an individual who needs help, but please avoid organizations like The Susan G. Komen Foundation. These are fake charities, they are more big business than charity. Almost none of the funds go to breast cancer research, instead it goes to pay very highly-paid executives. They raise money because it costs money to raise more money.

Here is a good article to read if you are interested in how breast cancer is Big Business. Be forewarned that it is long, but informative and well-researched, and has an annoying advertising page that you have to skip.

The Big Business of Breast Cancer

Photo courtesy of Microsoft Clip Art