I Bought Jello Today
It’s true I bought jello today, I’m not certain where — maybe it was in Safeway or Lucky’s or Longs Drugs – yes, I think I was in Longs where I stared at the perfectly square three by four-inch box finding solace in a label that read “artificially flavored raspberry.” Perhaps it was because I had just seen the Perseids scream across my backyard sky the night prior to my jello lust, but the artificially-flavored warning looked like a day-glow comet which made it all the more attractive to me. I was captured and transported to a time where artificially flavored was not such a bad idea and jello was happy. It jiggled and you smiled. As a kid it was easy-peezie. Easy to make, easy to mold, to play with, and easy to eat. It was refreshing and cooling on a hot summer day. Sometimes it was all I could eat when I stayed home sick from school yes, as I recall, in jello there was comfort. I grabbed the raspberry and what the heck a peach artificially-flavored, too. My son would probably want to mix the two together (he’s a Gemini and apparently they do this kind of things, mixing and matching, wanting 2 of everything, when he was younger if offered a choice of cookies he would politely look up and say, “I’ll have one of each, please”). Little did I know bringing home a box of jello would help me to work my way back to comfort, order, and a sense that all could be well in the world.
For those of you who don’t know, my 14 year old son was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm last month, saying life has changed is a bit of an understatement for us and yes a box of jello helped to bring some sanity into my life. It took me a few days to make the damn fake raspberry gel and then it sat in the fridge for another few days before my stomach hurt so bad that it called out to me. Soothe my tummy it did. I ate it for breakfast one day and dinner for another, it allowed me to sort through thoughts, create some order out of the recent chaos and thankfully eat something.
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About a week ago I noticed that I haven’t been driving around with the radio on or my iphone plugged in, I guess there are too many thoughts roaming my mind and I need the quiet only car rides bring. The thought that visits me the most is the UCSF hospital policy of consent. I don’t know why University hospitals have this consenting policy for 14 year olds, I had this notion that if young animals where made to attend a consenting meeting– there were be millions of people protesting this cruelty, but not so true for our youth . As if they are not wounded enough with absentee parents and divorce, the consenting policy is just one more opportunity to mis-manage the mind of a teen. Let me explain a bit further here– I am the adult, however, this particular hospital insisted the details of a cerebral angiogram be described to my son (a minor). Angiograms are no picnic, they are the gold standard of brain tests and are approximately a 2-3 hour procedure, whereby one is put to sleep. At the meeting my son looked faint, but powered on. As scheduled, the next morning he bravely walked into radiology, got into his hospital gown and was left alone in a tiny room waiting. The wait was growing a bit long, when he walked out announcing he was not going to go through with this. He elaborated that he did not want to be put under and have a catheter running through his arteries stopping just above his neck whereby doctors would begin to shoot dye into his brain for imagining. Information overload for a frightened teen already anxious about his health. There were no sedatives administered to help him, only a few kind nurses tried to talk him into going through with this. At 6’1” his mind was made up, maybe next year he thought he could get a cerebral angiogram. The anesthesiologist standing by agreed that the consenting policy for minors was over the top ridiculous- he said there are many adults who don’t want to know what procedures entail, so why do we need to subject our kids to this? When I later confronted the neurologist about this he mumbled something about Nuremberg . . . . . hmm. When I told a doc friend about this he replied, “Can we just stop here, can’t we do better for our children?” As a doc the entire incident upset him greatly.
Bedside manners seem to have all been tossed out with our health care plans of which I reminded UCSF in a stern, but jello- felt moment email to their neurology department. My son now has a new neurologist who seems to understand the complexities of teen-agers. She asked us to be a part of a research study, starting out with a higher quality MRA. This may not give them all the info they need, but her plan is to enlist his trust and ease him into the challenges and concerns of an aneurysm which due to the type and location, may or may not be treatable. Meantime we wait—peach jello anyone?
Stay true,
M