On Monday night, my mom, the kids and I went to dinner to celebrate my sister’s birthday. We hit the local Chinese restaurant, where we were all happily chomping on rice noodles when my seven year old son took a sip of his lukewarm tea and started to cough.

I remember when I would cough like that as a kid and my mom would make me put my arms in the air. I do that with my son too. I also make him look me in the eye as I slowly count to five, then tell him to take a breath. I do anything I can to get his attention off of coughing because, with him, coughing almost always leads to vomiting.

I held my napkin under his chin, as if that would contain his bellyful of Lo Mein and mushrooms. He began to gag as his sister firmly shut her eyes and plugged her ears, as she frequently does. Then my son threw up about a tablespoon of liquid before calming himself down.

I was thrilled! I was so proud of him! His grandmother even gave him a dollar.

He didn’t vomit, and vomit, and vomit some more as he did on the first day of Christmas break. He had a cold and started coughing in the car as we were leaving the school, which is where he started throwing up. He coated his jacket and his booster seat, then leaned out the window and threw up some more. He finished on the ground in the parking lot where I had hurriedly pulled into a spot. I undressed my son next to the car in the frigid temperatures before driving him home to do laundry and bathe him.

That scene, or one like it, plays out about once a week. If we’re lucky. Sometimes it’s more. You might think this is disgusting. But, these are the moments that define the mother I am.

I am the mother of a sick kid. I am the mother of a boy who weighs 38 pounds and will soon be eight years old, who is hard to understand when he speaks and who hears everything as if he is holding his hands over his ears.

I am the mother of a child with OCD tendencies, who easily gags, and chokes, and has horrible reflux, heart defects, hearing loss, a missing tear duct and stubby ear canals. I work as a lunch lady so I can be there to watch over him when he eats. I give him stomach and allergy medicine, sinus rinses, eye drops and ear drops. And, I carry special bags in my car to catch his vomit (when I can).

I am the mother who helps my kids with homework as I am making a dinner that I know my son can eat. Nothing stringy, nothing too spicy, nothing pasty or with an odd texture. Bites need to be dime-sized.

I am the mother who drives her daughter to basketball practice and makes sure to bring a blanket to keep her son warm, because his heart problems make him extra cold.

I am the mother whose son sees not only a pediatrician, but a cardiologist, gastroenterologist, opthamologist, geneticist, allergist, ENT…oh, and we were just told to consult with an orthodontist too. I am the mother who is a pharmacist’s dream and a health insurer’s nightmare.

I am also the mother who cheers when her son doesn’t throw up in the middle of a restaurant during her sister’s birthday dinner.

I am the mother who takes her victories whenever she can.

Follow

Email

If you haven’t read between the lines you may not be aware that the name of this blog is a bizarre take on “Mom of Ali”. Years ago when I created an online account and gave myself the user name of “momofali“, my best friend sent me an e-mail asking, “Who’s Momo Fali?”

Since then, or at least since the creation of this blog, I often go by the nickname, “Momo“. As far as nicknames go, this is significantly better than when my elementary school classmates called me “Dog-Star Diane”.

But, even though I am Momo Fali, I am Mom of Ali as well. And, that Ali? Is one heck of a kid.

I talk a lot about my son’s struggles, but his older sister was even smaller than him when she was born. Ali arrived 10 weeks early, weighing just 2 pounds, 9 ounces. That was almost 11 years ago. Considering where she started, she has faced a fair amount of obstacles herself.

Her biggest challenge is being the sister of a kid with medical problems. It is not easy. At all.

There have been times when she was promised a day of fun and she’s ended up sitting in the emergency room because her brother was sick. There have been mornings when we had to drop her off at a neighbor’s house at the crack of dawn so we could get him to the outpatient center for an early surgery. And, there have been countless meals when she’s watched her brother choke and vomit at the dining room table.

Needles, meds, doctors, surgeries, therapy, x-rays…these things are a part of her life just as much as they are part of ours. Knowing what she does about life at the ripe old age of ten, just doesn’t seem right.

Don’t get me wrong. She’s still a pretty typical kid. She bosses her little brother around, she talks back a lot and I’ve actually seen her spit her dinner into her napkin and then feed it to the dogs. Though, truth be told, I’ve wanted to do that myself a few times.

Despite the things she has seen, or possibly because of them, she is amazingly well-adjusted. She is smart, responsible, kind and compassionate. I am lucky to have her.

It is time that I told her so. Just like the letter I wrote to my favorite teacher last week, I am hoping she reads this so she can know how great I think she is.

Maybe, just maybe, it will actually get her to clean her room.

Follow

Email

I will never claim to be a petite flower. I am 5’10” and have palms that make Meadowlark Lemon look like an extra from The Wizard of Oz. Also, you know you’re old when the first basketball player that comes to mind is Meadowlark Lemon.

Follow

Email

Back in the spring of 2002, my husband and I were told by a pediatric cardiologist that our baby would be born with a very rare heart defect. His best guess was that our son would be premature, then be sedated and ventilated until he reached five pounds and at that point, he would have open heart surgery.

When the news came that our child’s heart was getting worse and he would, indeed, be born seven weeks too soon, people in our lives starting mobilizing.

My best friend organized a massive effort to have people bring us dinner. She knew we would be at the hospital a lot, and we still had our three year old daughter to take care of. It was unbelievably thoughtful.

Which is why it should make perfect sense that we declined the offer.

My husband and I felt sure we could handle our household, his job, the dog, our daughter and a baby in intensive care. We handled it all right, but I look back and realize it was the most stressful time in my life. Luckily, our son proved his doctor wrong and he came home after three weeks. If his hospitalization had gone on for as long as the doctors expected, I don’t know how I would have held things together.

That story leads me to Tuesday, when I went to the garage to take some meat out of our upright freezer only to find that someone had left the door open. Water was dripping from the door and every bit of food had turned to a gooey mess.

What does my son being in the hospital have to do with a door left ajar? Wait for it…

Everything…everything…was completely thawed. All the beef and chicken we buy in bulk to save money, a big turkey, and lots of fish my husband had caught. Thousands of dollars in food. Gone.

I felt sick. I cried. This was food we bought despite losing our business last year. This mess was discovered just days after finding out that our health insurance at my husband’s new job starts the deductible over again on July 1st. The deductible we just met. Oh sorry, the $4000 deductible we just met. Oh, and before that insurance started February 1st, we had just met the deductible on our old insurance. That baby with the heart defect? He’s seven now and had his ninth surgery…in January.

In case you’re not counting, that’s THREE different deductibles we will meet in ONE calendar year. Our premiums are crazy-high too. We will put out over $20,000 in health insurance this year alone.

After realizing the food wasn’t salvageable, I did what anyone would do. I called my husband and then I starting venting to everyone who would listen. And, people did listen. Not only that, they did something about it.

Yesterday morning I received an e-mail saying that three great ladies would be at my door on Sunday with food to restock my freezer. A mighty generous statement, especially given that they live roughly 400 miles away.

It turns out that one person said he’d like to help us out then it kind of snowballed and other wonderful people got on board. People started mobilizing, and this time we didn’t really have a say. When I tried to stop them I was told, “This train has already left the station.”

All I can say is that I will do my best to pay this forward. I promise.

I couldn’t turn them down like I did my best friend all those years ago. And, I’m betting that when I look back at this time in my life, I won’t think of how stressful it was, but rather how generous people can be.

They didn’t do it for recognition. As a matter of fact, they planned on keeping it private. But I was not about to let this go unmentioned. My pride can take a ride in the back seat for this trip.

When I told my neighbor about it, she got goosebumps and said, “Thank you for telling me this. I needed to hear it because there is so much bad in the world.”

She’s right. But, you know what? There’s a lot of good too.

Follow

Email