Musings of a Marfan Mom

September 8, 2011
by marfmom
5 Comments

The Promise of a Future

September 4th – 10th is Suicide Prevention Week. Having lost a loved one to suicide myself, I asked my friend Cristi of the blog Motherhood Unadorned to guest post today. She is a tireless suicide prevention and overall mental health advocate. You can also find her on Twitter and Facebook.

I was eating lunch one day in between classes (about 15 years ago) and a very close friend Denise walked up and gravely sat down. She looked me straight in the eye and said “Stephanie* fell off of Cabra.” Cabra Hall was a 6-story dormitory building at our University. Needless to say, hearing that one of my closest friends fell off of a building isn’t exactly something I ever expected to hear in my life.

But something inside of me knew.

I looked at Denise without hesitation and said “No, she didn’t. She jumped.”

It had not been confirmed. The story continued to be that our dear friend “fell” for quite some time. But as I made it over to the hospital and spoke to her boyfriend, we collectively confirmed in our hearts what we knew was true.

She had jumped.

And miraculously her body was in full-on healing mode. It swelled to enormous proportions, protecting itself from the intense impact. Only bones were broken. Not a single organ punctured.

She was going to live.

You might think that I would be rejoiceful. But the guilt was unbearable. She had told me a few times that she was “depressed” but at that point in my life at 20 years old, I had no idea what depressed really meant. I didn’t even know that I also had depression.

I spent days, weeks, going between classes and hospital visits, multiple times per day. It was the only thing I knew how to do. Be there for her while she healed and recovered. I threw myself into being the friend that I thought I should have been before her suicide attempt. It was one of the most horrible experiences of my life and it wasn’t even happening to me.

Flash forward 10 years. I am now fully aware of my own mental illness. I am living in it. I am in a deep dark hole of sadness, so deep and dark I am physically hurting myself. My mind is taking me to a place where I no longer want to be in this world.

I don’t have kids. I’m not married. I’m feeling alone. My meds are not working. My doctor just sucks. And I feel as though there’s no future for me. I absolutely don’t see it.

But I remember Stephanie.* And on this day she is married, and medicated, and happy. That is what I can see. Not my own future, but the possible promise of one. The miracle of hers.

And it saves me. She saves me.

I ask for help. I tell my family. I tell my company. I travel thousands of miles away to receive intensive therapy to build back my life, to balance my meds, to fight for a future that I cannot see but hope is there for me.

Today I am married happily. I have two gorgeous kids. A house. A life. I have friends and family who mean the world to me. And I could have missed it. I could have missed ALL of it.

In December 2010 my dear friend Dina lost her own battle with mental illness and died by suicide. She is why I started blogging. Why I am fighting tool and nail for prevention. But this suicide prevention week, I also honor Stephanie* for the miracle of her life. For her suicide attempt not completed. For my own miraculous recovery.

I am not healed. But I am a work in progress, and a good one at that.

I am here to tell you, that each one of us is valuable. Our life is worth the fight. Every one of us has a future, whether or not we see it, and it could be a GREAT one if we just let it happen.

September 5, 2011
by marfmom
13 Comments

I Don’t Care

I went to a little party for other “autism moms” recently. In between the snacking, catching up, and you-won’t-believe-what-the-school-did-now stories, a conversation about the potential causes of autism began.

If you follow the news at all, you’ll see theories as to what causes autism nearly every week. Maybe it has to do with the time of conception. Or the mother’s stress level or use of anti-depressants during pregnancy. Then there’s maternal antibodies (from the flu?), or the theory that autism is actually an autoimmune disease. Confused yet? I know I am!

But here’s the thing:

I don’t care to know what caused my son’s autism.

So many of these theories are things that aren’t preventable. I mean, do researchers think people are going to abstain from sex for three months out of the year to prevent autism? Not using anti-depressants might seem like an easy choice, unless you’re the woman who needs them in order to live. How much of stress can we really control? Even getting the flu vaccine doesn’t always prevent the flu.

While I was pregnant with the Menininho, my husband took a job across the country when I was 10 weeks along. My mother and sister moved several states away at 14 weeks. I alternated between my brother living with me, a best friend living with me, and living alone. I also accelerated my Masters degree so that I could graduate at 34 weeks pregnant, and then moved 3 weeks postpartum so our new family could all live together. You could say that I was a little stressed. Some of those stresses could be forseen before we decided to have a baby, others not.

But if the Menininho’s doctor could look me in the eye at his next appointment and say “Maya, we know for a surety that your stress during pregnancy caused your son’s autism,” what good would that do me? I can’t change anything. It wouldn’t have even helped with Baby J’s pregnancy because how do you easily quantify stress? The only thing it might do is add to the stress I’m already under trying to address M’s diagnosis.

I battle guilt being a mother on a daily basis, “typical” mom guilt: are my kids eating a balanced diet? Is it a problem that M asks for Sid the Science Kid and Ellen DeGeneres by name? Then I add on the “autism mom” guilt: are our behavior tactics the right ones? Should I have said yes to that second session of speech therapy a week? I don’t need to add the guilt of the idea that I could have somehow prevented the Menininho’s autism on top of that.

No. Instead I’ll focus my energies on finding the right treatments for M. What’s done is done, and dwelling on whether I could have done something differently only takes valuable energy away from taking care of my family. Call me when scientists find a cause we can prevent but until then, you can find me enjoying my boys and trying to beat autism.