Langer Loksh

Healthy Habits Start Early

Today Charlie is six months old! Time for solids! Here is Charlie enjoying his first meal--healthy, iron-rich rice cereal mixed with Mommy's milk.

Gerber rice cereal, October 30, 2005

Too bad it's all a lie! Because we have been feeding him ice cream all along. He really, really likes it.

Hood "Champions" Comeback Caramel ice cream, the official ice cream of the Boston Red Sox, October 29, 2005

Big Fun in the Suburbs

On the way back from our vacation in New Jersey, we stopped at a mall in Connecticut to feed Charlie and pee. Summer and Jeff found a full-sized carousel in the food court. I stood with Charlie and waved as they rode. A woman next to me began making faces at Charlie. Then she asked, "Does he have microtia?" Microtia is the medical term for Charlie's little ear. I nodded, and she pointed to her son, a six-year-old Asian boy she'd adopted at age four. Microtia is more common in boys, and more common in Asians and Native Americans.

"You're the first person I've met," I said. She told me that it didn't really bother her son, that he was mostly annoyed that he couldn't wear sunglasses. She did a cute impression of him vacuuming the minivan with his finger plugging his good ear. She said he was entering first grade and they were going to wait until the end of the school year to do surgery, because she thought that at this age he'd fiddle with it too much. I asked her who she was seeing, and she said Dr. Romo in New York. "He does prosthetic ears," she said. I nodded, relieved to have met someone else with microtia in that most generic of suburban settings.

But I also felt confused. Prosthetic ears seemed the least attractive option; you have to have different ears for different seasons, and they don't feel real. The heralded Dr. Brent does only rib reconstructions--he takes cartilage out of kids' chests and uses it to sculpt a new ear. Dr. Eavey said there was so much to work with on Charlie's ear that he'd do a soft tissue reconstruction instead, using what he has on the right and nicking some from the left. This is less invasive than rib reconstruction and can be done sooner. I'd liked the idea of getting this over with before kindergarten, but we can't rush, we have to do what's best for Charlie in the long run.

Frustruated that there didn't seem to be one right answer, I complained to Maureen. Her response was exactly what I needed to hear. It reminded me that the only way to sail through this safely was with the humor throttle opened wide. "You know what will happen if you do the prosthetic," she said. "When he's 12, one of his friends will say, 'I know, let's leave Charlie's ear in someone's mailbox!'"

Kitty Love

Doctors Behaving Badly, Part II

All newborns in the Commonwealth of  Massachusetts are given a hearing screening test before they leave the hospital. Jeff and I were lounging in our hospital room, emotionally exhausted but peaceful after our talk with Dr. Spiro, when a woman buzzed in and introduced herself as Barbara So-and-So and then without taking a breath she said “I’m the audiologist and I wanted you to know that your baby failed the newborn hearing screen so we’re going to follow him at Mass Eye and Ear and we’ll have speech pathologists work with him and blah blah blah blah blah blah--” 

Jeff and Jill: “Are you sure? Because we know he can hear—we can tell he can hear. He turns his head when we talk.”

Barbara: “Oh. Well I don’t have the results of the test.”

Jeff and Jill: “Well can you go get them?”

Barbara: “I’ll be right back.”

Barbara, about three minutes later: “You were right, he can hear.”

Barbara is the HEAD OF THE NEWBORN HEARING SCREENING PROGRAM FOR THE ENTIRE STATE. Way to be, Barbara.

Parents and School Administrators Behaving Badly

A very spooky Halloween story.

Doctors Behaving Badly, Part I

About ten hours after Charlie was born, a neonatologist told us that our son probably had a syndrome that could include problems with his heart, his kidneys, and his brain. He started talking about how doctors are growing new ears on the backs of lab rats, and I had to bend over in my wheelchair and put my head between my legs so I didn’t faint. When I did that, since I was so recently pregnant and then suddenly not pregnant anymore, I was acutely aware that there was no baby bump, and I felt panicky, like, “Where is my baby?” and then, “Oh yeah, he’s right over there,” and then, “But they are telling me he is not OK.” (I am not sure where Jeff found the strength to be rubbing my back, reassuring me, when it was happening to him too, but in the days to come it became clear that we each processed and handled the various situations quite differently, and we had to work a little bit to come together, but when we did it was so good—perhaps another post for another day.)

About 48 hours after that Dr. Rhonda Spiro, the geneticist, walked into our hospital room and made it all go away. She said Charlie was healthy, that his birth defects were limited to what you could see in his face. “They told us he might have mental retardation,” I said. “Put it out of your mind,” she said. “What you see is what you get.” Dr. Spiro is so kind, her manner so exactly what we needed, I think I would love her even if she’d brought us bad news, but she brought us incalculable relief. I love, love, love Dr. Spiro.

About four months after that, we brought Charlie to see the craniofacial team at Dr. Spiro’s clinic, the National Birth Defects Center. The team is lead by a plastic surgeon from Children’s Hospital named John Mulliken, an older white guy in a bowtie. Jeff and I walked into the room and found nine people, including Mulliken and two young Asian guys he must have been training. “What do you think?” Mulliken said. “One, maybe two,” one of the students said, apparently evaluating the severity of Charlie’s condition.

Uh, hello there, nice to meet you.

Mulliken said, “Who are you going to get to do his ear?” I straightened up proudly and said, “Dr. Eavey.” I thought this was the right answer. This is who the hospital sent us to. He’s the head of pediatric otolaryngology at Mass. Eye and Ear.

Mulliken rolled his eyes. “Oh, Dr. EAVEY,” he said. Another doctor in the room—I have no idea what his name was because no one wore a name tag or introduced him or herself—said, “You have to be really careful who you get to do the ear. The best guy is Dr. Burt Brent in California.” I am totally confused. The head of the department at Mass. Eye and Ear is not good enough? Then the doctors started talking about Sylvester Stallone, about how his mouth pulls to one side like Charlie’s and it didn’t stop him from becoming a big star. I glazed out, unable to absorb any more information.

It's Natural

When Charlie was born with that crazy ear, one thing I was very worried about was how random people would react to him. Charlie is now almost six months old and out of the thousands of people who have seen him, exactly three people have said anything. First, my babysitter said, "He's got a funny little ear!" Then, a man in a deli in Connecticut said, "What's wrong with his ear?" and I said, "It just came out that way. We'll fix it later." Every single other person who has ever seen him has just lit up with a smile immediately and commented on how cute he is. There is no pause, no surprised look quickly shifted to a nervous smile, just an instant genuine grin.

Today my cashier at T.J. Maxx, a teen boy with a baseball hat perched cockeyed high on his head and a huge baroque rhinestone cross hanging practically to his waist, said "What's wrong with his ear?" I said, "It just came out that way. We'll fix it later." The boy said, "Don't fix it! It's natural. Not many people can say they have that!"

Someone or something is clearly trying to teach me a lesson. I have been a fretful wreck my whole life. I never managed to learn that the fretting is wasted time. The thing that's going to happen is the thing that you never thought of. You just don't know what's around the next corner. I'm only just now figuring this out. I feel so much better already, being liberated from even some of the fretting (though I have more work to do). And I have my Charlie to thank for it.

Surely They Must Have Doonesbury in Heaven

I've been thinking of my dad this week each day as I read the comics because he loved Honey and Duke and he would really have enjoyed their latest exploits in Iraq. Tomorrow he would have turned 84; he's been gone for nine years. But I'm smiling as I write this, thinking about his big smile. It's amazing how time heals. Losing my dad has made me stronger for Charlie.

High Quality Stores

I remember it well: the Junior Mints epiphany. I was a grad student at the time. I entered the Campus Convenience store (I'm not hypercapitalizing; that was the name of the store) and there I saw an absolutely enormous box of Junior Mints and I realized: I can buy these WITHOUT GOING TO THE MOVIES. Just buy them and eat them.

My candy connection Julie informs me that there is such a thing called Junior Caramels in addition to the rumored Limited Edition Junior Mints Inside Outs. According to the Junior Mints people, both of these varieties are available at high quality stores--though not, apparently, at my grocery store or CVS, both of which I frankly would have put in the high quality category. So if you see them, buy them and mail them to me. Thanks.

Not a Moment Too Soon

It's 9:00 p.m. and do you know what Summer is wearing? UNDERPANTS. Disney Princess underpants, mais of course. I'll spare you the photo of Summer showing off the Jabba poop she deposited in the potty the other night. Instead, here is a picture of Summer making her one "funny" face with Audrey, who is a whole year younger than Summer and is already a full-fledged wearer of underpants. Hers are plain white, because her mother Sarah is good and strong and has not (yet) succumbed to the unstoppable Disney Princess marketing machine.

When Audrey mastered the potty, Sarah said it was the most stressful two weeks. Pardon me while I bury my face into my pillow and scream. Two weeks? How about 52 weeks? They say not to push it. They say the children simply love putting stickers on a chart. They say it is perfectly healthy for them to still be pooping in their Pull-Ups at age five. They are clearly not the ones excavating the poop from the butt-crack of the five-year-old. (Summer is three.) It was getting way too gross, and I was getting way too bitter, and I'm so glad it's over. I am proud of Summer. She drinks only orange juice. She watches way too many Disney movies. She stays up way too late. At least now she does it all in underpants.