Stephanie and I will celebrate nine years of domestic partnership in mid-December. Nine years. Can you believe that? Today I was thinking that we needed to get away, stay at a hotel, and go out to a nice dinner to celebrate. But that kind of outing will be a little beyond our resources just before Christmas. So on to other thoughts.

Unrelated, yesterday and today I was at work thinking about life and our lives here in Alaska. Sometimes, as the regular routine of work, school, commuting, dinner, kids, chores, etc. come to dominate, the fact that we are in Alaska seems less relevant because we don’t do any Alaska things. I mean, if we aren’t camping or wildlife viewing, or river riding, or hiking, or anything, then why are we here? Of course I know the answer. We’re here for proximity: when the weather breaks, when the day off comes, all of that is right outside our door. At the same time, though, we need to purpose to take advantage of the opportunities that are here.   

And so it occurred to me tonight: For our anniversary, we can stay at one of the Alaska State Parks cabins. There are a number of really cozy cabins tucked away here and there and available for Alaska residents for a nominal fee. We have stayed in several of those at different times during the summer. Each time we’ve stayed in one I’ve thought about how nice it would be to stay there in the winter. It would be difficult with kids, but how nice it would be for just the two of us. I think we’ll get an overnight sitter for the kids so that Stephanie and I can sneak away for a quiet weekend in the cold and dark of the woods, in a cozy little cabin warmed by the glow of a woodstove. And if we stay at one on the Chena Hot Springs road, we can even go out to the hot springs for a soak. So that’s what I’m plannin’. 

Our daughter Sarah, our third child, was born in July of last year. She was delivered via planned cesarean, without any complications. After a couple of days in the hospital, we were released to go home to our boys and the resumption of our daily life. Sarah was precious. Very quiet, and very easy. She slept thought the night, which we loved. She woke to feed for just a few minutes and then went back to sleep for hours. We told everyone who asked how easy she was.  

But she wasn’t gaining any weight. And Stephanie was more sensitive to this than I was, but she recognized that Sarah wasn’t eating as much as she expected. A dip in weight is normal in the days after birth, but that weight should be gained back after a week or so. After a month of little weight gain, Stephanie embarked on a journey of medical intervention in order to find out what was going on. There were all kinds of scans, tests, and exams that turned up nothing.

Eventually, she was admitted to the Fairbanks hospital in order to track her intake and output very closely over 24 hours. It was then that a heart murmur was detected, and her heart defect was first diagnosed: Supracardiac Total Anomalous Pulmonary Venous Return (TAPVR). Today, I know that mouthful of words like I know her own name.

Over the year and a half since that time, Stephanie and I have been managing the almost continuous stream of doctor bills, hospital bills, insurance statements, payments, insurance reimbursements, formal letters of appeal, negotiations, letters to the state department of insurance, phone calls, letters of decision, further letters of appeal, some hand wringing, more letters, more payments.

Stephanie agreed to be responsible for all of the insurance and medical related billing and paperwork. We knew it would be easier if one or the other of us took full responsibility for it, and Stephanie was willing to do so. Many, many thanks to her for keeping meticulous records of all of this and for going to bat on our behalf with our insurance company, my employer, and Sarah’s doctors. She did an incredibly thorough job.

Ultimately, it’s been kind of fascinating, in a train wreck sort of way, to see how much this whole experience cost, at least in monetary terms. The true cost can never be known.

The initial admission to Fairbanks Memorial Hospital was $9,925 for one overnight. Once the diagnosis came, we were immediately rushed to Anchorage. The medivac via a turbo prop and two ambulances was $17,500. Sarah and I were at Providence Hospital in Anchorage for about fourteen hours: $26,260. During that time, Sarah had her first procedure, a catheterization that entered her body in her femoral artery, right at the top of her thigh, and threaded its way into her heart: $20,260.

The next morning, Sarah and I flew on to Seattle on a Learjet. It probably would have been a pretty cool experience if my peripheral vision and my senses of wonder and adventure were working that day. They weren’t. Total cost: $38,540.

The actual heart surgery was a modest $19,978. A relatively small price for such a stunning act of medical and surgical skill. I’m still in awe of what they accomplished that day, and for which Sarah’s surgeon only charged $9,400.

The rest of our hospital stay at Children’s was more lengthy, and more costly. It makes sense, in such a world-class facility. $98,955.

Whenever I discuss money I feel like I have to clarify that I am neither bragging nor ashamed about all of these dollar amounts. They are what they are, and I find it interesting, even fascinating, but I cannot quite decide if I think this is a large dollar amount (it certainly is), or a relatively small dollar amount, considering what all was done (if the price of this surgery was in the millions, and the course and purpose of my entire life was suddenly redirected toward paying for it and nothing more, I would still consider it a worthy bargain).

All told, we were billed $231,500 for Sarah’s medical misadventure. She cost more than our house, more than our net worth, more than a few years’ salary, and more than a Lamborghini Gallardo (and I was this close to buying one of those, too).  

We are so blessed to have had excellent medical coverage through my employer. Because we do have insurance, that dollar amount above is not what we actually paid, but a percentage of a lot of money is still a lot of money. We are blessed to have the world of advanced medical technology available, and to have the support and prayers of our family. And more than anything, we are blessed to have Sarah with us as we struggle through this stack of paperwork. As I mentioned to Stephanie recently, there was no money back guarantee. If she hadn’t lived, we still would have been charged this amount and working through this paperwork, except that each statement, bill, and payment would be another poisoned reminder. She waved away both me and the thought as tears filled her eyes. 

Sarah is doing incredibly well, and shows no signs of any illness or limitation. Her scars are faint, but they will be a lifelong reminder of this experience. She runs around after the boys all day. She is frighteningly smart and uses this intelligence to torture Toby (she is her mother’s daughter). And she hasn’t had the attention to discipline that I think the boys have had, and so she’s fairly terrible about throwing herself down on the floor and having a fit of tantrum from time to time. But she’s also very sweet, cuddling warmly with mom or dad, patting us on the back when we hold her to mirror the way we are patting her. I am looking forward to watching her grow, to see her became a strong and beautiful adult. Who will be counting pennies then? 

Everyone loves the weekend; I know we’re not alone in this. Weekend mornings in particular. This is a universal truth, but it must be especially so for those who work Monday through Friday, for students, and for families. The weekend provides the needed break and rest from the workday world. 

Saturday and Sunday are the best days of the week. We get so much joy and have so much fun being together as a family. On these mornings, the stressors of life fall away. We are home, which for us is the place we most desire to be. We are relaxed, watching our kids be kids, watching the snow fall outside, enjoying the familiar voices of Weekend Edition on the radio, enjoying that comforting cup of creamy coffee, often making special breakfasts of waffles or pancakes, and enjoying each others’ company.

On Sunday mornings, we enjoy this kind of morning. We bask in it until one or the other of us looks at the clock and the spell is broken. We’ve got an hour to leave for church, and we must dive in to getting ready if we are to have any hope of being at church on time. Ratchet up the stress. 

One of us jumps in the shower while the other one picks out three sets of kid’s clothes. Someone wakes up Jamiee and gets her started toward readiness. There are shoes to put on. Matching pairs of socks to find. We trade shifts in the shower and the other one starts getting Sarah and the boys into their clothes. I can’t find my belt. Stephanie decides against an outfit once it’s on and changes into another, and another. It’s about time for Sarah’s morning nap so she’s crying, but we still have to go. They boys are being crazy. I’m taking too long and not thinking ahead. Stephanie is blow-drying her hair, applying makeup.

I’ve learned from past mornings. Or I like to think I have. In the past, once I’m ready and the kids are ready and Stephanie is still blow drying, I have just gone out to the car, got the kids buckled in, started it, and idled in frustration. Stephanie has this childhood memory of being late to get ready on Sunday morning and of being left behind as the family went to church without her. This was not a good memory for her, and I’ve just caused her to relive it. That makes for a good morning.

On subsequent Sunday mornings I’ve changed tactics and waited upstairs, totally relaxed and acquiesced to the idea of being late, applying no pressure to hurry whatsoever, only to frustrate her further and be accused of lollygagging. I haven’t learned anything.

We’ve been moments away from being ready, only to realize that I can’t find my belt. Can’t find my wallet. Can’t find my keys. And then Stephanie helps me look, because I never seem to be able to find anything. We turn the house upside down. We get stressed. The house becomes more of a disaster. We’re late. Later still.

There have been mornings like these where Stephanie and I are both snapping at the kids with voices raised louder than we intend. We push too hard, trying to motivate the kids to hurry when they seem to have no concept of the idea. We almost immediately feel terrible about this, because this is completely against our parenting philosophy. We get bugged at each other, and this is not how we’ve agreed to relate to each other. By the time we’re all buckled into the car and backing out of the driveway, all I want is peace. No kids talking. No radio playing. I want everyone to shut up for a minute.

And I realize that the hour before we leave for church has become my least favorite hour of the week. And that thought startles me. My favorite morning of the week. My favorite day of the week. My least favorite hour of the week.

We value going to church together as a family. We don’t look at it as a chore, a burden, or an obligation. For us being involved in church is family time as well, it’s just our larger family of faith, and we don’t want to miss it. It just seems to be that transition from weekend morning to dressed for church that kills us.

We’ve tried laying out clothes the night before. We’ve tried waking up earlier. Starting to get ready earlier. Going to bed earlier on the night before. Nothing works, and I suppose the real reason for this is that ultimately we’re treating the morning like a weekend morning. We’re not sure what the solution is other than to recognize it’s an issue and keep a sense of humor about it.

And sometimes, when we’re twenty minutes late for Sunday school and everyone is bugged at everyone, the only thing to do is stop at the local donut shop, sit together, enjoy some doughnuts, and some peace, and love on each other for a while.

Thanksgiving morning was always a great time for me as a child. It was a day that my brother and I didn't have to go to school, and our mom did not have to go to work. No waking up early, no rushing to get ready and get out into the cold to make it to school on time. Whenever we did wake up on our own and stumble out into the living room, the day already had a festive feel. Mom was there and she was already busy cooking for the meal to come, or continuing to clean. The house was open and brightly lit, and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade was on TV. Thanksgiving morning always began with the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. 

We watched as each float, marching band, or super inflated cartoon character came down the street. The hosts would feign surprise to see Snoopy! or Garfield! come around the corner. It was clearly a Thanksgiving holiday, and it had a Thanksgiving feel. Then came the Big Transition. After the Rockettes high kicked, and after the pop star of the year sang, then would come, not the climactic figure, but the transitional figure: Santa Clause. There he was at the tail end of the parade signaling the beginning of the Christmas season. And of course it was the following day, the day after Thanksgiving, that kicked off the Christmas shopping season. Christmas didn't begin until the day after Thanksgiving when Christmas decorations would appear on the sales floor, and Christmas carols played from store speakers. 

In my house as a child, Christmas came even later than that. Since my birthday was on the 14th of December, my mother determined to protect my birthday from being overshadowed by the holiday. There was no tree, decorations, or carols at my house until the day after my birthday, the 15th of December. And that's still early in comparison to earlier traditions. Once upon a time, Santa Clause himself was supposed to have brought not only the presents, but the tree and the decorations to every house as well. It all went up after the kids went to bed on Christmas eve. Talk about last minute. 

Now we have Christmas coming earlier than ever. Holiday commercials, holiday products, and holiday music have all arrived early as retail stores attempt to maximize sales and profits, and promote convenient layaway options for a society with maxed out credit card limits.  

Each of us can turn the phenomena around for ourselves, and maybe we can all do it for each other, and lessen our collective holiday stress. Don't give in to seasonal sprawl. Resist the temptation to start decorating just yet. Of course you love the holiday music and holiday decorations, but leave them in the attic for now. They will be that much more welcome and more treasured when they arrive, and you will have less chance to be totally sick of them before Christmas even arrives. Don't reward stores that foist that artificial feeling of Christmas spirit (you know, that spirit of buying) upon us all. Let's all be thankful first. One holiday at a time please. 

My time as a residence hall director was rich with interesting characters encountered during a fun and free time in their lives. Sometimes, however, we also saw students who were in difficult places in life and were genuinely hurting. On one such occasion, I received a phone call sometime shortly after midnight, just a few days after the fall conclusion of daylight savings time. It was not uncommon to get calls and requests that late at night as guys were continually up, coming and going at all hours. 

This call came from one of my younger residents; I think he was a sophomore at the time. He was calling from the lobby courtesy phone, which means he was standing about twenty five feet from my front door. “Hey, Rozell. Man, I need to talk to you for a minute.” There’s really an infinite number of directions an introduction like that can go.

I went out to the lobby to talk with him and see what he needed. “Dude, Rozell, my roommate is flippin’ out on me, and he just pulled a knife on me and I don’t want to go back in there.” Roommate conflict was not uncommon in the dorms over the years, and we often had to make peace or make other arrangements for residents. A knife or the threat of physical violence certainly merited more, and more immediate, attention.

I asked him what they had been fighting about, and he explained, “We weren’t fighting about anything. I was asleep. He was talking to himself when he flipped on the light and woke me up. He was yelling at me about all kinds of stuff and accused me of changing the time on his watch, and he threw his watch across the room at me. I stood up to talk to him when he came right up to me.” In a quieter but more emphatic voice he continued, “Dude, he reached over and yanked my boxers down.”

Now, I couldn’t figure any of this out. I didn’t know if the roommate was angry and hostile, or joking around, or what. The resident in front of me was obviously shaken, and he was one of our better residents; he was someone I trusted to be straight with me, so that gave his story more credibility. He did not want to go back there to his room, so I told him to hang out in the lobby while I went and talked to the roommate.

Before I went to confront the roommate, I called my partner director, briefly outlined what the resident had told me, and asked him to come along with me to check on the roommate. It’s always better to have backup.

So my partner and I went and knocked on the door. After several more knocks and calls through the door went unanswered, we let ourselves in. The light was full on, and this brother was laying there in his bunk stark naked. “Hey,” I said. “Wake up. I need to talk to you.” He sat up for a moment and I asked him if he was alright.

In this job, I had been called on at times to confront drunk student, hostile students, football players, those who hated me, and I’d never really been intimidated by any of them. After being in this room, on this occasion, for about thirty seconds, I was already pretty freaked out. This guy was not all there, and it was abundantly obvious.

As my partner and I stood there in this guy’s dorm room, he stood up quickly and took a couple of large steps toward us, still naked. my mind was obviously scrambling pretty fast, trying to figure out how best to play this. At first he wasn’t really answering our questions, he just wasn’t engaging us in conversation, but after a few moments he started to talk.

I wish I could remember more clearly all of the nonsense he was saying. Apropos of nothing, he asked us, with a rhetorical flourish, “Do you know who changed the time? It all started with the farmers. The farmers changed the time.” He continued to make a stream of disjointed, random statements about daylight savings time and other things we couldn’t quite follow. He talked repeatedly about talking to himself, talking to God, and himself being God. He talked about being the victim of some group that may have been the farmers, but maybe not, too. At one point he turned to my partner and me and said, “Well, take your pants off if you’re gonna stand there.” No, we said, We’re fine like this. What he was saying was at times hilarious, and at other times nonsensical and scary. It was hard to stifle a nervous giggle, but there was a big, naked guy standing in front of me, and I was terrified.

My partner and I went back out into the hallway to confer. I didn’t really think this guy was yankin’ our chain, but still I figure I had to give him the option to suddenly get better when faced with the reality of the men with restraints coming to get him. And so I gave him the same line I’d given demon boy more than a year before.

I said, “Hey, man. I don’t really know what’s going on with you, but I think you need some help, so I’m gonna call 911. When they get here they’re gonna come with an ambulance, they’re gonna put you in restraints and take you to the hospital. Even if you tell them you’re just kidding around, they’re gonna keep you overnight for observation. It’s gonna be a big deal, so if you’re screwing around, now’s the time to knock it off.” He just sat there and didn’t respond. After a moment I added, “So I’m gonna call 911 now. It that okay with you?”

“Yeah,” he said, “That’d be okay.” It was then that I really knew he wasn’t messin’ with me, and that he probably was having some kind of mental breakdown. As he sat there it seemed that whatever other voices were scrambling around in his mind, there deep down somewhere he was hearing what I was saying, and he knew that he was coming unhinged, and he needed some help.

We called our boss and consulted with her. We called campus police and had them come over. Before calling 911 outright, we called the 24 hour mental health crisis line and spoke to the on-call person. She said we’d have to call and wake up a judge to have the guy committed just then. It was just before 5AM at this point, so once it was established that there was no immediate danger, it was decided to wait until office hours, just a couple hours away, to take him in for a psych evaluation. We checked in with Farmer Boy a few more times, and once he assured us that he was not going to hurt himself, and that he was not going to leave his room, we left him there for the next couple hours.

At 8AM I went back to get him (he was, thankfully, fully dressed). We were met by the dean of students, and the three of us drove to the mental health center for an evaluation. I heard later that day that he was diagnosed with an initial onset of schizophrenia with religious delusions.

Unfortunately, that community did not have the resources to handle this kind of case, and so he was transferred to the nearest psychiatric hospital more than an hour’s drive away. The only way to transfer him that the System had in place was by State Trooper. And so he had to ride alone, for an hour, in the back of a Statie’s cruiser, before entering what must have been the terrifying phase of admission into such a facility and the long road of dealing with the newly emerged, and probably lifelong mental illness.

It must have been scary for him, both to wrestle with the voices inside his head, and to enter alone into the mental health system. One thing I don’t remember is any contact with the parents, or when the parents became involved. I don’t even remember this guy’s name anymore. I wonder about him now and wonder how he is doing today. I wish him the best.