Dr. Lisa's Bountiful Life

Fertile Ground

I come from an unusually large family.

My parents had ten children in sixteen years, including one set of twins.

I was the oldest.

Raised in a suburban Maine town, mine was not an experience shared by many.

That my parents were so obviously fertile caused me no end of embarrassment as a youngster.

“Another one?” my schoolmates would ask. “How many kids do your parents plan on having, anyway?” I could not answer that question until after my youngest brother was born during the autumn of my senior year in high school.

Ten. That was the final number.

Though I had often suggested that I would never have children myself (having helped raise enough of them already), I became pregnant with my son at the tender age of 21. As a first year medical student, living two states away from my then-husband who visited only on weekends, I was surprised by this turn of events.

Surprised, and again, slightly embarrassed. I cannot explain why I would have felt shame over so normal a human function. Now a mother of three, and proud big sister and aunt to many, I have greatly benefited from fortuitous biology.

Others are not so lucky.

As our guests on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour remind us this week, fertility does not naturally come to all.

Fertility and adoption counselor Anne Belden and reproductive endocrinologist Dr. Ben Lannon have worked with countless couples for whom having a baby becomes a challenging ordeal. They describe the shame felt by men and women who cannot accomplish what they are told should occur “naturally.”

Fertility issues, for some strange reason, remain one of medicine’s “dirty little secrets.” I come from an unusually large family. My parents’ fertility status was no secret.

The early embarrassment I felt over this--and my own discomfort following the surprise pregnancy with my son-- in no way matches what couples who struggle with fertility must feel.

But I have great compassion for those who experience embarrassment over something they cannot control.

I hope that fertility, whether abundant , inadvertent or lacking, will someday be treated for exactly what it is: a human function about which nobody should feel shame.

 

Boston Run

In 2008, my seven-year-old daughter, sister and I took the T to Copley Square in Boston, and watched the Marathon runners cross the finish line on Patriots Day.

My sister, then a doctoral student in nutrition at Tufts, was well versed in the ways of the big city.

A longtime resident of Maine, I had some trepidation about facing the crowds, the noise and the sheer vastness of the urban setting.

This was quickly diminished by the experience of watching people gratefully--often euphorically--reach the end of a 26.2 mile journey that had (for most) been many months in the making.

My sister greeted several acquaintances among the finishers. She had herself run the Boston Marathon previously, and knew the route well.

It was a beautiful April day. Flowers were blooming. There was an air of holiday and celebration.

My daughter and I enjoyed the comraderie and the crowd energy generated by runners and spectators alike.

Fast forward to Patriots Day 2013.

Another crowd gathers to watch the Marathon runners enter Copley Square. It is a beautiful April day. There is an air of holiday and celebration.

An eight-year-old boy, his mother and sister, stand among the spectators, waiting for his father to cross the finish line.

A bomb explodes. Then another. 

The boy and two others are killed immediately. His mother and sister are critically injured.

Countless others are maimed and wounded.

Word of the tragedy immediately spreads through social and mainstream media. We hear of yet another irrational,  evil act perpetrated upon those whose only crime was attempting to live their lives.

Very little separates us from those who were impacted by this crime.

For most, it is an issue of timing.

I am a runner, my sister is a runner and many of our siblings are runners. We have run Boston, and other marathons across the country.

I am a mother with children who have often watched me cross the finish line at races.

I am sad and angry that a pastime I love has been tainted by senseless violence.

I am sad and angry that an eight-year-old child lost his life.

Today I laced my sneakers up and ran for those who no longer could.

And prayed that Boston would somehow find the strength to persevere, and heal, in the face of its lost innocence.

Remembrance

2013

Embracing

Have you had your heart broken?

Me, too.

I doubt there is a human alive who can claim differently.

We who chose to love are choosing to make ourselves vulnerable to heartbreak. 

Even as we are opening ourselves to joy.

The joy that comes from loving is due in part to knowing that we are connected to all others who have chosen to love. 

As philosopher Martin Buber wrote, "“The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable through the embracing of one of its beings.” 

Buber described the difference between "I-Thou" and "I-It" relationships.

When we see another person as an "It" object, we are unable to recognize that person's humanity. We keep him at a distance.

When we embrace that person as a "Thou," we are better able to understand our commonality.

As a doctor, and a human, I am highly aware of my vulnerability.

I hear my patients stories, and from them I hear my story.

I feel my heart break, even as I feel their hearts break.

I also feel their joy.

Each week, I share some of this joy--and this heartbreak--with listeners of our radio show.

One of this week's guests, a mother whose college-aged son committed suicide eight years ago, caused me to feel intensely vulnerable.

My own son is currently a college student. I love him as fiercely as any mother might.

I know that by loving him--by loving anyone--I put myself at risk for loss.

Yet I chose to embrace him.

I chose to embrace the mother who shared her story, and know her as "I-Thou," rather than believe that her story is unique to her, and could never become my story.

I invite you to join me in this embracing.

 

Embracing

August 2012

Listen to Dr. Lisa's conversation with Michael Chase, best-selling author and founder of The Kindness Center, and Sandra Fisher, suicide prevention advocate and mother, this Sunday on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour & Podcast.

Mother, Becoming

I have many roles, and many titles, but mother is the one I take most seriously.

It has caused me to approach medicine in a different way.

It has caused me to approach many things in a different way.

My son, now nineteen and a biochemistry/Spanish major at the University of Maine, is home on college break this week. Every time he returns to my house, I am afforded the chance to reflect on parenting.

Conversations with mi hijo (as I affectionately call my son, in homage to his love of Spanish and year spent in Guatemala) remind me of the person I once was,  and how that person has merged into the one I will always be in the process of "becoming."

We are, all of us, constantly "becoming."

As a college student, I spent years doing research on cancer and a blood disoder called monoclonal gammopathy. This complemented well my pre-med courses and my interest in understanding biology.

My son learned yesterday that he will spend this summer doing biology research at Maine's Bigelow Lab, through a National Science Foundation program for undergraduates. 

I see in mi hijo the fascination with how things work that I myself have always had.

More accurately, perhaps, it is why things work the way they do that fascinates us both.

As a college student, I may have thought that this fascination would wane by the time I had reached adulthood--certainly by the time I had a college student of my own.

Perhaps I might finally have found wisdom and a thoroughness of knowledge.

And yet I have found so many more things to learn and experience.

Which, truly, is the wisdom of living: that life is vast and endless in its multiplicity of connections.

My son is at the beginning of what will no doubt be a long and interesting journey.

He may follow in my footsteps as a doctor, or not.

He will approach the world in his own unique way.

His becoming enriches my becoming.

Mother I am, and student, both.

 

Central Park, NYC

February 2013

The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour & Podcast airs each Sunday at 7 am & noon. Download the podcast through iTunes.