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Chronic illness has changed my life so dramatically, that when I think of that pre-2001 life, it sometimes feels as if it happened to someone else. I wonder if others – not just the chronically ill but also their caregivers – feel this way.
By the time I got sick, my children were grown and out of the house, so my life had come to revolve around my career as a law professor. In 1982, I’d received a J.D. from the School of Law at the University of California, Davis, and immediately joined the faculty. At the time I got sick, I’d returned to teaching after serving as the law school’s Dean of Students from 1992-1998.
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Serving as Dean of Students was by far the most challenging job I’d ever had. I was part administrator, part academic counselor, part lay therapist, part mother, part enforcer. To give you a flavor of how crazy the job could be, I once had to mediate a conflict between two law students who were roommates and were sitting in my office, yelling at each other. One of them was convinced that the other was intentionally turning up the heat at night in order to get him to move out of the apartment. The “accused” vehemently denied it. Desperate to come up with some way to get them to resolve this (so they’d get out of my office and I could get on with my more important duties), I had each of them put in writing a promise to the other regarding the highest (in one student’s case) and the lowest (in the other student’s case) that they would set the thermostat. To my surprise and relief, I never saw them in my office again! |
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| When I returned to the classroom in 1998, I felt a gap in my life, now that counseling students wasn’t a major part of my job. And so I became a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) for a teenage boy in child protective services. (This was unrelated to my legal background; I underwent intensive training to become this “lay” advocate.) I took him out once a week and I made sure his needs were addressed during court hearings about his status. He lived in a group home with the highest level of supervision. He had serious emotional problems, but we had a great time on our outings. We’d eat at our favorite Chinese restaurant and then play miniature golf or maybe just drive around and talk. My heart ached when I had to explain to him over the phone that I was too sick to continue as his advocate. To this day, I worry that he never really understood why our relationship came to such an abrupt halt. (Once you leave the CASA program, you’re not allowed any contact with your child). I’m left to wonder and to hope that he’s doing okay as a young adult. |
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Before getting sick, I loved to work in charcoal, pastel, and occasionally in oil. Here’s a link to some of my work: |
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| Tony and I were not world travelers. We liked to go to Hawaii when our jobs allowed. But when Tony visited our daughter, Mara, and her husband, Brad, in London where they were temporarily living, they took him to Paris for the day. He knew immediately that this was a place we should visit together. And so, two years later, we took that trip on which I got sick and never recovered. |
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