I’m a little late, but happy heavenly birthday to two enigmatic souls who are a huge part of me: my adoptive mother, whose birthday was Friday, and my biological father, whose birthday was Saturday.

Olga Eneida de Freitas Christlieb, shown on a happy Christmas morning in the early 1970s, raised me and therefore greatly influenced who I am. Her constant struggles, internally and with alcohol, made almost every day a challenge for all of us. But when she died in 2004 after years of strokes, both major and minor, Mom finally found a place where her untreated issues no longer had her, and her family, in their unrelenting grip.

I don’t know how old Mom would’ve turned on her birthday, because she never let on what year she was born. She guarded her driver’s license as if it bore secrets on which her life depended. She was either born in 1930, 1931 — or 1923, which is what one place on the Social Security Death Index on Ancestry says and what some Panama documents we found at Dad’s house after his passing in 2014 make reference to.

A fellow I reached out to in Panama a couple of years ago — whose grandfather had the same name as Olga’s father, but it apparently wasn’t him — was able to get a copy of her birth certificate for me, and it says 1930. (It’s not the original — just a document typed up with her birthdate and parents’ names.)

But whatever year it was, we all wish you a happy birthday and send you our love, Mom.

Orval Bradford Workman — who decided sometime during his youth to rename himself Robert and went by Bob — never laid eyes on me or, as far as we know, even knew about me before his tragic drowning at age 45 in Florida 16 months after I was born in West Virginia in February 1961. I may not look a whit like Bob — facial features or the hair: His was wavy and mine is straight as raw spaghetti … although hopefully not that stiff.

But Bob left an undeniable imprint on me, as anyone whose genes have been passed on to another would. Just as I see my striking resemblance to my birth mother Betty in the many photos my older full siblings have shared with me since I found them, I have come to know how I am like both parents who conceived me little more than a year after their 1959 divorce.

Startling as it seems — at least to me, a guy who’s still in his 50s (barely) — Bob would’ve turned 104 years old Saturday. He was born in 1916, the same year as some really big names you’ll recognize: actors Olivia de Havilland and Kirk Douglas, both of whom died this year at ages 104 and 103; and a slew of other actors/entertainers including Gregory Peck, Glenn Ford, Betty Grable, Jackie Gleason, Van Johnson, Keenan Wynn, Dorothy McGuire, Fernando Lamas and Dinah Shore. Beloved TV journalist Walter Cronkite was also born in 1916, along with world-known British veterinarian/author James Herriot and playwright/screenwriter Horton Foote.

Last but not least, many of you know Ramona and Beezus from her many children’s books, but author Beverly Cleary was also born the same year as my birth father — and she is still alive at 104.

As for this photo of Bob, I wish I knew its story. It clearly was taken during his youth in West Virginia, probably when he was between 13 and 15, but that’s only a guess. My sister Terry — who was just 5 when Bob faded from Betty’s and my three siblings’ lives for good around the time I was conceived in 1960 — and I have talked about it and have no clue who the baby in the pic is. I would think it’s a relative, though.

Bob grew up an only child: His older brother Lyston died at age 3 in 1913, we assume of scarlet fever or some other childhood illness. Another older sibling (we don’t know if it was a boy or a girl), apparently born in 1912, died either in childbirth or at a very young age.

So, a wondrously happy birthday to you, Olga and Bob. Who knows, maybe you’ve met in heaven and are talking about me right now?!  

I had the most wonderful phone visit with this gentleman this morning. He’s Bob Nelson, and he was my Dad’s best friend growing up in St. Paul, Minnesota. Bob turned 90 in April and is still going strong, just using “a stick” — a cane — occasionally, although he says he doesn’t really need to. His wife Betty is doing great at 86, too. They live in a senior community of about 50 apartments in Hudson, Wisconsin, a quaint little town on the St. Croix River that separates the two states.

You’ll never meet a more pleasant fellow. Then again, having visited Minnesota numerous times to see my grandparents Alma and Frank and other relatives while growing up — and quite a few more times since — I’ve never met anyone from the Land of 10,000 Lakes who wasn’t the definition of friendliness and warmth.

Bob was so happy to hear from me. Since Dad passed away in July 2014, we’ve only spoken a couple of times and exchanged a handful of emails. We talked about how much we both miss him.

Betty and Bob have grown kids, along with grandkids and great-grandkids (when I asked him how many grands and greats, he laughed and said he’d have to write ’em all down to add ’em all up) Their oldest is a 64-year-old son who’s a dentist. Sadly, they lost one of their sons in a car accident about 10 years ago.

I told Bob that I’ll never forget how he drove, at age 84, three hours from Hudson to Hutchinson, Minnesota, to join us for Dad’s small but beautiful funeral service. That meant so much to us, not to mention how he stood there and gave a moving tribute to Dad, telling stories about his dear friend and sharing some of the memories he still cherishes after all the years.

In addition to the sweet photo of Bob and Betty, the group shot above is an awesome memory from 1947-48, Bob and Dad’s senior year at Murray High in St. Paul. (Murray stood right across from Dad’s house on Grantham Street in St. Anthony Park.) Dad, whose first name was Clark but who was known by his family and friends by his middle name, Lindsay, is the coolest of cool dudes at left in the awesome leather jacket. Bob, looking pretty doggone cool himself, is right next to him. A few years ago I knew the names of the other guys, but I’ve forgotten.

This last photo is part of a true keepsake: After Dad died and we were going through the countless heirlooms and family treasures at his home in Missouri City, I found a letter Bob had sent him in August 1949. Bob was in the Army, stationed somewhere in the Pacific, and Dad was in the middle of unsuccessfully trying his hand at two Minnesota colleges — Carleton and Winona — before joining the Navy in 1950 and ending up stationed in Panama for over three years.

It’s a two-page letter full of great fun like “Are we still going hitchhiking across the States some summer?” and “It’s hotter than hell again today. … I still wish a damn typhoon would hit here.” We just don’t write letters like they used to, do we?

One of the last things I told Bob before we said goodbye was what an amazing coincidence it is that my biological parents have the same names as he and his wife Betty (her formal name is Elisabeth). He knew about my having found my birth family 15 years ago, but didn’t recall that my parents’ names were Betty and Bob.

The Nelsons are such great folks, and I feel very lucky to know them. It’s like having a piece of Dad to hang on to a little while longer. I’m going to do my best to make sure we stay in as close a touch as possible from now on.  

As I fell in love with baseball at a young age, one of the players I couldn’t get enough of was this guy. Tom Terrific truly was to me, even if it seemed like my team, the Houston Astros, could never touch him.

My editing shift for The Dallas Morning News was almost over Wednesday evening when I heard the disheartening news that legendary pitcher Tom Seaver had died at a relatively young 75. I was shocked and saddened, and immediately went to look up how he’d died: Lewy body dementia and COVID-19 complications.

I texted several baseball buddies, knowing they’d also be sad to hear of the passing of a great ballplayer and great man we’d all grown up watching. I also texted my brother Crys, one of the three full siblings I found 15 years ago, who was 25 years old when Seaver and the Miracle Mets won the World Series in 1969 (I was only 8). “He was a great one,” Crys texted back.

Seaver, a gifted, overpowering right-hander, shut down opponents with a fantastic fastball, pinpoint control, a brilliant mind and the perfect pitcher’s mentality. On top of that, he was a great guy with boyish good looks and charm.

“Tom does everything well,” former New York Mets teammate Cleon Jones, who caught the final out of the ’69 World Series, said of Seaver. “He’s the kind of man you’d want your kids to grow up to be like. Tom’s a studious player, devoted to his profession, a loyal cat, trustworthy — everything a Boy Scout’s supposed to be. In fact, we call him ‘Boy Scout.'”

As a 22-year-old rookie with the Mets in 1967, Seaver won 16 games — does anyone do that anymore as a rookie? — and was named the National League’s Rookie of the Year. That summer, when Seaver made the first of his seven straight trips to the All-Star Game — 12 overall — Atlanta Braves slugger Hank Aaron introduced himself before the contest.

“Kid, I know who you are, and before your career is over, I guarantee you everyone in this stadium will, too,” Aaron told him.

That night, Seaver would enter in the 15th inning to get the save in the National League’s 2-1 win — after Tony Perez’s home run off Catfish Hunter in the top of the inning.

Two years later, No. 41 led the Mets to their unbelievable season that culminated in a championship — the only one he’d ever be a part of — by compiling a remarkable 25-7 record and a 2.21 ERA to win the first of his three Cy Young Awards. That same year, 22-year-old teammate Nolan Ryan went 6-3, making 10 starts on his way to the Hall of Fame along with Seaver.

In the pitching-rich NL, Seaver didn’t win the league ERA crown that year — not with the Giants’ Juan Marichal posting a 2.10 and Cardinals teammates Steve Carlton (2.17) and Bob Gibson (2.18) finishing second and third (the previous season, 1968, was when Gibson posted his never-to-be-touched 1.12). Jerry Koosman, Seaver’s teammate, had the NL’s fifth-best ERA at 2.28.

That ’69 run of Seaver’s was the first of his five 20-win seasons. The Mets went 100-62 in the regular season and overtook the Cubs to win the NL East after trailing by 10 games in mid-August. From Aug. 5 through season’s end, Seaver went 10-0 with a 1.34 ERA, eight straight complete games and three shutouts.

The Mets defeated the Braves in the first-ever NLCS, then beat the Baltimore Orioles — who won 109 games in the regular season — in five games to complete their leap from lovable losers to improbable world champs. Seaver lost Game 1 of the World Series but bounced back to win Game 4 in a 10-inning complete game.

As I was reading some online sources about the 1969 season, I ran across something I hadn’t remembered: Only one NL team had a winning record against the Mets that year — the team I had already become a big fan of since we lived just 5 miles from the Astrodome. Somehow, the Astros — who that year finished 81-81, their first season without a losing record, in fifth place in the NL West — won 10 of the teams’ 12 meetings, including all six games in the ‘Dome. The Reds went 6-6 against the Mets, but the Amazin’s had a winning record against everyone else.

Sweet.

Seaver’s 311 wins, 2.86 career ERA and 3,640 strikeouts (sixth all-time) put him in select company like no other: He and fellow Hall of Famer Walter Johnson are the only pitchers ever to post 300 wins, 3,000 K’s *and* an ERA below 3.00. Seaver was 40 when he won his 300th in 1985 as a member of the Chicago White Sox and back in New York — but against the Yankees in the Bronx, not against the Mets at Shea Stadium.

Seaver threw “only” one career no-hitter, against the Cardinals when he was pitching for the Reds in 1978 — after the Mets traded him and slugger Dave Kingman the previous year in what came to be known as the “Midnight Massacre.” But in very Nolan Ryan-esque fashion, Seaver had five one-hitters, 10 two-hitters and 27 three-hitters.

Funny thing about Boy Scout, though: For him, it was never about statistics. It was about performance.

“In baseball, my theory is to strive for consistency, not to worry about the numbers,” The New York Times quoted him as saying in 1976. “If you dwell on statistics, you get shortsighted; if you aim for consistency, the numbers will be there at the end.”

The numbers Seaver put up during his 20-year career take me back to the great baseball of my youth, when pitchers threw complete games with regularity. You just don’t see these anymore, and you won’t ever again — just like we’ll never have another 300-game winner. A few more of Seaver’s untouchable feats:

— 61 shutouts
— 231 complete games
— In addition to winning 20 or more games 5 times, he won 16 or more 7 other times
— 9 times with a season ERA of 2.59 or better (one was in 1971, when Seaver led the NL with a 1.76 ERA and had a 20-10 record, but finished second in Cy Young voting to the Cubs’ Fergie Jenkins, who went 24-13 with a 2.77 ERA)
— 10 seasons with 200 or more strikeouts (nine times with the Mets, once with the Reds), an NL record
— Major-league-record 16 Opening Day starts

I remember watching Seaver pitch a lot on TV for both the Mets and Reds, and he always seemed to be dominant. I also listened to plenty of games on the radio in which he pitched against the Astros, and I recall him being in command then, too. I attended my share of Astros games growing up, but I don’t recall ever getting to see Seaver pitch in person. I’d remember that.

While writing this, I found a database revealing that during his 12 seasons with the Mets, Seaver recorded 10 or more strikeouts 62 times — nine of those against the Astros.

“I would like to be a great artist,” he once said. “I would quit pitching if I could paint like Monet or Rousseau. But I can’t. What I can do is pitch, and I can do that very well.”

Baseball has missed Seaver these past 34 years since he retired at the age of 41 in 1986. And now a nation misses a hero of its national pastime who brought so much joy to so many.

You always did it the right way, both on and off the field, Tom. I’ll always be grateful for how truly Terrific you were.

https://www.mlb.com/news/tom-seaver-top-10-moments-c290307942

Blogging this from a post on my Facebook page on Thursday, Aug. 20:

For 10 hours today until getting discharged about noon, this was my view from a room at Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital in Fort Worth (the same place I had my ruptured appendix yanked out in late May). But before being wheeled to the fourth floor of the Cardiac Tower around 2 a.m., I spent almost five hours in a crazy-busy ER, thankfully in the relative silence of my own little room.

To cut to the chase, I am the proud (?) owner/recipient/beneficiary of a DVT, more complicatedly known as a deep vein thrombosis. In layman’s terms, a blood clot in my right leg, extending approximately from mid-calf to mid-thigh. I’m also now getting my first crack at blood thinners (anticoagulants), specifically one called Eliquis, which I’ll take twice daily for about three months.

This all started about two weeks ago. Actually, it probably started in mid-March when we at The Dallas Morning News all took our jobs home, and my level of activity that came with a daily commute, a standing desk — and getting away from it on a fairly regular basis — dwindled big-time. At home during the pandemic, I’m not standing at my desk, I don’t get up and walk around enough, and I’m not getting nearly enough exercise. Those would seem to be prime suspects for this thing I now must deal with.

When I started having right calf pain week before last, I logically thought I had pulled a muscle during a couple of bike rides. But it lingered into our drive to Galveston several days later, although the pain wasn’t unbearable. Before we left on our trip, though, I did what we all do and attempted to self-diagnose through the infinite sources within clicking reach. There were possibilities including dehydration, hypothyroidism (which I do have) and pulled muscles.

But the one that seemed more prevalent on the sites I visited — and the one I could never entirely convince myself I *didn’t* have — was a DVT. Some days the pain decreased, some days it increased. Sometimes walking seemed to help relieve the pain. Meanwhile, as I was favoring my right leg so much, I started having pain in my left heel. As it grew worse, I started searching for an answer to that, too — and all signs pointed to plantar fasciitis.

I would’ve cried if it weren’t so laughable. But reading all the material about DVT and seeing how it could become a life-threatening issue if pieces of the clot break free, travel through the heart and become lodged in the lungs, creating a pulmonary embolism, I decided I needed to see my doctor to be sure.

I made an appointment to be worked in at 7:45 Tuesday morning and saw a nurse practitioner. Sure enough, she did make one certain diagnosis: plantar fasciitis in my left foot. Told me about the stretches I should do, the iced water bottle I needed to roll on the bottom of my foot to help heal the inflammed plantar fascia, and the shoe insert I should buy. But when it came to my right leg, she did a physical exam of the calf and determined I had nothing more than a muscle strain. I didn’t have a couple of the common symptoms of DVT: redness and warmth in the alleged area of clotting. Do some calf stretches and this will work itself out, she said.

Thank goodness for what happened the next day, yesterday. The leg pain was much worse and extended higher, around my knee and into my thigh. But the biggest change I noticed as my editing shift wore on was how swollen my right calf and the area below it had become. It also was now somewhat numb to the touch. I asked Kay to come into our bedroom, which has been my pandemic office, and look at my two legs and tell me what she saw. She was shocked at how swollen my lower right leg was. Up to this point, she hadn’t been sure I had a DVT — but now, even though she didn’t tell me this until I got home from the hospital today — she was almost sure of it.

Kay told me I’d better call the 24-hour nurse line for our insurance provider, Blue Cross Blue Shield, after my shift for guidance. I did that, and the nurse recommended I see a doctor within four hours. Not twenty-four. Four.

I went just before 9 p.m. to CareNow, realizing they didn’t do imaging but hoping the doctor might at least give me his best opinion. Instead, I was told by the woman at the front desk, who spoke to him, that I should go straight to the ER if I thought I might have a DVT. That’s how I landed at the Harris Methodist ER, which had taken such good care of my rotten appendix and me. Within a couple of hours, I had the ultrasound that confirmed the blood clot, and, knowing only what little I’d read online, I was surprised to hear it wasn’t confined to my calf — and that it was as extensive as it is.

After finally getting in a hospital room at 2 a.m. on a growling stomach after skipping dinner, sleeping about three hours, talking this morning to nurses, the doctor on duty and the PA for the hematologist I’ll now be a patient of, and watching videos about DVT, I understand more about what I’m dealing with and my treatment. Like, for instance, I thought the blood thinners would be helping break up the clot that’s already there. Nope, those are to prevent another one from forming. Basically, your body works to dissolve the clot while the med’s doing its job. If all goes as it should, there’s a low risk that any chunk of the clot will break free, flow upstream and wind up in my lungs.

So, let me close out my usual long-winded storytelling with this: If you have symptoms of any kind and you’re unsure what they are, it’s perfectly OK to go online and see what’s out there. You’ll learn which sources are the most reliable, although I still find myself perusing many for the same reason I eat a lot of the food I eat — because it’s there. 😉 

But if you experience anything with even the remote potential of being serious, call your doctor. Don’t let it go. With my appendix, I didn’t wait to get in to see mine when the intense pain hit, and I’m damn glad I didn’t. With this situation, I probably could/should have gone in sooner. But if I had, I probably would’ve gotten the same misdiagnosis I received Tuesday. Once the symptoms and pain reached another level a day later, it seemed pretty clear this was something serious.

Do your own research, but don’t blow off seeing a doctor. It seriously can make all the difference for your life and your loved ones’. 

Blogging this from my Facebook today:

Many of you saw my post Wednesday about my late biological mother Betty’s 99th birthday. As most of you know, I have three older full-blooded birth family siblings — brothers Crys and Robin and sister Terry — whom I found 15 years ago. We lost dear Robin, a smart, sensitive, devoted father, grandfather and husband, in January 2009 when he was only 61 years old. Crys, Terry and I keep an open group text going and stay in close contact, although we don’t get to talk or see one another nearly as often as I wish. They’ve both lived in the Denver area for over 45 years.

Yesterday as we shared texts about Betty’s birthday and I texted several photos of her, I asked Crys and Terry to do me a special favor: Would they please take a minute to text me one lasting memory of Betty in her honor so I could share it on Facebook and on my blog?

And they did. Lord knows, over the past 15 years I have barraged them with so many questions about Betty and our father Bob, they’re certainly accustomed to it. And being the loving, kindhearted people they are, they’ve never told me, “Enough with the questions! What are you, some kind of reporter?” 

I’m so sorry I’m a day late with these, Betty. Newspaper deadlines got in the way, as they often do.

****

A sweet memory from Crys, who was born 2-28-44 (we share a birthday, 17 years apart). He joined the Air Force in September 1962 after having graduated that year from East HS in Huntington, West Virginia. After getting out of the service, he lived briefly with Betty and almost-teenage Terry in an apartment on Third Avenue before getting his own place, enrolling in Marshall University and going to work at WSAZ-TV:

“When I returned to Huntington (in 1966) after the Air Force stint, I was learning to play the electric guitar I had bought. There was a song, ‘The Shadow of Your Smile,’ that I was intrigued by and I was surprised that our mother knew it (I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised). I turned on my amp and started playing as she sang. It was a beautiful moment that I will always remember.”

****

Poignant memories from Terry (Teresa), who was born 12-19-54, graduated from East HS in 1973 and moved to Colorado about a year later after getting pregnant — and, at age 19 like our mother did as she was months from turning 40, placing her son for adoption. (Terry reunited with her son when he was 18.) Terry had always been the baby of the family — until she and our brothers were discovered by their long-lost sibling:

“Well, I have lots of little memories of Mother that were special to me! Number one was always holding my arms around her waist and her singing to me and we dancing in a circle is probably the most precious. And also, that at least once in the summer, maybe twice, we went to Dreamland, the swimming pool in the West end of town and we had to take two or three buses to go down there coming and going … and she did that just for my pleasure! Love you Mother for always thinking of my happiness!   I have a lot more to say but that’s just a few right now.”

****

Betty never had a driver’s license, never drove a car, so that’s why she and Terry had to take those buses to Dreamland, a crazy-popular Olympic-size swimming pool in the Huntington suburb of Kenova. It also had a pavilion where big bands — and big names — started performing in the 1930s. (I’m talking Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong and the like.) Betty herself sang at Dreamland with a dance band fronted by a drummer named Hal “Scotty” Scott a number of times in the early 1960s.

Terry has told me before about how she often danced with Betty at home when Terry was growing up. That visual touches my heart like no other — Betty twirling gracefully, gently with her young brown-haired, brown-eyed daughter through their rented house, then later their apartment, serenading her with that remarkable singing voice. The chills and tears come as I type. I wish that just once, I could have been that brown-haired, brown-eyed dance partner.

Thank you, Sister and Brother, for sharing such sentimental memories of our mother, and for always showing me how much you loved her. Thank you for loving me, too. 

It seems all too unbelievable, but my precious birth mother Betty is 99 years old today, July 22, 2020. She’s celebrating with all the other angels, as she has been since arriving at heaven’s gates five days before Christmas 1992.

So many of my Facebook friends and family have shared in my birth family journey since the social media platform came around — what, 12 years ago? — and we cherish that you’ve so genuinely joined us in that life-changing experience.

As we wish beautiful Betty a happy 99th, I’m bringing back a FB post I wrote 5 years ago, because it embodies so many of the emotions I’ve felt and questions I’ve had since finding my three older full siblings in 2005. Crys, Robin and Terry were all very close to our mother, and the memories they’ve so generously given of her have meant more to me than anything.

Also, to celebrate Betty’s birthday, here’s one of a handful of songs we have priceless recordings of her performing in about 1951 at a March of Dimes benefit in Logan, West Virginia. She truly had an amazing gift, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Here’s to the mother my brothers and sister have always loved, and to the mother I never knew but love just the same. 

****

It’s your birthday, Betty Louise.

I – and all your surviving family and friends – celebrate you, honor you and love you. And, even though our eyes and arms never met, I miss you. You can miss and long for someone, even if you never knew her personally or ever embraced her. You love, cherish and are grateful for all the people life surrounds you with. I wouldn’t trade the family I’ve known my whole life for 10 Astros World Series titles (and those who know me well know how much that would mean to me).

But you always wonder what if. What you missed out on. I can’t help that, and I hope you and all the people whom I love and who love me can accept that. It’s not like missing the bus or missing an appointment or missing a sale you’ve been waiting for. It’s like missing the smells and comforts of your grandmother’s house, the reassuring warmth of her hugs, the escape provided by visits to her home. You wish you could go back and keep going back forever.

And so I miss you – and what we never had.

There are so many things I don’t know, and will never know in this life. If I’d searched for my birth family sooner and found you before you left almost 23 years ago, maybe you could’ve answered all of my questions – or at least some of them.

I don’t know how or when you and my birth father Bob, the father of all four of your children, met. I don’t know if he started drinking at some point after you, at age 18, married him in 1939, or he was already under the bottle’s spell before you fell in love. I don’t know how bad things truly got in your 20 years of marriage – outside of the relatively few details brother Crys has told me about from childhood flashbacks, many painful. Or how many times you thought about packing up Crys, Robin and Terry and leaving Bob, if you ever did. I don’t know if you loved him so much that you forgave – or overlooked – his weaknesses and drunken larks to keep your family together for your children. I don’t know if, after your 1959 divorce, he pleaded with you to take him back, promising to change, so you gave him the last of what must’ve been countless chances to get it right.

I don’t know how you felt in 1960 when you found out that you, divorced a year earlier, were implausibly pregnant out of wedlock, knowing the father could only be your ex-husband. I don’t know how much time, as a single mother two months from turning 39, with children ages 16, 12 and 5, you spent trying to decide what to do. I don’t know if you cried or prayed “why me” to God or accepted responsibility for a moment of passion – I’m convinced that’s what it was, not the appalling alternative – and its fateful outcome.

I don’t know if you agonized through sleepless nights about whether to keep me or give me up, or decided immediately that adoption was your only option. I don’t know if your thoughts raced ahead, looking at the prospect of what life would be like with another mouth to feed, another child to rear until you were almost 60. I don’t know if you were so focused on working to put food on the table that you knew you had to block out conflicted thoughts of me during your pregnancy. I don’t know if you were so ashamed, so worried about folks finding out, that you didn’t tell a soul besides your Aunt Victoria and Uncle Walter. I don’t know how difficult it was to conceal the pregnancy, but I’m sure you wore out a girdle or three trying to.

I don’t know if, while performing with an upscale hotel bar’s dance band as I grew inside you, you sang lyrics that echoed some of the essence of your life story, and the anguish and regret you felt about your predicament. I don’t know if, while you performed gigs with a band at Dreamland a couple of years later, any of the songs you so beautifully entertained crowds with reminded you of me and brought tears to your eyes.

I don’t know what you were feeling when you arrived at Cabell Huntington Hospital in Huntington, WV on Feb. 28, 1961. I don’t know if you tormented yourself over whether you were doing the right thing. I don’t know if, after I arrived at 5:15 p.m., you saw my face. I don’t know if you held me or if the nurses asked if you’d like to – or if you asked them if you could. I don’t know if I was whisked away to avoid complications or if the nurses tended to me as you watched. I don’t know if you cried or put on a brave face that masked your sorrow. I don’t know if you really wanted to keep me but couldn’t shake the stark reality that my life would be better if you didn’t.

I don’t know if your tears dampened the form you signed March 3, 1961, making it official I’d be going home with another family. I don’t know if your days were filled with regret and pain at first, and then things became easier for you. I don’t know if you thought of me every day or only on my birthday and Christmas, the holiday when you and your grown children who lived out of state were almost never together.

I don’t know if you wished you could tell your secret to the three children you raised or how close you came to doing so. I don’t know if you ever considered trying to find me but were just too overwhelmed by it all – and felt you had to take your secret to heaven with you.

I want to know all of this, and so very much more. But for now, I can only speculate – and say I’m sorry for every misery you suffered.

****

What I do know, in my every fiber:

I know you made the heartbreaking decision you did – the one that had to be made – out of an undying love for me and a resolve to keep me safe, whatever it took. I know you did it to protect me from my father, who’d already drunkenly threatened to take your young daughter away from you. I know you took every possible precaution to ensure he never found out about me, from the jarring moment you realized you were pregnant until Bob’s unfortunate demise when he drowned in Tampa in July 1962. I know that my life – not how difficult keeping me would surely make yours – was your only concern. I know you selflessly opened your heart to send me into a new home because you knew you couldn’t raise a fourth child on love alone, no matter how abundant.

I know you formed and stored a picture of me in your mind and memory, and that image often entered your thoughts, especially when life threw so many challenges your way. I know you missed me and wondered what my life was like – it’s not possible, knowing the kind of tenderhearted woman I’ve learned you were, that you could have shut me out once I was no longer yours. I know that every Feb. 28, you found time to cry and tell me you loved me – as well as your oldest son Crys, who turned 17 the day you gave birth to me.

I know you aren’t the mother who raised me, but I am who I am – as are all four of us – in great measure because of you. I know most of me can be traced to the parents who were forever grateful for your benevolence, the act of two people receiving a newborn from a stranger about whom they knew nothing. But I have personality and emotional traits, and even mannerisms sister Terry has noticed, that only your son could have. Your sensitivities and sentimentality are instilled in me.

I know you’re overjoyed and thankful that, 10 years ago, the child you lost finally became part of your family again. I know that even though you could never bring yourself to admit to my siblings that I hadn’t really died in childbirth, it was your greatest hope that we would find each other someday.

I have much to be thankful for, many family and friends to love and cherish. You, what you did for me, and your other three children with whom I have built everlasting bonds, are among the blessings I will never stop counting.

Happy birthday from all of us, Betty.  

I’m not a reporter — like our dear friend and former Dallas Morning News copy desk colleague Christopher Wienandt, I’ve been a copy editor for many years. But I started my career as a sports writer, have always had a passion for writing and still try to make my own opportunities.

When it looked like our COVID-, protest-, layoff- and attrition-strapped reporting staff wouldn’t have anyone available to write a proper obituary for Chris, my supervisor mentioned that if I volunteered to write one, we’d run it.

It was my honor to spend time before and after my editing shifts a couple of days late last week working on a feature obit for Chris. It would’ve been a disservice for us not to have a staff-written obit for him like countless other former DMN journalists have over the years.

So, here’s to Chris, whom we all admire, love, respect and will never forget.

*****

By FRANK CHRISTLIEB
Staff Writer
fchristlieb@dallasnews.com

He spent almost 40 years in the newspaper business and earned four degrees — only one of which had anything to do with journalism. He became a gifted and revered copy editor and was committed to the craft, defending the vital role of those who, like him, toiled in anonymity.

But actually, Chris Wienandt had another job in mind.

“I wanted to be an actor, and still do,” he told American Copy Editors Society co-founder Hank Glamann in 2005 for a newsletter profile when Wienandt became president of ACES. “But I think I was destined to be a journalist. I’ve always had a passion for language, a passion for knowledge and a passion for accuracy. That pretty much means becoming a journalist.”

Wienandt, a copy editor and copy desk chief for more than 30 years at The Dallas Morning News before retiring in May 2017, died of Parkinson’s disease Monday in Fort Worth. He was 68.

Wienandt was more than just a copy editor. He was an avid motorcyclist who joined a colleague on a trek to Mount Rushmore and rode his motorcycle cross-country to an ACES conference. He was a devotee of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, which he took up in his 60s — and continued for several years after his Parkinson’s diagnosis in 2014. He even joined a boxing group for Parkinson’s patients, determined not to let the disease knock him down.

Known for his ever-present wit, intellect and professionalism, Wienandt arrived at The News in the early 1980s and quickly took on a copy desk leadership role. He became respected for his focus on getting the printed word right, his grasp of endless subjects and his calm demeanor.

“I really had no right to be on his copy desk in 1981,” said Steve Kenny, a former News editor who’s now senior editor in charge of the newsroom at night at The New York Times. “I had been a reporter but never a copy editor. I had never even had a copy editing class in college. So Chris had to teach me everything at a time when I didn’t know my way around a stylebook. Those lessons have served me well for 40 years, and I would not have had the editing career that I’ve been blessed to have if I hadn’t fallen under his tutelage in 1981.

“Every lesson came with a wry crack or a joke,” Kenny said. “Early on, I wrote a headline about a ‘Looming crisis.’ He came over to me and said, ‘Steve, nothing looooms in The Dallas Morning News.’ Every time I see ‘looms,’ I think of Chris.”

Wienandt, who besides being a stickler for details could throw out puns with the best of ’em, was known for creating award-winning headlines. But he also knew when they crossed the line into being “groaners.” Wienandt served as president of ACES until 2010, and his “Headlines as Poetry” session was always one of the most popular at the group’s annual conference.

After his first few years at The News, Wienandt joined former colleague Beverly Bundy in Darmstadt, Germany, where they worked as journalists at Stars and Stripes. After returning to the States, they married in 1987 and had a son, Joe, in 1992.

Wienandt came back to The News in September 1986 and worked there until his retirement. He led the team of copy editors for the business news section for a number of years, and taught journalism classes at the University of North Texas and Texas Christian University.

“I remember my first day on the copy desk at The News,” said Joel Thornton, former copy chief who started at the newspaper in 1986. “After I learned the weird computer system, I was still unsure of my next move. But then a tall, friendly, laid-back guy with a professorial style helped put me at ease. Chris was a pro copy editor, and I learned a lot from him.”

In addition to his editing roles, Wienandt was an integral part of a team of “super users” who helped roll out a new content management system called CCI at The News in the early 2000s. In 2003, he was part of the original staff of Quick, a niche product geared toward 18- to 34-year-olds.

”As an editor, Chris championed clarity and battled cliches,” said longtime News copy editor Clay Morton. “And, to boot, he was one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet.”

Wienandt was a tireless advocate for copy editors, kicking off the 2008 ACES conference by telling attendees that they are “as essential to newspapers’ success as their stockholders are.”

As word of Wienandt’s death made its way around social media, tributes poured out among friends and former colleagues. They called him brilliant, classy, hilarious, kind, gentle, an inspiration, totally cool, a kindred spirit and a stalwart of copy editing.

“Renaissance man is a term used loosely, but Chris really did know at least something about seemingly everything,” said John Hanan, The News’ analytics editor, who was deputy copy chief in business news when Wienandt was that department’s copy chief. “On any given editing shift, you never knew whether he was going to quote Shakespeare, Mark Twain, W.C. Fields or Jim Morrison. He was one of a vanishing breed.”

Born in Iowa City, Iowa, and growing up with a father who became the longtime dean of the Baylor University graduate school of music and a mother who was a founding member of the Waco Symphony, Wienandt and his two younger siblings might have seemed destined to follow a musical path. But after piano lessons and playing the bassoon at Richfield High School, he pursued an undergraduate degree in German at Baylor, and then a master’s at the University of Iowa, also in German.

His sister, Linda Wienandt, who called him “absolutely brilliant,” remembers that while she was studying journalism at Baylor in the mid-1970s, she had an internship at the newspaper in Copperas Cove. She persuaded older brother Chris to take her place for the summer, and she believes that’s when the journalism bug bit him and drove him to get a second graduate degree, in international journalism, at Baylor.

He would later earn a doctorate in American literature at UNT. In his dissertation, Wienandt studied the newspaper career of author Mark Twain, arguing that Twain made the right decision when he chose to become a fiction writer.

As a youngster, his sister said, Wienandt enjoyed doing impressions and was pretty good at them — including Julia Child cooking sessions. “Years later, when Chris met Julia Child [twice], he behaved himself and found her charming,” said wife Beverly, who was the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s food editor for 16 years.

As an adult, he did his version of actress Katharine Hepburn. In a Facebook tribute after his death, his sister-in-law mentioned that, when visiting her in California a couple of years ago, he showed off how his Parkinson’s “had really added nuance” to his impression of Hepburn, who didn’t suffer from Parkinson’s but had an ailment that caused tremors.

Wienandt’s wife said his sense of humor and mental sharpness were still evident when he died. While filling out a form to donate his body to the UNT Health Science Center in Fort Worth, he told her, “They really want me.” His donation was the kind of farewell gift to science, she said, that he would encourage anyone to make.

Survivors include his wife, Beverly Bundy of Fort Worth; son, James Joseph Wienandt of Dallas; and sister, Linda Wienandt of Tempe, Ariz.

Twitter: @FrankChristlieb

Fifteen years. As of June 11, 2020, that’s how long it’s been since I “rejoined” the family I was separated from at birth through adoption. How long it’s been since I called a stranger in Colorado, one of two brothers and a sister, my three older siblings who grew up in Huntington, West Virginia, where I also was born.

How would he react? Would he refuse to believe me and hang up? Would he be disinterested and not want anything to do with me?

No, my brother Crys, I would sense right away, was much too sensitive and caring to brush anyone aside, much less someone calling out of nowhere with such a genuine and believable story.

Fifteen years later, one of the siblings I reunited with that day, our brother Robin, is gone, having died at age 61 in early 2009. But the gift of having three full-blooded siblings in my life is one I’ve treasured and wouldn’t trade for 15 Astros World Series championships. And if you know me very well, you realize that’s saying a lot.

Finding one’s roots — and making contact, with all the uncertainty and potential for heartache — isn’t for every adoptee. But it was for me, and now that I’ve been down this glorious road, I cringe to think what I’d have missed out on if I hadn’t taken the leap. If I hadn’t been brave enough to head down the path that led me to Crys, Terry and Robin. If I hadn’t been open to learning all the difficult life histories, along with the goodness and grace, that I now know about our parents, Betty and Bob.

And the adventure isn’t nearly over.

Five years ago, I wrote the following piece about my first contacts with my siblings in 2005. Seeing as I don’t have it in me to write a fresh one, I’m sharing it again. I hope you won’t mind.

****

Nervously, I tried to stick to the script I’d rehearsed both silently and aloud.

“Hello, Mr. Workman? My name is Frank Christlieb, and I live in Arlington, Texas. This is a long story, but I was born in Huntington, West Virginia in February 1961 and placed for adoption. I’ve just learned some information about my birth family, and I think we may be brothers.”

There was no moment of silence before Crystal Edward Workman responded, no disbelief in his voice. Only a sense of immediate acceptance, understanding and openness with the forgotten sibling our mother Betty had told him 44 years earlier she’d lost in childbirth.

I wish I’d been able to record that long-overdue contact June 11, 2005, between brothers, separated in age by 17 years, who never knew the other was out there somewhere. We visited for over two hours as Crys willingly, trustingly shared intimate details about our family with a stranger he already seemed certain was, indeed, his flesh.

When Betty, a divorcee of almost two years from her alcoholic husband Bob, came home from Cabell Huntington Hospital after giving birth to me Feb. 28, 1961, and signing papers for my adoption three days later, she didn’t talk about it with her other three children. The four of them had spent the first six months of her pregnancy in escape mode, across the Ohio River in Ironton, where she sang with a three-piece dance band and waited tables at an upscale hotel’s popular bar.

How she did this while carrying a child, I can’t begin to grasp. During those months living in a cramped apartment above a downtown grocery warehouse, 16-year-old Crys and our 13-year-old brother Robin could see that Betty was pregnant but knew better than to ask questions.

“She really kept it a secret from me,” Crys said of Betty’s troublesome condition, the result of a moment of rekindled passion with her ex Bob, the father of all four of us – though we didn’t know undeniably, until a DNA test weeks later, that Bob had fathered me.

Betty, Robin and our 5-year-old sister Terry moved back to Huntington in November 1960, while Crys stayed behind to attend and play basketball as a junior at Ironton High. When he rejoined the family in March, he asked Betty about the baby and was told it had been lost. Subject closed – until 10 years ago.

“It saddened me, obviously, but I left it at that,” Crys said when I spoke to him a couple of days after our initial contact. “I knew the turmoil her life was in during those days and months.”

In my heart, I know Betty never stopped thinking of and missing me, although it’s just as likely she never told a soul aside from her Aunt Victoria and Uncle Walter Rowe, with whom she and the kids stayed in Huntington the final three months of the pregnancy.

Perhaps a limited circle of other relatives knew. From Betty’s few friends and co-workers I’ve been able to find still living over the past 10 years, none knew about me. She was intensely private and couldn’t bring herself to reveal such personal, embarrassing details about an episode she knew should’ve never happened.

In that first illuminating phone call, Crys told me of Bob’s booze affair that broke up the family in a 1959 divorce, and about Bob’s drowning in Florida – a pitiful ending none of them knew the truth about until August 2005, when I dug up a police report, autopsy and Tampa Tribune accounts of a brawl between two homeless drunks along the Hillsborough River.

Crys told me how he’d graduated from high school in 1962, joined the Air Force and was stationed in Colorado, then moved back to Huntington in 1966 to attend Marshall University (majoring in English), before spending three decades as an electrician after getting married and moving back to Colorado. And he talked about Betty’s second marriage to a man 17 years her junior who, sadly, also drank himself into an early grave.

“She was always having relationships with men who were bad for her,” Crys lamented openly, as if we’d always known each other. “She was basically a very good woman, kind and giving, who always ended up with the wrong person.

“It’s a shame you couldn’t have met her, because she was such a wonderful person.”

Crys talked about our sister Terry being so like our mother – filled with warmth, compassion and a forgiving nature. He touched on Betty’s amazing vocal talents, saying that whenever he hears old standards like “It Had To Be You,” his thoughts turn to memories and visions of her. And he recalled sorrowfully Betty’s final couple of years of life, when she fought valiantly against the ravages of inoperable lung cancer.

Later that Saturday afternoon, Crys’s wife Charlene emailed several old family photos, giving me my first glimpses of Betty, Bob and my siblings when they were kids. Sitting at my desk at work, staring with co-workers gathered around at the first attachment I opened – a shot of a smiling, beautiful Betty lying on a couch at home – I knew without a doubt that she was my biological mother and that she’d finally helped bring her lost child back together with the three she raised.

****
Two days later on my Monday off, I jumped to answer the phone. I knew the sister I’d never had was calling, and I was even more anxious than when I contacted Crys. Terry had been on a weekend church retreat when I reached out to our brother, and she hadn’t learned until returning home to Arvada, Colorado, on Sunday evening that Crys and Charlene urgently needed to see and talk to her.

The tears – and the shock – flowed when they all got together that night and Terry learned of the baby brother she never knew about. Only 6 when I was born, she didn’t even know our mother had been pregnant.

After almost three hours of emotional, long-distance enlightenment, I knew more about my birth family than I ever dreamed of learning: Verbal snapshots of our parents and the kind of people they were – their virtues and faults. Memories of how Robin, 7 years older than Terry, played such a vital role in helping raise her after Crys joined the Air Force and Betty was working long, late hours as a drugstore clerk or taking the occasional nighttime singing gig.

The revelation that, like our mother, Terry had become pregnant out of wedlock and relinquished a baby boy for adoption – although at age 19 in 1974 rather than at 39 as Betty did in 1961 (and how Terry and Dan have been joyfully reunited since he was 18). About Crys buying Terry her first pair of bellbottoms.

And about her child’s-eye memories of the fateful day Bob was arrested in late spring 1960 after pushing Betty and drunkenly threatening to take little Terry away from her. No one in my family ever saw him again before his July 1962 death, so Betty was already in the earliest stages of pregnancy when he’d been hauled off.

Most meaningful and heart-rending, Terry shared memories of the end of our mother’s life. Terry had traveled from Colorado to Huntington to be with Betty in early December 1992 as her cancer’s progression grew swifter. Betty had sung to Terry beautifully and often during her only daughter’s youth; this time daughter sang to mother in her dying days … and prayed.

“Dear God, please take her,” Terry beseeched.

“I’d been there for a couple of weeks and Mother said to me, ‘Why don’t you go home, put up your Christmas tree and get ready for the holidays?'”

Terry did so hesitantly, and our brother Robin flew up from Florida to comfort and care for Betty. He was still with her when she died in her sleep on Dec. 20, 1992.

****
Dear brother,
Beethoven, in his 9th Symphony, celebrates the brotherhood of all men under God. Now, when I hear that glorious tribute, I will remember your search for brotherhood and belonging, and how it brought so many people together. We are all basking in the glow of this newly discovered brotherhood, with the hope that, under God, we will all understand what it means to belong to one another. Thank you again for that quest, that need, that brought together a new family.

Love, Crys

****
Ten days after Kay, 3-year-old Will, 10-month-old Lindsay and I returned to Arlington after driving 16 hours to Colorado to meet Crys, Terry and their families in early July 2005, I received that extraordinary email.

Not that I didn’t already know how they all felt about me, but my articulate oldest brother’s words were not only deep – they were profoundly genuine. We hadn’t all just hit it off; we’d begun forging a bond that we knew would withstand any test. It has.

And when brother Robin, on the day the DNA results confirmed our full-blooded kinship, said, “Welcome to the family, Frank,” I knew I was the luckiest of the lucky.  

Since discovering my West Virginia roots in 2005 — most wonderfully, finding my three older full siblings — I’ve tried to learn as much as possible about my biological parents and my birthplace of Huntington. In doing so, I’ve reached out to a multitude of strangers, most of whom didn’t know Betty and Bob. But those who did have been gracious with their time and memories, filling in bits of my parents’ lives for the son who never met them.

Today, I learned that one of those folks, Joe G. Stevens Jr., left for heaven on Memorial Day at age 93. Mr. Stevens, whose family owned Stevens Drug Store in downtown Huntington from 1934 to 1988, hired my dear birth mother Betty as a clerk in about 1968. She ended up being one of his most beloved and valued employees for the next 20 years until he sold the store at the corner of 5th Avenue and 10th Street to Rite-Aid in 1988.

https://www.herald-dispatch.com/obituaries/wv/joseph-g-stevens-jr/article_60af1b17-38fb-5dd3-82d3-4b7bd4fc57c8.html

After Mr. Stevens hired Betty, in no time she became fast friends with fellow clerks Dolores Gardner and Shirley Booten, and the three were inseparable during the two decades Betty worked there. Dolores and Shirley were younger than Betty, but old enough that their kinship was genuine and relatable, and it never wavered. I know this not from Betty, who died of lung cancer in 1992, but from phone visits with Shirley and with Dolores, who died of the same cancer in 2012.

But back to Mr. Stevens. I was fortunate to get to visit with him a couple of times a few years back, too, before his wife, Jeannette, passed away. He told me about how he hired Betty away from Lawrence Drug Store, where she’d gone to work after placing me for adoption at birth in 1961.

I know the hiring at Stevens was difficult for Betty, because Mr. Stevens told me that both she and her close friend Ruth Bunch, also a clerk at Lawrence, were in the running for the position, and Betty got the job. I remember Mr. Stevens telling me that Betty was always a dedicated, diligent worker and that the store’s customers loved her. (I also know this to be true from others.)

Betty had been divorced from my alcoholic birth father for a number of years by the time she started working at Stevens. But a couple of years after she arrived, Dolores told me, she introduced Betty to a man who was 17 years Betty’s junior — a local amateur country musician named Ronnie Cazad. They ended up marrying in July 1971, with Ronnie only 33 and Betty weeks from turning 50.

She always loved him, but his son Ron, who sadly passed away three years ago, and others have told me the marriage was difficult because Ronnie, who also struggled with alcoholism, didn’t work after the early years. Betty, who never drove in her life, often got rides to work from Ronnie’s mother, who was just five years older than Betty. She worked there until Mr. Stevens sold the drugstore in 1988, when she was 67 years old — and then found another job clerking at a small drugstore in Guyandotte, a tiny community on the eastern outskirts of Huntington.

The most revelatory, lingering comment I can recall from my first phone conversation with Mr. Stevens, who I wish had shared more specific memories of Betty with me but didn’t seem inclined to:

“One thing I’ll never understand is why she ever married that damn Ronnie Cazad.”

Like other elderly contacts I’ve made in my search for people still living who knew my birth parents, I’d done occasional Google searches for Mr. Stevens in recent years to see if he’d passed away. Late this afternoon, I searched “Joe Stevens” and “Clearwater,” where he and his wife had lived for years, and was saddened to find his obituary in the Huntington newspaper. I’d hoped to call him one more time to see if he might open up a bit more about Betty, but never had time (isn’t that always the way it goes?). After reading of his Alzheimer’s, it became clear we couldn’t have had that chance.

Mr. Stevens’ obit is full of wonderful life adventures and achievements involving not only pharmacy, but military service, singing and dancing, poetry writing and directing musical variety shows. It’s clear he was quite an accomplished fellow and I would’ve loved to have met the man who hired my mother for the job she would hold longer than any other in her life.

Rest well, Joe G. Stevens Jr. And thank you for taking a shot on Betty over half a century ago.  

So much can happen in a week.

Our nation slipped deeper into an abyss of racial division and hatred after the savage, unforgivable killing of George Floyd by four officers in Minneapolis. Protests, the majority of them peaceful, lawful and proper, began and will continue as we try to make sense of all killings of this nature, whether white on black or black on white.

It’s hard to have much hope for our country’s future if so many refuse to have empathy and genuine regard for all human life, no matter our skin color or beliefs. But one need only look at the goodness of people across this great nation during such crises as the COVID-19 pandemic to keep believing there’s a way out.

Or am I only dreaming?

****

I’ve always seen the appendix referred to as a “finger-like appendage.” How perfectly fitting, because it’s an organ that serves no purpose, and when it decides to go kablooey, it actually gives you the middle finger. About 4 inches long, it dangles from the start of the large intestine like a — well, it just hangs there.

We can live without it. It’s a shame it takes something as painful and avoidable as appendicitis — and, worst case, a rupture — for us to end up living without it.

****

The day George Floyd was killed, Memorial Day, I was off work and pretty oblivious to the news. I’d woken up that morning with stomach cramps I’d call bad but not severe. As with other abdominal issues, I figured these would dissipate in a few hours. Our family had eaten Rusty Taco takeout the night before, so I assumed that was the link. I took some Pepto and Imodium (figuring runs were on the way) and napped off and on.

When I awoke mid-afternoon, the cramps were still there. In my haze, I stretched out full-body while still lying down, suddenly feeling an intense pain in my lower right abdomen. What the heck, I thought, did I just pull a muscle? I got up, went into the living room and told Kay, saying, of all things, how could I have pulled a stomach muscle stretching in bed? Or caused a hernia?

So what do we all do when our bodies start doing something weird? We hurry to the internet. I looked up abdominal muscle pulls/strains and hernias but didn’t find much to help me self-diagnose (always a bad choice). The location was definitely out of place for a hernia of any kind, and I felt no bulge, so I nearly ruled that out. 

Knowing that Kay had suffered a ruptured appendix 14 years ago, and realizing the location was pretty much where that nonessential organ sits, I decided I’d better look at the possibility. But seeing that appendicitis is rare at my age (59) and that I had none of the other classic symptoms (vomiting, fever, diarrhea), I all but convinced myself that couldn’t be it either.

The pain didn’t really worsen through that evening, but I did a little more research and was befuddled. And I was stuck on the probability that I’d pulled a muscle, for the simple fact that the onset of sharp pain hit at the exact moment I stretched. Looking back, that’s probably when my appendix burst. But neither Kay, who’d been through this before, nor I thought it was my appendix — because of “the customary symptoms” I didn’t have.

Messaging a childhood friend, Alison Lee Shiets, that night on Facebook, I told her what had happened, saying surely I was too old for it to be my appendix. Tuesday morning after a fitful night of trying to find a comfortable sleeping position, I woke up with about the same pain.

I found a 3:44 a.m. message from Alison saying I was NOT too old to have an appendix problem and I’d better get it checked out because if it bursts, it’s serious. 

****
I would’ve gone to see my doctor at some point, but may have waited another day if not for Alison (thank you!!!). So I made an appointment with my PCP early that Tues morning for 1:45 in the afternoon. Meanwhile, the pain was worsening and my doc got yelps when he barely touched my appendix area. Sure, he said, it could be a muscle, but it sure presents like appendicitis. So he sent me straight for a CT scan. 

After arriving at the imaging place, I sat in the parking lot on the phone wasting time with the insurance company, because our policy insists on pre-authorization for MRIs and CT scans to avoid a $200 penalty. So, silly me, I sat there in my agony and, by the time I was walking inside, I was struggling to do that or stand up straight.

It took a while for them to take me back for the CT because of others ahead of me — plus, they needed me to drink 20 ounces of apple juice, apparently to help improve the scan quality. I asked the staffer at the door admitting patients how long it would be because I was in severe pain, and she said soon. Soon dragged out interminably.

The CT tech had to help me get on and off the table and was above-the-call sympathetic. Because of the possibility of it being my appendix, and with it already being well after 4 p.m., they put a stat on the results. 

Just after 5 p.m., while I drove home about 15 minutes after leaving, my cell rang and I hoped it was either the imaging place or my PCP calling. It was the doctor who’d read the scan, and he told me the now not-so-unexpected news: I had acute appendicitis. He’d tried to get someone at my doc’s office to pick up, but they were already closed — and he knew it was urgent enough that he’d better call me directly.

I told him I was almost home and we’d head to the hospital stat.

****

Kay and I couldn’t decide right away whether to dash off to a hospital in Arlington, where we live, or Fort Worth. Knowing we couldn’t waste time, we picked Harris Methodist Fort Worth, where our daughter had been born in 2004. Kay — my angel throughout this ordeal who has taken the best possible care of me, along with all my nurses during two hospital stays — got me to the ER pronto.

She worked to get me past the front-door COVID-19 screener to check-in and triage while a man was telling the screener he had to get in to see a dying relative who’d been attacked in her home. I felt awful for him but was in too much pain to stick around for the outcome.

Kay told the screener I was in an emergency situation and had to be seen ASAP, and as always, she was firm about it. With no visitors allowed, she felt guilty having to abandon me.

Thankfully, my care began almost immediately. An IV was started, morphine given and laparoscopic surgery to remove my appendix set up for that night as I was moved later to pre-op. I met the surgeon and told him I’d heard from staff that he was definitely the man for the job. He said he’d seen my scan results and it was a pretty clear-cut bum appendix.

As I lay waiting for surgery, the nurse taking care of me suddenly said to her colleagues seated nearby, “Did anyone call Dr. (name redacted)?” Apparently she’d been so busy, she hadn’t had a chance to call the surgeon to let him know I was ready for him. So she called, then apologized to me for making me wait quite a bit longer than I needed to. Then she apologized to him when he walked in.

I’m not sure of the time, but I’m pretty surgery started around 10 p.m. By the time I was coming to and could groggily hear a recovery nurse calling Kay to let her know I was out of surgery and would be taken to a room soon, it was well after 11.

I arrived at my room on the second floor of the Harris Tower just before midnight.

****

My general surgeon, a late-40s fellow with salt-and-pepper hair and an easygoing, reassuring bedside manner who clearly likes his patients to understand everything about what’s going to happen and what already has, came to see me around noon the next day. When he told me he’d found not only acute appendicitis but a ruptured, gangrenous appendix with infectious ooze seeping into my abdomen, I couldn’t help myself.

“Shit, it was ruptured?”

Then he showed me the photographic evidence.

I probably should’ve figured on it having burst, based on the severity of the pain, but what do I know about a straight screwy appendix vs. a ruptured one? He assured me he felt confident that he’d gotten all the infection and that I shouldn’t have major problems recovering.

He mentioned the possibility of ileus, a condition that commonly develops with the bowel after abdominal surgery, which can be a serious blockage or involve more of a general disruption of normal digestive function and clear up in a few days. (Side note: According to her death certificate that my birth sister Terry and I located after I found my three siblings, our maternal grandmother, Olive, died of “paralytic ileus” after having a hysterectomy at age 32 in 1934.)

I was discharged early that afternoon, and if I could do it over again, I’d have insisted on staying at least another night. For one thing, I could tell I was dehydrated — and told the doctor and nurses — because my mouth was extremely dry and I was getting cotton mouth just talking. Doc did say that was common with ruptured appendixes (appendices?).

So I clearly needed more IV fluids to get rehydrated, but I didn’t push on that and thought I could rehydrate at home with lots of water and Gatorade. (Was I ever wrong.) It would also seem after surgery for a potentially life-threatening situation, they’d want to keep you longer than 12-13 hours post-op, to make sure you’re *really* OK to leave.

I went home, though, and even though I felt crappy, had no appetite (especially for the clear liquids I had to eat for 2-3 days), felt bloated and my colon didn’t move anything until Friday morning, I knew it was only a matter of time before I started feeling better — especially if I drank those liquids and did nothing but rest. Which I did.

But Friday sucked from the start, from still being dehydrated to vomiting to diarrhea to the horrible way I generally felt. So I told Kay late that afternoon I’d better get to the ER. I’d been in contact with the surgeon’s office earlier about how poorly things were going, and they knew this was a possibility and told me to go if needed.

At the ER, they had trouble drawing blood and getting an IV started, a red flag about my dehydration level. The ER doc came to see me briefly as nurses gave me fluids, anti-nausea med and morphine in my IV and sent me down the hall for another CT scan. A bit later, I went to the bathroom, and when I came back, one of the nurses said I was being readmitted. 

It wasn’t long before I was further surprised to see my surgeon walk through the door — I’d figured the ER doc would handle everything. Doc was great and told me what was going on. He said the scan showed I’d developed the ileus he’d told me about, and although he said he didn’t believe it would develop into a serious situation, he and the ER doc consulted and knew I needed to spend time getting IV fluids and meds so I could hold things down and give my digestion a chance to start working itself out.

Soon I was being wheeled across the hospital to the sixth floor of the Richardson Tower. If I’d thought of it at the time and hadn’t felt so dismal, I might have been humming a Howard Jones ’80s song: “Things Can Only Get Better.”

****

The nurses who came to my room looked at the IV in my left elbow, saw my swollen arm around it and said the IV wasn’t working. Apparently it hadn’t taken, or if it did, I was getting little to no benefit.

I’ve always been someone with solid, accessible veins, having donated blood for years after 9/11. But now, I was so dehydrated that finding a “good vein” was proving a tall order for the nurses. A couple tried and failed, and both arms still have the bruising to prove it.

Finally, someone said it was time to call in Kim, the charge nurse that night. It wasn’t long before a not-so-tall, friendly Asian nurse in her 60s came into my room. She looked at my arms and knew she had work to do. She tried another vein on my left arm. Nothing.

Kim then looked at my right bicep area, where I’ve never had blood drawn or an IV placed. I had no idea you could even start an IV there. She started slapping my arm, trying to get the vein to pop up into prominence.

“I’m not trying to beat you up!” Kim said more than once, smiling. I assured her I knew she wasn’t.

She used a heated compress, trying to get the vein of her focus to the surface. She said my veins were rolling and expressed how dehydrated that showed I was.

As Kim worked on that vein for what seemed 20 minutes, telling me not to move, I asked, “Should we pray?”

“Yes, yes, we should pray. Please God, please God …,” she said as I did the same.

Before long, as I refused to look, I asked her if I should.

“Yes! It’s in!”

I told Kim I knew she would come through and thanked her.

****

For the next two days through the weekend, I was cared for by a squadron of nurses whom I could never sufficiently thank for their constant attention and genuine concern for my comfort and condition.

That includes the main nurses as well as the patient care technicians who often took vitals every four hours, changed bedding, logged my info online in my room, brought ice for my water — and, worst of the worst, monitored levels and form (none) of everything coming out of me in the bathroom. I hated having to say, repeatedly, “Sorry, I left some more awful stuff in there for you.”

My vigilant nursing crew started with Vienna and included Chelsea, Nevenka, Sara, Donna, Maria and Kristen. Sara, who’s 45 and only four years ago was early in nursing school, came in twice during the wee-est of hours early Sunday to ask if I needed anything — on a night when I barely slept because of hourly visits from those God-bless-’em nurses.

It was also Sara (not during one of those nighttime visits) who told me her grandmother’s story of her father dying of a ruptured appendix in the late 1920s, when the family lived in the country and there was nothing to be done.

My old memory being what it is, I couldn’t recall today for certain if I’d had an overnight hospital stay before. I’ve had surgeries, but they’ve all been outpatient. I’ve been treated in the ER, but never admitted that Kay and I can recall. Going back to my Texas A&M days in the early ’80s, I do remember stays — one being a few days when I got really sick my freshman year — in the student health center. So there’s that, but since then, I don’t remember any.

This was definitely my first time to experience dragging an IV tower into and out of the bathroom over and over, and up and down the hall for the at-least four walks a day the nurses insisted be taken. 

As for the bathroom, I became all too familiar with the Bristol Stool Chart from staring at it each visit, wishing, pleading that I could advance from the bottom (Type 7) up even one notch. Once I asked one of my nurses, “Was that a Type 6?” No, she said almost apologetically. Type 7. 

Another memorable component (side effect?) to my hospital stays: getting to experience two COVID-19 swabs. Honestly, they’re not that bad. And although I had to wear a mask in the ER and while taking my walks, patients weren’t required to wear one in their rooms.

****

Since getting home late Sunday afternoon, I’ve made great strides. That night I finally ate some bland solid food — grilled tilapia and rice, courtesy of Chef Kay. In fact, I’ve now had that for five meals, because it feels “safe.” Other than that, it’s been toast, yogurt, applesauce and Gatorade for me. Mmmm!

As for my digestion, it’s still out of whack, but showing signs of coming around. It’ll notch up to Type 6, then drop back to Type 7, then back up again. Dare I hope for Type 5, out of the inflammation/diarrhea range and merely at the “lacking fiber” level? One Bristol Stool Chart baby step at a time.

The surgeon and I will discuss it all at my follow-up Thursday, which we’ll do by phone. We would’ve had the appointment in person, if only my drain were cooperating enough for it to be removed. But I’m still getting out more than 30cc of fluid per 24 hours, and the tube can’t come out until I cross that threshold. I’m making progress, but I figure it’ll be at least early next week.

****

As I continue to heal, Kay and I hope for our nation’s healing to come about, somehow, some way. But so much has to take place for that to happen. *All* Americans have to genuinely *want* to do that, and to *want* the same unity and brotherhood of races. I’m afraid far too many have far too much hatred in their hearts.

Until that changes, we’re just an appendix in a constant state of rupture.