Some Sobering News

As some of you know, MJ has been sick for a while now. I’ve tried to downplay it here because she wants to put on a brave face, but I just have to vent because it’s really affecting me now.

For more than a month now she’s just been sick as hell. She feels nauseous, her asthma is horrendous, she’s sore and she can’t sleep at night. Because she’s stubborn as all fuck a trooper she didn’t want to go to the doctor’s to see what’s wrong. But finally, worn down from all of her ailments, I convinced her to go so we could both face whatever is afflicting her.

Well, today we found out. And the news is startling to say the least. The good news is the doctor identified what’s wrong with her, but the bad news is aplenty. I’m not a doctor or a medical expert, so please excuse my lay terms, but she’ll be facing a variety of complications. In a nutshell, she’s suffering from an internal parasite that is affecting all aspects of her life. It is literally feeding off her insides, making organs such as heart work twice as hard. It has a host of other side effects as well. She’s been neurologically impaired quite a bit because of this. She has memory lapses like you read about, and her hand-eye coordination (which wasn’t great to begin with) is affected as well. Not to mention the doctor said she can expected swollen joints, and significant weight gain in general.

To be honest, I was floored. Hearing the news that your wife is being eaten away from the inside by a parasitic force that is slowly debilitating her body and mind is, well, alarming.

And absolutely fantastic!

Yup, that’s right. Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to give you the first glimpse at Baby G 2.0. We’re 7 weeks along, the heartbeat is nice and strong and I couldn’t be happier. MJ couldn’t be sicker, but her pregnancy with Will went way too smoothly so she was due for some morning sickness. He or she (we’re not going to find out the sex ahead of time) is due Dec. 31. C’mon New Year’s Baby!!!

But wait, there’s more…

Since you all know nothing in my life happens without some sort of drama, I’d like to take this opportunity to share with you the story of this morning’s ultrasound.

MJ and I are sitting in the waiting room, when I noticed a Barnstable police officer walking around in the back. The office employees had strange looks on their faces. Some appeared tentative, others were laughing but all of them were intently focused on something going on outside my field of vision. And since I’m a reporter, I was not going to just sit there while something interesting was going on.

That’s when one of the women told me it was a raccoon. A raccoon had gotten in through one of the skylights the night before, and terrorized the office. There were raccoon footprints all over the walls, it ate some leftover food, it tore down a curtain in the exam room and it tried to eat “Buddy,” the staff’s beta fish. And then it barricaded itself in one of the doctor’s offices, where it climbed up into a shallow bank of windows near the ceiling and fell asleep.

I promptly swung into action, because I have a nose for news and I know there’s nothing people love more than animal stories, especially when the animal is doing something wacky and quirky.

I interviewed the ultrasound technician, our doctor, the secretaries and the police officer in charge. In fact, I jumped into “reporter mode” so quickly that I temporarily forgot all about MJ who was about to view the heartbeat of our second child for the first time. It wasn’t until I heard “HEY IDIOT, CAN YOU COME IN HERE FOR A SECOND?” that I snapped back to reality and tended to the most important business of all.

But yeah, here’s the story I produced that eventually turned into a front-page package complete with photo and video. Just goes to show, you never know where stories will arise.

And for the record, I’m already nicknaming this kid “Rocky” in honor of our raccoon friend.

Paul Blackmore, Cape Cod Times

Today was a good day!