Gaining Fame in Cincinnati

Yesterday I stopped at a farmer’s market. As I was buying a quart of honey and a loaf of multi-grain bread, I mentioned that I’d be signing copies of My Lost Summer in late October at a coffee house down the street. A lady handed me the bread and asked what my book was about.

“It’s a memoir about my recovery from a coma when I was a teenager.”

Then another lady said, “I’ve read your book.” She went on to explain that she checked it out from the library. She said it was a good story and she liked it a lot.

I was happy to hear it.

Does Page 1 Foretell a Great Book?

In his blog, Australian author Alan Baxter (www.AlanBaxter.info) writes about a book titled How to Read a Novel. Baxter reasons that the book is a “clumsy grab for cash” as “if you buy [the] book, presumably you can read.”

Baxter later describes a suggestion made in the book: the author writes that if one reads page 69 of a novel and likes it, then he or she will enjoy the book.

I commented on Baxter’s blog entry, saying that page 1—rather than page 69—of any book is a better foreteller of a book’s worth—though I warned not to give up on a book after a single page.
I invite any author-readers of my blog to enter the first pages of their books in the “comments” area to this entry.

Following is the first page to My Lost Summer, my memoir about my recovery from a coma when I was 13.

Chapter 1
The Fall

Flash didn’t stumble as a warning he was going down. The saddle pad, which usually kept Libbi more in tune with her horse, was no help. There was nothing she could do. At one instant Flash was walking, at the next he was on the road.
Being turned, asking her mom if she could run her horse, Libbi was unprepared to catch herself or brace against the inevitable impact with the pavement. Her fall was like a dive—head first over Flash’s right shoulder. Impact was with the right side of her skull, and she was knocked unconscious. Luckily no cars were traveling on Beachler Road at the time. Equally as lucky, Flash didn’t land on her with his full weight, but he did roll over her. Then he rolled back over her to gain the momentum he needed to get his 1300-plus pounds into a standing position.
Elaine quickly and expertly regained control of her horse, who had spooked at the site of his fieldmate falling. She jumped off and, without a word, handed the reins to Earl’s son, who had doubled back when he heard the commotion. She ran to where Libbi lay and grabbed the loose reins to Flash’s bridle and pulled him away from the scene.
Already dismounted, Earl, Elaine’s boyfriend, held the reins to his horse as he knelt next to Libbi, calling her name, asking if she were okay.
Holding the ends of the reins to Flash’s bridle behind her so as not to lead him back, Elaine joined Earl—in position and activity: “Libbi? Libbi?” and then “Li-Bee,” in the singsong she used when she…

Compare page 1 with page 69:


who was shrugging on her jacket to drive him to the dance, “Why’s Mike dressed up?”
Elaine smiled down at her daughter, already in her nightgown for bed. “He’s taking a girl to a dance.”
Immediately, tears erupted. “He doesn’t need another girl. He’s got ME!!”
Automatically, laughing busted from both Mike and his mom, which only made Libbi cry harder.
Sensitive to his sister’s feelings, Mike ceased laughing and took her hand and led her around to the carpeted stairwell that led up to their rooms. The stairwell was where Mike, Chris, and Libbi held conferences among themselves.
Libbi sat on the third step up, and Mike sat on the second so that they were close to eye-to-eye, and he haltingly explained to her as best a fifteen year old could, “Libbi… You see…” He sighed. “Sometimes…Well, when boys and girls get to be my age, they like to do things together.”
Her tears still flowed.
“It doesn’t mean that we,” and here Mike pointed to his little sister and touched his own chest, “will be together less. Me going to this dance won’t take any time away from you and me….” His tone changed to playful, “…because it’s almost your bedtime anyway,” and he scooped Libbi into his arms and carried her upstairs to the big, open bedroom she shared with Chris, and he dropped her on her bed and tickled her.
Libbi laughed.
“I’m late for my date, so I gotta go.” He turned and exited the room.
Libbi hopped off her bed and trailed him down the steps. In the TV room she climbed into her father’s lap. “Bye, Mike.”
“Bye, Libbi. I’ll see you in the morning.” Their bond was secure.
A friend from Elaine’s childhood picked Mike up from the airport and drove him to his mother’s house in Carlisle. During the entire forty-minute ride neither driver nor passenger mentioned Libbi…

Page 69 describes the middle and end of a sweet story from my childhood that exemplifies the close bond between my oldest brother and me, that explains why he collapsed with emotion upon first seeing me in the hospital with tubes and lines running from my unconscious body.

If you’re not an author with a page 1 to post, or even if you are an author, cast your vote: which of the above pages do you think pulls the reader into the story more? Which is more likely to convince a reader to give this book a go?

A New Office for Me

I’ve been waiting for my husband to download the pictures from our vacation before I write blog entries. But, he can’t seem to remember how to do it, and I never did know how to do it. The last two pictures are of me at my book signing, so I’ve been delaying writing about that until I can post pictures with it, but darn it, a week without an entry is too much, I think, so I’ll ramble a bit.

Friday at work I got my own office. It’s a little, irregularly shaped room with no widows to the outside, but it is quiet, which, being an editor, I appreciate. I put my big map of the U.S. up on one wall with a diagram of the Lake Powell area underneath. (Lake Powell is a National Recreation area in Arizona/Utah.) A map of Puerto Rico went up next to that. I love maps and have designated that wall my map wall. On another wall that is only about three feet wide (remember, it’s an irregularly shaped office) I posted pictures of National Parks I’ve been to. Mt. Rainier, Crater Lake, Death Valley, Acadia, Yellowstone, Redwoods, Bryce, Canyonlands (my favorite), Arches, The Great Sand Dunes, plus more. It looks really nice.

My computer hasn’t been moved yet, nor has my phone, so I’m still in my old office until October—unless I’m editing.

Hopefully sometime this week I can start posting entries concerning our trip to Oregon. We really have some beautiful photos. Please check back.

The Follow-Up Appointment with ObGyn

The afternoon before we left for Oregon, Mark and I met with my ObGyn. We waited for Dr. Busacco in his personal office, the one with his framed degrees lining the walls and pictures of his children jockeying for space on the bookshelves behind his mahogany desk.

He entered fresh from surgery and shook each of our hands.

Not wanting to take anymore time than necessary, since we got in 45 minutes late even though we were the first afternoon appointment after a morning of surgery, I handed him the graphs of my basal body temperature before he even took his seat.

For the past three months of recording my basal body heat each morning, what I found interesting was how each month’s temperature pattern was consistent with the previous month’s. The first month I thought something was wrong. In fact, as I described previously, I returned a basal body thermometer to the drug store because I thought its readings had to be erroneous. My temperature was 97.7 degrees one morning and 96.9 degrees the next.

It could only go up from there. 97.1. 97.5. 97.6.

Then falling to 97.0.

Back up - 97.7.

And back down - 97.4. 97.0.

The degrees of my basal body heat, recorded at roughly the same time every morning, plotted out like that each month!

I compared the pattern with the sample graph of the perfect woman’s temperature, the one that almost looked like a straight line if you stood back far enough. The plot of my temperature looked like a heart monitor readout for an alert, perfectly healthy person, with its peaks and falls.

But one morning a couple weeks into the routine, I hit above 98 degree (ovulation!) so I stopped comparing my temperature to that of Ms. Perfect, who probably had eight kids running around and who probably got pregnant the first month she tried with each one. At least I was ovulating. That’s what was important.

Once Dr. Busacco sat down, he studied my charted temps. And he studied them. And he continued to study them for several minutes of mostly silence that Mark or I broke occasionally with a casual comment to one another.

As I looked at Dr. Busacco studying the paper, his brow furrowed, chewing on the nail of his left index finger, I wondered what it all meant.

“Did deciphering the plotted temperature always take this long? Did he always have that unreadable look? Is it a look of concern or just a general studying look? Is something wrong? Surely nothing’s wrong, for my temperature pattern has been the same for the past three months. It seems erratic to me, but it’s been consistent month after month, and who am I to say if the pattern’s erratic?”

Finally, after three minutes or so, I asked, “So, how’s it look?”

“Well, you’re ovulating, but they’re not quality ovulations,” Dr. Busacco told me straight-forwardly yet with a trifling of compassion.

Who knew there was such a thing as a ‘quality ovulation’?! I thought ovulating was like being pregnant: either you were or you weren’t.

Mark remained stoic. My response was equally unemotional: “Oh.”

Realizing that he didn’t have an emotional breakdown to avert, Dr. Busacco continued: “I’d like to do a hystophlalapertaquialogram. (OK. He didn’t say that word, but it was something equally undecipherable that started with “hysto-“ and ended “-gram.”). The test is done at the hospital, and I’ll be there for it.”

I’ll refrain from describing the test, but it will show if my tubes are open enough to allow the egg to drop properly. I’ll have it next month. Dr. Busacco told us that he’d be able to see the results right then.

As I have said for the past 15 years, I am fully recovered from my traumatic brain injury, or at least I consider myself so. When I see a new doctor and fill out the health history questionnaire, of course I write that I was in a coma in 1983, but it usually never comes up again, and some doctors don’t even find it interesting enough to ask me about upon initial examination.

My pap smears have been under Dr. Busacco’s microscope since 1999. I do not remember if he asked me about my coma; he likely did as he’s a good doctor. In any case, he knows I recently published a book about my recovery, so yes, he is aware of my head injury and expressed concern about my pituitary, which, he says, may have been damaged at the time of my injury. I understand that the pituitary regulates some pretty important pregnancy hormones.

A nurse took a blood sample that afternoon to check for hormone levels, among other things.

Before Mark and I stood to leave his office, Dr. Busacco smiled and said, “We’ll get you pregnant.”

If he has faith, so do we.

Baby Makes Three, and Babies Make Four!

Mark and I have been hoping to get pregnant with twins since last October. Twins because I’m 36, we want two eventually, and we just want to get it over with.

We decided before we started trying that if it happens great; if it doesn’t, it wasn’t meant to be and we weren’t going to take drastic measures to become “with baby.” We also chose not to tell anyone we were trying. Well, I told the three people I share an office with—but no one else! Oh, and then there were two couples, friends from college, with whom we went to a UD basketball game (Go Flyers!) in December—but no one else after them!

Since I’m pretty healthy—I eat a varied diet, get adequate exercise, and maintain a healthy weight—I thought I’d have no problems getting a bun in the oven. But May rolled around—time for my annual ObGyn exam—and we were eight months in to heavy practice with no result, so I chose to tell my doctor—but no one else after him!

After my exam, the nurse (I didn’t tell her; Dr. Busacco did.) gave me a paper and directions on how to record my basal body temperature. I was to bring this for the doctor to study in three months.

The paper has four blank graphs with temperature on the vertical axis and days of the cycle on the horizontal. The bottom line on the graph represents 97.0 degrees F. The top line is 99.0, and the 19 lines between are all tenths of a degree from one to the next.

The first graph on the page is a sample. It depicts the perfect temperature fluctuation of a patient whose husband, I’m sure, hit his mark on the first attempt. Before ovulation, this woman’s temperature ranged from 97.5 to 97.8—pretty tight. She hit ovulation right at 98 degrees but more important than that, her basal body temp remained well above 98 degrees for two more weeks, just like that of most Fertile Myrtles.

On the way home from the doctor’s, I bought a basal body thermometer at CVS, the national chain drug store.

Mark and I left for my dad’s in Georgia that night—a 10-hour drive. I took my temperature around 5 a.m. but I doubt it was true since I’d gotten little sleep and only intermittently, and I was sitting, and I’d been eating junk food, like we do when we travel in the car, not that junk food would affect my temp, but you never know.

After a couple days at Dad’s house, my temperature was all over the place yet. I thought there had to be something wrong with the thermometer so I asked Dad where the nearest CVS was so I could take back the thermometer “that I’ve been using to take my basal body temperature because Mark and I are trying to get pregnant.” So I told Dad and my step mom Mary Beth—but no one else after them!

They live so far out in the boonies that the nearest CVS store is 30 minutes away, and I couldn’t find the basal body thermometers, and the high school girls behind the counter twirling their hair and chewing gum were clueless—as was the pharmacist. So I had to rely on that old (or, actually, new) out-of-whack thermometer until I got back to Ohio. (I felt like its batteries were low or something).

So we caught some fish and bought some shrimp (50 lbs. fresh from the shrimp boat to bring home and freeze) and returned to Ohio, and I got a different thermometer from the CVS near my house.

The next morning, before even lifting the covers, I took my temperature in the dark of 5 a.m.

The thermometer is digital and beeps once to indicate it’s on, beeps four times after the temperature has stabilized, and beeps a single time again when it shuts off. My left ear is deaf to high pitches, and I’m a right-side sleeper (to eliminate noises from the chirping birds and insects in the tree outside my window that would enter through my good ear). My side table is right there so for the first several mornings I would raise a bit to reach the alarm, turn it off, grab the thermometer, turn it on (I heard the beep), and then lay my head back on my pillow and wait for the temperature to register. And, of course, then I wouldn’t hear the four beeps telling me my temp had been taken. One tortuous morning, after a hot chocolate and a full glass of water before bed that previous evening, I thought my bladder would burst before the temperature registered. It was the odd night that Mark slept in the same bed (see Sleeping Arrangements for explanation), so I didn’t want to turn on the lamp to check; therefore, I got up and ran to the restroom. The thermometer wasn’t even on! In my haste and fumbling and half sleep, I hit the on/off button twice yet did not hear two beeps. Ugh.

So I dropped to the floor and stuck the thermometer under my tongue. Thankfully, my temp registered in record time, and I relieved my bladder straight away.

Now into my fourth month of morning temperature taking, I make sure I’m fairly awake before I turn on the thermometer, and since I’m awake, I no longer fumble. While its in position, I lie on my back so that my right ear is exposed and I do not miss those important four beeps, and I think how bothersome it would be for a deaf woman to take her temperature every morning: she’d basically have to wake up fully, turn on the light, SEE that the thermometer was on, and check periodically for the stable readout, which equates to trying to see the end of your nose.

Thank goodness I have one good ear.

Oh, and Mom and my brothers and my cousins, they all know we’re trying now. Mark told his family too. We had to tell those closest to us to ease the stress of the whole ordeal. The trying part is not stressful. It’s the unsuccessful part that is.

The afternoon before we left for Oregon, Mark and I met with my ObGyn. He studied my temperature pattern and ordered a blood test to check my pituitary gland’s function, possibly damaged from my head injury from 23 years ago.

Stay tuned for more infanticipating updating.

General Observations of Oregon & Oregonians

We’re back from our Oregon trip. Nine days, it was, and a great time, and I didn’t plan it jammed full like most of our vacations. From Mt. St. Helens in Washington through central western Oregon to Crescent Beach, California and the Redwoods National Forest back up the Oregon coast, we still did plenty.

It may be a week or so before I get the story written, but until then, I’ll enlighten you with some general observations of Oregon and Oregonians from an outsider’s perspective.

1. Just as all small towns in central western Ohio have at least two churches and as many bars, each small town in Oregon has a Dairy Queen and at least one Mexican restaurant.
2. Hitchhiking is legal in Oregon, and middle-aged, dreadlocked white men seem to be the only ones trying to take advantage, though perhaps they are the only ones not catching rides and so are the only ones we see.
3. Many highways are paved with pebbles, which makes driving a bit deafening. If I lived here, I’d carry hearing protection in my vehicle for when I got on I-5 or another noisy road.
4. A person is not permitted to pump his or her own gasoline.
5. Lots of grasshoppers and chipmunks hang out on trails and, of course, scamper when a hiker nears.
6. Most drivers maintain or fall below the speed limit. It’s true. Even on roads through the forests where you know a policeman would not be sitting in his car aiming the radar gun. Generally, people just don’t speed there. It was refreshing and annoying at the same time.

Keep your eyes on this blog for a narrative of the trip plus pictures. We took over 100. I won’t post them all, of course. The best ones are of Crater Lake.