There is no good way to give someone bad news. Part 1.

Susan Cain's Bittersweet Book Giveaway this week!

When I looked at my phone Friday afternoon, I saw a bunch of missed calls. I don’t know about you, but I have two responses to this every time it happens: 1. It is just spam (most of the time, it is. They say that like 35% of calls are spam). 2. Something bad has happened. Neither are good. I never think, “Oh my friend just got some really good news and wants to share it. Or it is the lottery people telling me we won even tho we didnt get a ticket...”

Mostly, I have stopped answering these calls. Or I try to hide my annoyance when I do. I feel like when someone calls to share the good news with you that you are pre-qualified for a car loan, it’s a weird moment. There is a part of you that is excited, you’re a winner. And then annoyed, because it’s clearly a scam. They never call at the right time. Of course, that right time doesn’t exist.

I try my best not to be rude. To remember that they are people. They are doing the best they can with what they have. I imagine they are just trying to feed their families and being hung up on probably gets old… Or worse yelled at. My natural inclination is to be avoidant, and just not answer. But the problem with us is, we get a lot of dr calls. And medical professionals are hard to get a hold of. Most don’t share their cell # with you. I have started using the excuse to spammers, “I was just waiting for a Dr to call, and now is not a good time. Thanks so much for understanding.” Click.

I missed several calls on Friday from unknown numbers. When I got off work, I checked my voicemail, and it was our nurse coordinator calling us because there was a problem with some routine lab work that we had done at Children’s a couple of weeks before.

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It has been my experience that there is no good way to give someone bad news. However you say it you cannot divorce the bad news from the person who is telling you, and countless other variables, that are intertwined in chaotic unknowable ways; your hunger levels, the air outside, that you got a shitty haircut, etc. All of these things bleed into each other and it is very hard to tell who or what to be upset about.

3 years ago when the doctor gave us the news that M had CF, I placed all my anger and hate on her. I felt like she was playing a sick joke on us. That this could most certainly not be real. How could they know after one test? She seemed to know very little about the condition, and yet be so certain we had it. I know she was just doing her job, but at the moment, I needed someone to be mad at. She was the closest person to outsource my pain to.

On Friday last week, through the distant echos of car phone speakers, connected to a cell phone with poor reception even in urban areas, I understood a voice to be saying that we needed to come in for more tests. The translation process for humans to understand each other is baffling to me. She said she would have the Dr call me to explain.

I waited. From moment to moment, I felt the urge to scream. And then imagined that it could be all nothing. But it had been something in the past, so there is no reason why it couldn’t be something in the future. Lots of people have constellations of health problems. There is no rule that the fair thing to do is to evenly distribute the hard stuff among all people. I value fairness in a world that is just not fair.

One of the hardest things to do is wait. Uncertainty is a form of pain that aches in your muscles, manifesting in poor sleep and tightness. I feel like I don’t know what it feels like to be bored anymore. With smartphones, there is always something to fill the time with. New facts to learn that you can instantly forget. New things to be scared of. Being bored is something of the past. In boredom, sometimes there is peace. These days, one can easily be pulled into googling potential outcomes. I know, they tell you never to google things. I never listen. Negative results are favored algorithmically and served as examples of a future we may have to endure.

Our pulmonologist called. The story is familiar to us, now. It goes like this:

1. We got some tests back.

2. They are a little funny.

3. We just need to do some more tests.

4. It’s likely that M has this.

“There is always a chance that something went wrong. That the numbers aren’t correct. That’s why we have to run more tests.”

“Has that happened before?” I ask desperately to tease out the odds.

“Not that I have seen. But it could. You know, diabetes treatment has come a long way since you and I were kids. We just have to have you come in first thing on Monday for more tests.”

Cystic Fibrosis related Diabetes is a thing. It is something that most people with CF will get. M gets checked for it once a year. I just thought it would come later.

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Honestly, I was annoyed with M all that week. She has always had this attunement to my desires, spoke or unspoken. She is human and she doesn’t like to be told what to do. She is also 3, and her understanding of time and social decency is expanding rapidly. For her, time moves slowly. It is punctured by strings of events, our ruteen. After this comes that. After that comes that other thing. Recently, she and I kept having different ideas of what we wanted the near future to look like: I wanted us to eat (so that we didn’t meltdown) when she wanted to run. I wanted us to get dressed for school and she wanted to go back to bed, etc.

I felt a sinking weight in my gut that I had spent all this time resentful of her defiance. Letting my frustration with the situation limit the joy I could feel in her presence. I forgot that I am lucky. My expectations of how things should be dampened the actual beauty of reality.

Being reminded of the fragile nature of life, of the impermanence of it all somehow helps with reframing the moment-to-moment frustrations of having a toddler. “But we try so hard to keep her alive,” I tell our pulmonologist, “I want so badly for her to live a deeply rich life. To experience all the pain and heartbreak alongside the joy that humans should get to go through. I don’t mean to be greedy, but I want it to be long. I want her to have time.”

I spent the weekend sobbing. I tried my best to leave the house. I called my sister. She told me that she was sure all of this meant something, that the universe would take care of us. She and I are alike in so many ways, but we are dispositionally very different. I like to wallow, I feel like it is closer to reality. She assumes that a positive mindset will attract good things. We are both right. We are both completely utterly delusional.

“Casey, but in a meaningless universe, it would be impossible for the universe to care if we live or die. It just is. We just are. And someday we will have been if we are lucky enough to have someone remember us,” I say in between sobs. As an agnostic, I try really hard to not let the ultimate pointlessness of existence get me down. It is a constant battle to keep the focus on the meaning that humans construct, and value it as if it were true, despite knowing that everything is a construct. Even love.

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This week, it is fitting that I talk to Susan Cain about her book Bittersweet. Have you ever wondered why you like sad music? Do you find comfort or inspiration in a rainy day? Susan Cain invites you to embrace the feeling of longing—or the place where joy and sorrow meet—as a gateway to creativity, connection, and love. We have two copies of Bittersweet to send to you. Comment here if you are interested:

I will finish with one more piece of advice, from Jordan. Take it if you need it.

“Try not to freak out until you know all the info.”

Later this week, I will tell the rest of the story along with my interview with Susan Cain. Spoiler alert: everything is going to be ok. Susan is amazing.

With patient enduring love, Carissa

(I got us matching jumpsuits from Noble. I never thought I would be someone who was into Mom/daughter outfits but turns out I am. Also, the best paint ever from A Case for Making.)