by Jeni Birr
Fortunately, we were just renting, so this was really the landlord’s problem, but unfortunately for us, he decided to turn this into a major renovation. It was only the front porch that was damaged, but it had an awning area with roofing shingles, and apparently, you can never match roofing shingles, so the whole house needed a new roof. And hey, while we’re at it, since the house is getting a new roof, this might be a good time to fix the ceiling in the mud room. And because some of the siding was a little gouged, why don’t we re-side the whole house?! And then we’ll replace the front door, and the side door, and of course it will need all new footing, and while all the mesh is off of the openings in the crawl space, a cat is going to make its home under your living room which Apollo will spend day and night sniffing the floor looking for! All while the landlord is trying to coordinate with his other two business partners, as well as the contractor, who was only present half the time. The fact that we weren’t paying the contractor meant we were the last to know everything.
We had made it very clear to the landlord that if anyone was coming inside the house that we wanted to be home for that. He should have passed this on to the contractor, who should have passed it on to his men, but I came home from lunch with a girlfriend to men in the mudroom who had ripped off the ceiling and climbed in over the wall! I called Eric, he called the landlord, he called the contractor, and it was a hot mess. This is when we started getting pretty upset. We were paying full rent to live there, and we didn’t feel like anyone cared about our privacy or wishes. They left the roof off and only a tarp covering the gaping hole in the mudroom ceiling that night, and it was winter in Michigan.
The landlord offered us a hundred dollars off the next month’s rent because the roof was going in on a Sunday and the satellite dish had to be disconnected for a while, and you know by now that Eric loves his football. We probably would have consulted a lawyer, but by this point I had told the landlord to give the contractor my phone number, and I frequently had weekdays off so they were able to finish up the job quickly. Then, of course, the furnace went out, in February. The landlord had this replaced, a whole two days later. Then the tiles started falling off the wall in the shower. We couldn’t get out of this hellhole fast enough. We found another house to move into and left with a full month on our lease, which we paid for because our deposit was a month and a half, and I ALWAYS get my deposits back.
CHAPTER 14
We moved into a house we found on Craigslist only a few blocks away for about 10% more in rent, but felt twice as big. Except for the kitchen, which I think was smaller than my studio apartment kitchen, but at least the fridge had an icemaker that worked most the time. When the landlord’s assistant, Colleen, was showing us the house, she said the previous tenants had left because they’d just had twins and they were convinced there was mold in the house, but rest assured there was no mold. She also took us into the basement and showed us a puddle of water in the corner and said “yes, it leaks, but only in this corner.” She continued to let us know that Wally, the landlord, was aware of the issue and they’ve done everything short of re-laying the foundation which he was not willing to do. We didn’t think a little bit of water in the corner was a big deal, and we were way too eager to get out of our current predicament, so we signed the lease and moved in.
There was a tree stump on the side of the driveway in the back yard that I hated. I tried digging it out and just made a bigger mess of it. Eric had to help me with it and he likes to tease me about it every now and then because I asked our friends if I could borrow their chain saw. Fortunately for me, he said no once he found out why I was asking. This is not how you remove a stump, but I know that now. The toilet was also leaking when we moved in, but Wally sent his handyman by, Randy. Yes, Randy the handyman, which always reminded me of “Terry the Dairy Man” that would call Cosi every few days for our milk order, but that’s beside the point. Randy came by a couple other times for minor fixes, like when the pretty stained glass panel fell out of the high garage window in the middle of the night barely missing my car. I always felt bad for Randy, but I don’t know why.
It turned out that low and behold, the basement did leak much worse than we were lead to believe, especially during a heavy rain storm, and there was indeed mold because of it. However, Randy came by and spent two days cleaning each of the rafters in the basement with bleach, sprayed some protectant on them, they gave us a dehumidifier, and the mold did not come back.
Shortly after moving into this house I was transferred to a different Panera Bread location which was about forty minutes from my house, but right off the freeway. When I first got there it was just about all female. All six managers were female and most of the associates. There was a lot of estrogen floating around that store, and let’s just say there was probably a catfight or two until one of the managers got transferred away. I got along with everyone, but I have no idea how some people put up with this one lady I won’t name that was there long before I got there. She was a bitch, plain and simple; just a lazy, rude, horrible manager.
Over the first few weeks I was there, I think at least five people quit. I was really convinced it was me. Sherry, the General Manager of the store I had come from did everything by the book. Every single teeny tiny detail down to the last drop had to be exactly by Panera standards and would make certain you knew if you were doing something incorrectly. She was married to an auditor, and eventually became one herself, so I had a pretty good idea of the way things were supposed to be run, and this new store wasn’t following half the policies. I had already made a promise to myself that I was going to wait at least a month before trying to change anything so that people could get to know me, learn that I am just a fun-loving, goofy girl that also happens to be a manager, so I was trying extra hard to be friendly and nice, but people just kept quitting. Two of them on two separate occasions actually came in, worked half their shift, went on break, and never came back! Both on my shifts. I kept asking the other managers if it was something I was doing and they all insisted that no, it was not my fault, but I still felt like it was. That store just had a higher turnover rate than I was used to because it was in a much nicer area where the kids don’t really need to work. My other stores had a lot of more grown up associates, half of which with young families to feed.
I got used to this quickly though. Seemed like every other day we were hiring somebody new. Fortunately though, in some ways, I was responsible for the product. Ordering, inventorying, organizing, storing, rotating, labeling, etc…if it had to do with product in the store that was my job. If our food cost was in the gutter, that was, essentially, my fault. If it had to do with people, like interviewing, hiring, training, scheduling, firing, etc…that was Sandy’s job. Obviously we helped each other quite a bit, but I think we were each glad the other was responsible for the other thing. I was the people manager for about a month at my previous store and I hated it.
A few months after I’d been there, we had a change in the guard and got a new GM, Don. He and Michelle, the current GM, just switched stores because each was much closer to the other’s house. I don’t want to imply here that Michelle didn’t care about policies and procedures, but let’s just say she didn’t exactly enforce them. Don, on the other hand, he did. I think he knew at least as much as Sherry had, but was way more tactful in letting you know if you were doing something other than the Panera way. He was much more pleasant to work for and I learned a lot from him. I think Sandy did as well, as did Amy, Christine, and Stephanie, the shift leaders at the time.
A few months later, at the end of March, our lease would have been up on our newest house, but we decided to stay for the first time ever. Eric had not found a job in digital media anything and was getting no help from the school, even though they insist to every incoming student they’re practically guaranteed a job upon graduation, and career services is amazing at helping people get them, but that’s another story we’ll just skip right over. After a lot of conversations and
soul searching, he realized his true passion in life was still golf. He had loved working at Sawgrass in Florida, and had worked at Oakland Hills for most of his youth and teen years. He loved playing, and loved maintaining the courses, and had tried going to turf school in Florida, but couldn’t get the funding at the time.
After many long talks, and weighing all the options, we determined that he would need to go to Rutgers in New Jersey because they had an accelerated program. All turf, all day, for ten weeks. Then, a ten month internship that he could do anywhere in the country; and then another ten weeks back at the school. The only way we could even almost make this work is that Andrea said I could stay with her while Eric was away at school, Apollo included, and Eric could even stay as well during the ten months in between if he managed to find an internship here. Once he had completed the program, we would find our own place again. I would stay in Michigan, working at my current Panera because even though there are several out there, the cost of living is much higher and there were definitely no apartments where all three of us could stay, that I could afford to support us in. So this was our plan for a month or so at the beginning of 2013, but the program didn’t start until October. I explained our plan to Colleen, the landlord’s assistant, and we were going to sign another six month lease, but she had some computer problem and said she’d send us the new lease the next month with our rent statement, and the end of April.
Easter Sunday fell on March 31st that year. I remember I wore these fabulous pink pants I had found at the local thrift store for two dollars that I had also worn on Valentine’s Day. I was very accustomed to working holidays by now as I’d been doing it for years; and especially Sundays because one of the other managers wasn’t available on Sundays because she was very involved in her church. I know it made Eric rather upset that I was almost never home to watch football with him, even though I had requested it a bunch of times, but that’s just the way the cookie crumbles when you can’t make your own schedule. So, I opened Easter Sunday, but honestly, Easter really didn’t mean anything to me at this point other than an excuse to wear some bright pink pants that would have been questionable, as a manager, any other day of the year. I know I became very spiritual during my father’s illness, and I am hardly an atheist or anything, but let’s just say, I had lost a lot of my fire for the Christian ways.
I don’t remember anything special happening on that day, or the Monday that followed. Tuesday, the second of April however, seemed like any other day when I went into work at ten. Tuesdays were double duty for the product manager as inventory had to be done by close, and the truck order had to be in by noon, so I was always scheduled ten until seven on Tuesdays, but I usually tried to get there early just to make sure I was done with my truck order early enough to get out on the line and help by lunch, which usually got going by 11:30am. This particular day was no different, and I was pulled away as soon as I was done preparing my order but hadn’t entered it into the computer yet, to help put together a rather large call-in order. As soon as it was done, around 11:58am I was sent to the office to go submit my truck order.
About three quarters of the way through the order I started getting very confused. I looked at my twenty ounce coffee cup, my second of the morning already, and just shook my head at it thinking I’d had too much coffee again. Then my fingers stopped responding to the signals my brain was sending them. I kept trying to hit the zero but would hit the one, or vice versa. I remember staring at my fingers and saying “one” and I would hit another number. Miraculously, at this moment, my husband happened to call the store, which he never ever did because he knew I couldn’t really take personal calls at work, and it would have been a crime to call during lunch rush; and he usually just called my cell phone and left a message. When I saw his name pop up on the caller ID though, I answered. I also rarely answer the phone in the office because it’s usually a phone in that needs to be rung up at the registers in the front of the store. I answered and he proceeded to tell me he was leaving work and going to the doctor because his leg was really hurting him. I don’t remember responding. I don’t remember anything else until I woke up in the back of an ambulance with the paramedic lady asking me “we just had Easter, can you tell me what month it is?” I had no idea.
CHAPTER 15
As it was later relayed to me, I had apparently had a grand mal seizure. I completely blacked out, was shaking so violently that I fell out of the chair and the dishwasher girl heard me fall, looked into the little window of the office door, and ran and got Sandy to come open the locked door, because only managers had keys to the office. Fortunately, there was usually an ambulance in our parking lot because they would use our wi-fi while waiting for a call, so they were already there. My husband kept trying to talk to me on the phone not knowing that I was seizing and apparently was getting frustrated that I wasn’t responding because he thought I had just gotten distracted at work, and didn’t care about his injury. He called my cell phone and apparently left me a rather rude message that he made me delete before listening to once he found out what was going on. He called the store back about ten minutes later and asked to talk to me and the associate put a paramedic on the phone who told him what had happened and where they were taking me. He got there before even I did.
I was still very out of it at this point but I remember such a sense of relief coming over me when I saw him at the hospital as they were wheeling me in. He just had this pained, worried look on his face, but it was also very tender and loving. And as soon as I was settled he gave me the biggest hug and kiss on the top of my head and didn’t leave my side for hours. They did a few tests and determined I would be better suited at a bigger hospital so I was transferred a few miles over to a hospital I had delivered a whole lot of catering to while Kristen, the coordinator of my original Panera, was out on maternity leave.
Initial CT Scans and an MRI indicated I had a rather large brain tumor, but they didn’t know what type yet, or whether it was malignant or benign. They scheduled the biopsy for Thursday morning. We called Andrea, my family, my job, Eric’s job, anyone that might need informing. Eric’s dad came by the hospital and got my keys so he and Karen could go get my car from my store, get into our house and pack us a bag and take Apollo to their house. I remember Andrea came to visit me in the hospital that night and brought pizza with her from one of Eric’s favorite pizza chains, but it was terrible. I was also informed well after the fact that we watched the movie “Trouble with the Curve” but I don’t remember that part, and apparently she was asked to leave halfway through because visiting hours had been over for a little while and we were making too much noise, but I don’t remember that either. I don’t really remember much of this hospital stay other than Eric almost never left my side, slept on a very uncomfortable looking waiting room sort of couch the whole time and barely ate. Sandy came to visit me at one point and insisted he go get something to eat because he looked terrible.
I really don’t remember the day of the biopsy as I’m sure I was under a heavy amount of anesthesia for the rest of the day, but I do remember the flock of doctors that paraded through my room the next day. I felt like I met every doctor in the tri-state area. I was initially informed that there were actually two tumors and they were Astrocytoma, stage three. I imagine I was in shock, but I don’t really remember feeling anything at this news. I just felt like “okay, so…what do we do about it?”
We were released the next day and had a slew of appointments lined up already. Several were with the neurosurgeon that had performed the biopsy so he could remove the staples and take a look at the wound. (Is it still called a wound when it’s surgical? I googled it and apparently it is, but that just doesn’t sound right to me.) The other few appointments were with the man that was slated to be my oncologist, Dr. Fata. I remember his office seemed way too nice. It was clearly brand new, freshly remodeled and had beautiful blue glass stones and fountains and fancy stuff that was nice to look at, but didn’t feel like a doctor’
s office. I suppose this was the goal, but it gave me an odd feeling.
He ran some blood work and told me my iron was low and maybe my insurance would cover some shot treatment to boost it, but it was very expensive. Turned out my insurance did not cover it so I just started taking over the counter iron supplements. These were very constipating, as was the steroid I was now on. I was on all the same medicine my dad had been on, same steroid and same anti-seizure. Let me tell you, my dad never seemed to have any reaction whatsoever to his Decadron, the steroid, but I sure as hell did. It made me break out in horrible acne all over my chest and face, I was hot all the time, voraciously hungry all the time, and very cranky because of it. Nothing could satiate me. I was eating probably three or four times more than I had previously and gained over twenty pounds in a month, which is a lot for someone who only weighed 120 to begin with. And I didn’t like to be touched anymore because I was just so hot and miserable. Eric stuck with me though, every step of the way.
It was apparently not the original plan to do a removal surgery. Dr. Fata wanted to start radiation and chemo right away, but Eric did a lot of research and wanted to talk to a doctor that would operate, and we were referred to the University of Michigan Neurosurgery Department where Dr. Sagher worked, who specialized in awake surgeries. Apparently, they can numb the area they are working on while the patient is fully conscious so they can speak and let the surgeon know if anything starts being affected. (There are some very interesting videos online about this type of surgery; in my favorite one, the patient is playing a guitar!) He didn’t want to do this with me however because my tumor was so large he didn’t want to risk it. He was afraid there was too much pressure and when he opened the skull it would spring out to some extent and he wanted to make sure I was on a breathing tube if this were the case. I can’t say I was disappointed about this.