My Mother Named Me Cory

Back: Ike, Clint, Cory
Front: Whitney, Elisa, Mom, Tyler
Taken at Lori's wedding - Dad was working

Today is mother's day. For those of you who know me personally, know that I adore my mother. She is one of the most supportive, intelligent, empathetic, hard-working people I have ever known. And she is funny. So incredibly funny! She is shy in social situations, but can also get up in front of large crowds and effectively teach a variety of complex subjects. She taught me to be both systematic and task-oriented, but always to make it fun. I have yet to be able to clean my house without making it into some sort of OCD producing game. (ie: read and work, play cards and work, clean one area and than pick up 25 things). The source of her disappointment while I was growing up, was always when we were unkind to others. She has no tolerance for unkindness, especially when her children are the ones being unkind. To this day, she still asks me if I am being nice. She is the kind of person who walks up to a perfect stranger who is crying in a hospital and gives them a hug and offers words of encouragement. There isn't anyone I'd rather cry or laugh with...and sometimes we do both simultaneously. When people ask me about my family dynamics, I always say that it basically consists of myself and my five siblings vying for my mother's attention. The best spot to sit, is right next to my mom, weather you are watching a movie, driving in the car, on a roller coaster, or at church. 

Recently I had the opportunity to attend The Moth in Brooklyn. The Moth, it is a podcast/radio program that is taken from live storytelling events. Prior to moving to NYC, I had gotten really into them, as I love stories. The thought of telling a story in front of a live audience terrifies me, but I decided to write a story anyhow. It needs some editing, but I am posting it here, as my mom is one of the subjects of my story. Enjoy.    

MISS CORY

When I was seventeen years old I was diagnosed with Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura, also known as ITP. I can still clearly remember going to our family physician’s office with my mom, convinced that my head to toe bruising was caused by anemia, having been a vegetarian for two years. My mom, who happens to be a nurse, was convinced that I had leukemia, something that she failed to mention prior to the appointment. We were both thrown a curve ball that day and presented with ITP, an autoimmune disorder that causes one’s immune system to attack blood platelets, the body’s clotting factor. Maybe it was my naivety or my flair for the dramatic, but I left my doctor’s office in hysterics, knowing that my life would never be the same. Meanwhile, my mom was practically overjoyed that I didn’t have leukemia. At least that is how I remember it. I ended up going to a specialist who confirmed the diagnosis of ITP and immediately started on high doses of prednisone, a steroid that suppresses the immune system. I tend to be quite sensitive to medications and even low doses of prednisone send me into a physical, emotional and mental tailspin. At that time, they were giving me 80 mg of prednisone. I was a wreck! The best way that I can describe it is feeling like I could run a marathon but being so physically exhausted that I could barely move. I felt like I could crawl out of my own skin. Historically during prednisone treatments I would find myself mopping my kitchen floor at 3 am, not being able to sleep for more than an hour at a time. When I was seventeen, the prednisone caused some weird hallucinations. My favorite hallucination was feeling like my teeth were huge and I was tiny. My oldest brother still calls me Chicklet teeth to this day.

After being on the prednisone for a few weeks, there was a significant increase in my platelet count and they began to taper me off of the medication, only to have my counts plummet. They decided that they would perform a splenectomy within a week of my high school graduation. I was convinced I was going to die. I believed that I was going to go into surgery and never wake up. This belief was further validated by the fact that my sweet mother started giving me my Christmas gifts early, something that I jest with her occasionally to this day. During this time I missed a lot of school. Often I would stay at school for half of the day and leave early to take a nap. I was emotionally exhausted and scared.

Marlene

My parents are amazing people. I am the fourth of six children. My dad is a movie buff and I have a younger sister who is named after a song sung by Robert Redford in Paint Your Wagon. Once, as a child, when I was complaining about having a boy’s name, my mom informed me that I was actually named after two women. Cory, she informed me, was a character from a movie called The Reivers, based on the book by William Faulkner and Marlene, my middle name was from her best friend in high school. I am a pretty inquisitive person, however I never felt compelled to watch The Reivers. On one of those days when I was home sick, or maybe just emotionally exhausted, I was laying in my parent’s bed flipping thorough channels. And there it was—The Reivers, a very 1970’s looking film, starring a young, handsome Steve McQueen. In the movie, Steve’s character and his friend steal his father’s car (the only one in the county) and drive it into town to visit, Miss Cory. The first thing I noticed about Miss Cory is that she had very 1970s style feathered hair. The next thing that I noticed is that Miss Cory happens to be a prostitute and she lives at a whorehouse. For the second time in a year, I knew that my life would never be the same. I didn’t wait to finish the movie. I immediately picked up the phone, and called my mom, who was at work. “Seriously?” I accused. “You named me after a prostitute!” No apology. She simply replied, “But she didn’t want to be, she wanted to get married and have a family.” In that moment I think that I still thought that I was going to die, but there was a part of me that also knew that I needed to live—this knowledge was too great to not be used to my advantage—as much as humanly possible!  

Miss Cory

I survived the splenectomy, and I have survived the more-than-I’d-like prednisone treatments that I have had over the past eighteen years. I survived the bone pain associated with an exploratory treatment. I still allow myself to cry every time I have to start another prednisone treatment. Sometimes I handle it better than other times. Sometimes I am braver than other times. And sometimes I don’t think about it at all. But every time someone calls me Miss Cory, which happens more than one would guess, I smile. It reminds me that I am alive. That humor exists through hardship. That sometimes we are given what we need at the exact time that we need it, and that I would not have survived this far without my sweet, AMAZING mother.