As promised, the entire set of our wedding photos are posted.
Our photographers, the wonderful Allison Bitzer and Philip Given of The Susquehanna Photographic. Philip and Allison were not only great to work with and great people, they also support great causes. You’ll notice, if you visit our wedding photo gallery, a little image in the footer that says CC BY-NC-SA. That means my wedding photos are Creative Commons licensed. Yep, The Susquehanna Photographic supports Creative Commons. In my estimation, that makes them more awesome than any other photographers around. Their pictures aren’t half bad either.

Photo Copyright © THE SUSQUEHANNA PHOTOGRAPHIC

We’re mawwiaged! More pics later. <3, Erica

Mom had high blood pressure and headaches for much of her life and nearly a year ago exactly, one doctor decided to look deeper than the “stress, sinuses, tension” diagnoses she’d gotten in the past. An MRA revealed 3 different aneurysms. Her doctors response upon getting that test result was a 10pm call to my mom saying she needed to go to the ER. She did and my younger brother called and told me what was going on. My mom lived about 3 hours north of me if I drove normally. It took me about 2 hours to get there that night. The ER trip that night turned out not to be necessary but I wanted to be there with my mom regardless.

What followed was a succession of doctor visits and tests. An angiogram was done to reveal the size of the aneurysms (2 quite large, one “manageable”) and several doctors were consulted about the course of treatment. There was talk of her going to Buffalo in January of 2010 to have surgery for the aneurysms but the day discussed came and went and mom was still hanging out at home and working.

Early in 2010 (I can’t remember the exact month), my mom told me they’d finally scheduled the surgery, 3 days after my 30th birthday. Instead of going to Buffalo, she was having the surgery in San Francisco. The surgeon was supposed to be one of the best in the country. He was very confident about everything and this helped my dad and I feel comfortable about the surgery. Mom didn’t want to hear about it, didn’t want to talk about it. I found out later that she was taking anxiety meds to help deal with it all.

I arranged for my younger brother to fly down from Alaska and for my younger-ish sister to fly over from the East Coast. We engineered a successful surprise during what was technically my birthday weekend but really, the weekend was all about making sure she was feeling the love from all of us. She had to be at the hospital at 6am for her surgery so we all (well us minus the fiance who had to go back early for work) got in the Durango at 3am and headed down to SF.

After some paperwork and waiting around, her surgery got underway at around 7:30am. The surgery went on until about 6:00pm. To say we were tense and anxious was an understatement. She made it through the surgery, though there were some complications. We could never get a straight answer from the surgeon on why the surgery took 12 hours vs. the 8 hours we expected, nor did we get an answer as to why he deviated from the original surgical plan. All we knew was that instead of her aneurysm being coiled, it was clipped. The clipping caused some unexpected clotting that, to quote the surgeon, “blocked a small but important artery.” We’ll call that the understatement of the year.

Due to the blockage, Mom lost movement on her entire right side and had serious expressive aphasia. What was supposed to be a week long stay in the hospital followed by 6 weeks of rest at home turned into a week in the ICU and a week in recovery in the hospital. During much of the time in the ICU, Mom was in and out of consciousness and she battled hard to get from only saying “mmm hmm” and “uh uh” to being able to communicate with those of us around her. The expressive aphasia was frustrating to her to say the least. The lack of right side movement was beyond trying. Mom was a very do it herself kind of person and never really enjoyed being still for too long. Several times she tried to get up to do things on her own and I had to rush out to get a nurse to help. This was no surprise to me but I want to take this opportunity to take a small detour down the road of nursing.

Moms ICU nurses were top notch. Seriously, they moved like a well oiled machine and there were zero concerns from me aside from typical worried daughter “is she comfortable?” kind of things. Once she moved out of the ICU, things got concerning. Moms surgery was a multistage surgery that required an 8 inch incision on her left forearm, a 6 incision on her neck, and a large incision on her head. Due to all the meds and fluids she needed, a PICC line was put into her right arm. Due to the increased swelling and fluid in her head, they put in a drain on the side of her head opposite her incision. She definitely needed a lot of special attention. She didn’t get that unfortunately, and I had to point out specific instructions to the rotating parade of nurses several times. At one point, she developed serious pain in her right shoulder, enough that even having her sit up caused her great distress. Nurses response? We’ll get you some more pain meds. It took everything in me not to go off my hinges a little bit at this. Maybe its the troubleshooting computer tech in me that thinks you should find the root cause of a problem instead of band-aiding the symptoms. I digress…

Once the hospital deemed she was ok to move to a rehab facility, things were starting to look up but she was very upset that she wasn’t being taken home. She did not want to be in the rehab facility at all. I guess that should have been a sign. The nurses there were…a different breed? They were under the impression my mom was recovering from a stroke. I think the large cut on her head should have given away the fallacy of that. They didn’t know what she was supposed to do to eat or use the bathroom (in fact, one of them asked me and Steve on our first visit there).

On the night my mom passed away, Steve and I came up to visit after work like we normally did. Steve would always meet me at work and we’d take one of the cars up to the city together so we could ride in the HOV and have a slightly less traffic jammed ride up to the city. We got to the rehab facility and dad told me that when he got there, they’d taken her blood pressure on top of her PICC line. Everything ever written about a PICC line says you are NEVER supposed to put a blood pressure cuff over a PICC line and if you must take blood pressure from the same arm a PICC line is in, you do it from the forearm. Obviously when I heard that, I was livid, given that there was a sign over her bed saying exactly what not to do when a patient has a PICC. More digression.

Mom seemed fine that Friday evening and Steve and I told her goodnight and that we’d come back Sunday. Saturday was a wedding prep day. We left and Steve picked up his car from my job while I stayed at work to make use of my large monitors to work on some of the graphics work for our wedding invitations. Dad called me at about 10pm or so and told me that mom had taken a turn for the worse. I immediately called Steve and he came right back and back up to SF we went.

When we got to the hospital, Dad told me that mom complained of pain in her head and they took her down to get a CAT scan. While she was getting the CAT scan, something in her brain was bleeding and by the time they’d finished the CAT scan, she’d lost all neural activity. When I was allowed to see her, she was hooked up to some machines that kept her breathing but for all intents and purposes, my mom was gone.

I broke down. I never break down but I most certainly did that night. Panic, shock, etc etc. I called my brother who knew something was up but was not expecting to get THAT call. He was in denial. Shock. Etc. I called my sister and my other brother and my aunts and that was about all I could take. We helped Dad take his suitcase and moms suitcases out to the Durango and he went back home and we went home.

I cried a lot. I didn’t think it was fair. I still don’t. I want to make inquiries to see what went wrong at the rehab facility because once she was there, she was supposed to be out of the woods. I want to know why a brain surgery patient was allowed to bleed out during a CAT scan. Those inquiries will happen after the wedding, I just can focus the mental energy on them now.

I wonder what the surgeon thinks about my moms passing. I wonder if he feels like someone else messed up his work. I wonder if he got angry when he found out. By the way, don’t let Grey’s Anatomy fool you, neurosurgeons are not all like McDreamy. This one definitely was not. Bedside manner is maybe a skill he could work on.

It’s been a month since my mom died and I cry all the time, for no reason. Well, there is a reason, obviously, that I miss my mom. I wish I could have her back. I wish she could be at my wedding. I wish that she never had to go through any of what she went through and could still be here, healthy, enjoying life. She was always worried she’d die at an early age. Her mom died at 37. Her mom’s mom died at 41. So now, that has become my worry also. Aneurysms are hereditary and I’ve been having weird, random, icepick headaches a lot lately. I have a doctors appointment for them tomorrow. I am hoping I don’t get a 10pm call with unwelcome test results.

I’m trying to let you rest in peace Mommy. I miss you.

No related posts.

I found my Uncle on Facebook.

Sounds pretty mundane, run of the mill right? Many of your family members are on Facebook, I’m sure. To grasp this, let me back up for about oh, 50 some odd years.

My grandma went down to Saint Petersburg as a young woman, I’m not sure why but I know she ended up working at a local business. There she met a man. They conceived my father. The man then went…somewhere. My dad was born and never knew his father or who he was.

Fast forward to 1997, as my grandmother knew her days were getting short. She told my dad the circumstances of how she and his father met and also his fathers name. My grandmother passed away shortly thereafter.

Fast forward again to 2005 or so. I started becoming extremely interested in my family tree and history. I asked my dad what he knew of his father and he told me his fathers name, as told by his mother. I immediately did a search on Ancestry.com for the name. No matches. I didn’t pay much attention to it. I hadn’t known my grandfather for 25 years and it wasn’t that big deal a that I couldn’t find him. I assumed either my grandmother remembered the name incorrectly or my grandfather didn’t tell her his full name.

Fast forward again to 2010. I had my dad do the the Big Spit (23andMe test) and he’s got many Relative Finder matches. His paternal haplogroup is one of great interest to several people in said haplogroup. These results reinvigorated my interest in trying to find my paternal grandfather. Once again, I turned to Ancestry.com. Once again, nothing. This time though, I decided to be a bit more persistent.

Let’s rewind to 2005 again for a moment. The internet was still all about search and finding information useful to you. Facebook was still private. MySpace was being purchased by NewsCorp and was still for music artists and teenagers, for the most part. Friendster had a brief explosion of interest and use but was fizzling out. In 2005, the concept of  social networking just hadn’t yet reached the masses.

Things have changed here  in 2010. Facebook has just reached 500 million users and I can easily strike up a conversation with both my future mother-in-law (hi Lynne!) and my dad on the site if I so desired. Social networking is not just an idea a few sites are toying around with, it has permeated the internet.

Message #1 and what I thought was the most promising.

That was my thought process when I decided to take a pretty drastic (for me anyway) step on June 12, 2010; I searched for every person with the last name Anderson (of course this is not the real name) on Facebook and emailed anyone that looked to be any parts of African-American. The first person I emailed was also the first person to respond and he was who I thought I was going to get the best response from. I mean, he looks like my dad looked 20 years ago albeit a little shorter.

I sent him a message and got a response that I had mixed feelings about. On the one hand, he knew a David Anderson! On the other hand? This David  was from Georgia and everything my grandmother told my had to do with a David from New Jersey. I decided to wait for other responses before chasing down his since it seemed unlikely to be a match.

I’d also sent a message to a person also named David Anderson. He didn’t have a profile picture (well he did but it wasn’t of himself, it was an inanimate object) but I decided to take the chance that he may be related in some way. He responded to my message with the following: “Lol ha Yeah i know him very well, thats my dad call me 555-555-5555″

"That's my dad. Call me..."

Pause.

What? Wait what? This guy is my uncle?! But…he’s younger than me!  Composing myself, I asked more questions and eventually called. We compared details about his dad and my Dad’s dad. Lived in New Jersey? Yep. Lived in Florida? Yep. Born around the same time? Yep. Throughout the conversation, I was the one providing details and he was the one corroborating so my guard was up. Maybe he just responded positively to mess with me. Then he added his aunt (my great-aunt) into the mix. She was as skeptical as I was. Wouldn’t you be? Who just randomly pops up out of the blue like “Hey! I’m your brothers 30 year old grand-daughter! Holla!”  She and I spoke on the phone and told me she’d talk to her brother about the situation.

She was true to her word. The next day, she called me back. She spoke to her brother. He remembered my grandmother. He’d like me to call him.

…

No way. I was still in disbelief and shock. I took down his number and never called. I did speak to the other David again and while we were talking, he put me on hold. When he came back, his dad, my supposed grandfather was on the phone. A month later I still shake my head at this. I talked to this man who we thought to be my grandfather but I was still skeptical. I asked him how he knew and met my grandmother and he called her his girlfriend. Said they worked together in Saint Pete. Said where they worked in Saint Pete. Highly interesting because I had no idea what my grandmother did down there. Once we got off the phone with him, I called my dad. Asked him what my grandmother did in St. Pete. He confirmed what the man on the phone said. The man who was supposed to be my grandfather. The man who is my grandfather.

Still on the phone with my dad, I asked him if he was sitting down. He was, watching some show on the Discovery channel. I asked him if he’d like to know his fathers phone number. The line was silent for what felt like 5 minutes but probably was only 30 seconds or so. He said yes. I asked him if he was shocked, he said yes. I gave him his fathers number.

The next day, I called my dad back and asked if he’d called his dad. Yes, he said, but they were going to have talk again later. Talk they did. 3 weekends ago, my dad went to meet his father for the first time. At the same time, he met the rest of his family at their family reunion. 3 days ago, he and his younger (by 25 years) brother had lunch.

My dad now knows his dad. Sorry if this is a bit dramatic. I’m all weepy-eyed as I type this because it still floors me. I can’t even begin to imagine how my dad feels right now.

All because of  a search on Facebook.

The internet is a powerful tool. We truly live in the information age and it is remarkable, yet only in its infancy.

Truly remarkable.

Hi Dad!

P.S. The person in message #1 is actually related. The real last name (no, not Anderson) turns out to be fairly uncommon. Also? Hate finding typos where my fingers skipped over a word because my brain was moving too fast. I do that a lot, as evidenced by the typos in the messages in the images above and likely in this blog post.

P.P.S. Thoughts expressed in this post are mine alone and not my employers, blah blah, etc etc.

No related posts.

I’s (getting) married now!

Squeeeee worthy? I think so.

To save you all from the deluge of wedding ideas that I want to share, I’ve created a new tumblr specifically for these thoughts. Follow if you like to read about wedding-y stuff.

No related posts.

For the days leading up to Black History Month, I will do a cursory Family Tree for any African-American folks that ask me. The only caveat? You have to be willing to post your tree somewhere (blog, FriendFeed, Facebook, twitter, etc) during Black History Month.* Why? I think AfAms need a better understanding of who we are and where we come from. Interested? Email familytreeme@ericabaker.com.

To expand, I define cursory as “as many generations I can go back without having to jump over many hurdles”. This normally gets me back to the 1870s for most African-Americans and if the data is good, I can go further.

To get started, I’ll need the names and if possible, birthdates and birthplaces of your grandparents. The tree I generate will work backwards from them.

Once done, I’ll give you a list of all the people in the tree, the actual tree itself, and the GEDCOM format file in the case you want to upload and continue working on the tree in Geni or another family tree tool. If applicable, I’ll also provide interesting supporting documents (Freedmen’s Bank Records, Draft Registration cards, wills, etc).

Please feel free to pass this on to others.

*Why the necessity to post during Black History Month? Reminding people that Black History is more than just remembering the efforts of civil rights activists and celebrating African-American inventions; it’s our history.

A while back, I told you all I finally spent the money and did the 23andMe thing and I promised I’d report back with results. Well, better late than never right?

Applicable Ethnicity? Mostly European.

While the 23andMe health data is pretty good and comprehensive, unfortunately, the research in that area has been focused mostly on people of predominantly European heritage (more on this later in the post). African Americans like me will still show results in this area but I’m taking the reports with a grain of salt.

Aside from the health data, 23andMe has added quite a bit of really interesting Ancestry data. For example, apparently my maternal haplogroup is L2c1, a haplogroup common among the Mandenka of Senegal, according to 23andMe.

They also do this really interesting thing called Ancestry Painting. It basically matches each little bit of your DNA to where it most likely originated. Based on my Ancestry Painting (in the image below) I’m 20% European. The history of slavery makes this entirely unsurprising.

100% Mutt

23andme recently released a new Ancestry feature in Beta called Relative Finder.  The feature will be released to all users in early January and from what I’ve seen of Relative Finder so far, this could be a complete game changer for those of us interested in Genealogy. Check out the portion of my Relative Finder results pictured below.

Hello European relatives of mine.

As an African American, this is Huge. Think about slavery for a moment. Those European roots included in my Ancestry Painting will never be documented anywhere and up until now, there was almost no way to find out who was tipping to the slaves quarters at night. Once released to all 23andMe users, putting together the puzzle pieces of Relative Finder matches and family history will make it possible, maybe even easy to figure out the unknown branches in family history. Knowing who was a slave owner could lead to knowing where a slave originated, which could lead to finding out EXACTLY where I or any other AfAm came from.

Clearly Relative Finder would be highly beneficial to most African-Americans. There is one small problem. The cheapest 23andMe service, the Ancestry edition, costs $399.00. The median annual income for most African-American families is $30,134 before taxes. Factor in taxes and one 23andMe Ancestry kit will cost a family 20% of the average AfAm families gross monthly income, nothing at all to scoff at.

What does this mean? Sadly, this groundbreaking tech will remain out of reach for many of the people who could use it most. When I asked 23andMe about this on Twitter, their response was mostly vague but leads me to believe their pricing model isn’t about to change anytime soon.

Long story short? Price changes unlikely in the short term.

Sucks right? The genealogy isn’t even the half of it. Remember earlier in the post when I mentioned that a lot of the health data is based on studies of people with European ancestry? Yeah. That’s not going to change anytime soon unless a) some researchers decide to focus on African-American DNA or b) the cost barrier is reduced, allowing for more AfAms to participate on their own.

If you can’t tell, this is a pretty big deal to me. A big enough deal that I wrote to the Oprah show to try to get her to cover the subject. I don’t think any of the AfAm “moguls” have devoted any cycles to the subject, save the brief run of the African-American Lives series. In a perfect world, the Oprahs, the Diddys, the Shaqs, and the Jay-Zs of the world would take some interest in all this but thats not likely to happen. Other than that, frankly, I don’t have a real solution to any of the issues I’ve written about here. Maybe one day the price of DNA testing will be low enough that cost won’t be a barrier for those people that don’t have an extra $400 laying around. If you are an African-American with that kind of disposable income available, I encourage you try out the 23andMe service. If you do and you get some Relative Finder matches, I’ll be more than happy to do a cursory building of your Family Tree on Ancestry.com for you. The more you know, etc.

Disclosure: My employer is an investor in 23andMe however, the views reflected in this post are mine alone and do not reflect the views of my employer. I paid full price for the 23andMe service and have not been offered any future discounts  for the service.

Happy 2010 by teapotqueen

Happy New Year Peeps!

Make this decade a good one!

Given the recent spotlight put on web based “incentive” programs, I thought I’d share what I heard from Pizza Hut when I asked about this very topic back in September.

On September 19, I was having my typical Saturday night at home and decided to order pizza for dinner. Since Papa Johns doesn’t deliver to my area and Dominoes is well..Dominoes, I went with Pizza Hut. Standard operating procedure, I ordered the pizza and afterward, I was “qualified” to sign up for some scheme or another. I didn’t take a screenshot so I can’t remember which. I was annoyed enough by it to tweet about it since I knew Pizza Hut was at least paying some attention on twitter:

Pizza Hut wasn’t going to explain itself in public and responded:

I sent them my e-mail address via DM and they responded:

Turns out that correct information was a carefully crafted email response claiming that “the Web Loyalty program provides value to customers at a time when they need it most.” To quote Amy Poehler, REALLY?

Here is the full text of Pizza Huts email response:

Hi Erica,

Thank you for your question.

The Web Loyalty program provides value to customers at a time when they need it most. Pizza Hut customers who are members of the program receive $10 cash back every month and that’s just one example of many companies and services that offer discounts and specials through the program. To enroll, our customers complete a three-step opt-in process upon checking out online. If at any time they wish to discontinue membership or if they feel that they inadvertently signed-up, customers can call 1-800-889-8776 for a full refund.

Sincerely,

Alexa Robinson
Pizza Hut

Now, forgive me, but I don’t fully believe this. Why would Pizza Hut claim this scam is good for consumers even after its been targeted for a Senate investigation and settled a class action lawsuit for potentially hundreds of millions?

Well apparently there are up to 10 million reasons why Pizza Hut keeps it around. Ah, the almighty dollar wins over consumers again. While Pizza Hut falsely claims that these scams are valuable for customers, in reality, they are most valuable for Pizza Hut, customers be damned.

Remember that next time you’re ordering pizza. Frankly, I’ll be ordering from Pizza California. They’re local and they don’t try to scam me for the sake of their bottom line. Their Gold Rush pizza is pretty damn good too.

No related posts.

Oh Microsoft.

Who did you have vetting your Windows 7 party participants? I know you didn’t let everyone play because I know several people who applied and didn’t get selected. Yet, for some reason, you chose me?

Me who works at a company that your upper management seems to want to obliterate?

Me who publicly derides Windows whenever the mood fancies?

You could have Binged me and found out all this stuff yet still, somehow, you decided that I’d be a good person to throw a forced promotion party for your new OS (or is it a Service Pack with a shiny new title).

I’ll be the first to admit, I signed up for it. See my mom just got a new computer with Windows Vista. She hates Vista. Like, a lot. I promise I had nothing to do with that but you should have seen the smile on my face when she called and told me so. She repeats it too. Anytime we’re talking about her computers, she tells me. Even went so far as to have me put “Om-boo-tu” on her older computer with Vista just so she didn’t have to deal with it anymore. Promise. So when I got the opportunity to maybe give her a version of Windows she didn’t despise (for free!), I didn’t pass it up.

So here we are. You’ve selected me. I am a woman of my word so I will have the party.  We may even discuss Windows 7. Like so “thanks for the playing cards Windows 7! I’m all in” or “thanks for the fancy tote bag Windows 7. It’s perfect for my gym shoes!”

Anyway, I know you’re looking for promotion with this whole thing so far be it from me to begrudge you your shine. Here, I will unbox this party pack you sent me. You’re welcome.

[pie left]

Windows 7 Box

Box

It's here!

It's some junk in a box!

Nope, not fake.

Random crap from various vendors that I'm supposed to give party guests.

Puzzle and Playing cards. I'm thinking poker.

Centerpiece, Napkins, Balloons, Streamers

Letter, Windows 7 Ultimate Signature Edition (wtf?) 32bit and 64bit versions.

Poster.

Party bags for guests to put the crap from vendors I'm supposed to shill.

The whole shebang, minus box.

[/pie]

So there it is. Thanks Microsoft?