“Blazin’ Beth”, as she liked to call herself, loved fast cars as a teenager. It was just one of the many attributes that made her special. It was also this need for speed that brought her together with her husband, Mike when they met at of all places, a drag strip. Mike and Beth celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary in 2005. The following is a tribute written by Beth’s husband to honor the women he chose “for sickness and in health” and appeared in the Spring 2005 Issue of Lupusline.

Beth Blodgett
Most of all, she’s a Mommy

Explaining what lupus is to your family and friends is one of the toughest parts about having lupus. People just can’t seem to put themselves in the shoes of the lupus patient. My wife Beth has had lupus for a long time and I try as hard as I can to understand what she is going through. I’m coming close to understanding her but I’ve concluded that having lupus is like having a size 13 DDD left foot and a children’s size 4 right foot. When you have lupus, you’re just not going to find many people that can wear your shoes!

Beth has been through some unbelievable challenges due to lupus. Unbelievable, that is, unless you have lupus. When I met Beth she had a pretty long history of health problems. To be honest, that really wasn’t something I was looking for in a companion. I knew there was a chance that I was going to see a lot of the “sickness” side of the “for sickness and for health” wedding vow, but there was something that kept me intrigued with “Blazin’ Beth” as she liked to be called back then. Beth had an approach to life and desire to survive that made her special. I was convinced that she would be rewarded for these traits.

We decided prior to our marriage that we wanted children. I thought a couple boys and a couple girls sounded good. Beth wanted an entire girls softball team. Getting pregnant proved to be a big challenge for us. We went through a couple years of emotional and financially draining infertility treatments. When Beth was able to become pregnant, she was confined to total bed rest due to an incompetent cervix as a result of earlier bout with cancer.

Over a two-year period of time, Beth spent about 36 weeks in a hospital bed protecting the unborn children she was carrying. It was miserable for her but it did teach me that she was a wonderful mother already. The lives of our children were ended before we ever met them. Four miscarriages, including the premature delivery of two children (a girl, Sara and a boy, Shane) twenty weeks into two separate pregnancies ended our dreams of becoming parents.

The loss of a child or children would be very difficult for anyone to deal with. It became even harder for Beth when we were told that she had lupus. No matter how hard the doctor tried to sugar coat it, Beth was stuck with the thought that it was her body (under the control of this mysterious illness) that caused our children to die in her womb. Beth still thinks about this everyday. I often think about how things would have been different if Beth had been diagnosed much earlier.

In August of 1999 Beth introduced me to the wonderful world of adoption and our dream to become parents was alive again. What we went through is called an “open” adoption. Prospective parents meet with birth mothers and look for a “match.” Open adoption is a competitive process. The number of adoptive parents far outnumbers the available birth mothers. The birth mothers tend to be young and looking for the perfect parents for their unborn children that they love but realize they can’t raise. The matching process is a series of sales presentations and what you are selling is your ability and desire to raise somebody’s child.

It was during the matching process and in the months that followed that I realized how fortunate I was to have Beth as my wife. Beth and our future birth mother hit it off instantly. They understood each other and loved each other like a pair of sisters. They developed a mutual respect and admiration for the role each of them was playing in the future of this child. It was awesome to witness.

I’m not sure if it’s our wedding day or the birth of our child that is supposed to rank higher on the politically correctness scale but I can tell you that cutting our daughter Sydney’s umbilical cord in the delivery room was the most incredible moment of my life. It would have never happened if it weren’t for Beth. And for that, I am forever grateful.

During our first couple years of being parents, Beth’s condition seemed to be getting progressively worse. Sydney was a wonderful baby and we were living our dream but it was becoming a daily struggle for Beth to manage the pain and depression and cope with the side effects of her medication. A MRI indicated that some of Beth’s behaviors that we assumed to be medication related side effects were actually Lupus related neurological problems. Finding out that lupus was attacking her brain was a huge stressor for both of us. Getting people to be compassionate of these “brain problems” proved to be much more difficult than the “immune system problems.” I guess “brain problems” just scare people.

At the suggestion of her Rheumatologist, Beth decided to try chemotherapy (cytoxan and remicade) and steroids (prednisone) to continue her fight. The chemotherapy treatment would usually take 5 or 6 hours every 2 to 3 weeks and Beth would either sleep or read while the medication was fed into the catheter implanted in her chest. Beth grew accustomed to Sydney and me popping in to check on her during each session. The fact that we always brought something to address her sweet tooth probably had something to do with that. The side effects of chemotherapy were horrible. Beth would be confined to bed for up to a week at a time. It was during that time that I found out that I had friends that I didn’t even know that helped me out around our house and with Sydney.

The steroids led to Beth gaining over 50 pounds and living with an unpredictable and uncontrollable rage. After 2 years of chemotherapy and daily doses of steroids and a variety of pain relievers, Beth decided enough was enough. Beth and I had to face the fact that lupus was probably going to be part of our lives forever. This was such an easy opportunity to quit. But that’s not what Beth wanted to do.

One morning late last year, Beth asked me when “somebody” was going to do “something” about lupus. I really had no idea what the “something” was, but I knew that I was the “somebody” she had in mind. As a Past-President of the Rotary Club of Gardena, getting “something” done is right up my alley. After all, Rotary International has been the driving force behind the worldwide eradication of Polio for many years. After a couple months of planning, we have unveiled a lupus awareness campaign through our drag racing team. We have also created a fundraiser for Lupus International and set our goal to raise $20,000 to help find a cure for this terrible disease.

I’m proud of Beth. She has faced lupus head-on. She’s not just coping with lupus, she’s back to living with it. She educated herself with materials provided by Lupus International and meets with a local support group. She went back to basics with an improved diet and a low impact exercise program. She has continued to follow the advise of her doctors and today, “Sydney’s Mommy” is doing fairly well and Sydney and I both love her very much.