Eileen Diehl:  

After CV, I attended Franklin & Marshall College where I majored in child psychology and performed experiments on local Lancaster babies (with their mom's permission :) to determine whether babies learn their mother's face or their mother's voice, first; and at what stage of infancy the baby's preference for either one changes. I graduated in my college's bicentennial class and had to endure the college de-recognizing the fraternities in my senior year. Initially headed for my Masters Degree so I could become a child psychologist, my brother convinced me to attend law school instead. That was a time when there were more doctors than lawyers and law schools jumped at the chance to enroll people who weren't the typical government or political science majors. I fit the bill. While at law school, my college major steered me towards family law. I had the unique opportunity to join a family law clinic and represent indigent clients as a certified legal intern while still in my third year of law school. Soon I was hooked and I have been practicing family law exclusively for 20 years (divorce, child custody, support, alimony, prenuptial agreements, protection from abuse hearings). Prior to my going solo in 1997 and opening my own practice, my first boss had a midlife crisis and moved to Tampa, Florida to sell bridal gowns. He said selling wedding gowns was the flip side of divorce and his bridal salon became his "happy place". The name of his store is "Monica Flowers" after Monica Lewinsky and Jennifer Flowers. (he had an envy of politicians who fooled around behind their wives' backs); my second boss went through a traumatic divorce, liquidated his practice and dropped out of sight. After 20 years of this stuff, I am now certifiably insane too, but I don't bring work home and being privy to bad and abusive marriages has made me appreciate my husband all the more. Keeping the toilet seat up again honey? No problem if I fall in. Couldn't manage to get your dirty clothes in the laundry basket 5 feet away and they ended up in a pile on the floor? So what ? Only got me a card for my birthday or Valentine's Day? Ah, honey, you shouldn't have ! I have a higher tolerance for what would make most women go postal, because of my job. l met my husband in college at a frat party my roommate dragged me to (she said I studied too much and was such a geek I needed to get out). He was a member of Phi Kappa Sigma, a/k/a "Skull House" . He was drinking coffee and I had been doing kamikaze shots. Needless to say, my first impression was that he was a bigger Geek (that is Geek, not Greek) than I was. I later learned that he was the fraternity's social chairman; it was "his" party and he was the designated sober person for the night. Someone should have given me the heads up, because he started stalking me all over F&M until I agreed to go out with him. Had I known he was cool, his torment would have ended weeks sooner. He and I attended the same law school and he has been a district attorney ever since, first in Dauphin County for 5 years from 1990 to 1995 under former head D.A. Richard Lewis (who is now a Judge) and with his former drinking buddy Ed Marsico (who is now the head D.A. there) and now in Lehigh County where we live. We actually dated for 11 years before we got married; most of that time was spent getting our college and law degrees, but frankly, I like to kick the tires before I buy a car, you know what I mean? One day while we were dating in the early 90's, I was visiting him in Harrisburg (he lived in a bachelor apartment off of Progress Avenue and had laundry issues), he took me to this bar. Imagine my surprise to learn that my (future) husband's favorite bar was "Nick's" and as I looked over at the bar to the one in charge, there was Nick Nicholls from our class ! The owner ! Wow was I impressed. What a small world we live in. I remember Nick lived in Pinebrook and was friends with John Murphy, who I haven't seen since high school, but admittedly, John Murphy and I did not run in the same crowd. My only son, Konrad Bernardino (technically Vitaliano Konrad Bernardino, IV), now age 8, is a cancer survivor (stage III neuroblastoma dx the age of 6 months). If you see a billboard for "Alex's Lemonade Stand", that girl (Alexandra Scott) had the same cancer and the same Children's Hospital of Philadelphia oncologist as my child did; the difference is that if you catch it before the age of 1 it is 95% curable and after 1 it is 40% curable. Neuroblastoma is the third most common childhood cancer, after brain tumors and leukemia; however, of the three, it is the hardest to cure. The experts believe it is a stem cell cancer and once the baby's immune system kicks into high gear after their first birthday, the cancer acts like a runaway train and replicates in the DNA; that is, no amount of chemo or radiation can keep it in check forever. We were lucky. Alexandra Scott was diagnosed 3 days after her first birthday and lived only to the age of 8. Konrad's cancer was detected in infancy while I was still breastfeeding. His tumor was the size of a softball and it was in his abdomen, wrapped around his aorta. It was posterior, so it had to grow large enough to start pushing his organs out of the way so that the pediatrician could feel it when pushing down on his belly at a well-baby checkup. My son was completely symptom-free, which is why only 20% of neuroblastomas are caught before the age of 1. He endured 8 courses of chemotherapy in a 6 month period and 3 days after his first birthday he had a 5 hour surgery at C.H.O.P. to remove his shrunken tumor, which was then the size of a golf ball. We stayed at the Philadelphia Ronald McDonald House (the oldest one in the nation by the way) and everyone there had their dinner catered by sorority sisters from U. Penn. Did you know that babies have veins that are too small for chemo, so they get a port surgically inserted in the middle of their chest, which we had to flush daily with heparin and which had a dressing we had to change weekly by putting on sterile latex gloves. We had to give him shots daily for one week after each chemo treatment to raise his blood cell count so he'd qualify for the next round of chemo and stay on track. I felt like a part time mom, part time nurse and a part time lawyer that year. We took only 1 photo of him with his first birthday cake, because frankly, he was pale and had no hair, no eyebrows or eyelashes. Babies have big heads, so he looked like a little Uncle Fester. Thank God he has no memory of any of that horror. We participated in every raise money for cancer event that came to our general area, thinking maybe we could raise enough to make a dent in the research. We raised about $4,000 for research. I can remember he had his first bubble bath in a bathtub at 13 months and as he cupped bubbles in his little hand he gave me this look like "Mom ! How could you keep such pleasure from me for so long?" and I cried. A bubble bath ! T...Expand for more