The Fall Setback
We had a wonderful celebration yesterday for the first
anniversary of my mom’s passing. Several
of her friends came, along with the entire crazy family. We attended an anniversary mass, and then
had everyone back here afterwards. It was a
great day and evening, and judging from the number of sibling hangovers today,
there was no shortage on fun. My mother would have expected nothing less. So the
timing of this along with where we are in retelling our past year’s events with
Coleman is perfect.
After our appointment with Bock in late September, life went
on as we eagerly awaited the arrival of the prescriptions and supplements. Coleman celebrated his 11th
birthday, and for the first time, we had a ‘friend’ birthday party for him. We don’t usually do this because, well
honestly, he doesn’t like birthdays. He
doesn’t like the Happy Birthday song, he doesn’t eat cake or ice cream, he doesn’t
have ‘friends’, and he doesn’t like to open presents. So pretty much birthdays aren’t his thing. But this year, we had Kidzone in our bag of
tricks, and we knew how much he loved that place. We invited a very small group of kids,
primarily neighbors, to join us at Kidzone for play and then had them back to
our house for cake and ice cream.
All I can say is that we are very, very blessed to have
these families in our life, let alone our neighborhood. Best
birthday celebration we’ve ever had, hands down. Coleman didn’t stop smiling the entire time
there, and he ran around with those kids for a solid hour and a half – without any involvement from me! He’d run up to me every so often with some
comment like “You go on the slide?” and I would act all excited for him and say
“Oh yeah! Have fun!!!” and off he would run to the slide with the quartet of
kids. God, they were good to him. Asking him questions, following where he led,
and even, on a very close call, holding him up when he was centimeters from
falling back down the inflatable slide stairs.
There wasn’t a lot of conversation between them, and I’m sure much of
what he did say they didn’t understand.
But they never said a word, never complained to their parents, never
asked when it was time to go. They
laughed and smiled, and coaxed him with “Where should we go next Coleman?” They were like mini adults, taking his hand,
helping him up the ladders, down the slides, and through the bumpy houses. It was an outstanding 90 minutes.
A few days later the package of supplements finally came and
we officially began our road to recovery.
As luck would have it, we hit a bump only three weeks in. Coleman stopped drinking his juice. And then
he stopped eating too. He wasn’t getting
much yet in terms of supplements – we were supposed to add a new one in every
2-3 days, leaving just enough time between each to see if there was any
reaction. But I was cautious – I didn’t
want to rush into anything, so I was doing 5 days before adding each one in. So I felt pretty sure it wasn’t the
supplements. Still, since they were
being mixed in his juice, I backed off to see if he would start to drink
again. He didn’t and remained irritable
and still refused to eat anything. By
the end of the second day, I was sure it was strep. This was exactly how he had presented in the
past. We went in for a strep test, and
sure enough, it came back positive. Due
to a very serious strep infection the prior year that involved several trips to
the ER and nearly led to a much bigger throat infection (all because he did not
respond to a 10 days dose of Amoxicillin) we were prescribed Cephalexin and
went on our merry way. Only not so
merry. He vomited for 60 hours before we
could even get the antibiotic into him.
After 5 days he ate his first bite of food. 2 days later he began pooping blood. A lot of it.
We were terrified. We went back
to the doctor and provided stool samples for testing, but had to wait another
week for results. The heavy blood
continued the entire week. He was so
sickly, laying on the couch like he hadn’t since the Leukemia days. The
bacterial tests all came back negative, but still the blood continued. It was extraordinarily frustrating as our
pediatrician didn’t seem very concerned.
She felt it was possibly a reaction to the Cephalexin and that we’d just
have to let it run its course. Coleman
had been out of school for more than 2 weeks.
We were begging time at work, slipping in late, leaving early, trying to
cover the hours he was at home along side Sue, who thank God was able to come
most of the days. After another weekend
with bright red stools and 8x/day diarrhea, we went against our doctor’s
suggestion and called Children’s Emergency and spoke with the GI doctor on
call. I needed to be seen, I said. I cannot wait any longer. I was a wreck and thought something was very
seriously wrong with my boy. We went in
on that Monday morning, 17 days after it began.
And as I held Coleman’s hand walking through the parking lot into the
hospital, he stopped. He looked up to his
right side, smiled and then looked back toward me. “Where is nana?” he asked? It was the first time he had even mentioned
her name in the 7 months since she had passed.
He looked around like she was walking with us. “Where is nana?” he asked
again. “Can we see her?” he continued,
still smiling. Honest to God. It was as if she was there, whispering to him. It was the most comforting sign yet. I know it sounds nutty, but I am absolutely
sure that he could see her. “I think
she’s right here with us buddy” I said.
He just smiled and kept walking.
I knew then that we were good. No
matter what happened, she had his back.
That very afternoon things improved. No joke.
And the next day, he was 100% back to himself. No blood, no diarrhea. And I thought of my mom, pictured her smugly
nodding her head, so thrilled she is able to help like this: “See what I can do from here? You’re welcome.”
So finally healthy again, we started again where we had left
off in the Bock plan. It was the end of
November, and the weather was starting to turn colder. Hopefully by the spring, I thought, we’ll be
able to see some changes. Turns out, it
would be much sooner than that.
No comments:
Post a Comment