Christopher's Birthday-Celebrating 14 years with Christopher Slideshow.mov

A Different Kind of Celebration...

Thursday, October 21, 2010, 7:00 pm

We all have one every year.  In my family they occur around major holidays.  It wasn’t intentional.  It’s just the way it happened.  Nicholas’ is on St. Patrick’s Day, Emily’s is five days before Christmas, Paul’s is a few days before Halloween, mine is on Christmas Eve and Christopher’s is today.  Ten days before Halloween… on the six-month anniversary of his accident on April 21^st.  That’s right… today my walking, talking miracle is fourteen years old.  And we’re celebrating like we never have before!  Oh, we always celebrate birthdays.  Emily hangs the “Happy Birthday” banner from the family room fireplace, we make a special dinner and dessert, friends and relatives call to send birthday wishes, and cards and gifts are opened. 

But this year, this birthday is different.  We’re not just celebrating Christopher’s birth fourteen years ago, nor are we simply celebrating that he’s another year older.  No, this year we’re rejoicing in the fact that Christopher is actually here with us.  He is alive and thriving.  This boy who wasn’t supposed to live through the night on April 21^st is with us today, full of life, full of energy, full of love.

My heart is heavy today, but it’s a different kind of heavy than I was feeling six months ago.  I will be forever grateful for the amazing medical care he received from paramedics, doctors and nurses.  When I think of the thousands of people who prayed for him and for our family, I am overwhelmed.  Yes, today my heart is heavy with gratitude, with love for my child and with unbelievable joy.  I will hug him today, I’ll tell him how very much I love him and I will remind him, once again how thankful I am that he is here for us to celebrate.  Happy Birthday, Christopher!

The Walk...

Thursday, October 14, 2010, 10:00 am

Oh wow… I should have known.  Certainly I could have anticipated it.  But I didn’t. My mind was swirling with all that I need to do today, having returned last night from a week in Chicago.  You know… pick up the mail, catch up on laundry, make a dentist appointment, return my doctor’s phone call, contact Christopher’s math tutor to explain why he and Paul were ‘no-shows’ yesterday (they had the time wrong), write 200 vocabulary words and definitions on flash cards for Emily, pick Christopher up at noon from school (half days), take him to soccer practice and so on. 

I drove here, parked in the ramp, took the elevator down to the ground floor, took a hit of hand sanitizer, got my ‘visitor’ badge and started heading down the hall.  And then BAM!  I literally stopped dead in my tracks.  My breath caught and without a thought, the tears welled up and were streaming down my cheeks; all the feelings, emotions and memories flooding back as though gates had been thrown open.  I pulled out my phone and began photographing the walk.  I’d never taken pictures of it.  I know Paul won’t want to see them.  He doesn’t like ‘going there’ but for me, returning to those days is a form of therapy.  Yes, I’m here at Children’s Hospital, sitting in The Friendly Café.  That walk from the lobby to the elevator is much too familiar.  I wish I could say I didn’t know it, that I’d never made it before.  Six months ago that would have been a true statement, but not today.  It is now an integral part of my story.  The month that Christopher was a patient here will forever be embedded in my mind. 

 So what does Laura do when confronted with her emotional reality?  She pulls out her laptop, logs on and lets her fingers take over.  I have only a few moments before my hero arrives.  I’m having ‘cuppa’ with Dr. Newman, Christopher’s ICU doctor.  We haven’t seen each other since Tuesday, May 18^th, the day he was discharged.  We’ve exchanged e-mails and spoken on the phone about getting together but it has taken us almost 5 months to make it happen.  I’ve gotten myself a cup of coffee and I am pulled together pretty well.  But I know it will happen all over again when I see her walk in…the memories, the feelings, and the tears.  Oh well… it will be worth it.  Spending an hour with Vivienne Newman is a privilege and I will be honored to be in her presence.  She is coming here directly from the airport, having just dropped her son off as he is leaving for Israel.  Perhaps we will have a good cry together over our sons… two boys a decade apart in age, a world apart in life-experience.  Our tears for different reasons, but tears of love as deep as love can be… the love mothers feel for their precious children.

Doing What We Must...

Tuesday, October 5, 2010, 11:30 pm

Some days we do what we want to do.  Other days we do what we must.  My must came yesterday when I canceled my upcoming trip to Paris and Africa.  It was one year and three weeks ago, as we traveled along a beautiful road in Bosnia that my friend Angela Mason said to me, “So Laura, darling…” (Angela is British, so I’m always ‘Laura, darling’ to her.) “Next year we’re going to Mali.”  “Ummm… okay” I said to her.  “But Angela, where is Mali?” She then proceeded to tell me about West Africa and the work that World Vision has done in that part of the world.  We were going to see their water projects, specifically the drilling of a well and the dramatic difference that clean water can make for entire villages. 

I loved returning home from my overseas adventure last September (my first and very eye-opening one) with another trip already in the works. We talked about it as the weeks and months moved along and began planning for it. I couldn’t wait to see another part of the world and was thrilled that we were going to meet in Paris. I decided to go several days early to do a little sight seeing and enjoy the little sidewalk cafes I’d heard so much about.  We would spend a week in Mali and then return to Paris where I would unwind for several more days.  It was going to be a wonderful two weeks.  I would explore, write, learn and grow.  Perfect!

Then Christopher fell out of that tree.  April 21^st.  Five months ago.  Paris and Mali didn’t even enter my mind during the time he was in a coma and hospitalized.  I was just thankful that he was alive and doing so well… thankful that my miracle child had survived!  We came home from the hospital and did our best to adjust to our new normal… living with a brain-injured child.  The weeks moved along and all of a sudden it was July and time to start thinking about my trip.  Oh gosh… that trip!  I’d pretty much forgotten about it, so now I needed to decide if I could still go.  Christopher seemed to be doing well.  He got up every morning, showered, brushed his teeth, got dressed and moved through his day beautifully.  He mixed words up occasionally, left key words out of sentences and was a bit forgetful, but he was alive and thriving so I decided that it would be fine for me to go.  I completed the necessary forms to receive my Visa, began the vaccination process and bought Rosetta Stone so that I could brush up on my French that was buried somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind.

My sudden 2-week trip to Oklahoma to be with my parents after my mother’s emergency surgery was the first red flag.  When I returned home I noticed that Christopher was, well, a bit foggy.  He seemed to be walking around in a daze.  His word confusion had increased and everything came a little slower.  On our way to a routine appointment to see his Doctor at the end of that first week home, I said to him, “I just want you to know that I’m going to mention to Dr. Mandac that I think you’re a bit more confused than you have been lately.”  Christopher agreed, saying that he felt the same way and was experiencing more Cogno-moments, as he likes to call them.  We discussed this sudden change during his appointment and one of the doctor’s first thoughts was that the disruption in Christopher’s routine caused by my 2-week absence was a likely explanation.  “But” said Dr. Mandac, “it could also be the result of several other things.  I’d like to do another CT scan to rule out the possibility of new bleeding in his brain and let’s do an EEG to see if there are spikes in the electrical charges/impulses in his brain which would not be uncommon after this severe of an injury.”  So the tests were done and both came back negative… no additional bleeding and no unusual electrical activity. 

As we continued to meet with doctors and his Neuropsychologist, the consensus was that my absence was the most likely cause for the change we were seeing.  The injury that Christopher’s brain sustained lends itself to confusion and disorientation with any disruption to normal routine.  Within a month of my return home, his fogginess cleared up and his speech and language returned to “normal.” 

The second red flag came when school began.  Christopher is excelling in all subjects except for math.  After extensive neuropsychological testing, the results showed that his language and perceptual reasoning skills fall into the 98^th percentile or above.  As all of his classes other than math are language-based, it is no surprise that he is thriving in those subjects.  The parts of the testing that showed areas of deficiency however, were focus, concentration, attention span and speed of processing.  Ah ha!  That explains it!  The same side of the brain that controls speed of processing is the one where mathematical reasoning is done.  No wonder he is struggling.  Convincing Christopher that this is just a temporary problem and one that was fully caused by his brain injury has been no easy task.  He is very hard on himself and needs daily encouragement. 

“Hmmm…” I began thinking to myself. “I wonder who will do that daily encouraging while I am out of the country… Who will have the patience that only a mother can muster on an hourly basis?  Who will stay on top of him, gently reminding him of all that needs to be done before school, after school, before bed?  Who will be only 5 minutes away if, God forbid, something happens at school and he hits his head or has a seizure?  What if my 2-week absence, which will once again be a disruption in his routine, causes him to become ‘foggy’?  How will that affect his schoolwork?  How will all of this impact Emily?  Is it really fair to leave him in her care before and after school for 2 full weeks?  Will their sibling relationship survive that stress?  Oh gosh… what am I doing?  I can’t go to Africa… But I want to go so badly!  I’ve been looking forward to it for 12 months!  It’s going to be so exciting!  I’m all ready to go… my French is coming back to me!  It’s going to be such a wonderful break.  But what about Christopher?  What about my family?”

In the end, I realized that it’s just too soon after his accident, after the traumatic event that our family lived through for me to be so far away and for such a long period of time.  I need to be here.  Only 5 months ago Christopher was in a coma.  Today he is alive, healthy and thriving.  How could I possibly mess with that?  As Angela said to me today, “there will be other trips… we will have many chances over the years to go places… you’ll see…”  I’ll hold onto that thought for now.  And I will continue to count my blessings every single day.