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Welcome

For all parents who happen on this site, looking for help, answers, a place to share, my hope is we can learn and find a way...... I didn't start this from the beginning, I could barely think. So I'm going to post some things I wrote then, and date the blogs from the date I wrote them. But I'm actually starting this blog on 3/19/05. The first one I could find, was about Herbal remedies, more on that later......and here's what I remember about those early days: This around September 2003....there will be earlier posts. Sleepless nights, CNN going until 8AM, I was up at 6AM to work from home. He'd been up all night, and was ready to begin the daily sleeping until 3 or 4 when he would go out. Go out without showering, changing his clothes, brushing his teeth.

The most recent update

12/28/05 There is much more to tell, go back and recreate. But today, and these past few months have been of hope, possibility, and healing. Not just healing, but being healed. Today, he is in New York, traveling on his own. In the past year, he found that his love in life is helping others. Helping his friend recover from back surgery, driving him, taking care of the friend's child, initiated his friend's parents sending him a ticket to New York for Christmas. The program supported him in going. I missed him at the holiday, but am thrilled at how excited he was to go. He calls me know every few days about something. He is a young man, well, loving life, caring, and giving. He is still on medication, and wants to wean himself off. I think he will go that route and we'll see. My prayer is that he can live well without it. Continue to be a help to others and love his life. We have received many blessings. Thank you.

The earliest memories

I'm writing this 3/19/05 and dating it back, so there is a history.....

My son was, and I want to change that to IS, a fun, caring, loving, spiritual, outgoing, kind boy and young man. Living in two households, very different, until he was thirteen; we shared him and not without strife. He seemed to manage well, got good grades, had friends, played music from the time he was little, first the violin, then the drums (far better), spent a lot of time outdoors, and was very adventourous, funny, even irreverant.

I have hundreds of pictures of him mocking it up, grandstanding with friends, laughing, hugging the cat, and being ever so playful. We went on at least a couple of trips a year, got lost, laughed, saw new things. I taught him to drive at 15 1/2 and at 16, we took a 1500 mile trip to Ashland from the Bay area. We swam in the Sacramento River on a boiling day, and in Ashalnd we loved a Shakesperean play, drove back through Las Vegas, down to LA and then on to Tijuana for the Jai Alai games. Some normal quarreling about his driving a bit too fast (he got a ticket), and once ran off the road to the other side of the highway, sparing our lives.

Everyone has these stories.....

Migraines and School

Mid 1990's: From the time he was about twelve, he had Migranes. But after his father died, they began to be a couple times a week, then every day. They were serious, excrutiating and frightenting. I took him everywhere to get treatment for the migraines. Neurologists, Cranial Sacral doctors, an Acupuncturist, a Chinese Doctor, a Biofeedback expert, a Wiccan healer, a psychologist, a nutritionist and finally, the Cranial Sacral doctor, gave him a shot of Imetrix. I remember him saying, "I want to marry it." His migraine immediately released. He was pain free. He'd been missing a lot of school, at Berkeley High School, where he was getting straight A's.

Sometimes he'd call me to let me know he'd thrown-up on the bus, so I'd go get him. He'd been taking classes with me at the community college, as I was going back to finish my degree. He was amazing. For instance, in Astronomy, he'd get 98s on the tests, to my 95s. He loved school, loved learning, loved being the best. So I took him out of Berkeley High and enrolled him as a home student. I tried to get tutors over on that program. One of them showed up with an open wound on her nose. To think back, he tried to concentrate, but it was raw and red and wet and I'm horrified to think I made him sit there with her, or that she would do that to a kid. Especially a sensitive kid like him. Oh the mistakes...but there will be more lamenting about my mistakes. I sure made them.

So he began more or less full time classes, at least three a semester at the Community College. He was fifteen. Each unit in college, counted for 1.5 in high school, so in 10th grade, in college, he would graduate from High school, about the same time, but also have the college credits finished for transferring to UC Berkeley, where he wanted to go. The college councilors supported him. The other students got on well with him. The older girls loved him. And we had a lot of fun taking classes together, studying, even competing. Later I'll post a cute cartoon.

Those were happy, lovely days. Except for the continuing Migraines, that had a horrible hold on him.

Death

August, 1994: At thirteen, my son's dad was killed in a car accident, a head-on collision, on his way to pick up our boy for summer. A tragedy... Our son joined his dad's family at the funeral, but never seemed to want to spend time with them after, though I wanted him to keep contact with his half siblings. He turned his attention to his grades and both began to get straight A's, and put on some weight.

The step-mother had, for years earlier, chided him, and even berated him about his weight. I could never understand it, as the photos of him prior to his dad's death, showed a slender, handsome kid, full of mirth. It seemed as if now that he could eat normally, and not just sometimes when he was at our home, he ate constantly, and everything.

I could go on about that, but that's for another blog called: step-mothers from hell, the nicest possible description. Remember this though, and hear what the health care providers later will say about her actions as it relates to my son's more current status.

In addition, what had been an occassional migraine headache, (a family trait) began to be more persistent. I took him to a neurologist in the San Francisco, who diagnosed him with "acute, chronic migraines." He was fourteen.