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Showing posts from December, 2015

Holiday Elf...

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This fall has been filled with some dark times...times where I am peering over the top wondering if the light will come in and others where I am standing on the edge grateful that I am not at the bottom. Today a ray of sunshine arrived at our door...well, technically she arrived at the United Cargo bay from distant Puerto Rico. This sweet girl, being renamed Leia, has brought joy to my heart already. She is a part of my bid to get healthy and fit (can you say morning and afternoon walks?) and bring love and joy to my heart. Maybe not everyone is totally in love yet, but I am in love...and have hope that this is a sign of a new beginning. I'm taking things one day at a time. I realize that I must create my own happiness and quit expecting things to come to me...I am hoping that, in time, she can be trained as a therapy dog or a companion dog. This will be a win for both myself and Javad. Today, this sweet face is starting the steps forward...2016 here I come and I am bringing my

Memories like razors in the mind...

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Recently I was asked to submit a story for a book around the subject of parenting a medically fragile child. I have been mulling around the story ideas for a few weeks and, frankly, I should have gotten my submission in some time ago. The focus of this book will be to give perspective to medical professionals as well as to parents, which helps to give a focus for my story. When deciding what to write, I realize that there are many events over the last fourteen years that I could write about, but trying to focus on one has been the challenge. Clearly Javad's most recent episode is the one most prominent in my mind...it is the one that has made the most profound impact on our lives. So, today I began writing...I didn't realize how much everything is still in the forefront of my mind, even after nine months. It is almost profound what the mind can do, remembering the smallest of details. I mean, it took me over a month to learn the names of my students this fall and yet I can te

Javad, the giraffe, and the MLS Championship...

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This has been a crazy few weeks. For those who know me, you know that I love soccer. I met my husband playing soccer, met some of my dearest friends from soccer, and, this year, have made many new friends through soccer. Last year, on March 16, our world changed forever. Our sweet boy, who had beat so many odds, had his first ever seizure...one that was so big that it stopped his heart for almost four minutes and nearly cost him his life. It has been a year of lowest lows...Javad's seizure has blown a cavern through our lives. For the first months (maybe the first five), our boy just wasn't there. Snowed by drugs and the trauma of (let's review here...) a seizure, four minutes of CPR, three days of cooling (yep...a Javadsicle), then two days of thawing, two days of double the seizure medication, then three more weeks of sleeping. We brought him home after a month and had no idea what might happen. He was barely conscious and was being evaluated using the coma scale. I w