Wednesday, February 18, 2009

The Belly of The Beast

I picked him up at Ms. P's at 8 the next morning. It was Monday, November 27th. The day that everything changed forever.

Cameron was very pale and weak, a bit shaky on his feet, and was complaining of the headaches again. We got home and his head was really hurting. I called his doc, who was back in town, and described his symptoms to her. They were able to squeeze us in around 1:30pm that same day. I called school and Ms. P at work (which was usually verboten) to let them know the situation and that I was taking him to the doctor.

All morning long Cameron screamed at his pain. No whining, no crying, just yelling - angry and loud - at his pain to go away. Yelling at the pain as if it were an entity in and of itself. I've never seen anything like it.

I felt so helpless. I gave him a little coffee to help remedy the headache (as if). I laid him on my bed, stroked his hair, and sang softly to my poor sweet baby. He drifted off into a nap, or passed out from the pain, I'm not sure which. I woke him up after a few hours to go to the doctor, but he never came out of his drowsy state. I had to help him walk from the car to the elevator, then into the doctor's office. His words were slurry, and he was really out of it. Like he was drugged.

The doc ran more tests (2 exhausting hours worth), and finally a poke test with the sharp and dull edges of a broken wood tongue depressor. She poked first his right arm, leg and side, then his left. He could feel the difference on his right, but on his left they all felt sharp, or he couldn't feel anything at all.

She looked up at me and said, "I don't know. I suppose it could be psychosomatic." ... After staring at her blankly for a second, I said that something in my gut was nudging me that this might be a neurological issue, because of the numbness and headaches and everything. She muttered something about possibly doing a CAT scan, and I asked if we could please get an MRI, like, immediately. I was probably a little more demanding than that. She set up the appointment immediately, across town. I ushered him back to the car in a wheelchair, drove to the MRI office and tried to prepare him for the idea of lying absolutely still for the 45 minute scan. He could hardly sit up as I undressed him and got him into the hospital robe.

The nurse wheeled him to the scanning room. I held Cameron's hand and then his foot as the conveyor slowly moved my boy into the gigantic donut-shaped MRI machine... into the belly of the beast. Cameron was so out of it, but still managed to reassure me that he wasn't scared. I wish I could have done the same for him.

The clammor of the giant magnets banging around inside the machine during the scan was intense. Try to imagine being a child, strapped to a very uncomfortable platform, a cage around your head, having to lay perfectly still for that amount of time, with a perpetual loud banging going on around your head. Watching this was agonizing for me. I found myself feeling a little grateful that he was so out of it. It was awful, but nothing could have prepared me for what transpired 45 minutes later.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Ain't that a kick in the head?


A kickball, actually. Cameron was out on the play yard of his new school. It was early November, 2006, he was in 5th grade and was hit in his 11 year old head, hard, with a rubber kick ball. He even blacked out. The school nurse didn't send him home, and I wasn't informed of the incident until more than a week later... pretty typical of communications between Cameron's mother and me at the time.

A week or so later the headaches began. And the dizzy spells. And the nausea. Cameron finally mentioned the incident with the kickball, so I took him to the chiropractor, thinking that the ball might have knocked something out of whack that was causing the problems. The chiro adjusted him and suggested an allergy test. Being autumn, leaf and other mold allergies were all over the place, and the symptoms matched. I had my house checked, but no mold registered. I respectfully requested that his mom check for mold too, and, well... let's just say it was taken as an affront, and the request was not-so-respectfully denied.

Ok - quick side note on Cameron's mom. I will refer to her as "Ms. P." Really quick. Ms. P certainly relates to this story, but it doesn't center around her. I understand that she, too, is grieving this unbelievable loss, and I don't mean to come off as disrespecting her grief. I can relate my own experience and loss, as a father and as a cancer survivor myself, but I can not imagine the depths of a mother's loss of her only child. And still I must be truthful about this journey. The cancer was a walk in the park compared to dealing with her through all this. I don't say that lightly.

Thumbnail biosketch: Ms. P & I were married for 7 years, divorced when Cameron was about 3. Just grew in very separate directions, personally, emotionally - on all levels, really. No blame, just the human condition at work. Everything was amicable until the summer of 2005 when she started treating me like a criminal. Someone dripped poison in her ear that I was trying to take Cameron away from her (I wasn't), and apparently she was quite impressionable because nothing was ever the same after that. She said horrible things to Cameron about me, told him things like I would try to kidnap him, refused to let him attend his beloved great-grandmother's funeral (I had to get am emergency court order), sent police to my house once for no reason... really crazy stuff. She caused him much frustration and even despair throughout his short life. Sad. That's not to say that she didn't love him, in her way, or that they didn't enjoy good times together too, or that he didn't love her. He was very open with me about his feelings in general, but also regarding his relationship with mom. Cameron learned young to recognize love in all its forms. Love is love, but some people just have a really fucked up way of showing it sometimes. I'm just saying. I learned that at a young age too, but that's another book. It made made watching him experience it all the harder.

So Cameron's headaches kept on. Mine too - both from Ms. P, and not knowing what the hell was going on with my son. I took him to the pediatrician, solo. His regular doc was away, so we saw a stand-in. The doc ran a bunch of tests, said it could be mold allergies, or diabetes, or mono, or any number of other things. She called a few days later with the test results, and reported that it wasn't any of those. I asked what it could be, and she said she didn't know, but bring him back if the symptoms persisted or worsened. They did. Both.

Cameron was with his mom the latter part of that week, which meant that I didn't really hear much about his condition, until he called me Sunday night, 11/26, crying, saying that he couldn't walk and that the left side of his body felt numb. I asked if his mom was taking him to the hospital and should I meet them there. He said that she refused to take him, accusing him of making it up to avoid having to go to school the next day. His whole life, Cameron loved school. He couldn't wait for summer to be over, he was so excited for the new school year to begin. (He had attended a Waldorf school for most of his foundation years, which fosters a love of learning in children.) I told him to put Ms. P on the phone. She confirmed his story, and since he was still on "her" time, I could not come to pick him up to take him to the emergency room myself. Cameron and I had to wait until the next day.