Splendid Mayhem: Logen's EEG

Welcome To Holland

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......
When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."
"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."
But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.
The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.
So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."
And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.
But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Logen's EEG

Logen did pretty good yesterday at his EEG. Adam kept him up until midnight- they went to WalMart and bought a new toy, watched Tarzan, and made chocolate chip cookies at 11pm. I got the early morning duty- and woke him up at 5:30am. We watched Leroy & Stitch. He's been on Miralax- which has caused him to have some MAJOR big BM's. Needless to say, before 7am Logen needed 2 showers. I went ahead and took him to school and decided to work 2 hours that morning. I thought he'd do better wearing himself out playing and staying awake if he went to school.
When we got up stairs to do the EEG, Logen cooperated pretty well, he was just very wiggly when Larry was putting the electrodes on his head (there were 21 of them). Then, it came time to lay down. He wasn't so sure about that either. He did ok- the 2nd set of tests they blink a very bright light in your face and different speeds. Larry said, he needs to close his eyes for this part. I was thinking, Good luck with that one. Logen stared at it and laughed everytime the light blinked! Little varmit! He fell asleep for the last 5 minutes of testing, so Larry ran the first 3 over again- since little man was rather wiggly. We should get the results back in 2 to 3 days. I forgot my camera, so I took a few pictures with my phone- I had to had a few black mail pics :P

After the EEG, the "glue" left in his hair made for a lovely hair do!