One thing I think we all take for granted is our
health. It usually isn’t until we are
sick that we realize how grateful we are for being in good health. This happens to me every time I get sick. I vow to appreciate being healthy as soon as
I get better. But when you have a child
with special needs your appreciation for health takes on a different
level.
A couple of weeks ago on Sunday Jackson was kind of grouchy
so I thought he was tired and put him down for a nap. When he wouldn’t go to sleep I went in to
check on him. He had thrown up – all
over his bed. Fun, right? We soon discovered he had a fever. So we started the meds and jello. The next day he still had a low grade fever
so I kept him home from school. His
fever broke early afternoon and he was back to himself. Tuesday he woke up totally wiped out. I kept him home just to rest. He was also a bit congested but didn’t have a
runny nose or anything. Wednesday and
Thursday he went back to school. He was
still mildly congested but nothing too bad.
Friday he woke up and he was really sick. Lethargic, low grade fever, congestion, cough
and runny nose. It was of course
Halloween. Kevin and I had been making
his Halloween costume for a couple of weeks.
He was going to be Scooby Doo and we had built the Mystery Machine to
wrap around his wheelchair. By the
afternoon it appeared there would be no Halloween for Scooby Doo. He was very sick. To top it off, I couldn’t get him to eat or
drink all day. Now if you know Jackson
you know that kid LOVES food and eating.
I think eating is more important than breathing to him. So I knew something was really wrong with
him. That evening I noticed a weird bite
looking sore on his thumb. He also had
some weird spots on his chin. Suddenly I
remembered that the daycare Daniel and Sylvia go to had an outbreak of Hand,
Foot, Mouth Disease. Kevin googled it
and sure enough it looked like the sores he had. But he also had symptoms that didn’t fit that
disease. One thing I discovered is that
Hand, Foot, Mouth Disease is an enterovirus.
With enterovirus being in the news a lot lately you can imagine where my
mind went with that. The next day,
Saturday, he woke up and ate a few bites of waffle, but that was it. He soon went back to lethargic, not eating,
coughing and a non-stop runny nose. He
also wasn’t sleeping well, up most of the nights. The sores on his chin had spread all over his
cute little face. The biggest one right
on the end of his nose. He looked like
Rudolph. By Sunday morning I was
freaking out a bit. I was worried about
the enterovirus thing. Kevin was out of
town all weekend for work and about every hour I was flipping a coin on whether
we needed to head to the ER. By Monday,
he wasn’t getting better, he was getting worse.
I called the pediatrician and in we went. I am glad we did. Jackson didn’t have enterovirus or Hand,
Foot, Mouth. He had a very bad bacterial
infection and was on the verge of a very nasty ear infection (for the record,
he is 6 and has never had an ear infection).
So we started the antibiotics that day.
He slowly started getting better.
By Tuesday afternoon our happy boy was back! I kept him home on Wednesday just to give him
one more day to heal. By Thursday he was
back at school. Oh how I appreciate him
being healthy! Despite Jackson’s brain
malformation and epilepsy, the kid is freakishly healthy. He rarely gets sick. Usually he only gets sick the two times a
year when we go to Florida. He pretty
much always picks something up on the plane.
But never to this extent of being sick.
The thing for me is that despite his relatively healthiness,
he is still a kid with special needs.
And kids with special needs are much more susceptible to illness and
(god forbid) death. I am on a lot of
online support groups for kids with PMG, epilepsy and neurological
impairments. Pretty much every other
week or so one of these kiddos leaves this world. That weighs on me, daily. I think all parents worry that something bad
will happen to their children. But do
any of you worry every day your child is going to die in his bed from a seizure
while you sleep? I do. I wake up almost every night and turn the
baby monitor up to hear Jackson breathe.
Just to make sure. I worry that a
simple cold will turn into pneumonia, his body will shut down and that he will
die. I know, I’m paranoid. To me though these are real concerns. Jackson is the love of my life, he is the
greatest teacher I have ever had, he has taught me what total, raw love is, he
has brought me more joy than I could have ever imagined, he is the reason I am
who I am today. He has given me so many
gifts. All I want in return is to watch
him grow up. I want to know what he will
be like in 10, 20, 30 years. The kid
continues to be a mystery to me – will he walk, will he learn some more words,
in what ways is he going to surprise me with is accomplishments? When he gets sick like he was the last couple
of weeks I worry that I might not get to see the mystery of Jackson unfold.
I am so thankful for Jackson’s health. Everyday.
We should all be thankful for something as simple as being healthy. So many are fighting for their health. On that note, I leave you with a quote by
Neal A. Maxwell. “We should certainly count our blessings,
but we should also make our blessings count.”
