December 28, 2016

MEMENTO TE AMARI

Because the air is heavy of late, I hold on to what is essential and real.

"You are beyond sweet, and have accomplished more than I could have hoped for. You have fought to get to where you are, with a fortitude that is beyond understanding. There are no words to describe how proud I am to have you as my son, to be able to walk this path with you. You may not understand this, but I know that you understand that we love you."

                                              (from the dedication for his thirteenth birthday)



As you were born, long and hard years.

Provisioned with a mantle worn tightly;

a solemn oath to keep this plight in dignity, 

the suffering minimal,the light shining.

My struggles are as his breath and his breath has been my joy:

a shell discarded 

a new man born.

His heart beats without knowing,

the difference of life and death,

the power to calm and secure ruling over all adversity,

which is love.

                                        (poem based on the dedication to his twelfth birthday)

                                                                                 

August 28, 2016

STILL NOT TIME

STILL HERE, STILL HERE

From long ago, a serenity long lost.

I felt, as I woke Segev's brother and sister, that I was teetering on the brink of a precipice.  I thought that I had come close enough to my son's death enough times, to stand firmly on my own two feet. But I felt unsteady as in the midst of a severe storm, not buckling but oh so unpleasantly buffeted and pummeled. I thought, 'a few more hours' and that soon I would be consoling my eldest and middle child and they would be consoling me. So I woke them as they tried to find rest after they had helped during the night, assisting in emergency care for their brother who was barely able to take breaths and whose oxygen level, despite hours of constant chest compressions, ambo bag, IPV and suction, was hovering at 62%, having been stuck for some time as low as 50%.

August 17, 2016

So many miles we have crossed.

I am an old man now. Not in my mind, of course. But all the same, for eighteen years I have been fighting one crisis after another, each day. One more time to prove that life is here to stay for as long as the moment will carry. I breathe and so must he. There is no quitting, until the end overtakes us. And all that is, has been just and each moment has been weighed and those things, those moments, those accomplishments will never succumb to what is less. The endless nights of dawn, the turmoil, the anger and the lack of respite. If he can do, so can I. Perhaps less, certainly much less than once, humbled to know that less is forgetful and looking for pleasantries, groaning and no longer jumping from bed to treat, placate or save but to drag aching bones and confusion to the fray; but with a breath and a prayer, always, always into the fray.

June 09, 2016

Reflections

What does it mean to be an extreme caregiver to your child? Well in my case it has meant gaining 35 pounds, becoming too exhausted and injured to maintain a lifetime regimen of exercising and that I started smoking. Smokers, of course get no sympathy. I grew up in a household where both parents were heavy smokers but I didn’t start until I was 46 years old. That probably means something, but I’m not certain what.
Extreme caregiving has meant that my expression of creativity, writing, was put on hold for over 15 years, until it exploded from my unconscious with blogging about my son and life with him in 2010 and then publishing poetry in June 2013. After fifteen years of carrying my son and his wheelchair up two flights of chairs, my back was finished and now it’s difficult to even lean over my son and perform the physiotherapy which has helped him to survive.

May 26, 2016

Thoughts, after fifty years on this earth.




Forty four years ago I decided I would become a writer, because I wanted somehow to bring about resolution to conflicts that I witnessed people experiencing in their lives. That was my second choice, actually, my first was to become God, but I quickly realized that if I could think of that at age six (I wasn’t terribly concerned with actually how I would become God) then adults, infinitely smarter than myself and higher up on the pecking order, could do so and would be given preference.
But stories could be manipulated, changed, and so I vaguely envisioned rewriting people’s lives and conflicts and that they would then be able to see that things could be done differently and the outcome would be a more positive one.

May 05, 2016

The aging caregiver

There was a short conversation with the palliative physician who joined the team about six months ago. Going forward, after the catastrophe of attempting to control my son’s pain with a variety of opiates, putting him at death’s door yet again, he said he was running out of options. Fortunately I was able to increase his three other pain meds and add a fourth, which is helping Segev considerably.
But today is another such day where he is suffering signifcant pain. The last week has been another episode where he is vomiting frequently, his lungs are heavily congested, there is an increase in seizures and drops in oxygen saturation and a hard battle with an infected gastrostomy site, despite the constant methods of care. Today is another day where I need to decide whether I go to work or stay by his side.

February 08, 2016

The Gentle Savage

I feel I need to write this, yes, in the middle of it all. During the night we took turns, inserting a finger into my son's mouth and pulling his lower jaw forward, allowing him to breathe. Yes, without doing this he would have died. Suffocating. Slowly or quickly, I didn't know, but the natural thing to do was to fight for him, when he couldn't fight for himself.

The why and how of his deteriorating health, and the repeated incidents over the last few weeks of status epilepticus and no longer being able to breathe on his own, seems almost irrelevant. My mind still races though, even as I write this and he lies next to me on his side to allow his lungs to drain better, to try and understand the possibilities, the causality. And we've made decisions based on how we interpret that information. We've decided that if this happens again we will most likely take him in for an emergency tracheotomy. Because even when there is no air coming into his lungs, you can see him making the effort to breath. He's not ready yet to leave this plane of existence.

I slept for three hours on the couch at his mother's, while she held his jaw. My daughter suggested a position for him to lie in to force his airway open with enough success that the need to manually help him to breathe became less frequent. The seizures, which started in the evening and have continued through this morning have been reduced with massive sedation. His lungs have filled up again, despite the constant treatment and all these things have blended into a fireball of destruction.

The good times have been there, I have pictures to prove it for when my memory fails me, and I assumed they should give us the strength needed now, but in a somewhat bitterly farcical sense, those moments stand in stark contrast and offer little help.

To be honest, it's eating at our resolve, or perhaps to put it into a more positive light, we are simply recognizing that this is the natural course of things in my son's fragile and savage life.


January 16, 2016

raw update: nothing is the same

January 5th
It's difficult to know what my son is experiencing right now. Every aspect of his condition has worsened dramatically over the last month. The last week has been hell. While we bombard him with multiple pain medications, it's true that he suffers much less pain.
Using opiates is not a new idea but one I've always vetoed until recently, relying instead on standard pain meds and cannabis. None of which significantly impacted his severe pain. The fentanyl does that, with reasonable consistency and efficacy. But there is a price which we are all paying as Segev's condition continues to deteriorate.

January 09, 2016

UPDATE

Once again we find ourselves in the midst of a true crisis. The kind where you simply don't know if things will sort themselves out.

There are many different kinds of seizures, but the ones you fear the most are the brutal myoclonic tonic ones that ragdoll your kid with such a violence, that your heart breaks looking at it. When this happens despite all the medications, the CBD and the Cannabis, despite all the careful chest physio, despite the Fentanyl and analgesics, as though the hand of God grabbed your child by the scruff of his neck and went to town with a vengeance.

January 07, 2016

I, the aging caregiver: Introduction





Aging is a relative process. Being vain enough to think that I have aged well, until I look in the mirror, has long ago been replaced by the realization that the accumulated mileage is no longer covered by warranty. Coming up on eighteen years of caregiving for my son, it hasn’t always been easy, heck, it’s never been easy. If not for his smile and the twinkle in his eye when I sing to to him, (well cackle like a hyena is a more apt description, but he loves it!), I wouldn’t have been able to give one hundred percent. 

Of course, what was one hundred percent a few years ago is pitiful when compared to today. It’s not much of a paradox, the fact that the more you give, the less you have to give. You need to pace yourself for the long run, but to begin with you cannot know how long that will be and so you give it your all, hoping the long run will teach you to balance your own needs in face of your child’s. I never found that balance, and yet in part because of that, my son is still here.