Son No. 1

Son No. 1, J, is writer, you can read his work at Steel Town Sickness, but be forewarned - it is not for the faint of heart. He is brilliant, articulate and very dark. In a screenplay based on his life, the mother character, i.e. me, is brain dead and on life support. When it is produced I am quite sure I will want to leave the country.

Son No. 1 weighed 5 lb. 13 oz/ at birth, was 5 lbs. when I brought him home. He was so skinny and tiny I didn’t know how to handle him. Friends would bring over their bouncy chubby babies. The looked freakishly gigantic next to my blue eyed boy. They called his low birth weight “failure to thrive in utero.” After the first few weeks at home J experienced the first of his life long health challenges. He wasn’t gaining weight, I nursed him, but apparently wasn’t producing enough. Ick, I know, but it was a fact. The docs decided he should have supplemental formula. Not a good idea. He was allergic to every formulation. He threw it all up. I was beside myself. He was beside himself. He developed colic. No picnic.

J cried for hours; I cried for hours. He NEVER smiled. When I took him for his first formal baby pictures at 3 months the photographer commented “he’s not smiling.” After every squeak toy, funny face and animal impression failed, he turned me and said “Does he know something, we don’t know.” Clearly, he did.

Fast forward 24 years to a school building where my son and his fiance’ are sitting in a classroom attending a parent teacher conference. My son begins to clutch at his knees; he falls onto the floor in a tonic clonic seizure. He was transported to the local hospital. The seizure lasted 20 minutes. It left him barely functional for six months and brain damaged forever.

The cause - a rare side effect from an anti-anxiety medication. He was apparently vulnerable because of his failure to thrive in utero.

You can read his perspective on the moments before the seizure at STS.