Tonight's picture was taken in March of 2003. Mattie was 11 months old. As you can see Mattie was being transported on Peter's back, which happened to be his favorite way of getting around. That particular day we took him to the US Botanical Gardens. That happens to be one of my favorite museums, especially in the winter months. For two reasons, it is one of the only places to see greenery in Washington, DC during cold weather months, and the other reason is that the gardens have a wonderful hot house room, which makes me feel like I am in Florida when it is cold outside. What I love about this picture was that each one of us had a story to tell. Peter was posing for the picture, and I was most likely trying to get Mattie's attention to look at the camera. However, to me, it appears that Mattie and I were having our own private conversation and as usual enjoying our cheek to cheek time.
Quote of the day: No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. ~ CS Lewis
I had a horrific night and a challenging day. At 10pm last night, I began to have an intense headache and extreme nausea. Soon there after, the fun began. I had intense vomiting from 10pm to 4am. I was up that entire time, and was unable to find a position that brought me comfort. I wasn't sure in fact that I was ever going to stop vomiting, and feared that I would need to go to the hospital. If that wasn't bad enough, midway during this torture, I developed an ocular migraine. Some of you may recall that I get this issue under intense stress.
An ocular migraine can be described in the following way...... People with ocular migraines can have a variety of visual symptoms. Typically you will see a small, enlarging blind spot in your central vision with bright, flickering lights or a shimmering zig-zag line inside the blind spot. The blind spot usually enlarges and may move across your field of vision. This entire migraine phenomenon may end in only a few minutes, but usually lasts as long as about 20-30 minutes. Some people describe the feeling as looking through a cracked window. Having an ocular migraine is scary enough under the best of circumstances, but when you are intensely sick to your stomach, it just exacerbates the problem. Thankfully after 30 minutes my right eye went back to normal, but unfortunately I can't say that was true for my stomach.
By 4am, I was wiped out, with nothing else to give and finally went to sleep. I spent the entire day today in bed. I was still feeling sick to my stomach, and solved that problem by taking tylenol PM and forcing myself to sleep through the day. I am slowly on the mend, but feel as if I have been through WWIII. As I was roaming around our home last night and into today, I told Peter that I felt so trapped. I sat several times in Mattie's room last night, and grabbed Sunshine (Mattie's stuffed animal albino python) for comfort. Funny that I would be grabbing a python, but Sunshine was a powerful symbol of friendship for Mattie. Sunshine was given to Mattie by his pal, Jocelyn, at Georgetown University Hospital. Jocelyn gave Mattie this stuffed animal because he loved the real albino python he met at his 'reptiles alive' 7th birthday party (the last birthday party Mattie ever had).
I am thankful that Peter has been home and is not away on travel, because there is no way I could have made it the past two days without help. What you need to understand is that over the course of my marriage, I have vomited a great deal. Primarily since I get motion sick quite easily. Actually we joke about this often since Peter has helped and cleaned up after me in ALL sorts of places. The sign of true love, I suppose.
1 comment:
Hey Vicki,
I am really starting to worry about your headaches! They sound a lot like my sister's who had a problem with migraines also, but when her symptoms escalated, they did tests that showed she had a small pituitary tumor, which is supposedly almost always benign, and is for the most, easily controlled with medication, which she has taken for over ten years now, and does fine...helps the headaches, but I think she still takes a migraine prevention type drug, also. She teaches elementary school students, and is very good at her job, so I assume the meds do work, since I can imagine I would probably get a headache just walking into one of those classrooms:) I realize that migraines are also common, especially with stress, but am hoping your doctors are being thorough in diagnosing and trying to find you an effective treatment. I know that you already have enough mental pain to deal with, and adding such intense physical pain must be overwhelming. Although, for myself, I know I have sometimes welcomed a physical pain that I can focus on in lieu of the even greater pain we carry in our souls at all times.
Your friend, Charlie, has an incredible gift for finding those quotes of the day, that absolutely write my very thoughts. The before and after was a perfect description of our lives...I write B.C.(before cancer)when dating those things that existed in my old world. And the CS Lewis quote describing grief as fear is so very accurate...I wake up some mornings, and this fear just grips me...that feeling deep in the pit of your stomach, that you have when you fear that something horrible and terrible is imminent.and then I remember that my fears have been realized...the worst thing possible has happened...and the grief and fear are so intermingled, it is not possible to separate them...the fearsome grief of loosing your child.
Keaton loved the U. S. Botanical Gardens in D.C.! We could hardly get him out of that place when we visited there...also Atlanta's Botanical Gardens were one of his favorite outings when we were there. And yet another Mattie/Keaton connection..guess what Keaton's seventh birthday party was? Yep, we did the reptiles alive party thing, also!I am so sorry that Mattie was not able to have more...so unfair. Keaton has way too many of those stuffed snakes, since he already had his fair share, and then after his cancer diagnosis, everyone gave him what they knew was his favorite obsession. He used to wind his snakes around his IV pole in the hospital..was able to attract a lot of attention!
Holding you in my thoughts, hoping you can find some relief from the headaches and nausea, soon.
Karen, Mother of Keaton for Always
www.caringbridge.org/visit/keatonlee
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