Sunday, March 28, 2010

Why Sandra Bullock Might Consider Staying

I loves me some Sandy Bullock.  I always have.  I don't run out to see every movie because, face it, some have been stinkers, but more often than not, they aren't.  She is more of an everywoman than you get in Hollywood.  I stayed up to see her win her Oscar - by God, that was a coronation, because she really had been building for it slowly since Crash.  Then her personal life imploded by Tiger Wooding barely a week later - surreal.

I read this article today.  I had to share it.

Because of his acts, she has to choose between her dignity and a five year old child she has come to love as her own. Ex-step-mothers have no legal rights. Sandra -- who dedicated her Academy Award to "the moms who take care of the babies and the children, wherever they come from" -- cannot leave him without leaving them. She cannot stay with them without staying with him. And what will America say, and what will happen to her career, if Miss Congeniality stays?
Stay or go, Sandy, I still love you.  If you stay for your child, you have done so because you have done what biological parents find it hard to do - truly put her first.  And maybe, just maybe, this is your chance, Sandra Bullock, to advocate for change where it might be needed in the law, to give yourself and other step-parents a voice.

Chicken Pox Redux - Another Way to Look at the Vaccine Debate

Yes, I am off my blogging... largely because I have been sick for the past two weeks.  Initially I thought it was the onset of my seasonal allergies, so I started to kick my medication into high gear.  After a couple of days, my sore throat continued to get worse, so I went and got a strep test.  It came back positive.  That was a week ago.  I took a nap and woke to notice a kind of abrasion just below where my bra strap would be on my side.  I thought maybe I had some sort of reaction to the metal of the underwire, not anything that had happened before, but I could think of what else would have caused such a weird reaction.  By the middle of the week, it had developed into a full blown rash and was blistering.  I had no idea what was going on.

Wednesday night I woke to shooting pains through essentially the same location of the rash.  I didn't sleep well at all for the rest of the night, really bad since some of the medication I take is suppose to help with that.  Thursday morning, I googled shingles, saw the picture, ran to the school nurse in a panic.  Once I was deemed non-contagious, I went through the rest of my day waiting for the 3pm doctor's appointment.  I was educated on shingles (the stuff I hadn't read on the internet in the previous hours), loaded up with antivirals and Vicodan and sent on my way.  Normally, when I am given pain pills like Vicodan or Percocet, even after the c-sections or the surgery in December, I take them a day or two and them I done.  I am starting day four.  I  am conservative with taking them, but the fact that I take them during them day freaks me out.  The pain from the nerve is unrelenting.  The rash is healing, but I have been told that the pain can last for weeks or months.  

When I was a kid, I had an epic case of chicken pox.  When I was at the Kaiser hospital in California, they gathered the interns to display me when I came in to show them what a bad case looked like - at the time, I had them in places that they were unusual.  Mercifully, I don't remember the details.  From my understanding, shingles is being kinder to me (no face, no eyes), but it is relative.  I am just relieved that my boys both were vaccinated against the chicken pox so they won't experience the joys of either.  For all the debate over the vaccines and autism, right now, as I am suffering very painfully and I look at Jimmy and know, in my heart that for him, vaccines were not the genesis of his autism.  I am glad I vaccinated both boys and the illness that I am suffering through now, even though it is mild in comparison to what it could be, is something that they will never know.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

O Captain My Captain, Autism Is Calling

I wondered if, in 20 years from now when we were both looking at leaving our children behind without us to care and advocate for them, we would be seeing a world where autism had finally been accepted and understood as the catastrophic epidemic that it is, and handled accordingly. Or, if our world would still be pretending autism is some weird, unusual disorder that the boy across the way has, and it doesn't affect us all.
Every single family will have someone in it with autism.
Are we willing to keep this denial up in the face of this awesome reality?

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Have these researchers been to my house?

"According to a new study, siblings of children suffering from autism may develop hyperactivity. It also revealed that mothers of autistic children are more prone to depression and stress in contrast to mothers of normal kids."


Tell me something I don't know... unfortunately these studies never seem to give you insight immediately on how to address the problem.  But it does explain make you feel less crazy when you are looking at Jacob's behavior chart, knowing he won't focus in class, or when you are down.