* Happy Birthday to my little brother Esteban, who turned 4 years old today! We love you Esteban!
* Yes, that was Owen’s car. Yes, Owen was in it. Yes, it was a terrible accident – but miraculously, everyone was okay. He was driving with his brother, nephew, and friend to a gaming convention near LAX. It was trafficy so they were only going about 45 miles/hr. Owen saw an accident happening in front of him, so he hit the brakes and swerved to avoid the accident. The car hydroplaned and he lost control but was just regaining control when someone hit his car from behind. This made the car flip over and they slid upside down on the freeway for a few minutes. When the car stopped, they managed to crawl out of the car and get out of traffic. A cop was on the scene within minutes and nothing more happened. The car was given to the junk yard and Owen now needs to buy a new car.
* Owen’s car was 14 years old – yes, 14 years old! He really should’ve bought a new one a while ago but we spend all our money on Nathan’s therapies. Now he has no choice. His dream car is a Toyota Sequoia but we will see what we can get for a reasonable price!
* Thanks to everyone’s advice about comments. I think starting this week I will respond to comments on the posts themselves. I really appreciate the feedback!
* Nathan is substantially healthier. We’ve cleaned up his diet and his congestion is still there but minimal. We also realized that we’ve been giving him prevacid accidentally and this is also part of the problem. Prevacid neutralizes the acid in the stomach to prevent it from burning the esophagus. The problem is that it also makes it difficult for the stomach to digest food as it needs the acid to break down food. So the prevacid was leaving undigested food in his stomach which was also causing allergies and congestion and preventing him from fully absorbing nutrients from his food. We are once again weaning him from prevacid by halving his dose this week, next week we’ll give him 1/4, and the 3rd week we will completely remove it.
* How did we accidentally put him back on prevacid? Well I had several bottles of it that we’d kept stored that had never used. Marta started giving Nathan his supplements a couple of months ago. I forgot to take “prevacid” off his medicine list so she thought it was still a part of his regime, so she started giving it to him.
* Nathan is having a CT scan to check the shunt. Thanks to Maria for pointing out this might be part of the problem. I figured even if he IS better, it wouldn’t hurt to check the shunt. We are going in for the CT scan on Wednesday.
* The Feldenkrais workshop we were at this weekend was AMAZING. Truly amazing. He was worked on by one of the most experienced Feldenkrais practitioners in the world and he responded magnificently. Within one session the posturing of his legs had changed, and his hips seemed softer, his head stronger and steadier, his back straighter. She showed us many things we can do with him at home. I am more and more determined and excited to make Feldenkrais his primary therapy (complemented by the others I have mentioned before).
* I am still a wreck. Some stuff has happened in the last few days that have drained me and made me realize that I have to change how I do things. I am going into “energy conservation” mode and reducing my activities to a minimum. My goal is to make my life much more streamlined and return to what matters most – prayer, faith and love. Drama and trauma has brought me to my knees and reminded me of the very essence of my being. Whenever I stray from prayer, faith and love, I lose myself and it’s only a matter of time until I crash. I hope one day to stay the course.
* Have I mentioned how blessed I am for all of you guys who read this blog? For the amazing support and advice you provide? It was Iveta who turned me on to the Swash brace a few months ago. Maria who helped me realize it was time to check the shunt again. Kristina who helped me realize I need to streamline and organize my life. So many of you who responded to say, you are not alone. It truly makes a huge difference!!! THANK YOU!!!!
Thank G-d Owen and his passengers were unhurt. I believe in guardian angels and give them credit for doing G-d’s work.
I smiled when reading your paragraph on yourself – because of the recent movie – Eat, pray, love. Which I read is over-the-top on the ‘eat’ aspect. Your expression of the importance of prayer and love is helpful to your readers (fans).
Wow Marcela….that looked so awful! I am so happy no one was hurt! A miracle! See we can believe in them!
so glad everyone is ok & feeling better. That is awesome abut the Feldenkrais therapy! btw, we are blessed by you Marcela, its a full circle of love:)
Marce, que bueno que Owen y sus familiares están bien y no pasa nada aparte del susto, y que bien que Belle y Nathan estaban contigo, tienen un angelito muy guardían. Amiga que te vaya muy bien con la dieta y la tomografía de mi niñito, y tú, espero que retomes tus oraciones y momentos de reflexión, sè que las extrañas, un abrazo muy grade y besitos a mis niñitos
Relieved to hear that Owen is OK.
Take care of yourself, darling! You are such a doer and a giver and it’s OK to just let it all go.
You asked how we deal with the stress of too much? My husband always tell me–do one thing. Just one. And congratulate yourself and then rest again. I get the overwhelmed thing sometimes and it’s paralyzing. Sometimes hubby has to do the first thing for me, just to get me past the hurdle.
Hey! I found your blog from one of the CP Yahoo groups (not sure which one! SCE or CP moms)
Not to add to your list of things to do, but I was wondering if you could email me about Feldenkrais. I really would like to try this with LJ but we are located in KC and so there aren’t too many that practice that around here. However, there are a couple that I want to call but I’m really not sure what I should be asking or looking for. I think a lot of them might even use the Anat Baniel Method… which I know those two are similar but I’m not really sure how and how they’re different.
Any advice would be helpful. I doubt insurance will cover it (Medicaid) but I was looking at applying for a grant. How often does Nathan attend? I was thinking at least weekly visits would be beneficial but I bet that’s expensive!
Hi Christy, I’ve been following your blog for some time, I have you in my reader list, I don’t think I’ve commented but I read everything you write, LJ is adorable!!! I know how you feel about things being so hard for our kids…I go through phases like that too. But at the end of the day our kids are so special and their sweetness makes up for everything!
As for Feldenkrais…I’ll write a post about it soon. The practitioners we are working with now, we found on the feldenkrais website. There seems to be one lady in KC:
http://www.feldenkrais.com/practitioners/results/?name=&keywords=&country=&city=kansas+city&zip=&submit=Find
It’s hard to know what to ask – just things like, have they worked with SN kids before? How many years in practice? But at the end of the day you have to try them out and see how they work with LJ before you make a decision. A good practitioner will show you things to do with LJ at home so that you can see them say once a week or once every couple of weeks, and you work with him at home the rest of the time.
Right now we are not sure how often Nathan will attend, but we are looking at doing it pretty intensively to see if we can finally get Nathan moving! I’ll post once we’ve got a plan.
Best of luck!
Marcela.