Author: fifteenkey (Page 55 of 95)

“Oh, sorry. She’s your baby.” Gigi’s reaction was to run toward cuddling when the nurse asked “Do you want to hold the baby?” “Grammy” deferred to the new dad, as did the new grandfather, “the Big Papi.” At 3:47PM today, Nearly 49 years to the day my mother delivered me to the adoring masses, my baby really took one for the team and pushed a healthy, beautiful baby girl into our family. Baby having always seems to involve statistics… Weight, height, trust fund balance. All I’m going to say about Madison Olivia is that she taught her mother never to have sex again and she entered this world like her mom: hungry.

Lately my mind has been like a dryer, mechanically turning and doing its duty, but with the erratic thumping of a sneaker tumbling and banging around with random abandon. The Chuck Taylor is fear and it’s fucking with my fluff cycle.

Tonight I read Kyle the 30th and final chapter of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” and I could barely choke most of the words from my vocal chords. As I struggled, Kyle looked at me with odd curiosity. Without plot spoiling, I’ll just say the pages painted images of a funeral at the shore of the brilliant, sparkling lake aside Hogwarts.

This boy, who is so loved by so many is struggling with things he doesn’t fully understand and that those who love him cannot control.

“…he must abandon the illusion …that the shelter of a parent’s arms meant that nothing could hurt him. There was no waking from this nightmare, no comforting whisper in the dark that he was safe really…and he was more alone than he had ever been before.”

– J.K. Rowling

Writing is tedious without inspiration; more so sans subject. Over the past few years of this blogaholic existence, I’ve bookmarked things I could later wax on. “11 Most Important Philosophical Quotations” is one of them. Charitably making the top ten (“This one goes to 11”) is this post title by Heraclitus (ca. 540 – ca. 480 before year 0) [As an aside, can I still use the term “BC” if I believe JC was just another guy?] Anyway, as you can see by the not so Polaroid accompanying this babble from your not completely evolved ape, Heraclitus, or “Clete” to the old boys back in the Athenian hood, was an intense dude.

The point is that our lives, our reality flows and is impermanent. This morning I spent over an hour researching “Developmental Dyspraxia” in an effort to figure out what ails my son. The condition does sound dead on, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve spent countless more of my finite time searching for “the answer.” It just doesn’t matter. The next hour I spend reading to Kyle and the hours later today we pick pumpkins matter. Enjoy the beauty of the river and don’t dwell on why it runs.

On March 11, 2003 I read an article in Slate.com about a company working on memory therapies. I did additional research that included comments by testing participants including one man who indicated the “Ampakine” “lit up his mind.” I thought this biotechnology would someday help people like my son. On May 7, 2003 I purchased my first shares of Cortex Pharmaceuticals and have been accumulating them since.

Yesterday I accompanied Kyle once again to the Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts-New England Medical Center, this time for a consultation with a neuro-surgeon. We were there to determine if surgery to remove a cyst within his spinal cord would help him to walk, something that’s becoming more and more of a challenge for my boy each day. The answer was “no.” The doctor was very gracious and explained the cyst was below the area of the spinal cord that affects walking. Kyle’s mom asked, “what do we do?” Kyle has been falling and we fear he will seriously injure himself one of these times. The doctor didn’t have an answer. In front of us, he scanned hundreds of Magnetic Resonance Images and found no abnormalities or damage to answer the question “why?” He recommended metabolic testing, then genetic testing as next steps. As I put Kyle’s socks and shoes back on I looked him in the eyes and said, “I don’t care how long it takes. Mom and Dad are going to find out how to help you walk better.” “OK,” was my boys reply.

Oh, at about the same time we were getting our latest non-answer, Cortex got theirs. Their lead drug candidate was rejected by the FDA and the company stock lost 60% of its value.

It’s just something Megan says…

• I’ll miss the Yankees. If they were my team, I think I’d blow ’em up. The stadium’s not the only thing they should rebuild.
• Using power tools like table saws when you don’t do it regularly is stressful. It’s the potential of losing limbs thing.
• I love getting a laugh.
• I love October in New England.
• Driving to the airport on traffic-light Columbus Day was sweet.
• I want to add “Young Frankenstein” tix to the NYC itinerary with Mr. Kyle Daley.
• I’m proud of how Megan has handled her pregnancy. Madison has a great mom.
• The Patriots will stomp the ‘boys with cold precision.
• We all have vast pools of untapped ability. You figure it out.

How long would the line be this afternoon at the Topsfield fair if there was a contraption called “The Manny Home Run Experience” where lucky fans could feel what Manny Ramirez felt at 12:44 a.m. this morning? Someone could make a lot of money with such a “Baseball Orgasmatron.” It would produce that rarest of feeling that travels from the fingertips up the arms, down the spine finally peaking by firing all endorphin guns at once as you euphorically watch a baseball explode into space.

This morning there are 3 jilted lovers in the baseball playoffs, all facing steep odds of getting back the girl. This reality does douse my 2007 playoff fantasy with icy cold water. My scenario went something like this:

Division Series:

• Red Sox over the North Mexico Angels
• Bombers all over the Tribe like flypaper
• Phillies beat the Snakes to increase Mets fans pain
• Cubs prevail over Colorado (natch)

League Championship Series:

• Roger Clemens and the Yankees beat the Red Sox in 7 on a Johnny Damon Home Run
• Cubbies sweep the Phillies

World Series:

• Steve Bartman is forgiven as the Cubs overcome an 0-3 Series deficit to beat the Yankees

My picks aren’t looking very solid this morning, but hey, teams have climbed out of worse than 0-2 series holes, haven’t they?

Until about 3am this morning, Les Paul was just some guy who designed a kick ass 1959 vintage guitar Jimmy Page used with Led Zeppelin. After seeing Mr. Pauls bio on American Masters, baby, Im amazed. In addition to pioneering the invention of the solid-body electric gee-tar, the man invented multitrack recording. Oh, and he could play his ass off. Treat yourself and see Les Paul: Chasing Sound on your local PBS affiliate.

It’s been quiet around here. Too quiet. Please accept my apologies for not being here to entertain or irritate, whichever is your perception. In contrast to the digital silence here, my physical world was abuzz this weekend with vibration and pounding. Before you jump to any wild baseless conclusions, let me clarify by explaining my brother and I were performing delicate surgery on the bowels of this nearly 80 year old home of mine with no anesthesia, and it took no prisoners for every inch of wall we tried to take.

In 1930, the frames homes were constructed out of steel beams impersonating wood two by fours. Oh, and they were a full 2” by 4”, not the withered by inflation pencils we get today. These studs were chewing up sawzall blades like Takeru Kobayashi mangling 60 of Nathan’s Famous on the 4th of July.

Thanks to my brother, we succeeded in our “doorway bypass” and Megan now has a wall for a crib where an old doorway once stood. Now I need to find a talented plaster artist to smooth out our new wall before Madison Olivia comes home in a few weeks.

I despise cliché’s and we’ve got an infinite supply in corporateland. This morning on Boston.com, I scanned a hilarious collection of them and hundreds of reader comments that’ll give you a laugh or two.

Enjoy, but don’t spend any work, um, cycles reading them…

“I can,” was the curt reply to my request that she actually see Kyle walk. After an hour’s drive and a ten minute obstacle course pursuit for a wheelchair, Megan and I sat in the small examination room with Kyle and his Neurologist, a renowned practitioner in a major Boston children’s hospital.

Her examination resembled a scientific inspection of a petri dish full of interconnected nerves instead of a human moment. Tap this. Pull that. Push here. At the end of it she said my son was “at the same baseline” as he was two appointments ago. “He’s in a fucking wheelchair,” I replied sans the adjective. Her direction was for another full body MRI to detect any change in the spine long cyst running down his back, an exam with a Pediatric Orthopedist and a follow-up with her. Given the backup in the system, the former two dates won’t occur until some time in February. I hope my boy is still walking by then. When I asked her opinion on his recent degeneration, she cited stiffness in his joints related to what she believes is symptomatic of Cerebral Palsy. To that I had to ask her to re-prescribe Physical Therapy. I’m hopeful that bending the boy like a pretzel and getting him riding the stationary bike again will increase his flexibility and strength so walking will be easier. We’ll see.

In Michael Moore’s healthcare documentary, “Sicko,” there’s a reference to a “breakdown in humaneness,” describing our system in the US. I don’t know this doctor personally, and I cannot imagine the psychological impact of treating a parade of patients, many more affected than my Kyle, but doesn’t human connectedness matter in medical treatment? I do think that medical specialization is contributing to the disconnect. In this case, “missing the forest for the trees” is ignoring a young man’s silent fears of losing the ability to walk.