Just a weekend in the life of the family of R

11-something AM, Friday. I’m sweeping, cooking, laundering, etc., continuing preparations for BFFZ and her family to come for Shabbos. G is doing similar stuff. My cell phone rings.

“This is School Nurse. R came to my office with a note from the teacher that her stomach hurts and her eyes hurt. She seems completely like herself, except… she isn’t talking.”

??

Isn’t talking… isn’t that, like… a neurological thing?

Long story short, because it’s late at night [I started this late last night] and today was a packed, super duper extra packed LOUD and looooooong day: she had a TIA. This stands for transient ischemic attack. What that means is… another stroke, except the good kind! – i.e., the kind that goes away, and leaves no lasting damage.

No lasting damage! Exhale.

Thank God.

Thank God.

Thank God.

She couldn’t talk. She couldn’t talk for something like an hour? Two hours? An hour and a half? Something like that. Aside from that, she was completely and totally herself. Fully conscious and aware. Personality intact. Using sign language of her own invention, communicating effectively. The nurse put her on the phone with me to see if I could get her to talk, since given her outrageously dramatic and hilarious personality, it’s not out of the question that she’d fake a thing like this. Much less likely that YS or RS would. So it was a possibility. But I knew. I knew.

She got on the phone and I heard a sort of faint sound, and then nothing. So G went. Called the SuperStroke team; SuperStroke team called School Nurse; G met the ambulance at the school; they took her to the ER back at our other hospital, in Manhattan; and then suddenly, she started talking normally. But in between there was an hour. Another hour of heightened terror, another hour of ok so how bad is it this time what’s going to happen is she ok is she going to be ok am I never going to hear her voice again. Another hour of trying to whisper to God. Words stuck in my throat, brain totally frozen (mine, I mean), please don’t take her away from me. And of course, this was about her, not me, and this time, she knew something was wrong. This time I’m pretty sure she was scared, or at least disturbed on some level. She’s never been like that before.

Sigh.

We’re going to deal with it, of course. Her being scared, I mean. The other kids too, especially a certain one for whom stressful situations present somewhat of a, um. Challenge. Heh. We started that ball rolling a while ago, but it fell to the less heated front burner. But it’s been turned up again.

Given the approach of Shabbos and the slight issue of my three other children, not to mention the guests who were already en route to my home, I didn’t go to the hospital right away. I put Babysitter Allison on alert, and then I stood in my kitchen having very slow, strange thought processes.

Should I tell Z and her family to turn around. If R is in the hospital for Shabbos and I’m not, then I definitely, definitely want Z here. She is exactly the person who I want here. I can’t think of anyone I’d want more. So I’m not going to tell them to turn around. But that means I have to make the food. Because they have to eat this food, prepared with these special ingredients, or else all kinds of bad things will happen to their kids. We bought new spices, new sugar, new rice, new other stuff, all particular brands that are known for their ability not to send Z’s children into anaphylactic shock. We’d scoured our main work surface countertop and were ready to go. This means I have to cook. If I’m not telling Z to turn back around and not come for Shabbos, then I need to cook, right now. Ok. What should I do first. Z is bringing side dishes and special oat challah. Side dishes. So I should do the main. And the soup. Because soup is important. Soup and a main and Z’s sides will be fine even if there’s nothing else. This is not a situation where I can call people and ask them to bring stuff. Z’s kids won’t be able to have it. Ok. I must cook.

Have you ever tried to make chicken soup while waiting to find out whether or not your seven year-old daughter is having a(nother) stroke and will ever speak again? A bit surreal.

By the way, if you’re somewhat confused by the fact that it was after 11:00 on a Friday morning when Shabbos started at 4:30 and I hadn’t started cooking yet, then you don’t know me very well.

So, thank God she suddenly started talking normally while in the ER, and my tall, handsome brother-in-law the neurologist, upon receiving my text message “she’s talking normally” (sent to the same group of phones to which I’d texted “R can’t talk, she’s on way to hospital, will keep you posted”), responded with his diagnosis: TIA. (Actually, he responded in a much funnier way than that, but it’s sort of an inside joke.) And indeed, all were agreed: TIA. But they kept her for Shabbos anyway, of course, and they did yet another MRI, of course, and (although she’s never had seizures) they also did another EEG, of course, which means that her hair is STILL chock full of that disgusting dried stuff with which they attach the copious wire thingies to your scalp. We tried using baby oil to get it out, which means her hair is now filled with disgusting dried stuff, and baby oil. Heh. Her hair looked somewhat – um – gross when she left for school this morning. [It's now Monday afternoon.] I told her we’re going to attack it with dish soap when she gets home. That worked eventually with RS after we used olive oil (twice) to smother those silly little lice. In the meantime, the word from Columbia (that’s where she was) is that the MRI from Friday night shows no change from the MRI of a few weeks ago. Which, incidentally, the SuperStroke doc was finally able to read on Friday afternoon, and she spoke to G, but I’m waiting for my own conversation with her before I post anything about the results.

So that’s that. Just another episode in the lives of a family wherein one member’s brain arteries are a bit more constricted than arteries, strictly speaking, are supposed to be. Because we’re always, at every moment, in a perpetual state of knowing this might happen, and when it does, we just have to wait to find out how bad it is. But this was not another tics episode. This was not further aftermath of the stroke in July. This was another real episode, brought on by the crapped-up arteries in her brain. This is what we know might happen, this is why she’s taking aspirin, this is why everyone who’s ever in charge of her is always prepped beforehand and on constant alert. This is what it means to be R. To be seven years old and to have these things keep happening, and to know they could happen again at any moment, and that given what’s happened so far, they probably will.

“This is my seventh time in the hospital, including when I was a baby,” she told me over the phone on Friday. She wasn’t crying, and she didn’t sound terribly upset, but she didn’t sound thrilled, either. She didn’t have the upbeat, happy-go-lucky take on things that she usually does, even when taken to the hospital by ambulance in the middle of a school day.

So yes, it’s time to call in the pros. There are some things we can’t do for her on our own, though as her mother who gave birth to her and feels her presence as part of my consciousness every instant of every day and every night, I so very much wish we could. She still sounded cheerful, though, when she first got on the phone with me from the ER. “Hi, Ima!” And chills ran through me and I said “Cookie, that is the best sound I’ve ever heard. I’m so happy to hear your voice.”

Thank you, thank you, thank you, God.

Tags: Stroke