Leo Clement

We got back yesterday from a three day/two night stint in the hospital figuring out what is going haywire in Leo's noggin. He just hasn't been himself for over a month and this past two weeks the seizures have ramped up into a whole new level for him and us. I don't have to say that it was scary. Wait, yes I do, because it always helps my emotional state to say or write things as they truly are. I felt completely bowled over by the uncontrolled and wild seizures that I felt were eating up my bright little boy. The worst of it was that I wasn't being taken seriously at the hospital. I felt like I had to run a triathlon filled with an obstacle course at the end of which there would be a phone that someone would actually answer intelligently and helpfully. Finally I threatened and coerced enough semi illiterate secretaries to in their turn, bully the orcs in scheduling to actually get my son in for an EEG before the snow flew. Once Leo was in, things went a bit bett...

So as a shameless book nerd it perhaps comes as no surprise that the passage running through my head right now as I'm sitting and thinking about my son's seizures is the title of a chapter in a Harry Potter book (Order of the Phoenix in fact). I did say I was a nerd. Anyway, the name of the chapter is "Dudley Demented," and way back when I read it, (seriously way back...not last week for the hundredth time. Really..) I always got a chuckle from that title. Today though, I feel myself commiserating with the hapless and pathetic Dudley because Leo's seizures remind me of dementors; creatures of evil who suck everything good and happy from your soul. Can you tell I'm a teeny bit upset? A friend asked me today what I feared the most from this new trend of seizures and after a moment of thought, I realized what I feared the most wasn't hospitals or medicines or surgeries, though those aren't very good either, what I fear the most is that the seizures w...