PAgent’s Progress

at Strollerderby

Gather ’round the campfire this Halloween for some scary stories. No, not stories about ghouls and ghosts, or things that scream in the night. No, these are genuinely scary stories, the kind that keep adults like me awake late into the night, unable to stop thinking about them.

The Darkened Hallway

I noticed the other day that the light in the hallway was burnt out. At the time I fleetingly wondered how all the bulbs could burn out at once, but then just assumed that all had burned out but one, which had finally given up the ghost.

Then my son complained that the light in his room didn’t work.

Ah, thought dad, a breaker got tripped. I checked the electrical panel, and all the breakers were in the “open” position. A little experimentation verified that the hallway, my son’s room, and the GFI outlet in the bathroom were all on the same circuit, and all were dead. I was mystified. Checking for a tripped breaker pretty much drains my reservoir of electrical acumen. In fact, I guiltily began to wonder if I hadn’t screwed something up when I fixed the doorbell.

So we called in a professional electrician. She poked and prodded and checked outlet after outlet. Then she started checking light fixtures. It was only when she looked behind the hallway ceiling fixture that she found the problem.

The wiring had melted. Melted. As in, exposed to high heat. In our house. In fact, at a point equidistant from each of the bedrooms. When I think how easy it could have triggered a fire in the attic, I get a little shaky.

Well, it’s fixed now, and we have light again. But I find myself wondering what other time bombs lay hidden behind the sheetrock of our walls and ceilings…

The Best of Intentions

We are treating our daughter for ADHD. The medication, which she’s been getting through a transdermal patch, has been wonderful. It has allowed her to concentrate on her schoolwork, to restrain herself from various antisocial behaviors, and to begin to create some relationships with her peers. When it seemed like her impulse control wasn’t controlled any more, especially in conjunction with the stresses of middle school, we upped her dosage.

Last weekend, she started exhibiting a ‘tic’. Tic is a fairly benign word, which conjures images of a twitching cheek, or a flickering eyelid. The definition of ‘tic’ is “A habitual spasmodic muscular movement or contraction, usually of the face or extremities”. In her case it was a compulsive straightening of her arms and flexing of her fingers, or a shoulder roll. At it’s worst, her arm would fling out unpredictably, sometimes striking the wall behind her.

Picture someone suffering from Tourette’s Syndrome, and you’ll get the idea.

The arm straightening and finger flexing had been something she’d always done. But we attributed it to a nervous habit, or just a mannerism. Then it suddenly become frequent and uncontrollable.

Now we know that her ADHD meds can trigger tics in patients that are predisposed to them. We immediately stopped giving them to her, of course. But they haven’t stopped. It can take a week or two for them to go away. Or they can become permanent.

Is she concerned about her new involuntary movements? Yes, of course. But she’s actually MORE concerned about not taking her ADHD meds. She saw middle school as a fresh start, a new beginning. She’s absolutely terrified that without medication, she’ll be ostracized again, get in trouble again, and end up right back where she was before treatment. So are we. We’re already getting back into the nightly battle to get her to do her homework. Old patterns. Old habits.

Meanwhile The Wife walks around on the verge of tears, consumed by guilt. She is haunted by the belief that this is her fault. That she chose to use the medication we did, at the dosage we did, to make her life easier. And it has ruined the Girl’s life. There’s not much I can say to her to make her feel any better, except that I was involved in the decision, too, and it seemed like the best idea at the time.

And so this Halloween, we will watch our daughter head off to go trick-or-treating. And none of the pirates and princesses and zombies that come to our door will be as scary to us as what’s happening inside our daughter’s brain right now.

I like musicals. I realize many of you will consider this a character defect, but nonetheless. There’s something very artful about telling a story through song. When done well it can turn the dial on emotional resonance up to eleven. When done badly, well…

I’m particularly fond of the work of Stephen Sondheim, and of his works, I adore “Sweeney Todd”.

Ah, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

But the version that I fell head over heels in love with was the stage production with George Hearn and Angela Lansbury. Hearn’s performance is chilling — his powerful voice oozes with menace and crackles with unquenchable anger. The combination of the talent of the performers and the minimalism of the set dressing make it one of my favorites. Here’s the scene “Epiphany” from the film, where Sweeney finally snaps and embarks on his bloody quest for vengeance:

It gives me chills.

And now Tim Burton is filming a new version of “Sweeney Todd”.

Yes, Tim Burton. And it stars Johnny Depp.

And I’m cringing. I really, really like Johnny Depp. I think he’s a fine actor. But I can’t help but believe they are going to ruin something I adore.

Here’s the second trailer for the Burton/Depp version of the film:

Oh, God. Well. It has possibilities. I mean, it has a certain style. And hey, Alan Rickman. Alan Rickman can read a restaurant menu and make it sound like gold.

It might be good. Well. At least it will make money.

Sigh.

The Romans had a charming custom to keep their most successful military commanders from suffering delusions of grandeur, and subsequently entertaining thoughts of staging a coup. When those select few who were deemed to have earned it were given the honor of a triumphal procession through the city, a slave would stand behind them all the while, providing a counterpoint to the cheers and adulation of the citizens, whispering “Remember, you are only a man.”

Which is why, during the improbably warm and sunny weekend we just had, I should have had some small gnome of a servant to follow me around whispering “Remember. Soon the rains will return.”

To say the weather was beautiful would be a shocking understatement. The sky was blue, the sun was brilliant, and you didn’t even need a jacket. It was lovely. It was glorious. Cue the gnome: “In less than week, it will be November.”

But I didn’t have a gnome. And so I went to the dog park, and I drove around with the windows rolled down, and by God I wore my sunglasses. And I did my best to completely and utterly forget that we have been predicted to have a cooler-than-normal and wetter-than-normal winter, with a good chance of snow at lower elevations.

La-la-la-la-la! I can’t hear youuuuu!

I didn’t used to be infirm.

Oh, I always had health issues. But aside from hypertension and a mild case of chronic hypochondria, I was pretty healthy.

Although my general health declined as I aged and put on weight (unsurprisingly), the stool sample really hit the fan when I had children.

For example, over the course of my entire adult life, I had suffered one sinus infection. Within three years of having my first child, I was having six a year. I can now identify your most common antibiotics by taste. So, have children –> get sinusitis.

Then there was the persistent cough that just wouldn’t go away. I finally crawled to my doctor and asked him to shoot me in the head. Instead he handed me an inhaler. I found out I was predisposed to asthma. Mind you, I’d never had asthma symptoms before, not even as a child. But now, I have asthma.

Have children –> develop asthma. Are you seeing a pattern here?

Between the asthma and the sinusitis, even a mild cold has a better than even chance of turning into something worse. If it heads north, it turns into sinusitis. If it heads south, it turns into bronchitis. Either way I’ll be sucking on my inhaler for a couple of weeks. Which leads me to why my blogging has been sketchy as of late. I’m suffering from the effects of a nifty case of bronchitis.

I had a cold last week. I even took a day off from work to try and fight it off or at least speed recuperation. It didn’t matter. By last weekend I was barking like a seal and the cough just got worse from there. By Thursday I wasn’t getting any sleep and I couldn’t take it any more, so I went to see my doctor. Now I’m taking a prescription cough suppressant and a short course of azithromycin (aka Zithromax, one of my personal favorites).

Do I feel better? Yes. Do I feel good? No.

No, I’m still dragging ass, and still periodically bend over and cough until I see stars. My body is still trying to get the gunk out of my lungs, and that’s pretty much the only way to do it. The coughing gives me a constant headache.

So. Before kids: over-the-counter cold medicine and bed rest and I was right as rain. After kids: multiple prescriptions, visits to the clinic, and almost complete debilitation.

This is what children do to you. Be afraid. Be very afraid.