The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, Doubleday Canada
How do you write a novel involving murder, humour, a marriage breakdown and family crisis when you use an autistic narrator who does not understand humour or emotion? Read this touching, funny, sad novel and find out. An excellent book (and Haddon’s first novel, the talented bugger!!)
A year or two past the average, and two months of serious wiggliness later, Jon has lost his first tooth, at roughly 7.75 years of age. He takes after his cousin Meghan, I guess.
We think he swallowed it. And as much as I’d love to have the keepsake, he does most of his business at school, and frankly what happens at school, STAYS at school. Sayonara, tooth!
Huh, Ronnie’s a couple years late in the adult teeth department, too. I remember he conveniently lost a tooth while he was in the water at Wasage beach. He came running out to me, with his mouth covered in blood. Momentary shock, until I realized Reid was laughing, and Ronnie’s tooth had been loose. I’m not sure our fellow beach goers were impressed.
Did he still get money for it?
Got back from the cottage a couple of days ago – three days of rain, rain and more rain. For all that it was extremely relaxing (well, we couldn’t really do anything, could we?) and Jon especially had a fine weekend of lounging about with the weather channel and his LeapPad toy. But he and Peter did manage to get out kayaking three times in the incredibly chilly water. Brrrr.
 Jon and Daddy in kayak (a bit crowded in the 1.5-man boat) |
 Afterwards: Really cold but really happy |
In my defense, in getting all the gear together to go kayaking, I left my PFD onshore, so we shot the photos, then I grabbed the PFD before we headed out onto the bay!
Hah, with that big, bulky, warm sweater, I thought you *were* wearing a PFD!
One of Jon’s most endearing (or annoying, depending on our mood) habits is his ability to obsessively track the dates. Every morning, upon waking, his first statements is almost always “It’s Monday, May the 17th!!” (replace with whatever the correct day/date is). This morning Peter (preparing to write in Jon’s communications book to his teacher) asked Jon for the date. Jon said, totally deadpan, “Monday, May the 12th.” As Peter looked quizzically at Jon (Jon doesn’t usually miss the date by that much) Jon’s mouth widened into a little smile. So sly!
Scene: Carlaw and Gerrard between 10:45 and 11:00 today. I forgot a bag on our way out, so we had to double back, and the dog was still there 6 or 7 minutes later.
The whole household is buzzing with the release of the trailer for Pixar’s The Incredibles, due out this fall. The three of us just gobble up anything PIXAR makes. Jon loves to recite Mr. Incredible’s basement mumblings and belows from the teaser trailer: “I CAN’T COME TO DINNER, I’VE GOT THE…red…guh…I”VE GOTTA GO!” As funny as their version is, Jon’s makes me laugh and laugh.
Without notice or much fanfare, today turned out to be a milestone day. We attended Jon’s routine clinic at the Hospital for Sick Children, something we’ve been doing every 6 to 12 months since Jon had Infantile Spasms at six months.
Jon originally was on a short, sharp course of ACTH to shut down those evil seizures, and then on to vigabatrin, and after a couple of years he was switched to the anti-seizure medication valproic acid, all under the watchful eye of Dr. Conrad Yim. He was the first doctor to figure out baby Jon’s seizures during our hellish 11 hour emergency room visit to Sick Kids in late March 1997, and he stayed with us until he got a major promotion to the Trillium Health Centre in Mississauga, where he is Paediatric Neurologist and magazine cover model.
Enter Dr. Pam Cooper, who we immediately got along with. Dr. Pam learned early on that Laura and I both have a background in brain and behaviour psychology, and she’s always approached us with respect and trust, trusting our judgment as first hand observers. It also helped that we all shared similar doubts about a fad treatment at the time, and when a major study showed it to be bogus, we turned into a mutual admiration society.
Dr. Pam has stressed to us that Jon’s development is extraordinary for a kid with his degree of PVL (his kind of brain damage) and the resulting challenges, and one of the ways she did this is every meeting she would stress to us that we ought to have another kid. Today, she stressed that it would be a waste of our gene pool not to. Wow. (But Laura’s still not buying it.)
Last meeting, after a particularly odd EEG (the taking, not the reading, but when it comes to that, Jon’s EEG is pretty unique), Dr. Cooper proposed that given Jon’s unique situation and his seizure history (just two 5-second absences when he was three, and he was on anti-seizures at the time), we might think of doing the unthinkable–taking Jon off the medication and see what happened.
It took us five months to slowly reduce the dosage to nothing. In case of a very unlikely attack of status epilepticus (a non-stop seizure loop), we were issued these tiny pills that could comatize a moose.
Jon has shown no changes. Everything is great. He’s drug-free and happy.
So at today’s meeting Dr. Cooper had a long chat with us, marvelled over our son, gave him a bit of a prod and a poke, tried to impressed upon us how wonderful it all is, and then gave us our walking papers. We’ve graduated. No return visits, unless something bad happens.
There is some sense of relief and delight, but more of loss. We’ve known the neuro nurses almost as long as we’ve known Jon, and they’ve been familiar faces and reassuring personalities as we went through our blackest days. One neuro ward nurse biked a vial of ACTH to our house when we need one more tiny dose at the end of Jon’s course. We only see you guys once or twice a year, but what are we going to do without you?
So goodbye Valerie, Anita, Irene and…Dr. Pam
Awww, you’re not keeping his FIRST TOOTH?!?!?! Come on, it’s a requisite part of being a parent!
*snicker* *snicker*