Okay, suddenly there’s trouble. We started putting together a big post celebrating our vacation, but I’ll post what we had written, and that will have to do for now… –P

We are back from a two-week vacation to Lotus Land. It was a lovely vacation, idyllic, even—until the twist ending.

Part the First: Vancouver
We landed in Vancouver July 3rd. The Vancouver portion of the trip was fairly low-key: Mainly seeing friends (hi Alayne, Leanne and Brenda!) and family.

The convenience of the very accessible B-Line buses

At Granville Island, where we witnessed a The Birds-like attack of seagulls on a girl with a heaping plate of food; Bachan playing music with Jon

Playing ball with Teagan. Jon got quite used to saying goodnight to her, and being greeted in the morning…

Visiting Valeria at Lee’s Candies, and a walk in Pacific Spirit Park

On Tamo and Midori’s trampoline

Not pictured: Jon’s delight at the Seabus and disappointment that we only took it once (Eduardo drove us back from North Van);
Tamo getting his knickers in a serious knot from losing to Peter at crokinole;
Midori being absolutely great friends with Jon.

The view from Spanish Banks

Part the Second: The cabin
We opted to take a flight to Campbell River to forgoe the lengthy ferry-ride and drive up Vancouver Island. At the (miniscule) South Terminal at Vancouver airport we got caught by security for carrying in Jon’s backpack a—gasp—tiny wrench and allen key for Jon’s wheelchair!! Never mind the fact that we managed to get from Toronto to Vancouver with the same wrench and key in the same pocket without getting buzzed; I’m not sure exactly what they thought we were going to do with them—take apart the plane, maybe?

Thence followed five days of sheer loveliness better described in pictures:

Lots of relaxin’: Laura with cuddlebug Teagan; Tara with Jon

Jon’s first fish!

Jon second catch–really!–was this shark, a dogfish, which he reeled in with help from Daddy, who is holding it not for credit, but for scale. Note the dangerous spikes on the dorsal and adipose fins.

Jon enjoyed the boat. The fine, dangerous teeth of the dogfish. But not so dangerous as the teeth of Jon, which joined the teeth of 10 of us in eating two dogfish as fish and chips.

Laura with a rockcod (yum yum); Peter with a lingcod (which had to be thrown back, alas, being under the required three-foot size)

Grandpa fishing

Prawn traps; prawns the size of young Shetland ponies

Moonsnail “peeing”—actually just expelling water—as it squeezes itself back in its shell (lotsa laffs from Jon)

Tidal pool life galore!

Logs at low and high tide, from the same spot

One biiiiiig log, filled with iron spikes and steel cables, that we finally put out to sea at a very high tide. It took the tide, brains, brawn and human couterweights to get that log out, and then four of us swimming with it against the waves at dusk to put it out for good. Happy memory of Sev yelling to us (Tara, Tamiko, Midori and Peter) from her boat, “You guys are hardcore!” 🙂

The winning team of a fiercely competitive game of Cranium involving everybody but Jon

Midori relaxes as Laura, Tamiko and Jon enjoy the sunshine!

Campfires in the evening!

The view

Part the Third: Laid up
We left the Campbell River Airport on Saturday the 15th, bound for YVR and a connecting flight home. During the flight Jon hit his knee against his tray when the airplane made one of those seatbelts-on alarms that go “ding”. We had a two-hour wait until our Toronto flight, so we were cruising the eateries in Departures, looking for lunch. Jon was progressively hunching more and more in his wheelchair until his head was below his knees. When we tried straightening him up he started screaming (and boy, can he be LOUD). Finally we took him out of his chair, laid him on the floor (still screaming), called First Aid. Upshot: Jon and Laura ended up in an ambulance to Children’s Hospital. Peter followed with the wheelchair in a taxi paid for by the airport. (Both Air Canada and YVR airport, by the way, were wonderful and very accommodating. No problem getting an alternate flight. Colour us very impressed.)

Luckily, despite our initial fears of 1) seizures and 2) bone fractures, it was diagnosed as a muscular issue. Jon’s muscles are always quite tense (hallmark of cerebral palsy), and he gets even tenser when he’s nervous. Add to this the pain of banging his leg, fear of the airplane noises, and sheer tiredness (he got to sleep very late that night) and his leg went into huge and continual spasms. At emergency he got a dose of muscle relaxant and Advil and we were told not to fly for about 48 hours. Finally, on Monday we got to Toronto. Jon was great on the plane (would only say “ow” quietly when his leg spasmed); once we got home he felt free to let ‘er rip with huge amounts of overtired and pained screaming and crying.

Jon is not much better now, though we’re not sure how much of it is true pain and how much is tension from the pain. Jon has missed 4 days of summer camp, and we’re off to the doctor today to see where we are.

About as active as he can get, poor guy.

Jon’s reading programme, as designed by Tami, works like this: each day Jon reads two stories, and on a day when he can read the first one comfortably with no meaningful errors (and/or corrects himself on anything significant without assistance), he “moves on” from the first story and he is introduced to the next story. Leapfrogging, basically, with one familiar story always there.

Tami has had a plan for Jon’s reading for the past three years, and Jon has been up to the challenge. But Tami hurt her ankle badly in March, and was away for about 8 weeks. Despite the best efforts of her assistants, there hadn’t been much reading at school, and we did what we could on the weekends. When Tami returned at the end of May, Jon was about 120 pages short of her target for the year.

We undertook to read with him in a second session daily, which was pretty intense: previously when we’ve tried it Jon just couldn’t see the page–his eyes were tuckered out for the day. But in May and June, Jon responded well, fighting exhaustion, humidity and hormones, and his first bout of academic pressure. Towards the end, he was so strong that he would move on in both stories at the same time. And last Monday, he completed the 120 pages, and finished the Grade 2 reading program, and started the Grade 3. With two days to spare. Yay, Jon!

(He’ll get a little break during the summer, but Tami has supplied us with lots of reading and spelling materials. No backsliding!)

So Jon has been somewhat emotional these days. He’s had several tantrums of late: explosive, sometimes physical, and very intense.

The weird thing about them is that he was turning on a dime. After the Sunday one, he turned around and did 16 pages of tough reading homework; cheerfully, anger completely evaporated.

Now, Jon has had tantrums before, and even waves of tantrums, but that was years ago. And all through all of them, none of his teachers had ever seen anything; they could barely believe that such an angel would ever do this.

This included Tami—until Monday, when Jon decided to try his new attitude at school. To sum up: demanding and surly, then kind of weepy when challenged on what was going on and why he was doing this.

He has been under a heavy workload at school. And there was the humidity. And he’s going through a new social phase, so he may be testing the waters. But we suspect there’s something else too.

Tami mentioned that it seemed “almost hormonal”, and the EA’s have noticed some other things that lead us to a new fact. New to us anyway, and we like facts. So how is it that we never learned—and no one ever told us—that it’s common for kids with CP to hit puberty early?

When I heard this interesting fact, I nonchalantly googled “cerebral palsy early onset +puberty”, thinking maybe one scientist had a study or two. 42,100 returns. Oh crap.

It’s called precocious puberty. (Of course it is.) Common in kids with brain injury, including kids with autism and FAS. For the boys, it tends to start early and end at the usual time, and the likelihood is inversely proportional to the amount of body fat. Oh craaap.

Looks like the future is now. With more coming soon. Anyone got some raw meat and a chair?