Follow a
family as they are immersed in a medical mystery: why is their 8 yr old failing
school? Read an excerpt from DINGS at LanceFogan.com.
Chapter 22, Part 1
The following week I
returned from an early-afternoon errand with Madison and received the call I
had been waiting for. I phoned Sam in a flush of excitement. “Honey? Sam? The
neurologist’s office just called. Conner’s appointment is on Friday after
school. Isn’t that great? I think—I hope—Conner will be able to stop taking
those pills then.”
“That would be great,
but we don’t know if the doctor will stop them—not for sure. We shouldn’t get
our hopes up prematurely, Sandra.”
Why did he always
have to do that? Why did he always have to smother my confidence, my optimism?
Why couldn’t he just agree and be hopeful, too? “I know, Sam, but Dr. Choy told
us that all of Conner’s tests were normal. Even he said that the neurologist probably would stop the Dilantin.
Remember? He said that. I remember
it. Don’t you?”
I was holding on,
clinging to my very own one-person “lifeboat.” I knew that this was illogical,
wishful magical thinking, but I would not let go of these hopes.
“No, Sandra. He
said—whatever. Fine. We will clear everything up on Friday. That will be good
for Conner. It’ll be good for all of us.”
This was not what I
wanted or needed to hear: his typical pessimism. He would say it was his realism. “We’re having steak for dinner.
’Bye.” I hung up.
***
“What are you doing,
Mommy?” Madison had padded down the stairs to find me circling the kitchen like
a merry-go-round. I had been singing and clanging pans together preparing to bake.
“I’m going to make a
special dessert for tonight, honey—a surprise for Daddy and Conner. Chocolate biscotti! Do you want to
help Mommy, little one?”
I hummed and twirled
as I opened cupboards and brought out more ingredients. I grabbed a bag of
gourmet-chocolate nuggets and a bag of walnuts. “We all love my chocolate
biscotti, and there’s just enough time to make it before our men get home. Do
you know what, precious one? Conner should be able to stop taking those pills
in two days. Two days! Won’t that be
great, sweetheart?”
I whirled like a
dervish. I glided and spun from the refrigerator to the cupboard to the cutting
board and back again as I poured and measured, mixed, kneaded and chopped the
ingredients.
I tied an apron
around Madison’s little waist. She knelt on a chair at the kitchen table and
pushed a rolling pin back and forth over an empty cutting board. She hummed
with me, too.
I put the tray of
biscotti into the oven. The essence of chocolate filled the kitchen. I
telephoned my parents to tell them about Conner’s upcoming appointment and
reconfirmed that no one else in our family ever had seizures. Then I called
Kathy and Marge, my two closest friends, to share my excitement.
“…Yes, Conner should
be able to stop taking those pills in two days. I really hope so, I pray so.
It’s what I’ve read on the Internet. We’ll finally get to the bottom of this
whole nightmare, and that should be the end of it.”
When Sam and Conner
came home, I hugged and kissed them and hurried them off to wash for supper.
Everyone loved the meal.
After we put the
children to bed, Sam and I lingered over wine, talking on the couch in the den.
It had been a good day—until now. I drank more than usual, a second glass just
so he couldn’t drink the whole bottle by himself. He wanted to start a second
bottle. “No, Sam. We’ve both had enough. You, especially. Please! You need to
cut back. You never used to drink this much.”
His lips curled with
a defiant glare. I froze. No arguments now, please…
He got up and brought
out another bottle from the cabinet. Then his eyes darted swiftly between the
bottle and me while
he seemed to consider the
situation. Slowly, he articulated each syllable: “I’m not ready to cut back, as you say.”
“Oh Sam. There’s so
much happening with our family. I’m starting to think that we might not survive
this.”
“Aw, c’mon. What are
you talking about? It’s not that serious.” He began to cut off the cover over
the cork.
I sat forward and
looked up at him. “I’m telling you how it is, Sam. Now I’m going to tell you
something else—something about me. I admit it. I’ve buried what’s really
happening. I know that’s what you think. Nevertheless, I just had to. I’m so
worried about Conner and for all of us. No one has yet told us why he had that
convulsion. Not really. I’ve swallowed what Choy and Bob Jackson fed me—that
the neurologist will agree with what they both told us. That he could stop the
Dilantin. What if this neurologist finds something terrible in Conner’s brain
even if the tests were normal? I’ve read about all kinds of terrible diseases
on the Internet. Doctors make mistakes; it happens all the time. Everybody
knows that. I need you with me now. Now, especially…” I felt drops roll down my
cheeks and wetness ooze from my nose as I stared up into his face. I pulled out
a tissue from my pocket.
His expression
softened. “I—I—Okay, honey. Conner will be all right. You’ll see. He’s a strong
kid.” He lowered himself onto the couch next to me with the dark bottle still
in his hand. He laid the corkscrew on the coffee table. “I’m sorry. I hear you.
Yeah. Okay. No more, tonight. I have
been trying to cut back, honey. I have. It’s hard.” He stood the bottle on the
coffee table and put his arm around my shoulders. I curled into his chest as he
pulled me toward him.
“Oh, Sam.” My
tenseness eased.
“Come on, honey.
You’re so wound up with all these suppositions: they’ll stop the medicines;
he’ll be on them forever. Just ease up and go with the flow. Isn’t that what
you’ve always said? It’ll work out. Come on, Sandra. Remember Mark Twain? He
was right. He’d ‘crossed many a bridge that never was there.’”
I looked into his eyes and managed a
weak smile. “So, now you’re the one
glossing over the problem and encouraging me?
Nice.”
Lance Fogan, M.D. is Clinical Professor of Neurology at the David
Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “DINGS” is his first novel. It is a
mother’s dramatic story that teaches
epilepsy, now available in eBook, audiobook and soft cover editions.
