Colm

Rohypnol

He was dragged; kicking and spluttering, into his life. The intial chaos of the delivery room is any mother's worst nightmare, and this was like a personal hell for her - blood stained the walls as the umbilical cord was frantically disentangled from her son's precious, fragile little neck. All protocol dismissed (in the fray that is the Irish Healthcare System), the sterility of the room had been compromised and the midwives set about cleaning it from top to bottom so that there would be no delay freeing it up for the next mother-to-be.

Charts were filled and flung, haphazardly, at the base of her trolley. The child and his mother were briefly united and then pried from each other once more, incubator and cold harsh mattress greeted each respectively. As she climbed into her bed and gazed at her bundle of joy, he stretched his alien fingers and she pondered. It hadn't been an easy delivery by any stretch of the imagination, but he was her sixth and she knew the ups and downs of labour better than most. She couldn't help but feel that something was amiss.

Things settled down in the weeks after the birth and the family moved on with their lives. The former baby (now ten) coped quite well with her new little brother. Hers was going to be the hardest adjustment, having spent so long as the youngest in the family. But four girls and two boys seemed a rather triumphant legacy.

It wasn't two months before things began to go wrong. The night the crying wouldn't stop aroused suspicion, but not panic. His pallid, blank expression of some indefinable pain troubled them greatly, and finally a sense of emergency set in. The young girl didn't understand when they took him away. Nor did she comprehend the overheard telephone conversations; new words like "haemorrhage" and "clotting" were developments which frightened her into silence.

She spent the summer during which she celebrated her eleventh birthday in the home of a family friend. Nobody told her what was going on, nobody asked her if she was alright. She would look back on the hospital baptism in years to come and realise why it was such an urgent affair. Her teenage years saw her as a wretch; volatile, angst-fuelled, adolescent hatred of her parents was the only expression she had of her emotions. The young boy was beautiful; though damaged, still flawless in her eyes. She didn't blame him - she didn't blame anyone. She couldn't see the point of blame anymore.

In subsequent years she would pick up pieces of the puzzle and piece them together, but those years would always be a touchy area. Her life at that point had been so confusing and fuzzy that she really didn't want to look back on it - nostalgia made her nauseous. It transpired that the blood to his brain had been restricted because a crucial dose of vitamin K had not been administered in the frenzy after his birth. The supplement is always given to children in order to ensure that the bloodflow is constant, and to make sure clotting occurrs where it is necessary. The pressure of the blood on his brain had damaged the left hemisphere, resulting in epilepsy and serious implications in his speech, development and cognition.

His epilepsy was initially treated with drugs, or so she understood. Her parents couldn't stand to see him bloated - swelling up from the steroids; acting like a zombie instead of the bright little button that he was. His seizures didn't even subside when he took them, he was just numbed; made a shadow of his former self. But then, at age two; came the diet. The Ketogenic Diet. Based around starvation - high fat but low carbohydrate and protein. It consisted of meticulously measured quantities of certain foods, and her parents had worked tirelessly to ensure that the values suited him. Trial and error was the only way of testing it but lo and behold - by age four he was seizure free.

He began school, attending a normal boy's primary school for the first time at age 7. Junior Infants didn't know what hit them, he was the star of the class. Lunchtimes heard a chorus of "He's my best friend!", "No he's mine!" Nobody in the adult world really knew where he was headed from there; he required and would always require 24 hour care. Bearing in mind the fact that it was the fault of a member of staff in the state health system who caused the inital damage, it was scandalous that he wasn't compensated financially and that the tutoring he needed wasn't subsidised; but his parents knuckled down and did the best they could for him. Of course, his older sister still loved him through it all. All of his siblings did.

He's just started his second week of this school year. He's eight years old now, in senior infants. His sister.. Eh.. I'm going to college for the first time next week. I just thought it would be an interesting experiment to write a life story in the third person. He's a pretty savage little guy, has all the quirks that my siblings and I have which distinguish us. Hope you liked (and weren't bored by) that little outpouring.

Matt Holck

does he have any friends?

Rohypnol

Matt Holck wrote: »

does he have any friends?

Rohypnol wrote: »

Junior Infants didn't know what hit them, he was the star of the class. Lunchtimes heard a chorus of "He's my best friend!", "No he's mine!"

He's in the same school at the moment. His best friend is called Dermot. At his birthday party this year they were all running around with him like mad things, and there was one little boy holding onto his arm. I said to him "Are you holding Colm's hand?" to which he replied "No, we're giving each other Chinese Burns!" He's just like one of the lads.. :P

by8auj6csd3ioq

lose the brackets

Rohypnol

That's very astute of you. I didn't even notice how much I did that until you said it.

by8auj6csd3ioq

Rohypnol wrote: »

That's very astute of you. I didn't even notice how much I did that until you said it.

I was not being smart but I think it breaks the flow of your writing. You would not see it in novels the way you might in newspaper articles. Also, you could try to construct your sentences so that you have a full stop and start a new sentence for the bracketed part

Best of luck with your writing

Jack Magee

Rohypnol

Brittany Dry Stock-still wrote: »

I was not being smart but I think it breaks the flow of your writing. You would not see it in novels the way you might in newspaper articles. Also, you could try to construct your sentences so that you have a full stop and start a new sentence for the bracketed part

Best of luck with your writing

Brittany Dry Stock-still

Heh, I wasn't being sarcastic or obnoxious in my reply, that was genuinely productive feedback that you gave. Cheers.

Yeah, I'm more into journalistic writing so I guess I adhere to the styles and forms that that encompasses. I overdo it on the language and that makes it very hard to read because it's monotonous and boring. I'm better at assignments which, while they're good for college, have little practical use in the real world aside from boring legal documents and stuff. Oh well, I guess I'll stick to writing which is supposed to be boring!