I feel like I don’t have the answer to anything, yet all day I have to proceed as if I know what I’m doing. Or, at least I pull off a good act. After running to yet another doctor to try to solve my son’s sleeping problem at night (which is my sleeping problem at night), I’ve got another paradigm to assimilate, another doctrine to disseminate.

Who’s right when it comes to our kid’s health? I’d like to think it’s me, but I spent the day at the dentist then the internist. They’ve got all the things I should do, and I feel as though I’ve been doing it all, yet I have to do more. And more.

Addison was a trooper as the doc looked down his throat, tapped his reflexes, and peered in his ears. Addison held on to a bell and clanged it, but eventually he started to cry. I brought in my daughter who acts very, strangely "happy" at doctors. It freaks me out a bit. I think she doeth not protest enough.

We got home at 8 p.m. I dispensed "all-natural" syrups, mixed herbs, and fired up the vaporizer all in the hopes of getting a good night’s sleep.

I told a friend I’d dance naked in the streets while swinging a hula hoop around my waist and shaking a tambourine. I wonder where I can get a hula hoop?

In January when the Trade Winds blow into the Central Valley of Costa Rica, I am never amazed at their force. Blow and blow and blow. Trees bend; roofs rattle; hair styles are shot; cars shake; and dust is everywhere. It like living with the winds of a tornado that never touches down.

For the past three years, my son has not been able to sleep because of all the dust in the air. He’s just getting over a cold that’s lasted for five weeks. I jam him full fruits, vegetables, and even sneak ginger and garlic in his food in hopes he’ll finally sleep through the night. A few months ago, my mother brought down that door/sealer stuff to put between the door and frame. I stuck it on yesterday in hopes of keeping more of the dust out of Addison’s bedroom. When I finished putting it on, I patted myself on the back for thinking ahead - a job well done. When I closed the door, it wouldn’t shut.

About a week earlier, I moved those troublesome guinea pigs to the balcony, which of course opens from the door I now cannot shut. Three times a day it’s my daughter’s responsibility to give these critters some sort of leafy green vegetable. The two of us pushed on the door until we could get the lock to catch. She thinks she can shut it on her own. If she can’t, huge amounts of dust and wind will blow right into the room.

I’m never quite sure if thinking ahead saves me time and energy or causes me more grief. I’ve been bound and determined to get my new house set up and finished. You know, no "unfinished" little tasks hanging around to gnaw at my nerves. Then all will be perfect, tidy, and organized, right?! Hmmm….I better think this one through.

Seeing a professional, in any sense of the word, is always a test of my knowledge, fortitude, empathy, and last but not least, boundaries. The last time I took my daughter to the dentist they strapped her down to a table. It was one of the parenting experiences you can’t believe happened when you get home. Was that really me watching them torture my child?

My daughter’s teeth are in great shape, and we’ve been hounds at keeping her mouth, her diet, and her candy sucking clean and sober. Have you ever, ever tried to keep a kid away from candy or snacking in this society? I’ve walked across parking lots of stores and had candy bars stuck in my child’s face. I’ve opened the door of my car at family events and been greeted by pretty purple lollipops. Schools hand out candy; toll booth operators hand out candy; and most restaurants now tie a dessert right in with that bargain price kids’ meal. I’ve fended off more than most parents could. Since I homeschooled for the first six years of my daughter’s life, she was exposed to so much less and suffered through many-a strange and odd looking snack assembled by her mother.*

My daughter issued no protests as the hygenist cleaned her teeth while staring at cartoons (which of course are ladened with advertisements for sugar filled, or corn syrup flavored, or red dye colored juices and snacks). The dentist called me over to look over the x-rays and go over the plan for Coco’s teeth.

I decided against one of the treatments. This was not easy for me to do. It is more-to-all-of society’s liking when we are aimiable, agreeable, and "go with the plan" suggested by the professionals.

Why don’t you want it?

I told her I had spent hours and hours researching the subject on the Internet and had decided against that particular treatment. Stunned and still unconvinced of my knowledge (she was the professional after all), she implied that because I wasn’t a dentist and hadn’t studied the subject, perhaps I was mistaken.

No, I said. I really did a lot of research. Then she got me with that question all writers eventually get.

Have you written a book?

I don’t know if this was a general interest in my career or a bit of a dig into the fact that unless I had written a book, I cannot surely comprehend all things dental. I went to the dentist for an removal of plaque and an x-ray or two and another person’s opinion on the status of her teeth. Yet, when I go to professionals, I am also looking for a bit of confirmation on the fact that I’m throwing my hat in the ring everyday and this person, whom I’m paying, is right alongside me. Most dentists, doctors, etceteras seem to be a bit threatened when someone comes along and knows something about the human body.

But I am a professional too. I am a professional in the mothering of my children. It is my full-time job. It’s my business to know everything I can about my kids. That’s what’s missing with the "conference;" the talk about my child. Maybe there’s something they could learn too.

We agreed to disagree on the issue and she said she’d respect my decision to not get the treatment. The room fell silent and my daughter came over, finished with her cleaning. She was white, whiter than her usual white. She bucked up well for the long, 1/2 hour procedure. I was proud of her. In fact, I was proud of the three of us.

*I even sneak seaweed (known as Wakami) in her pancakes..can you imagine?

There are times when it is settling to tell the truth and remind your husband that as long as we have our families, our health, good food, and a roof over our heads, what does it matter that the dog just chewed the custom made seat cushion.

And then - there are other times - when the second cushion in two weeks gets chewed up, and I hide the torn fabric and battered seat under the guest bed and pick up the little pieces of foam now strewn through every part of the living room. And, when the cushion is noticed, missing, I mention - as a sidebar - that I’m mending a rip in the fabric.

Which one is real? Could it be both?

I have all the faith in the world that our dog will test this theory again.

And so the story goes….

(too see the first part of this story go to Miracles Make Things Go Away).

I peeled off Addison’s clothes and laid him on an exam table. He looked like a doll in a dentist’s chair. The ultrasound doctor put a pile of scratchy paper towels over his penis because she was afraid he’d pee when the cold jelly was rubbed on his belly.

The last time we’d been in this room, we found out Addison had two cysts on the bile ducts (those little tubes that drain liver liquid into the colon). At one month, the surgeon said he’d another surgery at four months. We pushed the first look at the cysts to nine months. But the prognosis was gloom and doom: without surgery, Addison would get cancer.

The doctor moved the wand over Addison’s belly. She’d push under his ribs, then explored below the belly button and over to his sides. This went on for about ten minutes. Addison lay patiently, looking at me as if I’d handed him over to aliens for inspection. The words I feared the most echoed in the room, as if they’d stayed there awaiting our return: cancer, surgery, cysts do not go away on their own, cancer, cancer, cancer.

They’re not there,

said the doctor without looking away from the screen.

I pushed my tongue against the roof of my mouth to stop the tingle of tears and screams of joy.

I can’t find the cysts anywhere.

I dressed Addison. The doctor handed me the ultrasound printout. We left the building.

The pediatrician was overjoyed about the ultrasound. She told me the ultrasound doctor wanted to tip Addison upside down to see if the cysts were hiding somewhere she couldn’t see.

That’s what I always say about medicine, she said as we put Addison on the scale.
you just never know.

But I knew. I knew it all along. And, so did Addison. To us, this was nothing out of the ordinary.

As I lay on the bed, careful not to move so I wouldn’t disrupt the eight needles sticking in my chest and legs, my acupuncturist played his flute for the crowd in the waiting room. It had been awhile since I’d been pricked, but with my immune system a wreck and cysts growing on the back of my neck, I decided I better get re-adjusted.

The doctor’s flute playing has improved. The first time he played for me, I was visiting him for an intestinal virus that knocked me down and bowled me over. A few years before, I’d had the same virus and suffered for a week until a conventional doctor found a drug that would work. I wasn’t going through that again, and since I had discovered acupuncture through a problem with my daughter’s teeth, I figured why not?

True, it costs some time and then there is the approximately $20.00 a visit and then there’s the flute playing, but it seems a rational, logical, and simple option to dabble with. And if it works: BRAVO! Problem solved. And if not: the doctors are always ready and willing to dispense the proper drug. So, in my book, why not give it a go.

I’d rather ramble down the road less traveled for a trip of pain relief rather than run right down the highway to the big beast of conventional medicine. - I’m not crazy, I don’ want it to go away. In fact - thank goodness it’s there! My son wouldn’t be alive without it. But I like to save their wisdom for the few and far between.

Last week, I got several massages in my home to help alliviate a pinched nerve in my neck. The woman came right to my home. The cost: $10.00 for each visit. This woman was so considerate and concerned about my neck that alone may have dissipated some of the tension. About half way through the massage, she leaned over and whispered in my ear:

Do you want me to put a chair on your back?

I looked around our cluttered guest room and wondered which chair she wanted to put on my back and how exactly a chair would help in solving my pinched nerve problem.

I repeated the word chair:

A silla? (pronouned seee ya)

She bent over and whispered again:

Arcilla (pronounced ar seee ya)

I thought for awhile….where did I know that word from? Oh yes, I know! It means clay -
she wanted to put a clay wrap on my back. Of course, I said. Clay.

The kink in my neck is gone; my daughter’s teeth are coming along beautifully; even that intestinal virus went away (the next day, and I’m not kidding!); and the little cysts in my neck will most likely dissolve with just a few more melodies on the flute.

Three months ago, my son’s blood test came back as anemic. But the doctor or the lab never called me with the results. I thought we were just testing for thyroid problems. I figured no news was good news.

“If he stays anemic, he might have cognitive learning problems,” said the doctor.

That statement will hit any parent right in the sternum. Trouble learning? MY KID was going to be different than all those other kids. The words mentally retarded already spun in my mind daily because every book on Trisomy 21 says that this group of children test low for intelligence level.

Funny thing….even with a child with Down Syndrome, I want Addison to be an above average boy. The need to fill our kids with information is a cultural line we’ve been hooked into. We show our kids videos of shiny objects; flash cards at their little faces; teach them where their fingers and toes are; count to ten in 14 languages; learn verb conjugation before toilet training; and possibly, learn the finesse it takes to make a crème brûlèe.

I’m kidding on the last one. But, I’ve slipped into all the traps, in one way or the other, in teaching, and hoping, my kid is going to rise above the cream. Meredith F. Small, a professor of anthropology at Cornell, who’s written several books about children and how we mold them into miniature models of ourselves and all that culture has imposed on us, said that kids are going to learn language at their own pace - no matter what we do to them. They learn by watching us, modeling us. We might get a four year old to sputter bigger words earlier, but he may not understand what “grizzled” means until he can understand the content of a story that needs a word such as grizzled.

I took my son for another blood test. I was grateful that it was only a pin prick to the finger, but his wailing would have suggested otherwise. The nurse put a Band-Aid on his tiny index finger.

“Be careful she,” she said. “He could swallow it.”

Duh, I thought. Why don’t you just give him a sucker and tell him not to suck on it? Addison held up his finger like a prize all the way out to the car. I tried once to pull it off, but he quickly withdrew his finger and kicked liked a bucking bunny.

I told him he could have the bandage as long as he didn’t eat it. He resisted this information, and upon leaving the hospital, he had the thing in his mouth. I stopped the car and fished it out of his mouth. (He loves to hide paper, grass, etc. on the roof of his mouth.) He wailed again, but in less than a minute, he fell asleep. He slept for almost two hours in my car while it was parked in the garage. I guessed he’d needed to recover from all he had learned.