When Medication Is the Right Choice

Jennifer Byde Myers www.jennyalice.com Jack is asleep in my bed right now. He wandered in while I was folding clothes; I pulled back the covers and asked if he wanted to snuggle. He’s non-verbal, but he made a happy sound I know to be yes, and from across the room he leapt in, buried his head under the pillows, and fell back asleep as I returned to my unmatched socks. It’s hard to believe that he’s the same boy who as a three-year-old didn’t sleep for 52 days. Fifty-Two days where he didn’t rest longer than twenty-thirty minutes in a row and no more than one to two hours in a 24-hour period. Back then he would scream and thrash the entire time between passing out. It’s an example — the worst one — of what we call “episodes,” what appeared to be pain from unknown source, and it happened…

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Kodachrome

Jennifer Byde Myers www.jennyalice.com Can you remember developing photos, when you had no idea what you were going to get? We would turn in those little canisters and hope for something wonderful to come back in the envelope.  We used to spend a lot of money trying to get a good picture of our son. Capturing Jack on film required expert photography skills combined with the fastest shutter speed and endless rolls of film. It took money and patience and perseverance, and faith, and will, and cooperation and an ability to be spry that most people lose about the age of nine — and we failed, continuously. We don’t really have those “Kodak moments” in our family, and it’s not for lack of trying. We have been prolific in our clicking so as to produce at least some decent shots over the years, if only by the grace of statistics…