condition – Page 5 – thetruesuperman

The Real Superman Part XV

By Jeff King

Dylan was doing so well. He no longer was laying around like a lump. He was back! He was all over the place. We had gotten his helmet and tried several times to make him wear it, but we were unsuccessful. Every time we placed it on his head he would rip it off and toss it. We got so tired of fighting with him, we just decided not to try to force him to wear it.

We went to the mall and Dylan would run right to the elevator to watch it go up and down. We were so happy, because the light had returned to his eyes and life had returned to his body once again. This was so amazing. We went everywhere. We even decided to take his chair out of the trunk, because he didn’t have a need for it anymore. I took him to another mall where he enjoyed riding on the little carrousel that was there. He rode it several times and then I took him off of it to walk down to meet Terri and the children where they were getting their hair cut. Dylan took off. He began to run. He ran just like he used to. I was so happy to see him running once again. My man was back and he had proved once again that he was indeed Superman, and those seizures, which are his kryptonite was not going to defeat him. I gave chase, because I still was unsure about him running. I kept thinking, “God please don’t let him have a seizure”, because the floor was concrete and then suddenly he dropped to the floor head first. He lay there in a heap, flailing around uncontrollably. I ran to retrieve him off of the floor and there were several mall kiosk employees who ran to help us. One gentleman grabbed a slew of paper towels and some ice to put on Dylan’s forehead, which he had slightly busted open, but fortunately it was not bad. He did have a goose egg protruding from his forehead, but he was fine. He never cried or screamed or anything. We continued to walk to meet my family, but by now I had firmly taken his hand and made sure he walked beside me.

He begin to have several of these seizures where he would just drop to the floor, ground, etc. They were the most frightening ones, because you never knew when they were going to happen. I had recently been hired as a permanent part time teacher’s assistant at the school I worked for. I started out a one on one temporary employee. I worked with two students who had autism and behavioral issues. I was told that I did so well with them that the school wanted to hire me permanent part time and as soon as a fulltime positon became available then it was mine. School was scheduled to begin on August 26th 2013. The day before school was to begin. I was upstairs when Terri screamed for me to come downstairs. I ran downstairs. I was greeted by a scene that looked straight out of a crime scene. Blood was everywhere and Dylan was laying on the living room floor in a pool of blood convulsing violently. He had an absence seizure and had fallen and busted his head on the corner of the entertainment center. I had just recently taken a first aid and a CPR course in the summer. I grabbed Dylan up and told my daughter Destiny to grab me something that I could pack his wound with. She grabbed a bunch of paper towels and I reluctantly used them to pack his head to try to stop the bleeding. I told her to call 911 which she did. I examined the gash in his head and it was bad. It was as deep as it was wide. We waited for the paramedics to arrive and they took over. Dylan was sitting on the floor like nothing had even happened to him. He didn’t cry or give any indication that he was ever in any pain. The ambulance took him and my wife to the ER and I followed in the car while Destiny and my son Dacota cleaned up the mess.

I arrived at the hospital several minutes after the ambulance. Once inside the immediately took Dylan into a room where a nurse attended to his wound until a doctor could see him. The doctor came in and examined Dylan and determined that he would either need several stitches or staples. We actually opted for the staples because they would leave less scarring and thank God we had recently taken him to get his hair cut so it was easier for the doctor to clean him up and staple the wound closed. It was on the top of his head, which was another blessing so whenever he grew his hair back the scar would be almost unnoticeable. The doctor put 8 staples into Dylan’s head and once again he never cried or screamed out. His threshold for pain is very high. The only time he cried was whenever we were holding him down, but other than that this little guy is amazing. This is indeed the Real Superman and he was amazing. (To be continued!)

The Real Superman Part VIIII

By Jeff King

We made an appointment to see a Neurologist at Sinai hospital in Baltimore city. The Neurologist was supposedly one of the best around. We met him and he had all of Dylan’s hospital records from the previous seven years. Our first impression was a good one of this gentleman. He seemed very knowledgeable and genuinely caring. He played with Dylan and made us feel at ease. He talked about a treatment program that we should start and the first medicine he prescribed for Dylan was a seizure medication known as Lamictal. Lamictal would have the least effect on Dylan’s cognitive skills, so the neurologist explained. We began to give him this new medicine and right away, the seizures stopped. He was doing so well on this medication. We felt like the seizure activity that he had been experiencing was just a little hic up in his overall health, but now with this new medication, he would be back on track.

He continued to make progress and the seizures hadn’t effected his cognitive skills as of yet. He was loving on a new show Yo Gabba Gabba and his favorite character on this program was a little fuzzy monster-like dude named Broobie. Dylan quickly learned the songs on this show and began to sing them. His favorite was called “Party in my Tummy” I still remember Dylan saying, “Does the green beans want to go to the party in my tummy?” He would wait several seconds before answering that question, “Yeah” then he’d break into the song, “There’s a party in my tummy, so yummy, so ,yummy, there’s a party in my tummy!” You get the gist of it.

We weren’t really concerned about Dylan’s cognitive skills. He continued to learn how to say words and use sentences. We understood that most of his language was mimicking what he heard, but, he did know and understand so much. Maybe we should have been more concerned, but at the time there was no indication that he would regress and become nonverbal.

After about two weeks of taking the Lamictal Terri noticed a slight rash around his mouth. We weren’t sure what it was so she called the neurologist to voice our concerns. He asked us to watch him overnight and see if the rash got worse. He never told us to stop giving Dylan the Lamictal. The next day the rash had spread all over his body and he was covered in big blotches. His skin looked as if he had an extreme sunburn. We called the neurologist and he told us to bring him into his office right away. We took him into his office and he said, “I was hoping that this wasn’t going to happen? He’s having an allergic reaction to the medication. He then prescribed some antibiotics to begin giving to Dylan right away. He told us to discontinue the Lamictal. We took him home and gave him the antibiotic. It was about a week before he was better. The neurologist then prescribed Clonazepam tablets to begin giving him. These things would begin to have Dylan spacing out. He slowly began his dark decent into an abysmal place where we weren’t sure if we could ever get him back from.

We had gone through some very tough times before Dylan began to have these seizures. I have already mentioned how Terri went into the hospital to have surgery to remove her gallbladder. It was supposed to be a very quick and easy procedure; a same day procedure. It would be done with the doctor using endoscopic surgery. This minimally invasive surgery was supposed to be an easier and safer way for Terri to have her gallbladder removed, however, the surgeon ended up cutting a bile duct and bile from her liver began draining into her stomach. She nearly died and she had to be transferred to John Hopkins Hospital where a well renowned surgeon who had invented the surgery to fix her practiced at. He saved her life. I touched on this just a little, because about three years after Dylan was born, Terri developed a pretty big hernia, most likely from carrying around Dylan. She had to schedule another surgery with the doctor who had created a new bile duct using part of her large intestine to do it. He would perform the hernia operation, because, we didn’t trust any other hospital or doctor around. She had complications and ended up in the hospital for two weeks. She was so upset, because she kept thinking Dylan would forget who she was. He slept with me on the couch for those two weeks, which was a binding experience for the both of us.

When Terri was released from the hospital, I tried to take some time off the job I had been working for the last ten months, but, because I hadn’t been there for the entire year, I was told by their HR department that I could not do it. I had no choice to resign to take care of Terri and the children. It was a tough dark time in our lives. I can’t mention the name of the company I was working for at the time, because they may sue me if I was to, but let’s just say that they were an up and coming Baltimore Clothing company that has ties to the NFL and whose clothes can now be seen in movies, and even other sports franchises. They were not very family friendly and it is sad that the owner got rich off the backs of his workers and didn’t care if those workers had families or more important things to attend to. I could say Karma is well you know. I know I am being so cliché. Anyway, it is my sincerest hope that the owner will one day reap what he has sown!

I mention these things only because it sets the events in the story of what troubles we would have to face next. We as a family had continuously walked through the shadows, but each and every time we came out holding tight to the light of a promise. A promise of a new and brighter day. Little did we know that this struggle was just getting started. (To be continued.)

The Real Superman Part V

By Jeff King

As I said before, Dylan loved to go to the park, he loved to swing on the swings and slide down the sliding board. He was a cheerful child with a sweet disposition. He wouldn’t harm anyone, because he really didn’t interact with other children, even though occasionly another child would come up to him and ask him if he wanted to play? He didn’t even acknowledge the other child. This happened several times. It was actually heartbreaking to us. Dylan also has a high threshold for pain. One time we were at a park and he was on the sliding board. He was at the part of the slide where there’s a base that leads to several slides and a pole that children use to slide down. Dylan just decided to walk toward the pole he didn’t grab for it, but just walked right off the edge of the base and fell about six foot to the ground. He immediately got back up like nothing happened. Terri went over to check him out; he had several cuts and bruises, but he was fine. He didn’t cry or show any signs of being in pain whatsoever.

Dylan also liked to go to the mall. The mall we go to has a glass elevator and Dylan loves to watch this elevator go up and down. He would probably sit there and watch that elevator going up and down all day if we would let him. This mall also has an inside play area that all my children liked to play in when they were very young; Dylan was no exception. He has since outgrown it, however, he loved to go in that play area and sit on the little Humpty Dumpty slide that was in there. One day in particular I took my family to the mall. My wife and daughter wanted to shop, so I told them that I would take Dylan into the play area. Dylan ran around and was having fun. A few children tried to play with him, but when he didn’t respond to them, or even acknowledge that they existed they went on to find another child to play with. Dylan ran to the little plastic Humpty Dumpty slide and began to slide down it. It was pretty busy that day and there must have been about 30 children in that little area. The parents were sitting on the foam rubber benches that surrounded the play area watching their kids play and have fun. Some of the parents had real young children so they were accompanying them in the play area. Dylan was in his own little world, as was normal for him. He was sliding down the slide and climbing back on it. Occasionally he would sit at the top and not slide, so I would have to get up and make him slide down so he didn’t impede any other child’s turn. This slide was actually a bridge though and you could slide down either side. This didn’t seem to bother the kids and most of them just went around Dylan and slid down the other side. Dylan didn’t mind nor did he ever bother any of the other children. On this particular busy day in this play area, Dylan was sitting on one side of the slide. I had been watching him as I always did. I never took my eyes off him, because, he would quickly get up and run out of the play area if you didn’t watch him. On this day as Dylan was doing what Dylan did a hundred times before, he was sitting on this slide not bothering anyone, when this woman ran over to him and begin to scream at him. “I don’t know where your parent are, but if you touch my child again you’re going to be in trouble!” I jumped off the bench and ran over to her and begin to yell at her, “What the hell is your problem woman, don’t you ever yell at my child again!” Then she yelled at me, “Well I don’t know where you’ve been, but your son has been pushing my son off the slide!” I then proceeded to call her a liar, because I had been watching Dylan the whole time and not once did he put his hands on this lady’s child, nor even acknowledged the child, or the lady yelling at him in fact!” I was livid then I said to her. “Woman, you have mental issues, my son is Autistic and doesn’t have any idea what you were just yelling at him! He never touched your child or even acknowledged your child being there!” Every parent in that play area was watching this transpire. She went red faced and started apologizing, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know!” she stammered. It was at that time my wife and daughter came running over. “What the hell is going on?” Terri asked and I informed her of what transpired. I hadn’t known it at the time, but Terri had watched everything from outside the play area. She went and yelled at the woman, and it was at this time when the rest of the parents were saying nasty things to her as well. She was sobbing and quickly opened her cellphone to call perhaps her husband or someone. She knew that she had made a mistake and she probably felt like the biggest heel in the world. This would be the start of many ignorant and sometimes very asinine people saying foolish and hurtful things to Dylan and us. (To be continued.)

The Real Superman Parts I and II

The Real Superman Part I

By Jeffrey King

Why do we consider Dylan the real Superman you may ask? Well if you knew Dylan and children like Dylan, you would see that they really are super! Do they have the power to fly, or bend steel, or are they faster than a speeding bullet? No, but the everyday struggles that these precious children have to endure is nothing less than super. Many people look up to athletes, police officers, fire fighters, soldiers, etc. as heroes, and they definitely are; however, my biggest hero is Dylan and let me explain to you why. In 2003 my wife was pregnant with our third child; which was Dylan. This was a child that we were uncertain that she would be able to have, because in 2001 my wife nearly lost her life due to a medical surgery that went wrong. The doctor ended up cutting a bile duct while he was removing her gallbladder. She was hospitalized for over a month and I was left to care for my two small children who were 2 and 3 years old at the time. I lost my job, due to having to miss so much time caring for them. I won’t get into too much detail about that dark time in our lives.

Time warp to 2003. We found out that my wife was expecting, we were actually shocked, because the doctors said that they didn’t think she would ever be able to have another child. She had a very uneventful pregnancy with no complications. All of her pre-natal check-ups were fine and she did exactly whatever her gynecologist told her to do.

Dylan was born on March 25th 2003 at 5:49 AM. He weighed 8 pounds 9 ounces. He seemed healthy and my wife was fine. No complications. The next morning, he was a little jaundiced, therefore they put him under an ultra violet light overnight. We were discharged the next day, but were told to bring him back to check him out in 3 days, because of the jaundice. We took him back and were given a clean bill of health.

Almost right away we noticed that Dylan was different than our other two children. He had a difficult time sucking his bottle, he couldn’t seem to focus his eyes on anything. He wouldn’t follow my wife’s voice. He was very stiff and floppy. At three months old he couldn’t hold his head up, didn’t smile and couldn’t grasp objects. This was difficult on my wife, because, she felt that something was wrong, but family members just said that she held the baby too much and didn’t let him develop on his own.

We were very concerned that Dylan wasn’t meeting any of his milestones, so we took him to his pediatrician to voice our concerns. He was a little over three months old. She examined him and told us that he just may be developing slower than normal and told us to give him another few months and bring him back if there were no changes. She saw him again when he was six months old and he still was having a developmental delay. She then made us an appointment with a geneticist. It took us several months to get in to see the geneticist and he examined Dylan and did some blood work on him.

Several weeks later we received a call from Dylan’s pediatrician who told us that we needed to go and see the geneticist right away; he had the results of Dylan’s blood test. We called to make the follow up appointment with him and he saw us right away. He brought us into his office and he explained what was going on with Dylan, who was now nine months old. I will never forget the conversation. He told us that what Dylan had, he had never seen anything like it since he became a doctor. He went on to explain that Dylan had a triplication of one of his chromosomes, chromosome 15. He explained that this chromosome had made two copies of itself; the original, the second copy, which was inverted and a third copy of itself. He went on to explain that this was what was causing Dylan’s developmental delay and that there wasn’t anything that he could do to fix it. He told us that Dylan would probably need extensive services to try to get him to develop. He would need physical and occupational therapists as well as a speech therapist. We asked what should we expect and his reply was exactly this, “You can’t put Dylan in a box, I am not sure what he’ll be able or unable to do, but it is better to start these services early to benefit him as much as possible.” He also went on to tell us, “Since I have never seen this condition, I really don’t know what you can expect and if I were you two, I would go do your own research to see if you can find any other children with this rare condition.”

Terri and I were devastated! We felt like we did something to cause our boy to be like this. We saw a child in a wheelchair who was severely crippled and was twisted up like a pretzel. Excuse my description, but that is the only way I could describe him. Terri looked at him and began to bawl uncontrollably. I grabbed her and pulled her to me. I told her, that we didn’t know if Dylan would end up like this, but even if he did, we will be the best parents that he could ever have…… (Continued Later.)

The Real Superman Part II

We went home and together sat at our computer, we googled triplication of chromosome 15 at that time there wasn’t anything written about it, however, a few things did come up in our search one was duplication of chromosome 15, or Isodicentric chromosome 15 syndrome. We began to read about it. For more information you can read about Idic 15 at the following websites http://www.dup15q.org/understanding-dup15q/what-is-dup15q-syndrome/

http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/isodicentric-chromosome-15-syndrome

By reading this material we had a little better understanding of what Dylan was going to be like, but these were duplications of the chromosome and not a triplication. We read that 1 in 30,000 newborns are born with this. We read about the developmental delay that the children have, behavioral difficulties, mental retardation, autism, seizures and just so much more. It was truly overwhelming. We stumbled on an organization that was called Unique The Rare Chromosome Disorder Support Group. They were based in the United Kingdom. We wrote to them about what the geneticist told us about Dylan.

Several days later we received an email back from them and they informed us that they believed that Dylan had Idic 15. They signed us up with their organization and sent us a welcoming package that had names of other families who had children with rare chromosome abnormalities. There were families in the United Kingdom, and even many in the United States that had children who had Idic 15. We didn’t feel quite so alone anymore. We would identify Dylan’s disorder with Idic 15, however, he didn’t have a duplication, but a triplication of the 15th chromosome, so we still didn’t really know what to expect?

We contacted the Maryland Infant and Toddlers Program and was entered into Child Find. The sent out a team of assessors to see if Dylan qualified for this program. We shared with them all of Dylan’s health records. After the initial assessment it was determined that he qualified for help and right away they set up home visits from physical, and occupational therapist. These visits would go on once a week and they were not fun for Dylan and made us have to go outside on several occasions. The therapist would come in and ask us a slew of questions before they began to work on Dylan. This was done by twisting and pulling and contorting his little body in every way imaginable. He would scream and cry; it was heartbreaking for us as parents. They brought in a giant exercise ball and would place Dylan on it and roll him around on it. By doing this it helped to loosen up his tight muscles.

Dylan’s therapy went on for several excruciating months. He didn’t like whenever the therapists would show up, because he knew that they would make him work his body. We didn’t like to hear him crying in pain, but it was a necessary evil. I probably was the father from hell towards the therapist, because I would yell at them. They would always make me leave the room. I did start to notice that Dylan began to be able to do things that he was unable to do when before the two therapists showed up. He could now crawl, grasp items and then, he was able to sit up.

Dylan seen these two ladies twice a week for a year and the results were amazing. In the meantime, I had begun blaming everyone for the way Dylan was born. I never told her at the time, but I was sure it was my wife’s fault, perhaps it was the doctor’s fault, or even God? I then started blaming myself and beating myself up over it. It is hard to explain the darkness that some people go through when something like this happens. The tears that I cried and the anger and bitterness that was eating me drove me further away from my wife and my other two children.

I continued to angrily question God, “Why in the hell would you allow this to happen to this child? What kind of cruel God are you?” I’d scream through bitter tears. It was in one of those tear-filled rages that I looked at Dylan. He had now been able to pick himself up off the floor and navigate himself around the room using the furniture for balance. Then the words I heard echo inside of my ears and stabbed me right in my heart! “Stop feeling sorry for yourself! Look at your son, he is awesome! He is a champion. No matter how hard it has been on him he hasn’t given up. He has fallen down thousands of times, yet he still gets back up!” That day my 16 month old son taught me the most valuable lesson I have ever learned in my entire life and if I could share this with anyone this is very important. Never, ever give up! If you falter, or fail a thousand times, a million times; keep fighting the good fight! It was at that very moment in time my whole life changed! Dylan hadn’t given up on us and I would be damned if I would give up on him! (To be continued)