Last week, my 11 year old son, Kaleo, started to feel dizzy and began vomiting. The next morning he was feeling the same, so Monique took him to the ER.
A neurologist told us he thought he’d had a stroke. That didn’t even make sense to us. He’s 11 years old… But Kaleo was transferred to the children’s ICU at the UCLA hospital.
We were all really scared.
Monique stayed with him overnight. He was woken up every hour during the night for blood tests and monitoring and he has passed the stroke tests no problem.
I stayed at home with our 9 year old, Ellington. It’s actually been a rough couple of weeks because he has been refusing to go to school.
We think missing two years of schooling because of Covid had a bigger impact on him than we realized.
We’re getting help but it’s hard.
As I write, Kaleo has now been released from the hospital.
It turns out that he did have a stroke – meaning a blood vessel in the brain was injured. That’s why he was so dizzy and nauseous on Wednesday night. I’m so glad Monique trusted her instincts and took him to the ER.
After a bunch of MRIs, blood work and scans, it seems like it was a one in a million impact of jumping on our trampoline that caused it. Hopefully there are no long-term effects and nothing like this will ever happen again. Apparently the part of the brain where it happened – the cerebellum – heals really quickly.
The past week has been a roller coaster of emotions. I’ve been holding it together by handling business but I’m emotionally exhausted.
These photos are a little of what we suddenly went through, over the past few days.
My instinct is to hunker down when times are hard. I tell everyone, “I’ve got this.” Or, I put my attention on others as a way of coping, or distracting myself. So I’m leaning into an edge and sharing with my community.
We have all the support and guidance we need right now, so I’m a gracious no to any offers of support at this time.
I taught a class the other day about success. No irony here, I referenced David Brooks’ distinction of Resume Goals vs Eulogy Goals.
There’s no more important Eulogy Goal for me than helping my kids be healthy and happy. It’s pretty tough when I realize how much of that is out of my control…
To paraphrase George Pransky, true success in life is to be grateful for the highs and gracious with the lows.
Hug your loved ones a little closer this week.
Loving you. Rich