Little Feet 24 - Hell Month
Entry posted by Admin_2 ·
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This blog has been coming for a while, and I've been waiting for the right time. Basically, April was one of the top 10 worst months of my life at a time when most people are on top of the world.
I see myself as a person that can roll with the punches...get knocked down, spring back up, and keep life rolling as usual. April beat me down pretty badly. From the small jabs to the knock out uppercuts. I felt everything.
The first thing that caught me off guard was losing my poker business. To make a long story short, the Department of Justice in the USA shut down a few of the largest poker sites in the world to all US players, indicting a few key people and freezing all players' money. About 70-85% of my business died overnight. It took a few days for me to fully understand what happened. Once I was sure what was going on, I broke the honest news to my wife who took it in stride.
One thing that I love and hate about her is that she looks at emotions and business as a typical "man" would. Her response was basically, "That sucks, find something else to do. At least you are teaching at the moment." I love the fact that she isn't so emotional about that things (which is usually what makes relationships end for me). Other times, I'm looking for someone to feel bad for me, which isn't good in and of itself. I'm lucky to have a wife that knows when to tell me to stand up straight and suck it up.
I might not get the exact order right, but the next thing that comes to mind after that was a very serious issue. Jasmine has been physically developing slowly, outside of the bell-curve for normal babies. As I've said before, my father has taught me to be cool about baby problems, but I was too cool about what was really going on. Currently at 11 months, she can't really crawl, which isn't much cause for concern by itself. However, she didn't start sitting up on her own for a long time until just over a month ago. She was also favoring her right side over her left side, which I just attributed to her being right-handed instead of left-handed.
WRONG.
To make a long story short, she has a small lesion on the right side of her brain, which has caused her left side of her body to be inferior to her right. I believe it's a form of Cerebral Palsy called Hemi-paresis, but the doctors here won't go as far as saying that until she is at least two years old. At the moment, the lesion is too small for a brain scan to pick it up.
Anyway, we've been playing it safe and have been giving her physical therapy to support the use of her left side, particularly her left hand. 2 months ago, she would close her left hand in a fist and only use her right hand. Now she is beginning to use both hands, which is wonderful. If you're really interested, go back and check our youtube page on her (BKKvids), and you'll see that it's now obvious.
Needless to say, this was devastating as it would be to any parent. My mother was the first to point it out over a couple of Skype sessions. I knew something was off, but I played it too cool saying that we had a doctor's checkup just a few weeks away where we'd bring up any issues. The more my mother bugged me about it, the more stubborn I got. However, her words grew on me everyday to the point where I sat Jeab down one evening after Jasmine was asleep and told her that I think Jasmine has a mild form of Cerebral Palsy. She cried. I wanted to cry, but nothing would come out.
After that, I called my parents and told them what I feared. Everything is still up in the air in terms of a real diagnosis, but we are sure that she has a physical handicap that will take A LOT of physical therapy to overcome. It hurts a lot. It hurts especially for me (in my egocentric world) because of my high hopes for her as a musician. I love music and literally dream of her and I playing duets one day for fun. I know she can still do many things, but lets be real...this will hinder many things.
The evening that this really hit me, I knelt down in front of her while she was lying down. I swore up and down that I would love her and support her regardless of the diagnosis that occurs next year. Again, I wanted to cry but couldn't get anything out. She giggled and smiled in her usual way, oblivious to any change. That's what drives me forward when times are good or bad nowadays. There's NO WAY I can stop with a smile like that.
The next day a huge rain storm came in. I came home and saw some water below the master bedroom window. It was a tiny centimeter long stream.
"Shit. All I wanted to do was to come home, play with Jasmine, do a bit of her physical therapy, and eat some food." I thought.
Little did I know that the tiny stream led to a HUGE puddle under my bed. Mind you, this is a brand new home that I bought less than 3 years ago. On top of that, the air-conditioner broke and started spitting out ice and water, my balcony flooded into the second floor because some leaves got stuck in the drain, and this really bad other issue came up for me that my friends kindly erased when I needed them the most (those of you close to me know wtf I'm talking about).
While soaking up the flood waters in my bedroom with a few towels, I felt numb. For the past week I had been beaten down, kicked on the ground, and spat on by life...and now Mother Nature was literally and figuratively spitting on me again...in my own bedroom. I didn't feel a thing I was so numb. I was a robot cleaning up yet another mess.
I guess that the good thing that I've brought out from all of this is that I really believe whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I'm fucking HE-MAN, Superman, and all Transformers combined to get through all of this...and April, 2011 barely made the top ten worst months of my life at age 30. I remember soaking up all the water from my floor with the feeling that I was just a gladiator working as a slave. In my mind, however, I knew that sometime in the near future I was going to rise up and beat the crap out of my slave owner dude (life). I was going to win. Thus, I scrubbed my floor, numb as can be, waiting for the time to pass.
It's now the second half of May, and on paper, nothing has really changed. My income has been cut in half, my daughter has a yet to be determined physical deficiency, and we are paying out the ass in time and money for her therapy. It's alllll worth it. I love having more things to do with her now. I love making her use her left hand when she screams and yells at me that she wants to use her right hand. It's teaching me how to be a strong but good father. After all, I know more than her (for the moment), I love her more than anything, and dedicating my time to her is more fulfilling than anything I've ever done.
Needless to say, I'm happy that my hell month has passed. As long as Goodghost and and all his co-conspirators are wrong that the world will end on May 21st, 2001, I've got a lot to live for in my wife and daughter, not to mention the rest of my family.
I apologize for the length of this rant, but it's been a long time coming for this to come out. I didn't blog about this last month as I know people get too worried if you post doom and gloom perspectives. I had it in my mind that it was just a phase. I'm still confident, especially now that I have Jeab and Jasmine, that I'll keep succeeding.
Here is Jazz and I at the pool last Monday:
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