I don’t know how most Moms celebrate Mother’s day but at our house, celebration is fairly non-existent. Same goes for Father’s day, birthdays, Christmas…
Imperceptibly, I guess we lost interest in holidays or getting too excited about anything, really. Sadly, it’s kind of the norm for families severely affected by autism, PANDAS, PANS, Lyme, and other auto-immune disease.
Illness doesn’t take a back-seat for special days, flares still cause pain, sleepless nights snowball into another weary day, whatever day that may be, extra monies for festivities are funneled into healing, and we’re pretty accustomed to not fitting in at otherwise normal gatherings. We’ve lived this way for so many years that despite receiving a heartening card in the mail foreboding it’s annual arrival, I never suspected I’d have the best Mother’s Day ever.
I woke up to a fairly typical morning. My son got up at 4 or 5am having the urge to poop. Sounds like a tough start, but nowadays, he can get up all by himself and do his business with minimal help. He was in a joyful, playful mood, entertaining himself for a couple of hours while I slept in. It was light sleep because I was listening for him to need me, but he didn’t, so it was rest all the same.
At my leisure, I got up, high fived myself that the kids left no wet bedding to launder, and made breakfast. Granted, I made breakfast for people who inhaled it and left nothing for me, but they also busied themselves, happily chatting and engaging each other leaving me to do the dishes in a warm, loving atmosphere. I cherish time to myself enough to choose it over a meal.
In the afternoon, we played outside, worked a bit in the garden, went for a bike ride and took the dog for a walk. My son confidently pedaled, trying to splash through puddles and, being ornery, decided he would ride his bike with no hands. My daughter found hot rocks camouflaged in some gravel. She didn’t know what they were, but I explained that when I was a kid, we used to rub them on concrete and then ‘burn’ our friends with them. It was an amusing memory to ponder and my daughter wickedly enjoyed testing hot rocks out on me.
If I rewind just eighteen short months ago, our lives had spiraled far out of control because of PANDAS, PANS, and Lyme. I was a 24/7 nurse to my family, exhausted in every capacity, keeping OCD triggers at bay in an attempt to prevent hours of rage and aggression from one child which would drain my emotional bucket while nursing another child with the physical ailments of auto-immune encephalitis and Lyme, usurping my mental and physical energy. I lived from fire drill to fire drill on precious little sleep just to keep my family satiated with palliative care. I had no respite, but I did have plenty of laundry, dishes, meals, homeschooling, and therapy to do. My husband, like most husbands in this situation, was always gone at yet another job because there isn’t enough money in the world to handle this God-forsaken mountain of man-made affliction.
I certainly never envisioned my son being potty trained, playing safely on his own, or riding a bike; he couldn’t even poop, or walk, or get out of bed and in duplicitous fashion, he could never sleep. I never imagined my daughter living free of rage, aggression, and OCD flares that would turn my sweet girl into a monster.
At the advice of a friend, we started seeing Dr. Jaban Moore who turned our lives around. Within 6 months, we were headed in the right direction healing leaky gut, eczema, food allergies, thyroid, detoxing parasites, pathogens, and metals and here I am, just 18 months later, having the best Mother’s Day in a decade or more.
I thank God every single night and day for the healing He has rained down on us. We aren’t done yet but we are in a content, pleasant place. I might even sense the smallest crack of light illuminating the notion that celebrating the special days might happen in our home once again.
The Detox Depot 