Aly's Legacy

A neighbor of mine lost her only child a few months ago. Her only daughter. Her name was Aly. She had just turned 19 and had just finished her first year of college. She wanted to be a nurse or doctor, last I heard. She seemed like a good kid. She loved kids, even babysat for my son once. She died suddenly, from an accidental prescription drug overdose.

As a neighbor I am in shock, for this hits too close to home. As a mother, this is unfathomable. How do you lose a child, your only child, your world? As a mother, how do you recover from this? One day your daughter is here, the next she's gone forever, all her hopes and dreams with her.

When I first heard about Aly's death I was shocked. To read in the news that 1 in 5 teens has abused a prescription pain medication (The Partnership For A Drug-free America, http://www.drugfree.org/) is one thing, but when a young person in your neighborhood dies from partying with a morphine patch is somehow inconceivable. And yet, as I remember when I was a teenager and all that was available I realize that not much has changed. Back then instead of using prescription drugs teenagers sniffed glue or took cough medicine with codeine to get high, among other things.

I know how young adults are with their devil-may-care attitudes, for I was just one of them it seems. I feel lucky to have survived that period of my life, for I thought that I was invincible. However, it could as easily have been my mother who had to deal with her daughter's death.

But it wasn't and now I am a mother. Now I know how it feels to love someone more than yourself, to vow to protect someone to the ends of this earth, to feel the gut wrenching fear of loss. I cannot imagine life without my two young boys. I feel lucky to have them here with me under my roof, but guilty as I think about my neighbor several houses down whose daughter's room is empty. I feel fear as I think about my boys' futures: how do I protect them from something like this?

I received a letter from Aly's parents sometime after her death asking to spread the word about the dangers of prescription drugs that do not belong to you. "Warn your children," they wrote. "They think they are invincible, we all did. Just because the drug isn't illegal like heroin or cocaine or crack, doesn't mean it is safe if it is prescribed by a doctor for another. One tragic mistake can take their life away and leave many hearts broken."

After reading this letter I realized that my responsibility as a writer is to share this information with as many people as possible. My children aren't yet old enough for this to be a real threat to me but knowledge is power and if we get the word out now about the dangers of prescription drugs, perhaps by the time my boys are teenagers enough actions will have been taken to get these drugs out of the hands of young people.

As I get older I am finding that there are no guarantees in life. There is nothing written in stone that says that my children will be protected from all hardships and loss or that I will not experience an untimely loss myself. But I have to believe that all the love we bestow on our children will give us some insurance. And so let's hug them, squeeze them, love them, and TALK to them. And do a lot of praying.

Please do me a favor and share this information with your children or with the parents of teenaged children. Pass it on and spread the word. If the untimely death of a teenager can spark some change in this world then her passing will not have been in vain.

Survival of the Stitches!

Tonight Jeff and I can officially call ourselves seasoned parents: we survived a trip to Urgent Care for one of our sons.

It happened like this:

It was about 6:30 p.m. and Michael had just put on his pajamas. He'd had a busy week and weekend and was needing to go to bed early, says me. Apparently he didn't agree with this because he started that before bedtime rough housing thing that boys do with their fathers (at least mine do). I was putting away dishes in the kitchen and the boys and Jeff were in the living room.

All of a sudden I heard a loud thwack of head hitting solid surface. Immediately following was a loud, high-pitched scream, the one reserved only for serious hurts. I ran into the living room and saw Jeff holding Michael's head. His first instinct was to see if Michael's head was bleeding. Sure enough, it was.

"What happened?" I asked without raising my voice. Somehow I was not entering panic mode but instead was calm.

"Michael hit his head on the corner of the coffee table," Jeff replied.

"Murphy's Law," I said. "We haven't had a coffee table in the house since Michael was little for just this reason and 10 days after we get one someone gets hurt."

I was not experienced with head wound treatment but knew enough to find a spare cloth, wet it down, and put it on the back of Michael's head and apply pressure. After a few minutes I lifted the cloth to see the damage. What I saw was not good - a one-inch gash of broken skin on the back of Michael's head along with a lot of blood.

"Looks like a trip to the hospital for stitches," I said. Jeff agreed. Michael didn't.

"Noooooo!!!" Michael wailed. "I don't want to go to the hospital! I don't want to get stitches!"

Does anyone ever WANT to get stitches? Probably not. Michael doesn't do well with being hurt and has to have band-aids for little tiny paper cuts. The last time he had to have a shot at the doctor's office he hid under the table and I had to drag him out in order for him to get the shot.

I've never had stitches so I have no experience to go by as far as what happens, but I tried my best to assure Michael that it wouldn't hurt much and that we really needed to get his head fixed. Luckily for us we realized that we could go to the Urgent Care facility a mile down the road and bypass the ER experience.

"I'm scared Momma, I'm really scared," Michael said to me as I held the cloth against his head while Jeff drove.

"It'll be ok," I reassured him. "I'll be with you the whole time and hold your hand."

Despite this fact, he was pretty hysterical by the time the nurse took us back to the cot where he would get his stitches. I'm not the best at thinking on the fly, but I have to give myself a pat on the back because tonight I stood up to the challenge.

"How about if I tell you a story?" I asked him.

"Uh huh," he mumbled through his tears.

"Once upon a time," I began, "there was a little boy named Michael..." I don't know if it was the tone of my voice or if he really was enthralled by my stories (or maybe it was the 25 mg of Benedryl they gave him), but he calmed right down and remained that way while the nurse cut the hair around his cut and cleaned it, and through the doctor's assessment that he would indeed need 4 stitches.

We had plenty of time for stories too since we had to wait about 30 minutes for the Benadryl to take effect and the Lidocaine to numb his wound. By the time the doctor came in to stitch Michael up, he was pretty groggy. He only cried a little bit when the doctor gave him a couple shots of local anesthesia to numb him up. And he laid perfectly still for the stitches. Not even a peep.

So, 1 1/2 hours, $40, four Lego stickers, and two tired children later we said goodbye to the Urgent Care staff, thankful that we hadn't had to take a trip to the Emergency Room (for we would probably still be there) and thankful that the situation hadn't been much worse.

Nothing can prepare one for situations like these but I'm proud that Jeff and I were both mavericks through it all. No one passed out from the sight of blood or the gaping wound or the stitching of skin. We remained cool, calm, and collected. We survived.

Tomorrow, I'm afraid, will be a different story. That's when I get to tackle the fun task of washing the wound and putting salve on it. I'm sure that will be like trying to get a cat to take a bath. Maybe I can try the story trick again.

"Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Michael..."