Mind over matter ain't gonna cut it.

Twice I have been to the hosiptal with kidney stones. The first time, I was pregnant with Drew and had suffered from a horrendous back ache for about twelve hours. I then used the bathroom and looked into the toilet to find nothing but blood. Of course, being pregnant, I flipped out and called my aunt to have her take me to the ER. It wasn't until I gave the nurse there in Labor and Delivery a urine sample that I realized that this was not a problem with the pregnancy, but with my kidneys. The dull ache in my back lasted for a few hours after the visit to the hospital, but I was given Vicoden to take with me, so survival was sure.

The next time I suffered from the stones, I had no blood, but the pain in my back was bad enough that I was sure I was going to die. I have to say that passing a kidney stone is, without doubt, more painful than pre-epidural labor. So back to the ER we went. I was just barely capable of walking, but certainly not in an upright position. I gave up all dignity by panting, scrunching up my face and moaning every now and again while some idiot took my blood pressure twice because the first time he had forgotten the numbers before he could enter them into the computer. Then a nurse came to get me and offered me a wheelchair, but I couldn't stand the thought of sitting still when I wanted to run in circles screaming, "Owie, help me, owie! (Cursing) I'm dying! (More curse words.)" So I walked/hobbled back to my curtain and was given a cup to pee in. For 3 hours at home I had tried to urinate, and simply could not make anything come out, despite the fact that I needed to pee so badly that I was on fire and sweating. So I told the nurse I would do my best but not to expect any results. I went to the bathroom and, crying just a bit, I gathered my sample. Easily. It was like a cruel joke being played on me. How could I be completely incapable of peeing for hours at a time, and then miraculously be unplugged the first time I tried to go in the hospital? And it was sooo good. I kid you not, the very second that I had emptied my bladder, I was fine. No pain. It was like going from spiked sledgehammer to the kidney to absolute normal comfort - just like that. And no blood. I stood there in the ER bathroom wondering if I should intentionally slip and slam my face into the toilet or hold my hand under hot water until I had blistering burns, because I couldn't very well go walking back to my curtain with no injury and feeling fine. That would be a waste of the nurse's time. After some internal debate and several minutes, I decided that I had no choice but to walk out of the bathroom, perfectly erect, and deliver my unimpressive urine sample to the lucky soul who would be caring for the perfectly healthy me. I was embarrassed to be there, relaxed and smiling, laying on my gurney with a polka-dot hospital gown on. The nurse came into my curtain and picked up my sample. She held it up to the light. "Oh, yeah," she said. "You passed three stones and they're big enough that I can see the spurs on them." Excuse me? You can see the what on them? She held my pee up over my head so that I could see the tiny, spiked rocks that had come out of me. Let me tell you, I felt very justified in being there once I saw those suckers. I almost asked her to save them for me so I could prove to people that I was not just being a huge wimp. I chickened out on asking, but I would have taken a gold star for surviving it, had anyone offered. Later the doc came in and told me that while he could analyze the stones to find out what precisely might trigger their build up in my particular case, I would most likely suffer from them fairly frequently for the rest of my life. I was secretly glad not to have to be told what causes them. I didn't want to have to give up chocolate or milk. I am happy in my ignorance, and I have only had one more episode since then.


My point is, the pain of kidney stones came in such different forms that I was unable to recognize them for what they were after I had already been to the hospital for them once. The symptoms were different, but the cause was the same. Today, that is exactly like being a parent. For a month now, I have been suffering from a myriad of different pain and frustration, but all of my symptoms have come from the same place. Cameron.


Before you go thinking that I am a horrible mother who doesn't love her child, let me say that I adore Cameron. He is smart, very helpful, sensitive, forgiving and fun. He has only three flaws. And I'm only going to talk about two of them right now. The first is that he is irresponsible. He "forgets" things and loses things ALL. THE. TIME. He does not put things where they go. If he doesn't understand something, he will not ask for help, he just ignores the problem. The second is that he has the attention span of a one-year-old. He doesn't focus on anything that wasn't his idea for more than ten seconds. I reluctantly did gobs of research on ADD/ADHD last year, but do not believe for one second that he has it. Aside from there being almost no scientific evidence required or available in the diagnostic process, Cameron only has the focus problem. Of the 16 or so symptoms that are common in ADD kids, Cameron only sometimes displayed 3 of them, and if I remember correctly, 8 are required to be constant problems in order to diagnose a child with ADD. (Don't quote me on that, it's been a while.)


I want Cameron to learn the importance of schoolwork while he is young so that come high school and college, he has firm study skills and a solid grasp of all the basics that are required in order to understand everything that comes after them. For that reason, I require that all homework be done before anything else after school. If my kids don't have homework, then I require twenty minutes of study time where they can choose to read or write letters or play educational games - anything they want that has educational value. Am I a cruel parent to make them do this after so many hours of school? Maybe. But I want them to get in the habit of doing their work first and playing later. But it doesn't really matter, because aside from Fridays, there has never been a day that they have come home without homework. At the very least, both boys' teachers require 20 minutes of reading every weeknight. They both know that it's just the job of a kid.



And that brings me to the most recent pain I've suffered from Cameron. Forget the lost glasses and coats. Forget the hours we've spent studying together for tests that he has ended up bombing with some real flair. This latest incident takes the cake. I almost imploded from the force of the exasperation.



Last night Cameron came home with his math book instead of a worksheet, which has never happened before. There was a lined paper tucked into a page. I opened the book to that page and looked at the paper. It was headed with Cameron's name, the page number and some other gibberish that made no sense to me at all. The paper was numbered 2 through 70, even numbers only. I looked at the page number in the math book that was written on the paper and saw that the page only had problems numbered up to forty. Confused, I asked Cameron what he was supposed to do. He had no clue. He looked at me as if he had never seen the paper in my hand that was plastered with his messy handwriting. (Don't even get me started on that.) I spent about ten minutes trying to decipher the meaning of the paper he had numbered to 70 and the jumbled mess that he had written in his planner. Then I gave up and decided to punish him for his cluelessness by making him complete all the problems on the math page, 1-40 even AND odd. I numbered a new paper for him and told him to use the paper he had numbered as scrap paper to figure any answers he couldn't get in his head. It wasn't as mean as it sounds, because it was all subtraction that he already knows. How hard is it to figure out 18 minus blank is 18? Not hard, because he had it done at the kitchen table in about fifteen minutes. Then we moved on to the rest of the work on the list.


This morning, I got a call from Cameron 15 minutes after school had begun. The conversation went like this:


Cameron: Mom, you know that paper that I numbered yesterday?
Me: Yeah, what about it?
Cameron: I need it.
Me: Why?
Cameron: It's for a test.
Me: Can't you just number another paper? (And wondering why he brought it home if it was for a test?)
Cameron: No, teacher said it has to be that one.
Me: Cameron, I just put the babies down for a nap, and it will take me a lot longer to bring that paper to you than it would for you to just number another paper.
Cameron: Mom, you HAVE to bring it.


Well, crap. His teacher is in the middle of teaching, I can't ask her what the heck is going on. So I grabbed the paper and erased all the marking he had done on it, then loaded everyone into the car. I got to the school in a hurry thinking that Cameron was waiting on that paper in order to complete a test that everyone else has likely already started as they had their papers and knew what they were for. But no. I got there and walked into his classroom, and his teacher looked at me and said, "Let's talk in the hall." Not good.


Turns out that his teacher had told Cameron that he needed his math book, he told her he left it at home, and she told him he better call me and have me bring his math BOOK. The entire thing had nothing to do with his math PAPER. And guess what? I had put his math BOOK in his backpack that morning, so I knew full well that he already had it with him. His teacher and I checked his backpack and it wasn't there. Know what that means? That means that he took it out of his backpack and put it in his desk and TEN MINUTES LATER could not remember that he had done it. I told him to check his desk, and (SHOCKER!!) there it was. Then his teacher showed me what he was supposed to have done with the paper tucked into that book the previous afternoon. She had numbered an identical paper and put it on the document projector, and told the class to number their papers like she had done and then complete those problems in their books. Everyone else in the class numbered and then did the problems. Cameron just kept numbering until he ran out of paper, and never bothered to actually do the problems in the book. What? Did he think it was a test on counting by twos? Sorry, Cameron, you've already completed the first grade.


Pain, pain, pain. Frustration. Pain.


Cameron is too smart to fail so miserably at nearly everything he does in school. I simply cannot figure out how to make him concentrate and stay away from La-La Land. He's already sitting at the front of the classroom, I've tried making him repeat every direction I give him, I have tried revoking privileges, I've tried rewarding. The rewards never happen and I run out of things to take away. It's all just becoming too painful to deal with.


My last resort? A shock collar with remote activation. I think that if I could just at random times push a button here from home that would jolt him out of whatever world he's wandered off to in the middle of class, he'd eventually learn to pay attention. I could give the button to his teacher to push whenever she saw him spacing out, but where's my satisfaction? I wouldn't do it more than twice a day. Maybe three times.



Can you tell that I've spent too much time thinking about that? I have.


So tonight when Cameron comes home, we'll be having yet another talk about paying attention and responsibility. But this time I'm going to see if he has any ideas, because I'm plum out. Can't wait to hear what he comes up with.