The Monster Visits For Halloween

Jack went to a new pediatrician today for a flu shot. Once again, Susie was forced to go it alone, as seems to be the case when bad news is given.

Jack apparently screemed as most babies do for his shot. The bad news however is that Jack's rate of head growth has once again jumped. You may remember that it had previously tapered off. Head size is of course not the concern. I don't care if he looks like a bobble head; the problem is this likely means that the cyst in his head has increased in size and therefore increases the chance of pressure on the brain. As you might expect this can cause many problems, including those that we notice all the time or it could cause no problems (doctors look at extreme symptoms only despite all descriptive data I have looked at collected by parents indicating a myriad of suggested issues).

As you may have gathered through this blog or conversations with Susie and I or actual time spent with Jack, he is quite a moody little guy. However, in brief periods of time, 3, 4, or 5 hours, he usually does well, especially when others are around. Looking at others with babies Jack's age, I often find myself saying, we could never do that with Jack or he would never sit still that long and so on. Some of this I'm sure is normal but right now it doesn't feel that way.

At times we have thought Jack was getting sick only to find that nothing manifested into a cold or anything of the sort. Is it possible he has been having headaches as this is commonly associated with arachnoid cysts? Is it possible this is why Jack was pulling at his hair above the location of the cyst just a few days back? Is it possible that Jack has trouble sleeping lately as late as he was due to increased cranial pressure which I've read is likely to increase when lying down? Is it possible that Jack's left eye which is slightly lazy is due to the effects of the cyst on his brain? Who the hell knows? If I had to guess I would think the answer is yes.

I think I have long felt that Jack has been such a difficult baby due to some other reason besides personality. Further, Susie and I have relatively good coping skills with most life problems we face, but we seemingly are only average at coping with our baby boy, often not seeming to enjoy things or cope as well as others we know. I'm beginning to think this is due to Jack being a bit more unpredictable and possibly just simply not feeling as well as most kids a great deal of his life thus far.

I sent out a request for other peoples experiences with parenting a baby and only got one reply aside from Susie. Probably just as well since I think we are playing a whole different ballgame here.

Once again we are in the hands of the unknown. Once again I'm feeling helpless. Once again I just want to go home and hug my baby boy.

I do feel everything will be fine. I just wish that I could know that Jack isn't experiencing migraines and that his eye isn't drooping from brain pressure and that he won't have to go through brain surgery, EVER.