Dispatch from the Revolution: Cannabis Update and Contortions

New York City, 1996

to Christy

When Sophie got home from school today, I noticed that she'd once again not drunk much of anything. I gave her the afternoon dose of Charlotte's Web and then lay down next to her with one leg draped over her legs, my strong peasant left arm holding her left arm gently down and my strong peasant right arm wielding her sippee cup. I placed it on her mouth and spoke gently but firmly about her need for liquid and dripped a few drops in. She swallowed and then pursed her lips and sucked on the cup. I did this over and over for the next twenty minutes, all while listening to Oliver who was sitting in the beanbag chair in the window chatter about Teslas and the video of a brother and sister singing one of the theme songs to the movie Boyhood. At one point, my position became torturous when Oliver leaned into and over me to show me a video, and because I'm that mother who is aware of the needs of the siblings of the special needs kid, I simultaneously forced the Special Needs Kid to drink and craned my neck into an awkward position so I could respond appropriately to The Sibling. I might have even remarked on the absurdity of it all, and Oliver agreed.

Anyhoo.

I kind of want to back up here, because this post is supposed to partly be an update on cannabis. Sophie has now been taking the Charlotte's Web Hemp Oil at the higher ratio for a bit more than a month. We've also tinkered with the dosage and found something that is working for now. We're still not in the incredible spot we were last year at this time when Sophie's seizures disappeared for weeks at a time, but we might be close. The stuff works for her. We're also continuing the Onfi wean, and just as everyone who's ever visited here knows, the benzo wean is an ugly, ugly process. Today, I had a lovely and very informative conversation with my friend Christy who writes from Maine about her own struggles with her son Calvin's refractory epilepsy at Calvin's Story. As I walked the aisles of Trader Joe's, Christy suggested that the drinking and eating difficulties could very possibly be a result of the benzo wean, that forgetting how to swallow and drooling is a side effect of the drug and can increase when the drug is weaned. I think in that moment I got so excited and distracted that I threw in the chocolate babka and the chocolate cookies and the cinnamon bread, all of which this family does not need. So, later, when I got into my contortionist pose and coaxed Sophie to drink, I felt infinitely more patient with her and far less insane. My mind wandered to the time when Sophie was on another benzodiazepine, the hideous Klonopin and how it caused anorexia. My mind drifted to my helplessness then, how I watched her lose about 20% of her body weight and brought her to an interminable number of specialists who had literally nothing to say or suggest except for the eminent gastroenterologist at a prominent hospital who threatened a feeding tube. To make a long story short, I weaned her from the Klonopin, her appetite came back, she got into tip-top shape with the help of a naturopath and -- well -- here we are.

What's the point of all this? You do what you have to do. Light comes in through the cracks, even from as far away as Maine. I'm going back into Sophie's room to help her learn to swallow by coaxing a bit more liquid into her. Then I'm cutting a big old piece of chocolate Babka and listening to this: