My story . . . interlude

Well, I’ve got a few more episodes to go in my story, but I wanted to take a brief time-out and share a few photos from our experience. The first one is of Matthew during his second of two EEGs at the hospital. This picture was taken on May 31st, 2001. We have several photos of Matthew with all sorts of tubes and wires connected to him. This was the case with many of the babies that were in the neo-natal intensive care unit (NICU). Over time, seeing Matthew with all of that apparatus really made me realize that there were potential problems.





But the second picture is particularly peculiar, I think. As you have read, a lot of bizarre stuff was going on in my life during those stressful days of May and June of 2001. Although tangential to the main story, this second photo is an example of another weird occurrence. As the photo shows, on a few occasions, Matthew turned half-red and half-white! Whoa! Let me tell you, when you see your infant child half one color and half another, split right down the middle, you get kind of freaked out! This is a somewhat rare phenomenon called Harlequin Syndrome, where the nervous system somehow misfires and causes one side of the body to become flush. After the first few times, it never happened again. But with everything else that was on our minds, you can imagine how strange it was to see this. I thought that perhaps Matthew had some special powers. Hey, maybe we should have named him Jack-Jack! (Quick, name that movie—first correct answer wins a special prize!)