As always, my life last night and today interferred with my life. By this I mean my son got sick last night with one of his attacks. He gets these attacks occassionally, always in the wee hours, where his throat closes and he can barely breathe. We've made trips to ER with these while my son slowly turns blue. Last nights was not so bad, but didn't occur until around 4 am, meaning he was still dealing with Stridor (the term for it) this morning, so no daycare for him. Not because he's "ill", but rather that if he starts to run, he'll have another attack. While Mom and Daddy know what to do for him and how to calm him, others do not. At 4 am, my mental capacity is pretty low, so as my hubby held my kiddo on his bedroom floor and I raced around geting a humidifier and his nebulizer (just increases oxygen to him with each breath, doesn't stop the attack) and eventually sat down in front of him to help calm him, I kept thinking, Gee, if he was an avatar, we could just blow up his throat and this wouldn't be a problem!
While this thought is new, I've had similar ones with him as he was growing. Jonathan was early and did not have jaw or muscle development needed to suckle. We spent hours in occupational therapy helping to stregnthen and coordinate those muscles. He finally learned to take a bottle. Then we started solids, and it was all back to square one. Now we had to help him learn to chew and swallow. He mastered apple/pear sauce, and then we moved onto potatoes, and again, back to square one. Let me tell ya, most children eat chicken nuggets by a year, it was 18 months for my little guy. And the entire time, I kept thinking, if only you could somehow put your hands on his jaws and make them function properly. As a new mother, it was awful to spend 3 hours coaxing a few ounces of milk into him, then to have to get more milk outta me for another hour, then do it all over again. Is it no wonder I wanted a magical solution? At this point, we aren't sure if the attacks are related to the original problems or not, but it seems likely.
I began to wonder about those that have health problems and are challenged physically. Do they get a sense of freedom with walking/flying? I take it for granted that my avatar can walk and travel. She doesn't get tired, she doesn't get out of breath, and she has no problems, healthwise to worry about. Her kneecaps don't dislocate when she tries to hold up her motorcycle (Man I miss my bike!) The conversation about the mainstream vs. "gamers" seemed to connect to this. Is that draw? You can create a perfect person who can ultimately do anything.
Just a thought. Thanks for reading my rambling to this point.
1 comment:
Terapyn, sorry to hear about your woes. Seems like you have your hands and your mind pretty full and still manage to keep thinking about myriad other things and trying to relate all together. It is quite remarkable considering the difficulty of handling the Stridor condition. Like I quoted in an earlier post:
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
Philip K. Dick
If it was only possible to do what you dream about, modifying the avatar to fit our needs or wants.
However, Jonathan has come to this world on an age which gives him so many options that he could not have before. Not only that, the rapid pace at which technology develops and the seemingly unstoppable race towards our cyborgean future means that he will probably be able to not only take advantage but thrive in an environment that is still alien to us but will be commonplace for him as he grows up.
After all the body itself is a machine, albeit a very complicated one, and every day it seems, a new part, system etc. can be enhanced, sometime replaced altogether. I have seen or read about numerous studies and experiments where people can see with their tongue or some other very strange sounding but fascinating solutions to problems that seemed insurmountable a few decades ago.
The case I mentioned above is particularly interesting since it also brings into question the notion of "reality", and also because like many other geniuses, Paul Bach y Rita (a compatriot of mine) was considered an absolute nut case when he proposed in the 60's (yeah, right, what was he smoking?) that people could see with their tongue, hear with their feet or any other sensory substitution you could think about. Well, almost 50 years later, when he is already dead, his ideas and solutions are applied to real patients, which cease to be so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_substitution
http://www.engr.wisc.edu/bme/newsletter/in_memoriam.html
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20010901/bob14.asp
and as many more as you care to find.
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