VIDEO POST: Great sorrow stimulates action that forges change.
This video was played for Adam’s memorial service.
The first five years and a long descent.
During the initial first five years of his mental illness, while we were going back and forth to our therapist, while he was being prescribed a litany of medications from zoloft to trazadone, lithium, depakote, paxil, prozac – Adam was regularly smoking pot. Now, I can’t say for sure that it interacted with his medication – but, I can’t say for sure that it didn’t. Regardless, things didn’t get much better. He attended an alternative…
A mother’s story: Adam.
In early 1994 Adam was a noticeably different 11 year old – usually an extraordinary student, mature, responsible, gave way to a reckless attitude – angry, oppositional, a little scary for those of us living with him who were not accustomed to this personality. I sought assistance from the pediatrician who suggested that hormones were playing a part. That was it. We were sent home without an answer, and the outbursts continued – accompanying them…
Forward.
As I stood in the hospital room, feeling like I was in a dream, the running thought was, “How did we get here?” I remember whispering it over and over. As I watched my son’s chest rise and fall, painfully aware that the motion was not being done by him, but by a machine. The reality of a drug overdose. A neurologist saying that 96% of his brain was not functioning, and that they would…