At this moment in time, life is good.  So good, in fact, that sometimes it’s hard to remember how bad it was a year ago. Although I am mindful that things could change tomorrow and that there are a lot of families out there who aren’t as lucky as we are today, I’m going to gloat a bit.

The thief has received a thorough ass-kicking.

He isn’t gone, of course.  He never will be.  But he has made himself mighty scarce in the last few months.  Oh, he pulled a stunt in May — showing up in my son’s preschool class — but fled the scene shortly thereafter.

I don’t know if a picture is worth a thousand words, but showing you my son’s journey over the last year is probably more effective than anything I can write:

(update February 2011: I’ve removed the pictures of Gavin — not because his status has changed but rather because I’m a lot more concerned about his privacy at this point.  Suffice it to say that the pictures covered a progression of good to bad to worse to great)

When I wrote The Thief In My House, Gavin was that poor boy in the upper-right corner.  Yeah, that’s really the same kid.

What’s changed?

First off, we got him off the steroids.  By the first of the year he had dropped all the weight he had put on.  We’re not entirely sure they helped, but when you’re grasping for straws you’ll try anything that has worked for somebody else.

Secondly, we achieved control over his Epilepsy: since late September 2007 he has had only two major (tonic-clonic) seizures.  With the exception of the seizure in May (which was a result of us dropping a little too low in his medication adjustment), we haven’t seen a thing since.

I knocked on wood after typing that.  When a cause-and-effect relationship is tenuous at best, superstition tends to take over.  Call it bad mojo or Murphy’s Law, but his last seizure took place days after both my wife and I happily told friends that we hadn’t seen any activity in quite a while.

I’m actually wondering about the reprecussions of posting this blog entry.  Neurology sometimes seems just like glorified voodoo for all it does — and doesn’t do.

The third thing that changed was that we actually got help from our local school district — that’s District 49 here in Colorado Springs.  We were able to get Gavin into a preschool program, where he had individualized attention.  I have been told that Colorado is near the bottom of the list for social programs, so we consider ourselves lucky.

Fourth, we continued to attend the local Epilepsy support group for kids and families.  They have a website, and if you’re in Southern Colorado I encourage you to attend the next meeting.  I cannot stress enough the importance of having a support group, especially if (like us) the rest of your family lives thousands of miles away.

Fifth, we prioritized.  Our tolerance for drama and bullshit dropped through the floor.   Once our first priority — getting Gavin stabilized — was achieved, we focused on long-term issues, such as paying off medical debt.

Sixth, we were lucky.  Or blessed. Consider the following:

• Out of the blue, my wife is called by the company she left 7 years ago when she was pregnant with our oldest child.  Boom, she is suddenly employed.
• After a year as a contractor with crappy benefits, I land a job with a large, stable company with great benefits and an excellent work environment.
• Gavin ends up doing so well at in the District 49 preschool program, he gets bored.  At the same time my wife returns to work, we are able to get him into a Montessori preschool just blocks from our house.  Within a couple of weeks, we observe Gavin’s development take off again.
• We manage to hit upon the right combination of medicines, as our options were becoming fewer and fewer.

So like I said, life is good right now.  It’s possible that the other shoe could drop tomorrow: the effectiveness of medicine for kids with Doose Syndrome can change suddenly.  I suppose that’s not too surprising: you’re not dealing with a bad liver (hey, don’t drink alcohol) or set of lungs (don’t smoke) but rather an organ that changes based upon what you think.

An organ that is in the body of a 5-year-old who is absorbing everything he sees, smells, hears and tastes.

Voodoo, indeed: how the hell can you baseline something that changes at the speed of thought?

This is where we are today.  I’m hoping that tomorrow is much like today; there’s much to be said for boredom and normality.

Bill Paxton? Nothing really going on since Twister. Anthony Edwards? Gigs have likely been few after E.R. ended. But Ben Kingsley? I can only assume the movie studio had compromising pictures of him stashed away somewhere.

Do not try this at home: hypothetical AquaDots ingestion!

Tonight the Jacobson family hit the jackpot in the latest round of the Chinese Slipshod Toy Quality Lottery. AquaDots have apparently has been recalled. The problem?

If swallowed, the seemingly harmless pellets metabolize into a date-rape drug known as Liquid Ecstacy.

The toy itself is pretty clever: take a bunch of colored beads, place them into entertaining shapes on a special tray, spray them with water and voila! They stick together as sort of a 21st-century doily. My kids made a couple of stick figures and a darling yellow and black kitty, as seen to the right.

A yellow and black kitty ready to take the young’ns on a wild ride of self-discovery and trippitude, that is!

After hearing about the recall on the radio tonight on the drive home, I burst into my house and snatched the evil thing away from my helpless offspring. Well, not quite: they were busy playing with Play-Doh and didn’t notice. Still, crisis narrowly averted, I say!

Fear not, parental units…according to this New York Times article, the bead manufacturer has promised to “add a safe but foul-tasting ingredient to future beads to discourage children from eating them.” Yeah, that’ll work…since the kids who were affected by the drug ate them not because of their bright, candy-like colors but obviously from their sublime flavor.

And does anybody want to take bets as to how long it will be before we hear of some paint-huffing asshats buying two dozen of these kits from Wal-Mart? I mean, the meth-heads have already made the purchase of over-the-counter medicines a pain in the butt (in my area, at least), so is this scenario that outrageous:

Cashier: I’m sorry sir, you’ve got too many toy items.

Parent: Excuse me?

Cashier: You have three Chinese-manufactured toy items in your cart; by law I’m only allowed to sell you two at a time.

Parent: Uh…ok. I guess I won’t take the G.I. Joe action figure.

Cashier: All righty. Can I see some I.D., please? (In walkie-talkie): Can I get manager approval on lane 8?

At least the stuff China is producing right now is only toxic. Wait until they start shipping toys that somehow, inexplicably, explode when they get too hot. Or too cold. Or on Tuesday. Gosh, the American public might even demand somebody to be accountable for that sort of thing. Maybe even decide to stop buying products from a Communist country with an abysmal human-rights record, few environmental controls whatsoever, and more oversight as to what their citizens see on the Internet than the products they sell to the rest of the world.

Yeah, crazy talk. I must be getting a contact high from the yellow and black kitty.

After my wife and I finished laughing, I had to break the news to him that he wouldn’t get the chance.  My better half then asked me when she would be adopted, and I told her that it would happen shortly after I was adopted.

“I’ll get adopted by somebody rich, like Bill Gates,” I said, and then tried to reassure her with “oh don’t worry, I’ll take you with me.”

She wasn’t buying it.  Come on, Mr. Gates — dad – you’ve got room in your house for a few more, right?

(Note to self: if my wife gets adopted by Bill Gates, that makes her my sister.  Not good: I need to think these things through a bit more.)

I was a bit surprised to find that I enjoyed the movie — other than Pixar‘s stuff I’ve found most Disney movies to be God-awful, saccharine ordeals.  Maybe because Pixar alum John Lasseter had a hand in things, they avoided churning out the same “coming of age” pablum which had become Disney’s staple for the last couple of decades.

Seriously, Bambi II?   Cinderella III?  You’d think that if some company had the resources and budget to crank out a quality production, it would be The Mouse.

Maybe a potential strike in Hollywood might not be so bad.  I bet the handful of talented writers could probably get picked up by sympathetic sponsors outside of California.  Maybe even Bill Gates would adopt a couple.