About eight months after the accident, Oldest was still pretty depressed. I decided to take him out of the house and go to the pet store. I don't know why I decided a pet store. I guess I thought that all the cute little cold noses and wet tongues would do the boy some good. We were looking around and he became fascinated with the ferrets. We had the cage opened and a cute little ferret crawled up his arm, sniffed his face, and licked his ear. He made his first big purchase with his settlement money that day. He bought that friendly little guy, a cage, food and everything he would need to properly care for him. He named him Rafiki.
We had no idea what we were in for!!!! This cute little guy is so energetic and has the attention span of a cheese sandwich. I have seen YouTube videos of people who have trained their ferrets to roll over, play dead and other things and am amazed. Rafiki's favorite trick is finding Hubby's cooky stash, this trick, he taught himself. He runs all over the house stealing things and hiding them under the dishwasher, and has already gotten himself in such a pickle that we had to take him to an emergency vet.
All this havock is well worth it, though. He helped my oldest son through a great depression and now seems to be the only one that can make my son with Asbergers smile. This son, is still having a rough go of things. it seems that he decided to play the "Knock Out" game. This is a game where kids make themselves pass out. I guess you are supposed to have other people around to catch you. My son decided that he didn't need all that and made himself pass out, alone. He thought he had thought it all through. He piled up pillows around himself and went for it. Unfortunately, he miss calculated his height and bashed his head into the wall as he was on his way down.
He told me about what happened. I checked him out and realized he had a concussion. I called an EMT friend and we decided that a home treatment would be fine. That was about eight months ago. Since his little.... slip of good judgement, my son has had daily headaches, confusion, is constantly moody, and has memory problems. It took a while to determine that these symptoms were a) not allergies, b) not normal mood disturbances, and c) daily. After that, we started trying to get a doctor to figure out what was going on. We made three trips to This Son's doctor, one to the ER and still no one seemed to care enough to find out what the problem was. (The Emergency Room doctor did mention that it seems to be a brain tumor, but told us we would have to follow up with our regular doctor to rule that out, but he didn't run any tests.) Finally, I had a fit at This Son's doctor office, fired the doctor (um.... kind of loudly) and left to find a new doctor.
I decided to go to a Group Clinic instead of an individual. Best choice I could have made. Before they would even set up a new patient appointment, we were sent to urgent care. At urgent care, This Son was scheduled for an MRI and an appointment to have the tests read FOR THE VERY NEXT DAY, before we even left.
My son has been tentativley diagnosed with Post Concussion Syndrome (not a tumor, HA). He still needs to meet with two other docs (an Ophthalmologist , and a Neurologist ) but at least something is being done- finally.
In the mean time, my son's, still having symptoms. We argue every day and his memory problems are really stressing him out (wich feeds into the other symptoms, making them worse), but thank goodness we have this sweet little ferret that can distract him with its crazy anctics and put a smile on all our faces. Thank you Rafiki, you are a double silver lining. Best pet EVER.
If you have a warm fuzzy to share about how a pet has helped you, please share it with me! I wanna hear these stories and see the pics of the little unsung heros that change life just by being themselves.
