Monster Art Show

One of the Sesame Street episodes Molly regurgitates in her echolalia has to do with Elmo trying to get ready for the 'Monster Art Show.' Our usual Saturday routine of seeing a move put us on a collision course with the Plaza Art Fair, which is the same basic concept. The theater we go to usually is right there in the thick of it, so my first thought was to park and get on the MAX out of midtown and bus in to the Plaza, then walk through the fair to get to and from the movie.

But show times and whatnot, as we got closer to midtown, I realized the movie I was wanting to see, mother!, would start pretty soon and my second choice was over an hour later.



Whatever the director may say about telling the story of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel and God and all that, I see this as a perfect expression of the effects of fame and how easy it is for someone to chose the adoration of nameless masses over the genuine love of one person, no matter what consequences come.

So we got parked, level five instead of the usual two and got to the movie, and after I went walking through the fair with Molly. I can't tell, sometimes she seems to dig this stuff, sometimes she seems to think it's bullshit. When we got heading back the direction of the car she got hard to keep up with and usually I'm prompting her to come on, so I guess that's a thumbs-down review.

So we got to the parking garage, almost to the elevator, when Mo peeled off. I almost got a hold of her arm to steer her down to a seated position on the curb, instead she fell down and hit her head. Not hard, from what I could tell, shoulder first, and the head didn't go down fast like it would if the neck was limp at the time. But still.

It was a seizure. About a minute to ninety seconds I think, it's hard to tell, when someone you love and are supposed to be protecting seizes, time gets distorted, take my word for it. Seconds become weeks, it's true.

Thanks to the art fair, there were a lot of passers by to witness this, so while I'm holding her jerking head to keep it from hitting the pavement a few more times, I'm trying in vain to tell well-meaning bystanders that this isn't a 9-11 situation. The kid has had so many seizures and been transported after so many of them, it's not that I'd never go that way, but it would take more than this. As ridiculous as that sounds to the uninitiated. If I thought she'd hit her head hard enough to have concussion issues, if she'd say puked in the aftermath or acted otherwise out of the norm for postictal Molly, I wouldn't have hesitated to let the paramedics transport her but as it is I signed the waiver and went and got the car.

One of the EMT's was asking her, "what's your name?" And when he got nothing, was like, we have to transport when they can't even give us a name. I'm like, trust me, before the seizure you'd have have gotten the same not-answer. If you ask her "how are you" she'll say "happy" even through tears. I get that the feedback you're getting is outside the norm but for this kid, it's normal as grilled cheese sandwiches and wearing out Liz Phair videos on YouTube.

As they by default loaded her onto the gurney and into the ambulance even as I tried to tell them the ambulance was overkill, just give us a golf cart ride up to the fifth floor where I'm parked, I think I felt a little like Jennifer Lawrence's character in mother!, it's hard to not be listened to. Not be heard. I'm not taking concussion risks lightly, my wife has a TBI with profound consequences. A friend of mine almost lost a kid to a brain bleed after a skateboard incident and he was totally ready to sign off to not transport his kid who was just a couple of hours later in emergency surgery. I get it, but I saw the impact, it didn't look severe, and Molly wasn't acting differently than she does when she has one of these on a nice soft couch or something.

And she was fine. She soon after ate a couple of egg rolls and a bag of 'cheese chips' (her favorite snack of all time, Sour Cream & Cheddar Ruffles), guzzled some Diet Coke, came home and watched a little YouTube, unloaded the dishwasher and slept like a baby.