2: Food Poisoning/Therapy Begins

  

    My husband was away and I was tired of cooking. I thought the kids and I would go out to eat. Not our usual type of destination for food, but Denny's was close by our new house. I have many fond memories from my childhood of going to our local Denny's for breakfast after church on Sundays. Although my Denny's, in our small quiet town in Massachusetts, is not quite the same Denny's as here in the huge city of Miami. The same menu, just different atmosphere. Anyway, we had fun. Stuffed ourselves with the kinds of food we don't usually get in restaurants. Burgers, chicken fingers and hash browns and fluorescent colored mac and cheese I have ever seen. It was a far cry from our usual meal choices of Spaghetti alle Vongole or sushi or some other more refined restaurant specials. We came home happy and full and went to bed.

    In the middle of the night I am awoken by my daughter who is terrified because she just threw up on the floor. First time throwing up since she was a baby and we tried to let her "cry it out" until she would throw up all over her crib. Nice parents huh? We only tried that a few times. Doctors’ orders... Anyway, I run her into the bathroom and she doesn't even understand that she is supposed to throw up in the toilet. I have to teach her where to throw up! It's a frantic scene because I am trying to get her to the toilet. I don't want to clean throw up off of the carpet in our new rental home. She is so distraught she cannot even think straight. She throws up a few more times, I go clean, and then we cuddle in my bed together and fall asleep.

    I cannot even remember now if it was the very next night that the panic attacks started or if things just got progressively worse for the next few months. It got to the point that she was TERRIFIED to go to sleep for fear of it happening again. We would try to help her rationalize and see how illogical she was being. That just because it happened once, it doesn't mean it will happen again tonight. She knew the logic, she would say so, but she just could not convince some part of her brain that was in panic mode. She was unable to get to bed before midnight most nights and she stopped eating meat. Mainly, she seemed to just be having trouble only at night.

    My sister came to visit us a couple of months later. We set her up in our daughter's room so they could sleep together. This was when I realized it was more trouble than I thought. She had a whole set of rituals that she was doing in her room every night. Things like counting the fingers and toes on all of her Barbies and opening books to certain pages. She tried to hide them from my sister, but she noticed and promptly let me know. I was on the phone to find a psychologist the very next day. Luckily we found a wonderful woman. I will call her Dr. T. She was kind and understanding and got us right into see her.

Therapy Begins

   

Cognitive behavioral therapy began as well as some training for my husband and I on how to deal with the situation at home. It was very hard, and still is, to not lose our tempers. She would come out of her room in a panic at least 5 times at night needing hugs and reassurance and we could not always keep from getting angry. So therapy was good for us, too.
    Very slowly she was learning to use different techniques other than rituals to fall asleep. She is a beautiful writer so I bought her a journal so she could write before bed. Although that quickly turned into a ritual I later discovered. I looked in that journal one day and there were weeks’ worth of pages where she wrote and drew EXACTLY the same things on every page. 5 hearts, 10 stars, etc. Ugh. 
   She was however, slowly starting to eat meat again. She could begin to tolerate when we would say words like vomit, barf, throw up, etc. The idea is to expose her to the fear and get her used to hearing the words. This eventually led into some exposure therapy with Dr. T. They would look at websites and photos of vomit. Starting with cartoon images and working their way to harder images.
    Things were getting more manageable. Although taking vacations to our usual island destination became very unpleasant. She did not want to go anywhere. She was afraid of school if someone was sick. She just wanted to stay in the house and feel safe. Our child, who grew up loving boats, snorkeling and fishing with daddy was now terrified. Why? Well, because some people get sea sick of course. Our fun and livelihood on this tiny island where half the place is boat access only, was no longer fun for me. We had been going there since she was 4. We consider it our home away from home. We were going to live there someday! 
    This was particularly hard for my husband to swallow. This island is his dream. His peace and solace from the regular hustle and bustle of life. My dream too, but on the back shelf for now... Because taking her anywhere from her safety of home in Miami is one big tiring and mentally exhausting chore for me. So when vacation opportunities would arise, I would let my husband spend his time on the island and I would stay here with the kids. I was fine with that. I am Mom, I am strong, I can hold down the fort. I also was going to feel terribly guilty that I was letting her ruin his fun in addition to mine if we all went. So stay home we did. For about a year...

1: The Beginning

 I am not a writer. I have even said on many occasions that I cannot write to save my life. I want to prove myself wrong. So, forgive my punctuation and grammatical errors as I am sure everyone is a critic...

    I am a mother of two, a wife to my best friend and a ballet teacher. But, since it is our life, well mainly the life of my daughter that I am trying to save, I am going to give this blog a try. Friends said that it will help me to write it all down, but mainly, I want to help and reach out to others. So here goes.

    My beautiful, magical, mysterious 11 year old daughter is an emetophobic. Yah, I had never heard of it either until about a year and a half ago. My spell check cannot even recognize it as I look at the little red squiggly line under it! But believe me, or google it in if you want, it is very very real. Emetophobia is an intense and irrational fear of vomit/vomiting. It is listed in Wikipedia as the fifth most common phobia. She has lost 7 lbs since June, missed close to 3 weeks of school, afraid of food, afraid of her friends and afraid of us if we don't wash our hands. All for the terrorizing fear that someone or something may make her sick.

    Why my daughter? I have some ideas. She was kind of hard wired with anxiety as soon as she was born. In the genes unfortunately. You know those babies you can never hand off to anyone else without terrorizing cries, the ones that never sleep, the ones that cry much more than those other babies who are quietly resting in their own beds. That's my girl! 
    Born naturally in the water with a beloved midwife, she is our first child, the joy of our life (yes even with all of the above) that we just wanted to hold and comfort and protect. To the many discerning eyes in our families, we decided upon attachment parenting as the way to go. With lots of cuddles she slept in our bed and was carried by my heart in my homemade sling. We chose this method not only because I believed in it, but it was the only way to make her comfortable and happy. Sure, if I was willing to let my child cry it out for a year or two, maybe my life would be easier now, but I couldn't do it. We tried! The doctor even said "babies cry, that's what they do. Just let her cry it out." Really I thought? All day and night? Are you sure? After 9 months with that doctor, I just didn't trust him. We switched doctors and found out that our poor little girl was suffering. She had allergies! She was lactose intolerant! What? Why the other doctor didn't test for these things still sickens me. I look back and think of how I had to glue my child to me to make her feel comfortable when a simple diet change would have been sufficient and she would have been a happy independent child. 

    Undoing that glue has been quite a challenge over the years. Starting in kindergarten and lasting through 3rd grade we had a serious separation anxiety problem. I could not even go to the bathroom by myself until we found a wonderful child psychologist. We solved it and life was much better with our wonderful little only child who enjoyed being the center of our world. 

    At the age of 7, her comfy little life got really uncomfortable for her. Our son was born. Surprise to us all! Especially to her. The anxiety began again showing itself in lots of small ways. All things we could handle though with some extra comfort and some raising of our voices when necessary. About 6 months after our son was born, my husband and I decided we needed a change. We wanted a warmer climate, a better/different job market for Fabrizio and I had a desire from me to sell my ballet school and spend my time with my children. So, we made plans and we moved to Miami in June of 2010. 
     Then, 5 months after our move, is when I learned that nothing we had ever been through with our daughter could compare to a sudden bout of food poisoning...