seems she was never going to kill her self after all, big surprise.

Here is her supposed picture and her final post....

90DayJane is a personal art piece about me. It was meant for me and
(what I ignorantly thought would be) a small number of people who
might find it on BlogSpot. It is the result of me tapping into the
darkest part of myself and seeing where it led.
What I have written and filmed, at its core, is from a place of truth.
I am the girl in the videos. I have great disappointment with my
generation and its obvious obsession with celebrity culture rather
than their fellow man, thus the former Chuck Palahniuk reference.
I wanted this blog to be about personal discovery and truth. But the
correspondences I have received have taught me more about those
qualities than I could ever express. 90DayJane has become its own
entity and has influenced me. In fact, it has changed my perspective
as a human being.
I feel a massive sense of responsibility to my art, but more
importantly the readers of this blog. My closeness to this project
must have made art seem like reality to many people. That is not a
reaction that I expected nor can I morally justify. This is why my
project, 90DayJane, will be taken down in the next few hours.
90DayJane was meant to mirror the tragic figure, Christine Chubbuck.
Newscaster Christine Chubbuck committed suicide in 1974 by shooting
herself in the head live on air. She was very vocal about her
depression to those around her and gave every indication of her exact
intentions leading up to the event. Sadly, no one reacted or helped
Christine and those left behind could only ask "why".
Her story both inspired and terrified me because I can truly empathize
with her rage and even her isolation. I wondered how Christine's life
and subsequent suicide would play out in our time. Would the internet
be yet another place of isolation to her or an escape? If she remained
vocal about her intentions would anyone bother asking "why" or even
noticing before the fact? Would the reaction (if any) of the public
change her intentions?
I thought this mirror might reflect the isolation everyday people feel
and the lack of true human connection on the internet.
It is my feeling that the internet is the best and worst example of
human interaction. This was painfully proven to me by reading every
comment and every email. I believe I owed that to everyone. I know we
all saw the dark side of the reactions in the blog comments. There was
so much hate, immaturity and apathy. But, I truly wish everyone could
see the beauty and honesty in the emails; many people feel like Jane
(me). People have been more real and heartfelt than I thought was
possible. I owe them a debt of gratitude for showing me the difference
between people's reactions and their true feelings. I understand.
I do want everyone to know that I accepted no money for 90DayJane
despite multiple offers from television, film, books, etc... I will
not release my identity and I ask not to be contacted for any type of
promotion. I want only for the people who wrote to me to know that I
hear them and feel the same way. Your emails touched me so much.
Please, share your thoughts with someone in your life or express them
in a positive way.

To everyone, please reach out to those around you. It's much harder to
ask for help than to offer it.

In the video above I created a PostSecret revealing this project for
what it is. I am in no way affiliated with them, but their site does
great work for suicide outreach. At any rate, PostSecret gives me both
strength and perspective whenever I read it. I hope it does the same
for you.

thx- 90DayJane

Tags: 90dayjane

You get used to it I suppose, if you are going to have a social network comprised mostly of expatriates, they are frequently going to move on. I've certainly had a few that have left over the years I have been here.

Last fall I had four friends that I was closest too, Nic, Dave, Genni and Cynthia.

Nic moved back to South Africa last October. Sad to say I have not been very good about keeping in touch with him, I will have to call him tomorrow and talk to him. But I hear enough about him and from him on LiS. I am not completely out of the loop with him, and we have had some email contact. He was going to go for a year and see if he wanted to come back. His family in the meantime is all in the process of moving to Australia. I suspect he will eventually follow them. I doubt he will be back to live in Sweden, but maybe. Who knows. I don't think Nic does.

I said my final goodbye to Cynthia today, she is heading out Tuesday morning to California for a few days and then on to her new home in Tucson. She is confident that she will never return to Sweden. Went out with her last night and met her for a brunch today. Unlike with Nic, I will probably not be hearing much about her. I will miss her. I will miss the agreements, and the disagreements with her. We are probably too much alike for either of our own good. She has the same birthday as I, but exactly one year younger. She should be getting her adopted daughter real soon after a 3 or 4 year hassle.

Dave, what can I say about Dave. My go out to the bar and drink a beer buddy. My travel around Europe buddy. My confidant and best friend here in the motherland. He has accepted a job for the WHO in Geneva, it is a very smart move for him. He will be gone in 6 weeks. I am sure we will keep in touch to some degree, I will probably get to know Geneva to some extent when I go visit him. We can still travel around Europe together at least, as there are still many cities I wish to see.

Genni, Genni is still here for the moment, but her husbands businesses get taxed through the nose and he would like to move them somewhere else. They have jumped through all the hoops to relocate to Australia, a process they started while still living in South Africa, they have established residency there last year and now must live there for at least two years out of the next five to gain permanent residency. So they at least will go for 2 years. Who knows when though.

I don't know why, but I am not very good at keeping in touch with people, I don't do it very well with my family or my friends, even when they live in the same town as me. I am lazy about it and force them through my inaction to keep in touch with me. I am still in touch on an erratic basis with my second family back in SoCal. They will always be with me no matter where life blows me. Sadly I am way closer to them than I have ever been with my sisters. Years can go by with no contact with them. Juli is hard to stay in touch with because her refusal to become a functioning member of society means that she can't afford things like a computer or a broadband connection. AFDC just doesn't cover such things. Liz I used to make an effort with, but she rarely responds and after years of this, and her constantly saying nothing is wrong between us (which I believe), I have pretty much given up on and make no effort anymore. I am in contact with my mom, but even there I make her make the effort. Not out of a meanness or anything. I love her dearly. It is just the laziness I guess. Maybe I share the same defective stay in touch gene that Liz has.

I am always in the process of making new friends, I've become pretty good friends with these two Swedish gals, Åse and Susannah, and a guy from Bosnia named Sait. Sait is 20 years younger than me and gay, so he will not take the place of Dave and the gals are, well, gals. For various reasons they are often not available to go do things with. I've other friends here too, people that I've known for a while and socialize with, but not the same sort of friends as the four mentioned above. They are mostly expats as well, so there is that leaving possibility with them too.

Tags: bye, expatriates, friends, leaving, moving
My Current Mood: recumbent
Music I'm listening to right now: Björk Vespertine

someone posted this on LiS, and I think it is great!

It is an impromptu interview in Davos with Bono, with a certain someone standing right behind him!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTTqP4r6bgI

Can you guess who? (You can probably recognize him if you look through my friends list!)

:-)

I think maybe she took it down herself.

Now there is a 90-day-jane one that maybe has some virus's with it that was likely put up by someone else since her www.90dayjane.com still links to her original blogspot URL.

Of course there is an entertaining spoof out there now called 90 day Tania, http://suicide.movielol.org/ even though this is a spoof, it still illustrates the possibility of copy cats out there.

I have come to the conclusion that 90dayjane was always in it for the attention and we haven't heard the last of her

Tags: 90dayjane, sucide
My Current Mood: bored
Music I'm listening to right now: the sound of Alex playing a game on the other computer

on LiS someone posted a link to a blog called 90dayjane, it is this blog here;
http://90dayjane.blogspot.com/
it is disturbing to say the least, not that she is writing anything disturbing, only that she could be starting a new trend. She is writing her thoughts on a 90 day countdown to committing suicide. What is up with people? Is it a hoax? Real? Only time will tell, she wrote a little running up to the 90 day 'day' and then officially started the countdown on February 5th. She is a normal appearing 24 year old that claims not to be depressed or be going through any major life crisis of any sort. She says she is an atheist that simply doesn't see any point to going on. I can see her point, but my curiosity has always kept that option off the table for me in the past, then what really cemented that option not being for me was my becoming a parent.

This is already generating a lot of comments, from people believing it is just a Christian anti-atheist http://friendlyatheist.com/ thing where she will find the lord and be cured of her atheism to people that think she is just an attention whore. On LiS one guy posted a link to a blog where a fairly intelligent sounding guy is talking about the viral affects of teen behaviors, indeed any group of peoples behaviors. It makes a lot of sense, his name is Malcolm Gladwell http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:LXzNC0PQmx0J:www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/+Tipping+point+%2B+suicide&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1
and he wrote a book called 'The Tipping Point' which is a book I've been wanting to read but haven't gotten a hold of a copy of in English yet. In his blog he says this; "One of the things I explore in the book is that ideas can be contagious in exactly the same way that a virus is. One chapter, for example, deals with the very strange epidemic of teenage suicide in the South Pacific islands of Micronesia. In the 1970's and 1980's, Micronesia had teen suicide rates ten times higher than anywhere else in the world. Teenagers were literally being infected with the suicide bug, and one after another they were killing themselves in exactly the same way under exactly the same circumstances. We like to use words like contagiousness and infectiousness just to apply to the medical realm. But I assure you that after you read about what happened in Micronesia you'll be convinced that behavior can be transmitted from one person to another as easily as the flu or the measles can. In fact, I don't think you have to go to Micronesia to see this pattern in action. Isn't this the explanation for the current epidemic of teen smoking in this country? And what about the rash of mass shootings we're facing at the moment--from Columbine through the Atlanta stockbroker through the neo-Nazi in Los Angeles?"

This also makes a lot of sense to me. I have seen the viral affect of a groups behaviors in the past. It is what peer pressure is all about, isn't it? It is why I started doing drugs in my youth? Because all my peers were doing them? Even as an above average intelligent person, I was unable to avoid that particular trap.

What sort of place is our planet, our society, heading to? If nothing else it will be an interesting one!

I wonder how long it will take blogspot to shut her blog down? She has stated that if they do, we should continue with her on her journey to death at www.90dayjane.com





On a completely different note, Alex has not had a seizure since last October I think. I am definitely stoked about that. He is growing and interacting with other kids these days amazingly fast. He is definitely a curious fun boy now and not a little kid anymore. His shyness seems to be becoming a thing of the past. i am glad to see that as my shyness has been nothing but a curse to me my whole life. I'll be glad if I can avoid passing that on to him.

Tags: 90dayjane, blogs, seizures, sucide
Music I'm listening to right now: Björk (it is actualy pretty good, I'm impressed!)

I love the fall. I love the colors and the cooler temperatures, I enjoy the settling back into routines after the summer, people are happy and feeling good. The only bad thing about fall is that it is followed by my least favorite season, winter. I very much dislike winter. I dislike the 3 day old snow on the ground (I actually do like the snow when it is new and oh so white and the silence lays on the ground with it), and the constant grayness. I dislike the freezing and the slipping on the ice. The darkness is not really for me either. I used to consider myself a child of the night to some degree, but after experiencing Stockholm winters, I know that I am not. People get colder in the winter too, they withdraw more into themselves, kind of hunker down and cover up, go into a survival mode. I dislike that as well.

I picked up Alex from dagis on Wednesday and took him to a friends house for a Halloween party. There were about 6 kids there and maybe 5 adults. The kids went trick or treating in the rain and collected candy from the neighbors. It was at a friends house in Danderyd. All the kids wore costumes and watched Charlie Brown's Halloween movie on the TV. Alex was ecstatic. He loved it. Especially the knocking on peoples doors and saying trick or treat. It was a pretty special day, and I suppose with the snow on the ground all day today, marked the end of fall for me.

I have spent most of the day in and out of bed. Don't know why I was so tired. I don't suffer from depressions or I would think that was it. Probably it was avoiding the going out and changing my tires to the winter ones on my car. Oh well, guess I will have to do it tomorrow.

Tags: winter is here
Current Location: Home
My Current Mood: contemplative
Music I'm listening to right now: The Crane Wife

With Kat, he has had a cold the last couple of days.

We seem to be doing about one a month now.

Tags: seizure

with Kat.

Aug 25th, (Saturday) Seizure in the early morning while sleeping, he has had a cold for a couple of days but no temp and he doesn’t have a temp this day either.

My friend Dave is from a town in Nebraska that is comprised of a lot of immigrants from the old Czechoslovakia. His parents were born in Nebraska but all four of his grandparents are from the old country. His parents grew up speaking Czech even though they were in America. Now, they go back every couple of years for a month or so road trip. Dave and I are going to go visit them, for a few days and rent a car for 8 days and look around. Dave has been there before naturally, but this will all be new for me. Dave's parents will be in Brno on the day we arrive, so I guess we will drive up there first I think.

So, we booked 8 days in the Czech Republic in September. I am looking forward to seeing it!

Went to the parade and the party at Pride park afterwards till the wee hours of the morning, what a great time! Fantastic people, and a fantastically good time with the best kind of company!

I felt alive at the Pride party and parade, and I finally figured out what I am missing in Stockholm by and large. I felt like people saw me at pride, and they saw me in all those other cities. Unfortunately I feel invisible in Sweden, and that is what is missing. A sense of identity.

What a place! 5 days. This truly feels like home. Since I am unwilling to leave Europe while my son lives here, I can tell that some day when he is a little older and I can put him on a plane by himself, I will be moving to Amsterdam. The closest thing to a live and let live attitude I have found. Certainly a breath of fresh air after stifling Stockholm.

I met a girl on-line, no- not in a romantic sense, just a friend, and she was from Huizen, the Netherlands. Which I guess is sort of a suburb of Amsterdam. Realistically, you can drive from one end of the Netherlands to the other in 2 hours, so maybe it is all one big suburb. He name is Simone,

and she had the time to show us around a lot and take us to some of the places a little off the tourist path.

I went with Dave, and Vickie joined us there from where she lives in Växjö. Dave and I got there and took a train from the airport, well it turned out that we were on the wrong train, and we should have switched in some place called Weesp. So we wound up way out in the countryside. We talked to Simone and she said get off the train and she would come get us, so we got off in Muiden. Simone came and got us and showed us around the town and we stopped for a coffee in a cafe.

We saw a unique (to me anyway) drawbridge and lock setup

and a castle with an actual moat!

The canals there were amazing



and the boats and houses were fantastic. They were just a taste of what was to come over the next 5 days.

Amsterdam was a flood on my senses, yes, we smoked a little weed, just because we could, and we looked around the redlight district, just because it was there and interesting, but mostly we walked around the place. What a city! People that were friendly and open, the public transportation was good and not too expensive, and all the museums and what not were very nice. We made it to the Van Gogh museum and the Heineken experience. We sat out and drank beer and watched the multitudes go by at 2 in the morning at Rembrandt Square.




Well the photos are just too many to post them all, you will have to go to my photo page and see them to see them all.
http://public.fotki.com/alexspappa/my_family_and_friends-1/amsterdam/

On one of our last days there, we went to Utrecht. Utrecht was different because it has sidewalks and cafes and stuff right down at the water level, as well as up on the street. Beautiful town! A college town and absolutely stunning! I could easily see myself living here as well. It felt like home.




So far, this is the town I most want to see more of, the place, the country. I loved Paris, and Barcelona too, and even the cities in Germany, but for the most part I figured that if I have money to travel some more on, it wouldn't be back to these places because I'd rather see someplace new. But the Netherlands will draw me back. It feels like where I belong.

Tags: amsterdam
My Current Mood: excited
Music I'm listening to right now: The Crane Wife

Last week. What a great town. Like Paris, it seemed to breathe with a life of its own. I don't know why I don't get that feel here in Stockholm despite it being a beautiful city.

There was a section in it built by a man named Antoni Gaudi, it was interesting and I was sure that the English word Guady must have derived from this place. It was fascinating to see though, even his masterpiece the unfinished church.

This was a Catalonia city and I immensely enjoyed myself there.

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures as I lost my camera on the way back at the airport. I put it in the bucket to go through the x-ray machine along with my wallet, coins, phone, keys and watch. Right behind it was my computer in another bucket. Well the people were slow taking their belongings in front of me, and the operator of the machine didn't see it and stop the conveyor. This caused two buckets to flip up in the air and turn over, guess which two. Yep. Mine. So there I was trying to get everything back into my pockets and I missed the fact that the camera wasn't there since I don't normally carry it around through airport security. So I lost all my pictures. I miss the pics a lot more than the camera.

Tags: barcelona

Alex had another seizure today, he was upstairs at his moms and she was downstairs cooking. She heard a bang and called out to him and he didn't answer. She went running up the stairs. She said it is very hot upstairs, like over 40 degrees Celsius. So maybe he just over heated.

I just dropped him off with her this morning, I've had him since Thursday, and he has been fine the whole time. I guess he has a tem now though, 37.7 C and he normally runs about 36.9

Tags: seizures

i met this guy at the Southside pub a few weeks ago when I was out with Dave and Cynthia. Martin is his name. As we were talking motorcycles came up. I told him how I hadn't been on one for a long time, since I moved to Sweden and he said I should come out and ride with him as he has two bikes. We swapped phone numbers, but I figured it was like a lot of things that get said in bars and not really going to happen. The next day he calls me and wants me to come over for a ride. we start to set it up but then run into a snag with a second helmet. So it doesn't happen. End of story I think. Then yesterday, he calls again and has a helmet. So I bicycle over to his garage on Hornstull, and he takes me down and shows me the bikes. One of them is a Honda CBX 1000, a crotch rocket. This is his favorite ride, but after 2 accidents on it his ex-girlfriend made him buy a cruiser, which is what I am going to ride. What a machine! It is a 2004 Yamaha Road Warrior, a 1670cc V Twin. Ridden about 3 times and with a layer of dust on it. Starts right up and has this wonderful rumble to it. Ended up riding well over a 100 km all told. What a bike! I want one! We rode down to Botkyrka, over to Hanninge, back up to Hornstull to get him a jacket, over to my apartment to get me a jacket, then down for a cruise around Södermalm, into Vasastan and through Djurgården. Fantastic ride!


Then it was back on the bicycle to ride to Lilla Essinge to Cynthias for a formal round of Texas Hold-em, which I won! hahaha! Great day!

Well one anyway. Alex had a seizure at dagis today. Can't really see a reason for it. He is ramping down on his meds now, he is down to just 8 pills a day, much better than the 14 of a few months back!

So, we will see what happens. Hopefully he is out growing these things now. he has just turned 5 a few weeks ago, so it is time.

His last one was almost 3 months ago, so I am very optimistic.

Tags: seizure

When did it happen? I noticed this last weekend, that Alex no longer needs his teddy bear. It is like it was never a part of his life. I can't even remember when it happened. When I think about it, it has been a while since he last slept with it, or even needed it when he hurt himself. How could I have not noticed this change? This feels like a major rite of passage in his life to me.

I picked him up Thursday and took him to the circus. It was his first time at one, and probably my first one since I was a kid myself. This wasn't one of the rinky dink super small ones, it was a large one by Swedish standards, although still no Barnum & Bailey 3 ringer.

There is a good chance that I will be off to Barcelona in the next few weeks to install some equipment for a Spanish customer. It would be our first sale in Spain, so we want to make sure it goes super smooth. Even though the customer is not going to pay for my visit, my boss still thinks it is a good idea, so it will be done on the cheap.

Booked my tickets on SAS for the last 4 nights and 5 days in July. Going to Amsterdam. SAS was as cheap as Ryan-Air interestingly enough! Looking forward to that. Going with my friend Dave and another friend Vickie.

Music I'm listening to right now: slingbox

I am ecstatic! No seizures for two months. I don't know if the meds are finally working, or if maybe he is finally growing out of them, but I am stoked! He has been on the same meds, the three drug cocktail of 14 pills a day, all winter now. So I am not really convinced it is the meds. I think maybe he is finally growing out of them. He has not gone more than a week or two without one since they started back when he was 1 or so. It has been a long journey. The docs have now reduced a couple of his meds and they are going to wean him off off the two he has been on the longest, so now he is down to just 12 pills a day.

Tags: seizures
Current Location: Home
Music I'm listening to right now: Alex's snoring in the next room

Ok, ok, it was a short trip, but this last weekend I did a Ryan Air trip to Frankfurt to visit my friends Matt and Ally. This was the first time I'd seen them in their new city (well, it has been a couple of years), I'd just seen them when they were in Stockholm. They were doing really well! Their son, Jerry was a bouncing active fun little two year old boy. The last time I'd seen him he was still a baby.

Frankfurt was a beautiful city of about the same size as Stockholm. It is kind of a sleepy city with a lot of very nice architecture. They have some great food though! I went with my friend Cynthia, who loves to cook. She went ape-shit in the local fresh food markets buying all the stuff she can't get in Stockholm. Then she cooked us up a great meal on Saturday evening, and some of Matt and Allys friends joined us for the feast. A great time was has all the way around.

The first market was a cool indoor market manned by about 50 stalls of a permanent nature, all separate businesses, specializing in different things. Here is Ally (yes, 7 months along for sprog number 2) and Cynthia in the indoor market.


Amongst the other things to see, was an old town that got flattened in WWII, and rebuilt exactly as it was afterwards.


This was one of the original city towers that survived the war.


Here is the old opera house (yes there is a new one!)



This building in the middle, look carefully, is built to look like it is falling down, I liked it! Look in the middle behind the first building.


All in all, I had a great time, and I feel privileged to have friends like these!

Here is the link to the rest of the pictures I took in Frankfurt!
http://public.fotki.com/alexspappa/my_family_and_friends-1/frankfurt-may-2007/

Yep, she informed me a day or two ago. In general I am OK with this, if she is happy, then she makes my life less miserable. Her and her new beau have bought a house together, still in Täby. She is putting her current house on the market. Paid 3,370,000 kronor for the new one, a regular house.

I asked her if I could meet the new guy since he is going to be a parental influence on my son. She had no problem with that which is good. Then she told me that the new guy, Peter, would not be doing any parenting of Alex. I told her that was absurd, of course he will. That is the way it is. When I hook back up with someone, that will be the way it is this way too.

Then she came up with another boner that makes me well and truly wonder just how little she knows me. We lived together for over 5 years and sometimes she makes it clear that she has absolutely no idea who I am. The boner? She said that she hoped I wouldn't, but was afraid I would, use this as an excuse to withdraw from Alex's life. She was genuinely concerned that I would decide that since there was a father figure in Alex's life, I would use that as a reason to skedaddle out of Sweden and leave Alex.

Ah well!

Tags: kat
Music I'm listening to right now: Dave Brubeck Quartet, Take Five

I finally got to see Paris last weekend. I have wanted to do this for years. I always thought that seeing some of the great cities in Europe would be a lot easier while living here, but life somehow gets in the way. Ryan Air makes it a lot easier though! I went with my friends Dave and Lynda. We rented an apartment for the long weekend and it was a fairly cheap trip. I loved this city! It had a beat of its own and after the stifling atmosphere of Stockholm it was a refreshing change. People actually returned smiles and it was easy to strike up conversations. I felt alive in this city! I have to go back someday! We were joking around that it was a truly monumental city since there were so many huge monuments there. The Eiffel tower had to be done, and we went to the top, but I have to say, that was the worst part of the trip. They are driving through about 10 times more people than the place can really accommodate on its people moving systems. It reminded me of being in the military again. Hurry up and wait someplace else. But it was really cool to see! I spent 4 days walking around this city as I tried to take it all in.


Here is the Arc de Triomphe



Here is a girl tending bar from Ohio, of all places! Dave was in love!

We met a good crowd there, and after this place closed, a group of people took us poor tourists to an underground club down in some grotto, a lot of fun! (Well except for getting a fiber optic light brush poked in my eye by an exuberant partier!)


Here we are in front of the Eiffel Tower, the picture was taken from the square between the two wings of the Palais de Chaillot



Here is a building that is next to the Eiffel, I liked it because you could see a courtyard in the middle and lots of apartments that opened into it. I wonder how much these apartments cost? :-)



Here was the catacombs, interesting place, what a gruesome job it must have been to stack up all these tens of thousands of bones in all these caves.



Couldn't go to France without eating French Onion Soup could I?



Here I am at Notre Dame



I liked the Panthéon too!



I can't forget the Louvre!



Where I got to see the Venus de Milo!



And and as a side note, don't sweat the pics of me looking angry with my arms crossed! It is a joke since the day I went to Stonehenge and found it all fenced in and closed, a pic like that was all I got, it was in my pre digital camera days!



Here is a link to the other pictures I took in Paris!
http://public.fotki.com/alexspappa/my_family_and_friends-1/paristrip/

Tags: paris
Current Location: my living room
My Current Mood: chipper
Music I'm listening to right now: Radio Kaos

I am riding the train, listening to my entire record collection and surfing the net, all at the same time. I wonder what I ever did before this kind of technology was available. I read a lot more I guess, and this does cut into my reading time, good or bad, I don't know.

As I sit here listening again to Miles Davis' Kind of Blue album, I am again struck by what a fantastic piece of music this is. Truly fantastic. Humbling.

I am on my way down to Hassleholm to install a new set of sensors in a waste water treatment plant there and hook it up to their oxygen blowers to maintain a perfect 2mg per liter of dissolved oxygen in the water. Fun stuff. I could have taken a plane, but then it would have been getting to the airport early, checking the luggage and going through all the hassles of security and whatnot, then crowding into a tiny little seat and then the deplaning and getting my luggage back. The train takes three hours instead of 1, but I get to the train station 10 minutes before the train departs and leave right away when it gets where I'm going. I sit in a much more comfortable seat and get a view going by my window. All in all I think it takes about the same amount of time. I wonder why anyone would fly a short haul flight. I wonder if I am the only one chainging my travel patterns these days.

I am back in Stockholm tomorrow night and then early the next morning off to Paris for a small 3 day mini vacation with some friends. I am looking forward to that a lot. I've never been to Paris before so I will do all the touristy things like see the Louve and the Eiffel Tower.

Alex seems to be having fewer seizures these days, which maybe means the new meds are starting to take hold. Poor little guy is taking 14 pills a day and it kind of sickens me.

He got a new Dora the Explorer game from grandma last weekend, which was CandyLand done with a Dora theme, I ended up playing it with him several times, turns out he loves winning. :-)

Well Robert Cray is up now, so I am off to check my emails and stare out the window as I fall into the tunes.

While he was running today at dagis, he had one mid srun, which means he promptly fell on his face while running and of course didn't stick his hands out to catch himself since he was too busy having a seizure.

But again, he is at least having fewer of them!

Tags: seizures

But on the plus side it has been awhile since his last one!

Tags: seizures

a kids birthday party at Kat's sister Vicky's house.

Tags: seizures

.

Tags: seizures

Ok, he had another seizure today at daycare, but there may be a silver lining.

When he had those two seizures on the 10, he also got a new EEG, (or is it ECG?) and they saw a lot of activity, including a lot of what appear to be mini seizures. So they have decided that maybe he is having too many (evidently our word wasn't good enough) and are going to ease him off the two meds he is on now and try another one.

Tags: seizures

Yep, seizure again today at dagis.

Tags: seizures

Kat tells me, one at Dagis, one at home. She says he has a high fever now.

Tags: seizures

Today some of my friends got to witness one. We were out at lekslottet, which literally translates to The Play Castle. It is a indoor place where they specialize in kids birthday parties and kids of around 5 till around 8 or 9 can pay 100 kronor and get to play on their huge McDonalds style playgrounds. This is the sort of place Alex had a seizure while my mom was here this summer. I knew it was a danger place for this and I had told his mom that I didn't want to take him to one of these on Sunday (day after tomorrow)for a friends birthday party because of it. I was going to meet some of my friends though and thought I could keep a real close eye on him and prevent him from having one. He started to show all the signs and I had him sit down and drink a whole bottle of water and rest for a while, then I let him play some more because he looked ok. He went back in and was in the very back of the thing, up a couple three levels or so and had a seizure. Full on type, frothing at the mouth and everything. He pissed himself too. I wouldn't even have known about it if my friend Ally hadn't been back there checking up on her kid. It probably would have taken another 5 minutes for me to get worried enough to go look for him and another five minutes for me to actually find him.

One yesterday, and one today. Not sick that I can tell, seems fine. When will this shit end? Damn Swedish medical system.

Tags: seizures

Seizure at Kats. He was running around like a mad man with his friend at home and he froze up, didn't shake or anything, just froze up for a minute or so. A new type of seizure? Or does it appear this way due to the suppressive nature of the meds?

Tags: seizures

His mom found him on the floor, passed out the way he gets after he has a seizure. She didn't see him have one, but it looks like he must have. He has been coughing and sneezing so it could be from him being sick.

This led to a minor tiff between Kat and I as she didn't like my comments about the extremely crappy medical system here that can't seem to be able to find anything for Alex that works. She agrees with me but it upsets her that we can't do anything about it. She is crying and very upset, not about my comments, but about Alex having to go through this so often. Breaks my heart, it is very sad, but on the other hand it could have been a lot worse. This at least should be manageable if we were ever able to get him to competent medical help.

Tags: seizure

I picked up Alex Friday afternoon and took him back to Kat on Saturday evening. Then Sunday evening(Christmas eve) I picked him up again and kept him till Tuesday evening. So he got to spend Christmas eve with his mom doing the whole Swedish Christmas thing-
Then he got to wake up Christmas morning and discover Santa had come again during the night and left us both presents under the tree. I guess I over did it since he got about 15 things.

If the postal system ever gets its act together he'll get more when the packages from my mom and sister arrive.

I had Alex last weekend and won't have him this one. It was the last weekend I'll have him before Christmas. So we put up a small little tree. He really had a good time doing it. I am going to pick him up late Christmas eve after he does the Swedish Christmas thing with his mom. When he enters the apartment, the tree will be all lit up and he will go to bed with it in his mind. When he wakes up Christmas morning he will have his presents from Santa under the tree. It will be the traditional American style christmas. Poor kid, he is going to have to suffer through two Christmases.

Here is a picture of the lame little tree.

Tags: christmas 2006

This makes 5 in the last month, 13 in the last 3 months. I am so sick of these.

I am starting to lose hope that he will ever grow out of them. I am starting to lose hope that the piss poor medical system here in Sweden will ever come up with a way to medicate him properly.

This is probably the first time in my life I've ever felt envious of people with a little money to burn. If I could I would love to take Alex back to the US for a proper analysis at a good childrens medical hospital, one with a reputation for children with epilepsy. But it would cost airline tickets for him, his mother and me. The hotel costs while he undergoes the analysis, and the cost of the analysis itself. Way beyond my reach. Frustrating beyond compare.

I wonder, the medical system here seems pretty confident that he inherited this from me. Seems I had these so called fever seizures when I was young also. I eventually grew out of them, and I still hope Alex does as well. But I wonder if in fact I didn't actually have epilepsy also, but maybe the medical system back in the 60's didn't really recognize the type of epilepsy that Alex now has and that I might have had as a child. Maybe I still have it, just not the siezures. It could explain why I shake all the time. Maybe there is a medication that could put a stop to these shakes of mine. But realistically since I've lived with these parkinsons like shakes every since I was a teen, I guess they are not doing me any harm. I wouldn't mind getting rid of them if I could though, they really do suck. I think it would be pointless to have it checked out by the Swedish medical system though.

Tags: seizures

another seizure.

Tags: seizures

One in the middle of the night while he was sleeping. One today. He has something going on, maybe strep throat. It is worrisome that he has one in the middle of the night while he is sleeping though. That isn't supposed to happen.

Tags: seizures

today with Kat

Tags: seizures

This seizure was while playing with his friend Daniel out in the yard. He does have a temperature at the moment.

Tags: seizures

today at dagis

Tags: seizures

Seizure at dagis, this one is reputedly different, hands more violently shaking-possibly a result of the new meds?

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at dagis today

Tags: seizures

today at dagis.

Tags: seizures

Alex had a seizure at dagis today, they said it wasn’t as severe as the last one. They called me and were apologetic to me even though I keep asking them to call me. They will only deal with Kat.

Tags: seizures

Seizure at dagis today, they said it was a particularly intense one, although still only about a minute long. The doctors have finally decided that this medicine is not working (I think he has actually gotten worse on this one), and they are going to start him on a combination of two drugs. The current medicine will be one of them. The Neurologist is frustrated because she feels Alex should be seizure free by this time in the treatment regimen.

Tags: seizures

I really need to start posting in this thing again, besides just using it as a log file for when Alex has a seizure.

He had another one today, at Dagis. This was after they got back from an outdoor trip. I am sure knowing him that he was running around like a mad man during the trip, that is what he does. They have hired another person at Dagis that is supposedly charged with just taking care of Alex, but of course the person is now just another body taking care of all the kids, cutting down the adult to child ratio.

I have learned to tell when he is in danger of having one, and I can make him settle down some and relax and avoid the seizure, what can be so hard for these people at dagis to do the same?



On another front, I am sick myself, I've had a cough for about 10 days, and yesterday a good fever came with it. I don't have pnuemonia, and my sinuses are clear. The doctor said something about a farnyx, which I've never heard of, near the larnyx. Maybe once a day or less, I get a strong ammonia smell coming out with my cough. I forgot to mention that to the doctor today though

Tags: seizures

One on Monday, the second on Tuesday. Both full on siezures, both at daycare. He has been home with a slight temp and his mom Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. I picked him up this afternoon and will take him to daycare Monday morning.

Tags: seizures

It has gotten to the point where the dagis people call and tell Kat about them, but Kat no longer rushes to dagis and gets him and dagis no longer insists on that. They put him to bed for a nap afterwards because they take so much out of him, and then afterwards it is business as usual.

I picked him up as normal at 3:30 and he has been fine with me, a slight temp, like 37.4°C.

Tags: seizures

Today at dagis, again. A full on seizure. The docs are now talking about upping his meds again or maybe changing them.

On another note, Kat has informed me that she doesn't think I should pick up Alex anymore on the days during the week and take him home. She says it is too disruptive and with the epilepsy one of the keys is supposedly that a strict routine is maintained. I'm not sure I agree with this, however I don't feel I should take the risk. I don't want to go two weeks at a time without seeing him so I am going to try to work something else out. Maybe just pick him up one evening a week and do the ultimate pathetic single dad thing and take him to Mickey D's- I am going to look into swimming lessons and see if I can maybe take him to a pool one day a week. Interesting that Kat has decided this now that she has her new married boyfriend with the dying wife and was OK with it before. Alex talks about the new bf's kids and such, evidently he sees a lot of them. Realistically I've been picking him up at around 5:30 and it is 6:30 by the time we get back to my place. Then we eat and get ready for bed, then off to bed he goes. I don't really spend any Quality time with him. In the mornings I get him up frightfully early, like 5:30 or so, and then rush him though breakfast and off to Kats again. I think this is important though in the sense that he gets to see me, even if it is not Q time, it is better than no time at all.

Tags: seizures

Except for the two seizures mentioned in the last post, we had a great time. I wish I could spend more time with her. We did a lot of things with Alex who I had for the entire week mom was here. We went to the zoo and did a three day road trip down in Skåne. Mom really got to see what kind of kid he was and I think he warmed her heart. She met some of my friends at a Bar-B-Q a friend of mine had and I think she had a good time there, all my friends definitely enjoyed meeting her.

I had Alex the week following her visit as well, we went swimming one day and I took him to the Medeviel Festival in Skolkloster. We visited all his favorite parks and did a lot of bicycling too. It was a very good time and I loved having him.