Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Hope for a Sea Change: A Search for Healing
    Hope for a Sea Change: A Search for Healing
    Hope for a Sea Change: A Search for Healing
    Ebook66 pages56 minutes

    Hope for a Sea Change: A Search for Healing

    By Elizabeth Aquino

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    When her three-month-old daughter Sophie is diagnosed with a rare seizure disorder, Elizabeth Aquino and her husband, Michael, are thrust into a nightmarish world of impossible decisions, toxic drug cocktails, and talk of brain surgery on their tiny child. As they grapple with the harrowing progression of their child’s seizures, they grow to understand that the doctors know little more about how to heal Sophie than they do. They are in a terrifying no-man’s-land. This narrative of unintended medical trauma and the search for healing through alternative means will sear you with its stubborn hope, unexpected grace, and abiding love.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherShe Writes Press
    Release dateJun 8, 2014
    ISBN9781940838489
    Hope for a Sea Change: A Search for Healing
    Author

    Elizabeth Aquino

    Elizabeth Aquino lives in Los Angeles with her family. Always a writer but trained as a pastry chef, her life took an entirely unexpected turn when her first child was diagnosed with a devastating seizure disorder; her daughter became her greatest inspiration as they navigated the systems of care for the disabled and sick. Elizabeth’s work has been published in numerous literary magazines, newspapers, and anthologies, including the A Cup of Comfort series, qarrtsiluni, Kicking in the Wall, My Baby Rides the Short Bus, The Mom Egg, Spirituality and Health magazine, and the Los Angeles Times. When she isn’t writing she spends her time as an advocate for children with special health-care needs, operates a home-based cake and pastry business, and acts as chauffeur to and devoted admirer of her two teenage boys. She also posts daily on her blog, "a moon, worn as if it had been a shell" (http://www.elizabethaquino.blogspot.com).

    Related to Hope for a Sea Change

    Related ebooks

    Women's Biographies For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Everyone Has 32 Teeth

      Sep 29, 2023

      Everyone Has 32 Teeth
      11 min read

    • Article

      Where There Is No Hospital

      Mar 8, 2022

      Where There Is No Hospital
      15 min read

    • Article

      My Story The Day I Lost My Mind … And How I Found It Again

      May 19, 2021

      I’m back at last … back to how I was before I lost my mind. Sitting in the tranquil Daintree Rainforest in Far North Queensland, I roll a ball of black sapote ice-cream around my mouth, feeling all the terrible anxiety I’ve carried for the last year

      7 min read

    • Article

      My Story The Day I Lost My Mind … And How I Found It Again

      May 19, 2021

      I’m back at last … back to how I was before I lost my mind. Sitting in the tranquil Daintree Rainforest in Far North Queensland, I roll a ball of black sapote ice-cream around my mouth, feeling all the terrible anxiety I’ve carried for the last year

      7 min read

    • Article

      I Was at Rikers While Coronavirus Spread. Getting Out Was Just as Surreal.

      Apr 8, 2020

      “I am used to my family’s little quirks. But I am still getting used to what’s going on outside.”

      5 min read

    • Article

      Under Attack

      Jun 8, 2021

      Under Attack
      4 min read

    • Article

      During the Pandemic, a Prison Funeral for Our Angel

      Aug 14, 2020

      Despite coronavirus-related lockdown and a skittish staff, prisoners at California Women’s Facility pulled off a full-fledged memorial service for a beloved long-termer.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Face Value

      Oct 24, 2021

      Face Value
      7 min read

    • Article

      On The Outside

      Apr 18, 2024

      On The Outside
      9 min read

    • Article

      Blended

      Aug 6, 2020

      Blended
      10 min read

    • Article

      Why These Children Fell into Endless Sleep

      Sep 22, 2021

      I had barely stepped foot over the threshold and I already felt claustrophobic. I wanted to turn back. People shuffled into the room in front of me, while somebody else stood directly behind me, a little too close. It felt hard to escape. I could see

      12 min read

    • Article

      Hard Metal

      Jun 10, 2023

      When Raúl gave me his security job for August, he told me not to see anything. You don’t see nothin’, he said, because we both know I get curious. Sometimes the other guys think I’m soft, the way I get lost in my head. My girlfriend says it’s trauma,

      6 min read

    • Article

      Baby Boys and Expletives

      Jun 10, 2022

      Baby Boys and Expletives
      5 min read

    • Article

      Baby Boys and Expletives

      Jun 10, 2022

      Baby Boys and Expletives
      5 min read

    • Article

      Chost Stories

      Apr 12, 2021

      Chost Stories
      8 min read

    • Article

      GhoST StoRies

      Apr 12, 2021

      GhoST StoRies
      8 min read

    • Article

      A Symposium on Childhood

      Sep 1, 2021

      A Symposium on Childhood
      25 min read

    • Article

      The Great Unknowing

      Sep 1, 2020

      ...woman is her body as man is his, but her body is something other than her. —Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex THAT SPRING I walked into the hospital for a minor procedure and walked out with a handful of balloons into the strangest six weeks of

      14 min read

    • Article

      Siphons

      Feb 6, 2020

      Siphons
      6 min read

    • Article

      Night Terrors

      May 12, 2020

      Night Terrors
      4 min read

    • Article

      It Happened to Me…

      Apr 18, 2024

      It Happened to Me…
      9 min read

    • Article

      1 Tequila … Floor!

      Feb 16, 2023

      1 Tequila … Floor!
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Intimacy Of Covid

      Mar 23, 2021

      The Intimacy Of Covid
      5 min read

    • Article

      Tell Children the Truth

      Sep 14, 2021

      Tell Children the Truth
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Hope for a Sea Change

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Hope for a Sea Change - Elizabeth Aquino

      Prologue

      April 2007

      Sophie had a big seizure tonight at the dinner table. She looked to the right and froze. She let out a scream and toppled over, but I caught her and in slow motion led her stiff body to the floor. Henry, who at nine is three years younger than his sister, ran to get a pillow to put under her head and he knelt with me, stroking her cheek, telling her, It’s all right, it’s all right, Sophie, it’s all right. The youngest, Oliver, six years old, stood to the side, whispering, I’m scared, I’m scared. I called to him that it was all right, and that was enough. I was alone with the children because my husband, Michael, was working. A chef, he always works nights.

      When the seizure was finished, I tried to help Sophie to stand and walk down the hall to her bedroom, but her legs wouldn’t move, so I reached under her knees and lifted her, somehow, despite myself, and carried her. She fell asleep under a blanket. The boys watched SpongeBob in the living room, and as I knelt by Sophie’s bed, the sound of SpongeBob’s cackling drifted down the hallway and around the corner, comforting in its banality. I went back to the kitchen and silently cleaned up the dinner dishes, rinsing the plates and loading the dishwasher, letting the pots soak.

      Later, when Sophie woke, I changed her diaper, which I usually call a pull-up because it lends more dignity. She was soaked, her skin cold and goose-pimply, exposed. I can do these things, my jaw set, efficient. But as I taped her up, I noticed that the babysitter had trimmed her pubic hair. It was then that the tears came.

      New York City

      1995

      So hope for a great sea-change

      On the far side of revenge.

      Believe that a further shore

      Is reachable from here.

      Believe in miracles

      And cures and healing wells.

      —From The Cure at Troy

      by Seamus Heaney

      Chapter 1

      Diagnosis

      Why don’t you tell me a little bit about your daughter? Dr. Levine said on June 14, 1995. Dr. Levine was calling me from Long Island Hospital at the behest of a mutual friend. I had known Alice since high school in Atlanta, and recently she had married a New York City billionaire. Her clout had subsequently expanded to the point where she could dial anyone of influence in the city and make things happen. I had worriedly told her that our pediatrician had suggested we make an appointment with a pediatric neurologist to address the tiny chance that the funny jerks our three-month-old daughter was making when she woke up might be seizures. The receptionist of the neurologist in our HMO had informed me that the only opening to see the doctor was eight weeks away. When I told Alice this, she said, That’s ridiculous. How could you sleep? Hold on and I’ll make some calls.

      Ten minutes later, the phone rang. Dr. Levine listened to my description and said, You need to get in a taxi and go straight to New York/Cornell Hospital emergency room. I’ll call and tell them to expect you.

      My friends always ask me if I was worried at that point. If I somehow knew what was about to happen. No, I reply, no more than the normal anxieties of a first-time mother. I had licked my finger and stuck it under the sleeping baby’s nose to make sure she was breathing; I had called the pediatrician four times in one day to check on Sophie’s various responses to nursing and burping. I had even walked around and around my block one rainy Sunday night with my Big Apple umbrella held valiantly aloft as Sophie screamed in her Baby Bjorn front pack. Lots of babies had colic, I knew. I was more amazed that Alice’s money afforded her not only a sumptuous Upper East Side apartment and a Frank Lloyd Wright second home on the Sound, but also the ability to get people to do her bidding, immediately.

      When I arrived with Sophie at New York Hospital, I was quickly ushered through triage and brought to a room and introduced to two young women who would be asking some questions. Dressed in chic short black skirts, matte tights, and tasteful pumps, their white jackets crisp and clean, these women were a fellow and a resident, neurologists in training. Dr. S. would speak to me later, after the tests were done. I shuffled along with the order of things, dumbly acquiescing because, of course, they knew what they were doing, and surely this would all be over and OK and I could just go home.

      Within a half

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1