Parents of the HS Class of 2012 - Original - Page 1418

grinzing · 04-19-2012, 02:31 PM

amtc, I think it is very telling how the administration and the department responds to prospies. Could be significant as to the overall culture of how much the school value sstudent interaction. We ignored some of those signs with S#1 and in his case we wish we had been mindful of those type of clues ('nuff said).

sbjdorlo · 04-19-2012, 02:59 PM

rayrick,

I can't wait to hear about the Princeton visit! I hear the weather is beautiful! :-)

Thanks for the well wishes on the full tuition scholarship from Mudd. Unfortunately, it didn't change a thing as far as finances. They basically just shuffled everything around. Dh is not happy and wants to rule it out. I think we need to wait. I'm sad right now but trust that my son will be where God wants him. I guess UTD is still on the table after all.

NWMom2 · 04-19-2012, 02:59 PM

Creekland-so much about post concussion symptoms is not known/understood. Very important to regulate his sleep schedule and melatonin can help. You should discuss with his doctors of course, but B vitamins, DHA fish oil, vit. D, and chelated magnesium can help support his brain. My daughter was also low on iron. Voices could be a result of lack of sleep....

Snowdog · 04-19-2012, 03:01 PM

saintfan - I have headphones at my desk (i work out of my house) and listen to whatever I want without having to endure the judgment of my kids haha. YouTube is a wonderful invention for concert footage etc

mathinokc · 04-19-2012, 03:04 PM

sbjdorlo --

Sorry about the FA disappointment with Mudd. Remember that your son has several good choices. Even a school that might be less than "perfect" in his current view will probably turn into a place that will seem great next year. You have other kids, right? You have to consider that as you make choices about what you can do financially for your son.

sbjdorlo · 04-19-2012, 03:08 PM

You have a good point, mathinokc. We set an amount we could probably give each year (3K) and beyond that, our son will be responsible. He didn't like the idea of loans, at least for the first two years, and neither do we. He was offered a job at Mudd and he has an offer of another online job; I don't know how much they pay or how much he should work when going to a school like Mudd. So many factors!

Yes, we have two more kids who are not like this son and probably won't be winning scholarships and such, so we do need to keep that in mind.

Thanks for the wise advice.

saintfan · 04-19-2012, 03:11 PM

snowdog: text just received from DS15 - apparently important enough to text to his mother during school hours . . .

"wow . . . rush is coming too . . . dates were announced yesterday i think"

kathieh1 · 04-19-2012, 03:24 PM

sbjdorlo - Could you also take the Princeton offer and go back to MUDD to discuss it? If it comes down the money between those two schools I think you have a fair chance for an appeal. HMC is very small and personalized, and I know they must have adored your DS to admit him and offer such a great scholarship. I know seeing how these schools package aid can be a shock. I don't think HMC has as big an endowment as some others.. but it's a unique school that provides wonderful career opportunities -- even summer employment options probably that would be attractive. My D applied to HM and was waitlisted, but I looked into it quite a bit.

creekland - glad you're getting so much wise support on your son. It is scary.. and the head injury aspect makes us all think we should put helmets on the kids every day before we let them out. I had a friend whose son had a bad skateboard head injury.. those are not fun to recover from with mysterious symptoms common.

Rayrick - can't wait to hear the Princeton outcomes.

Ditto to what's been said about schools that drop the ball on being hospitable for visits. I'll give a gold medal to St. Olaf for doing the best job of making D feel wanted and welcome in all her interactions. Everything I've seen about that school makes me feel like they treat their students (and their parents) like gold. P*mna was also very welcoming when we visited in September, and their policy (and also HMC's) on visiting classes was to just show us the 5C's class schedule and say - pick any classes you want to go to and show up. My DH and I walked into the math dept at Pom*na and they were also super nice. I'll just say that for US -- Carl*tn and P*tzr flunked for their own reasons. They may be wonderful to others - and we might have caught them on bad days - but those impressions do matter.

I'm mailing some replies today to the schools she's not going to. I was going to do it yesterday but had to make sure D had really finished filling them out. We're waiting on reply from P on a FA appeal. I'm not really expecting to get more aid d.. and the longer it takes the more dumb I feel about even asking.. but it was in the category of no stone unturned. Should find out this week. I think we are delusional to think we can actually afford to pay what we're planning to.. My DH is 59 and I'm 58 - so not lots of time to make up the money we'll spend.

Snowdog · 04-19-2012, 04:23 PM

Quote:

"wow . . . rush is coming too . . . dates were announced yesterday i think"

oh lordy ha ha

Creekland · 04-19-2012, 04:47 PM

I need to catch up on this thread later, but right now I just want to make a desperate appeal for a pm if ANYONE has had (or knows about) what I'm about to relate. Literally, right after I wrote my last post on this thread I was called to the nurse as youngest was having another episode. Seeing it in person has really vamped up my stress and concern and scared the wits out of me. After this thread I'll try to keep it off here so as not to interfere with the good college stuff being shared...

The nurse said she's never seen anything like it in her whole experience (she's not super young) of dealing with epilepsy, panic attacks, tourettes, and similar. She was ready to call 911 - except the ER doctor told us not to unless he had vital signs that were off - those were all normal (pulse in the 90's but normal - oxygen at 100%). Blood sugar was ok. Everything was ok. He'd been tested for drugs at the ER - nothing - and he's not on any non prescription meds of any sort either.

He can feel these coming on. He said yesterday he felt one coming on in French class, but was able to suppress it. His French teacher said she saw a lot of twitching. The twitching is sometimes an upper body thing or a whole body thing - like someone would do when they are trying to wake up or shake something off. They're quick, then done and he gets about 1 or 2 an hour by my best guesstimate. Anyway, yesterday he said he was able to suppress a full episode.

Today he said he felt one coming on in French and would be able to do the same thing, but it kept getting worse. By Chemistry (next class) he asked to go to the nurse and was escorted down there (roughly 1:35). By the time I got there he was having whole body convulsions that looked like he had flat lined and was being shocked (Clear!). Sometimes he'd stay straight"ish" and other times he convulse into a fetal position, then back. It looked incredibly painful and he was sweaty, but he was awake the whole time and said it wasn't painful - just had some tingling in his fingers at times. He also hurt his ankle a time or two from the motion. Sometimes these were non-stop and sometimes there were a few seconds between them. The convulsions always went from the head down. There's no way they were faked. He didn't lose muscle control (bladder, etc) and could respond to questions. He said he could feel them coming on, then they would happen. He tried to stop them, but couldn't. Efforts by both the nurse and I to redirect his brain by conversation didn't seem to have an effect, though he would still answer our questions as he could.

Around 2:20 they got less. By 2:27 he stood up - had two of the "normal" twitches, and then said it was over. I've seen a few normal twitches since then, but he tells me not to worry. Otherwise, he seems normal (now).

I asked him more about hitting his head a month ago and he updated to tell me he didn't have "a" continual headache for 3 days afterward, but had headaches and felt lightheaded at times during that time. He also says he feels lightheaded right before these episodes happen (now 3 of them about one week apart). This was his first one during the day and there was no test or otherwise stressful event after it. He did take the PLAN test this morning, but seemed fine and felt the test was easy.

The voices he's poo-pooing now. I don't know if it's related or not. He doesn't say they didn't happen. He just says he doesn't think they're related. He thinks the headaches might be, but not the fall. However, he's 16. I'm just relaying anything.

I had the nurse call our doctor's office and she spoke with a nurse there putting her observations into his medical record. I did not have a cell phone on me to record it on video, but I'm going to try to keep something with me at all times now so I can if/when it happens again.

In the meantime, anybody? Dr? Parent? Someone who saw something maybe related on TV? My brain is on overload right now and I'd love to hear something - but make it via a pm so as not to tie up this thread. I'm grasping for info. The nurse didn't feel it was epilepsy of any sort (but she emphasized not a diagnosis, just an observation based upon her experiences).

Gotta go. He's around and I'm trying to be strong....

PinotNoir · 04-19-2012, 04:53 PM

Oh Creekland - I don't have anything helpful, but my thoughts are sure with you today.

mihcal1 · 04-19-2012, 04:54 PM

^^^ Scary! My thoughts are with you and your S, Creekland.

Iglooo · 04-19-2012, 04:56 PM

Creekland - Not to alarm you but it sounds worrisome. I don't think anyone minds the interruption here. But I'd like to suggest you post in Parent Cafe Forum. Start a new thread to catch attention of medical professionals among parents. You will have a bigger audience there and may get lucky a neuro specialist may stumble upon. Wish you luck.

Mom2M · 04-19-2012, 04:58 PM

Oh my, Creekland. (((hugs)))

I, for one, don't care if anyone who has information just posts or pm's or sends a smoke signal. I don't anyone cares.... I really wish I had something positive to offer. Can you try to get him to rest in a darkish, quiet room for a while as suggested earlier, just in case it will help?
I hope the Dr can help...take a notebook and pen/pencil so you can write things down. When you can today, write down as many questions as you can think of, I know that's helped me with complicated medical issues in the past. Make sure you have clear, comprehensive directions of what to do over the weekend, since you are seeing the DR tomorrow. Keep a cell phone handy in case it's needed.

Thinking of you.

mimk6 · 04-19-2012, 05:03 PM

Back in NYC. Not happy where my travel agent put me (I was so overwhelmed with all the travel this month that I enlisted his help which may have been a mistake. Last row on one flight, awful hotel near Columbia and now we're in the financial district which seems very far from everything interesting.) Anyhow, the plan is to meet with DD's best friend from college in the a.m. who did undergrad at Yale and is now in law school at Columbia. He wants to sort through his thoughts with her. I already had dinner with her the other night and know her thoughts so it should be an interesting conversation between them.

So what have I learned this month so far? Two trips was probably a mistake. Did we really need to see Williams? Should I have cancelled my flights and skipped that trip? Probably. DS says he feels "eviscerated" at this point and is crashed out in the hotel room now. Also, maybe I wouldn't have gotten sick if we'd skipped the first trip. Next lesson, is not to totally trust what someone says about drugstores. It turns out during the days I was sick, there were three drugstores within a few blocks of my hotel but I didn't know it and someone told me otherwise. Today I was finally well enough to realize I was across the street from a medical building and that maybe they had a pharmacy. They did and the nicest pharmacist in the world set me up with good drugs and my horrible cough has improved considerably.

Should we have approached college admissions differently all along? I have no idea. Should we have visited more schools? Applied to fewer schools? No idea. I will say this. DS is convinced that most of these super-lottery schools are cross admitting the same basic pool of kids give or take. I myself am surprised by how many people I met whose kids were cross-admitted to so many HYPS schools. I don't know why it surprised me but it does. I've heard a lot of interesting stories in the past few days.