Cabo San Lucas here we come!

It was somewhere in the month of April and I had just gotten off a U.S. Navy ship after two weeks of sea duty. Only those who have gone through this kind of experience can actually attest to the level of wear and tear that this kind of job does to you. When I go out to sea, this is not the typical cruise ship fun and games kind of travel. I typically start my days at around 5:00 a.m. and don't get to lay down my weary head until at least 1:00 a.m. the next morning. Generally I get less than four hours of sleep a day every time I am out to sea doing my job for an average of ten to fourteen days in a row. As a young lad, this was not such a bad thing since my body and mind had the energy and stamina to deal with the long hours and I recovered relatively easy afterwards. Now days it wreaks havoc on my system. To the point that I have had to seek medical help to make sure that when I am finally back home I can somehow adjust to the regular hours of sleep and get back to my normal routine.

A few years after I started to do long hikes as a fun weekend physical challenge, I found myself looking for a good doctor that would take care of my every once and a while pulled or strained muscle. A the Loma Linda University Medical Center I discovered a wonderful sports medicine doctor that not only had the right know how, but also had skinny enough fingers that when the time came to have to dreaded prostate exams I did not have to take muscle relaxers. Eventually we found a good balance, she would tell me how to make things better without telling me to stop doing them, instead she was very encouraging about my climbing, hiking, and anything else that had to do with physical fitness. Later through the years she pretty much convinced me that I did not have any choice but to take hypertension medication unless I was willing to start buying cemetery plots at an early age, so I am grateful to her for her wonderful and caring ways.

There was one particular year that I started doing my two week ship rides in November and by the month of February I had worn myself out with three of these trips. When I would get back from two weeks of sleeping less than four hours a day, it would take me weeks sometimes to adjust to my normal sleeping habits. The lack of good rest made me sick. By February a silly cough that started in November had turned into a serious bronchitis that was one step away from pneumonia. At this point my doctor recommended that once I got back from my trips I should take Ambien for a couple of days to force myself to sleep the regular 8 or 9 hours a day to re-regulate my sleeping pattern. To my surprise this little magical pill did wonders for me and actually did what she suggested in a very effective manner. The only problem with the magical pills was that you really had to go to bed once you took them because if you didn't, well let's say that things had a way of going weird while you thought you were awake but really were not.

One night sometime in April that year I had just gotten back from one of my two week out at sea 4 hours of sleep a night work duties when my uncle called me. I had just taken one of the magical Ambien pills and gone to bed when probably less than an hour later the phone rang and I answered it. In the next hour or so I had a full conversation with my uncle, booked flights for me and my two sons, hotel reservations, and then went back to bed. The next day I got a phone call from my dear uncle asking me if I had booked the flights and my answer was "Flights, what flights?" When I got home after work I went to my home office desk and found reservation numbers and every detail needed to take a boys only trip with my two kids, my uncle and his two sons to Cabo San Lucas. Amazing huh? I had zero recollection of having done all of this planning and booking the night before.

What a great way to bond with your kids. We spent time at the pool, rented ski jets, and hired a boat to go deep sea fishing for marlin. By the end of the long weekend I can safely say that it was worth every penny I spent making this special time happen. Not all went perfect, by the last day there was some frustration setting in from some typical childhood demands that I found to be too annoying to ignore, but all and all the trip was a success by any measure you can think of. My kids have many times begged me to do this again, which I intend to do when finances allow me to take such a luxury.

Back to the subject about Ambien, what a powerful and scary experience. I truly have absolutely no memory of planning this trip. This medication that had taken care of my sleeping disorder had also shown me that under special circumstances I could do things and not remember them afterwards. Apparently the trick is to never get out of bed during the sleeping cycle if you take the pill because one of the side effects is that you will do things and then not remember having done them. I personally know of a male friend of mine who is very close and dear to me that was also woken up in the middle of the sleep cycle while taking this pill to a phone call from another male friend. This individual has absolutely no recollection of having made a series of sexual passes to his male friend in which he graphically described how he would perform all kinds of male to female pleasurable acts. Not only did he propose to do all of this, in no way shape or form did he realize that he was talking to a person of the same sex. Needless to say, his friend was very confused that night and suggested he would never take the magical Ambien pill again.

When faced with the choice of taking medication to try to help my son's condition, he has refused over and over again on the grounds that the few medications that he has tried make him feel that he is not himself. My son describes his opposition as not wanting to be someone else because of the pills prescribed. Can you blame him? I for one would not want to feel like someone else simply because I have taken some medication that is supposed to make me better. Yet there is a possibility that even though those medications make him feel like another person, that is the person that he is supposed to be in the first place.

Tricky this business of altering the personality of an individual, isn't it? On one end we might be able to make the individual fit into the conformity of the rest of society. On the other end me might be making them lose their personal identity, what makes them who they really are. I have seen it in some of the children of my friends. I once invited a friend of my youngest son to go with us on a short hike up Mount Roubidoux in Riverside, CA. He was full of energy and kept running ahead of the rest of us and coming back and forth during the outing. At the peak, when we were all worn out from walking up the steep route and ready to rest, he kept asking me if he was allowed to run to the other side where the huge cross was planted probably one hundred meters away. Over and over he ran and came back and made the same request at least five times. Finally we decided to head back down and he was just as full of energy as he had been less than an hour ago when we started our quest. Once we got back to my car his mother called him on his cell phone and reminded him to take his medication. One minute he was climbing the walls because he had forgotten to take his medication in the morning, the next he was what almost seemed catatonic. The boy was not longer the kid full of energy and joyfulness. In fact, by the time we got back home he was ready to call his mother to return with his family.

This is not an exception to the rule. Most children that are put on medications that alter their behaviour are caught in this dilemma. They are either altered enough to conform to what society has decreed to be good enough behaviour to function adequately in school and around their piers, or they are out of control. For years we dealt with this by making adjustments at home to accommodate my son's unusual personality and behaviour. Some times it was trying and hard to deal with, but for the most part it was good. Unfortunately "some times" is not good enough for the educational system in which once you are one millimeter out of the tolerance that is considered "normal" then you are a problem to those that have to deal with you.

Consider this...when we were growing up, how many of your friends did you know had ADHD, bipolar, depression, anxiety, or some other kind of personality disorder? Yet we all went to school, most of us learned what we needed to learn, and eventually became useful participants in our society. In fact, recently I remember attending one of my high school class reunions and meeting with what I remember to be one of the bullies of my class. Guess what this what seemed out of control child grew up to be? He is a psychiatrist. Another one of my childhood friends was considered to be the class clown. He was hyperactive and had so many discipline problems that his parents had to remove him from our school and send him to some military type institution. Now this same amazing young man became a well known physician that has attained some of the most recognized levels of achievement in his career such as Assistant Secretary of Health for the United States of America. What might of happened if we would of pumped up this child with drugs from an early age and not allowed him to use his own drive to become the man he is today? There is much to say about what has happened in our society that has created the low tolerance level for what might be a bit out of "normal" in a classroom. The job of teaching has become more about numbers than it is about individuals.

I know for a fact that my mother, a teacher of 45 years of experience, can remember having to deal with all of the above I just described because we have talked about it. Yet she says that she always felt that her job was not only to teach those who were great kids, but to teach all of the kids. One way or another she found ways of gaining the trust and respect of the ones that seemed sometimes out of control. Could it be that once she made it clear that she really cared about these children too, the doors of respect suddenly opened both ways? I know that it is not easy to deal with these children that are not perfect but that should actually be part of the job description. To teach them what they need to know to become part of what makes our humanity so wonderful, that they can be part of the solution to our future challenges, and not just part of the problem.

Dad