Before I became a parent, I thought all of those stories about a mother’s love and mother bear were just exaggerations. And for the first few years of being a parent, there wasn’t that big of a difference between Kami and me. Megan was in most ways the ‘perfect’ baby/toddler. What I mean is she must have read “What to expect the First Year” while she was still in utero because she hit every landmark almost to a day! Crawling at eight months, walking on her first birthday, etc. She may have been a pain when it came to sleeping through the night, but that was about it.
We assumed that all would be fine when Jeffrey was born. But as you know by now, it wasn’t. When we first learned about his early issues, I went into a sort of hiding…I covered my eyes and hoped it would get better. Then I went to the “whatever the doctors say” mode. But not Kami. From Day One, she became a mom on a mission.
For years, Kami fought to get Jeffrey what he needed. When CHOP couldn’t see him for four months, she got him an appt. When the IU placed him in the incorrect setting, she fought for to get him into a classroom that was best for him. In kindergarten, he was in a ‘regular’ special education room. Not good. She fought so much that the director of special ed. made sure that her calls went directly to him and he was eventually placed into the autistic support class. When he was diagnosed with ADHD, she refused to medicate him and instead researched and changed the family’s diet to support him (and it worked beautifully!)
We were in a pretty good place until the summer of 2016 – the summer of the migraines. If you don’t know our story, Jeffrey has something called CVS (Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome) that was explained to us as something like abdominal migraines. It causes him to vomit every 30-60 minutes for up to 24 hours. They told us that it was likely to transition into migraines when he became a teenager. Well in August of that year, he suffered such an extreme migraine that he was hospitalized for 8 days because the doctors couldn’t get it to break.
Instead of sitting around the hospital feeling bad about the situation, Kami was once again on a mission to save her son. She researched extensively on what could help him. Now in the meantime, he was given a nerve block (a series of 12-15 lidocaine injections in his skull) to break the migraine, which eventually worked. The neurologist suggested continuing the blocks every 4 weeks to prevent future migraines from occurring. I thought that would be the way our life would be with him for while, but not Mom!
Kami’s research had uncovered some things that she implemented for him that have kept him migraine free since September of 2016. One of those things was “Jeffrey’s Blend” which has not only helped Jeffrey, but countless people all over the country because of her presentations at various nursing conferences. According to his neurologist at CHOP, his improvement has been unprecedented and she had never seen a child respond the way he has.
I’m not trying to exaggerate about how awesome she is, but without Kami, I’m sure that life for Jeffrey (and the rest of her kids) would not be a rich and full of life that is has become. We are all truly grateful in the Schaal household for what she has done, and continue to do, to be the best mom for all of her kids.
Thank you Kami for being the BEST MOM EVER! Happy Mother’s Day ~ We all love you!
