Granted, I've had it easy so far. I've been lucky enough not to have experienced anything too traumatic in my life: My kids' births went pretty smoothly, we haven't had to rush them to the emergency room for any reason, we haven't had any house fires or break-ins. I know people with sick kids for whom every night is a potential nightmare.
Last night was nothing close to what some parents go through. But nonetheless, it scared me senseless.
At bedtime, our six-year-old had a mild fever, which was no big deal except that he doesn't run a fever very often. When it does, it usually means he's sick for real (unlike our daughter who often gets fevers for no apparent reason and with no other symptoms). But I wasn't too concerned.
An hour later, my husband and I were watching the excellent new Bob Marley documentary on VH1 when we heard screaming.
At first I thought it was coming from the TV (Jamaica in the 70's was a dangerous place, after all), and then I thought some of the neighborhood's teenaged girls were getting rowdy outside. But then I heard loud stomping and wailing (again, not coming from Bob Marley's Wailers). The commotion was coming from upstairs...and then barreling down down the staircase and through the house.
Our son ran into the family room absolutely shrieking in terror, his eyes wild with fear. My husband and I ran to him and tried to comfort him, figuring it was just a nightmare. But it soon became clear we were dealing with something much more serious.
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| A good approximation of what my son looked like |
I met my husband's eyes. Whoa, what was going on?
My son's gaze became fixed on a picture on the wall. "BUT LOOK!! IT'S GOING SO FAST! STOP IT!" he screamed, tears streaming down his stricken face.
By now he'd been awake for five minutes, yet the nightmare still gripped him. Or was it the fever? I took his temperature. It was higher. I gave him some children's Tylenol, figuring his overheated brain was causing the hallucinations.
This had never happened before. I wondered if I should be really worried.
We brought my son back up to his bedroom, confident that the fever-reducer would do the trick.
Half an hour later, we were in bed reading when we heard something. Mumbling. Talking. Then yelling.
As I ran down the hall, I distinctly heard my son shout something about dinosaurs (which was weird because his dino phase ended over a year ago). When I got to his room he was standing on the bed looking around and shrieking in horror at something only he could see. He didn't seem to recognize me. I tried calming him down with a hug and soothing, reassuring words, but he struggled against me. He desperately wanted to escape from his room and whatever monstrous thing he saw there. He kept looking over his shoulder and clasping his hands over his mouth as he screamed and cried out.
When my husband entered the room, my son looked at him and yelled, "GET AWAY!" Who or what was he seeing in place of his Daddy? My son broke away from me and ran howling down the hall toward our bedroom.
But before he escaped my arms, I'd been able to process the fact that he was no longer burning up. The fever had gone down. So why was he still hallucinating?
In our bedroom, things weren't any better. When my husband tried to hug him, my son recoiled in horror. He let me hug him but would occasionally pull away and look at me, his mouth gaping in a rictus of fear. He'd scream and his hands would fly up to cover his mouth.
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| Was he possessed like Regan? |
Nothing we did or said was working to erase his fear. I felt so helpless, and the tears came.
By then all the commotion had woken up our daughter, who stood mutely by while her brother battled invisible demons. She looked almost as frightened as he did.
"Should we take him to the emergency room?" I asked, my voice breaking. The scene in The Exorcist where Regan is in the hospital getting a spinal tap popped into my head: She's strapped down and struggling while the doctor inserts a giant needle into her neck. Oh, no-no-no.
My husband, who seemed to be keeping his head better than me, said no to the hospital and suggested putting our son in the shower to clear his head. By then my son was no longer recoiling from my husband's touch, and he was able to explain a little what was scaring him.
"Does anything hurt?" I asked when he'd clapped his hands over his mouth for the tenth time.
"No," he moaned. "But when I open my mouth it feels like the monsters are going in and up to my brain and making me see crazy things."
Okaaaay.
But the shower helped, his lucidity returned, and we let him sleep with us in the hope it would keep the demons at bay.
It worked; there was a lot of kicking and thrashing but no more screams.
Today, he seems none the worse for wear; I'm not sure how much he remembers. But he feels terrible, is nauseous, and still has a fever.
And that's what scares me. What if tonight's a repeat of last night?
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