I Know Why the Caged Bird Screams
By LJ Goes
It's a scream like no other. You know something is wrong. You search for the cause. No teeth coming in, no picky fabric irritating her skin, nothing to be afraid of. In fact you say that over and over again. "It's okay peanut, it's okay, there's nothing to be afraid of." Your friends and family comfort you. "He's probably just colicky. Gassy." You pat and pat and pat that tiny little back. You coo and bounce, gently. Nothing seems to stop the screaming.
The screams eventually haunt your sleep. They chip away at your sense of self. Your family's sense of safety dissipates. You question your sanity.
During a presentation at a local school my friend (Blaze) heard these screams again - thanks to all her hard work, those days are long gone for her and her son P. The memories came flooding back. She barely made it to the parking lot in time to vomit.
While out for a run, my friend (Mama Mac) recalls encountering a mom with her screaming baby and shouting "Don't vaccinate that baby!" as she jogged passed them.
It's that powerful - that terrifying - for those of us who know what caused it.
"Mrs. Goes, today you will get 4 kicks to the stomach. Looks like just below the ribs to the right. 3 blows to the left cheek. Only 2 bites on your upper arms. 17 slaps in undetermined locations. One bloodied lip. You'll be fine, but the iPad screen...looks like you're out another 250.00."
"Good Morning Mrs. Goes. Today you will receive two upper cuts to your lower right jaw. Four head butts. 9 slaps to your calves and thighs. One glass Pellegrino water bottle hurled at your face. You'll be fine, but cleaning up the glass will be time consuming. In the meantime, clean folded laundry will be thrown, your youngest will be slapped, and the Epsom salt will be tossed around your bathroom until the tile is no longer visible. Only one direct hit to your stomach. 6 bites."
I'd accept either daily scenario readily and repeatedly if it meant an end to the screaming.
The screaming puts the burden on me. Is it the mito? The yeast? Did he get some food he's not supposed to have? His eyes are dilated, he's tearing at his stomach and ripping off his clothes. Is it the PANDAS? Which one of the many systems that don't work is presently causing him the most discomfort? It's up to me to figure it out. It's up to me to take away the pain. I'm mom.
The hitting, the violence...I'm just the recipient in that deal. No responsibility on my end. Plus, I've gotten used to it. I haven't gotten used to the screaming.
I will never, ever get used to the screaming.
The doctors say, "Ignore that behavior Mrs. Goes. If you pay any attention to him you are just re-enforcing it." I immediately imagine a child pinned under a car. I can see his body flailing and there's blood everywhere.
Just ignore it.
"That's just how it is with some kids. They scream for no reason. The spectrum." More wisdom from the white coats. They mumble something esoteric and irrelevant that does not apply to my child. It's hard for them to understand that all kids are not the same. They absolutely positively must believe all kids are the same. This is how current "preventative" medical science works. Someone who weights 5 lbs is the same as someone who weighs 230. Someone raised in the inner city is the same as someone raised in rural Kansas. Someone with a history of allergies, asthma and auto-immune disease is the same as someone without. Same. No testing required. Just shoot 'em up. We'll find out if there's going to be a reaction soon enough. And then we'll pretend it didn't happen.
I would scream too.
Our kids dwell in cages and the people who caused their imprisonment refuse to acknowledge they still exist. They live in bodies that are rebelling against them every second of the day. My friends and I are running around them with a box full of band-aids. One for the intestinal dysbiois, one for the mitochondrial disease, one for the auto-immune damage, one for the methylation failure, one for the macrophagic myofasciitis sydrome, one for the metabolic dysfunction, one for the central nervous system damage.
We can't seem to properly apply all the bandages through the bars of the cage, though. Some stick. Some fall off. A lot of our little birds end up bleeding out, innocent little victims of iatrogenic illness. I've never heard of a person being burned alive who just silently sat back and allowed it to happen. My son actually has a condition that at times causes his feet to feel like they are burning. He's deficient in malic acid and B2. No doctor told me. My friends with master's degrees and sick kids...they told me. Granny Smith apple full of the stuff really helps. But then there's the cerebral folate deficiency...he can't handle phenols. Don't get me started on the damage to his Krebb's Cycle!
Let me stop you right here and ask...do I sound like an idiot to you? Because, anytime my friends and I are given a platform to speak about our screaming children we are told we are passionate. Emotional. Understandably connected to the issue. This really bothers me because, well, an overwhelming body of scientific evidence indicates our kids have every reason to scream. They are medically ill. Profoundly, medically ill. And their illness was caused by their physicians.
Physicians who say we should ignore their screams, like they ignore their pain.
You'll have to excuse me. Now I have to go scream. Because some days when I put it all together like I did for you here, just now, it's too much to for me to take. SOMEBODY HAS TO DO SOMETHING TO STOP THE MINDLESS IATROGENIC DESTRUCTION OF CHILDREN NOW!! Do something. If your child is one of the 54% of chronically ill kids that inhabit this country, it is YOUR DUTY to educate yourself. Go to Thinking Moms Revolution to learn more.
LJ Goes (The Rev) is a Contributing Editor for Age of Autism, Co-founder of The Thinking Mom's Revolution and Executive Board Member for TEAM (Together Everyone Aligns Medically), a non-profit bridging the gap between awareness and action.
We can all do something. Number ONE stop trusting these doctors who are limited by the AMA to voodoo curses and toxic potions. The voodoo works like this: "You have to get the vaccine or your child will die of a preventable disease". Is that wisdom or is that FEAR and MANIPULATION? If something is good, why do we resist and why do they have to USE FEAR and MANIPULATION! A lie hates truth, but truth welcomes all ideas as TRUTH cannot be destroyed by a LIE. Only a LIE can be destroyed by TRUTH! That is why the AMA blocks truth, LIES and uses fear and manipulation. SO don't go to these doctors. Create a demand for doctors who have had the revelation that they need to repent of most all that they learned in medical school and are now practicing TRUTH in health care and DOING NO HARM! They are in every town, but they are QUIET because they don't want the other vultures in the AMA attacking them and trying to destroy their business. Stop asking AMA voodoo and toxic potion doctors questions and wondering why they only lie. FIRE THEM! Another TRUTH, don't give any doctor, even the natural a feeling that HE IS REPSONSIBLE for you or your children! Time for you to take your rightful responsibility to make good choices and STOP being naive! Second, you can get your kids in school without vaccines. Get an exemption form.
Posted by: Ellen Messer | March 14, 2012 at 02:40 PM
I have memories of my daughter screaming when she was a child.I think back and wonder if it was vaccine related.She is still very tempermental and sensitive to her environment. I myself have had lots of health problems I associate mostly with sucrolose poisoning and a tetanus shot. I am very sensitive to chemicals. I have also noticed that when ever I went out for a few drinks I would have burning feet when I left the resturant.It made me think that my liver was not able to handle the toxins.I also would sweat on those nights.I am going to stick to organic foods and I'm thinking of going on a low glycimic (green) juice fast.I wonder if that or something like the Gerson Therapy or Ann Wiggmor's diet might help your child.I would be interested to know if anyone tries it. Bless you all in your struggles
Posted by: Laurie | March 14, 2012 at 01:18 PM
I spent four hours getting my IVIG today for my broken immune system and I also went to the doctor for my C. Diff. It freaking hurts and I want to cry. I don't cry I bang my head on the walls b/c I want the pain to vanish into the walls.......back to the bathroom and I'm pooping blood, have been 7-8 times, and I'm on Flagyl.
My kids are sick too.....and as I sit and bang my head on the wall and cry(it hurts that bad like someone stabbed me multiple times with a pitchfork in my stomach) my nearly non verbal autistic son gives me a hug and I can see him crying and he says "Mama ick" or mama sick. He's followed me to the bathroom and seen the bandage from the IV.
Posted by: Carly | March 14, 2012 at 04:48 AM
Screaming was the soundtrack for my first Mothers Day, right after my son's second Hepatitis B vaccination.
Posted by: nhokkanen | March 14, 2012 at 12:57 AM
Dear Lisa,
Though our children are years apart, the bond of pain connects them. Caged birds, like canaries, are a vivid analogy. Autism, PANDAS, PANS - all labels that hardly dare touch the real issues. Thank you for painting this truthful and painful portrait.
Posted by: Teresa Conrick | March 13, 2012 at 11:57 PM
You know what bothers me more than being called passionate or emotional? Desperate. That is one word I can't stand. Is there any other time someone is called desperate for being armed with information and doing something about it? For actually caring about your child? That makes us desperate...
Posted by: Susie | March 13, 2012 at 11:08 PM
Thanks for telling it like it is. I only get the occasional arm grab or "love pat" smack to the back these days (but I did replace an IPad this week). My kids both still require intensive behavioral intervention to keep their behaviors in check, probably will most of their lives. These huge costs need to be acknowledged and accounted for, maybe then people will start to take this atrocity seriously.
Posted by: mlinn | March 13, 2012 at 10:58 PM
Oh, how I ache for you! Thank you for putting it down for the rest of us... and please read The Impossible Cure sometime... praying!
Posted by: Carrie | March 13, 2012 at 09:35 PM
These doctors are limited to treating within certain protocols otherwise they could get sued. But who created these protocols that don't consider pain a symtom? My niece's boy screamed like that when we were together at a family summer home one year. I knew the cry sounded wrong. I wanted to help her so I had her sister ask if her little boy might be allergic to gluten, but she said no. Sometimes the denial is so strong. And he is a beautiful little boy but he is not thriving. No one wants to understand him, certainly not the doctor who said 'he isn't thriving but he'll catch up.' This reassurred everyone even though he gets sick and screams like that.
Posted by: Kapoore | March 13, 2012 at 09:02 PM
Wow. The only word I'm able to type right now is ...wow.
I've been coming here for quite some time, and although many other posts have moved me in the past , this one touched me in a way that almost knocked me out of my chair.
Frank honesty is pretty rare these days. I just posted something to this affect in the "What Letter" article, but what I basically said is that I struggle everyday day with the knowledge that my son is desperately sick.... AS A DIRECT RESULT of the "care' that he received from a doctor who was supposed to be protecting him!!! And to compound that issue, I actually LED him to that fate when he wasn't even sick!! Heck his doctor actually PROFITED from the whole affair, from which my son walked away maimed, and she simply strolled to the patient in the next room.
You are 100% correct....SOMEBODY HAS TO DO SOMETHING TO STOP THE MINDLESS IATROGENIC DESTRUCTION OF CHILDREN NOW!! I realize that we live in apathetic times, but our children are being criminally victimized right under our noses. Some pretty sick people are actually profiting from this activity, yet parents are sitting back in apparent isolation from a rage that should be driving them to demand answers!!
I don't know how it all happened, but a basic parental instinct to protect our young has somehow been short circuited. Future generations are being decimated right under our noses., and for some reason, parents are just sitting back and pretending it isn't happening.
Posted by: Barry | March 13, 2012 at 08:43 PM
Bob Moffit;
I reported to VAERS many years ago on all three of mine.
As the years go by - I feel I need to update them - but really it is a waste of time
Goes;
When the eyes dilate you know something is going on with the brain. What surprised me is: The medical community are not even concerned with 26 year olds either!!!!!!!!
Immune system thing attacking the brain got to psychologists so they can talk the brain can reason with the immune system not to attack it guess. You got one that can't sleep and the brain goes crazy from that - no testing to see if there is epilepsy during a sleep cycle - just a nurse practioner under a psychiritist that just guesses and gives her some seizure medicine called Lamictal. Really the witch doctors guessed just as well.
Posted by: Benedetta | March 13, 2012 at 06:10 PM
The board 15 in all specialists (white coats) who gave us our son`s dignosis of "Regressive autism" said
"Autism you can’t do anything about it go home and have a cup of tea"...
Yep !green puss from the ears,temp of 104,baby hadn’t slept for 38hrs ,doctors comment on medical file "THIS CHILD ISN`T ILL"
You might question why I still go on after 14 years..
And they STILL put out the same S-H-ONE-T,to all parents with Autism..
Angus. one day soon
Posted by: Angus Files | March 13, 2012 at 05:53 PM
Mom: [addressing my pediatrician over and over again] "Something is wrong in my kids gut."
Ped: [standard answer]"Hmmm, belly does look swollen but it is common in autism, good day Mrs. Mom"
Mom: "But I have shown you all of the new information [studies-peer reviewed] coming out....look! Look, the gut issues!"
Ped: Mrs. Mom, you do know that none of this will change your childs neurological diagnosis, don't you?"
Ped: "Good day Mrs. Mom."
Posted by: StephM | March 13, 2012 at 02:44 PM
I thought I was use to the biting .. that was until I ended up in the ER where these wise doctors told me that human bites have a high infection rate and then the next day I was back in the hospital because lo it was infected. (I am sure sitting around the ER for a couple of hours before anyone half way cleaned up it up had nothing to do with the infection.)
Posted by: L Land | March 13, 2012 at 01:10 PM
I live the life you describe LJ.
Thank you for putting into words.
Posted by: StephM | March 13, 2012 at 09:30 AM
The following is an excerpt direct from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) site:
"Many different types of adverse events ocur after vaccination. About 85-90% of the reports describe mild adverse events such as fever, local reactions, and episodes of crying or mild irritability...."
Notice .. VAERS makes no effort to describe "episodes of crying or mild irritability" .. thereby suggesting that ALL "episodes of crying or mild irritability" are insignificant .. apparently including those children who "scream" for days following vaccinations.
If VAERS, the ONLY authority tasked with evaluating and monitoring adverse reactions .. routinely dismisses 85 to 90% of adverse events as anticipated "crying episodes" .. is it any wonder that pediatricians are quick to dismiss the common sense of parents who know their child would not be "screaming" for days and weeks on end .. UNLESS THAT CHILD WAS SUFFERING INTENSE PAIN.
Shame on both .. VAERS and the pediatricians .. who rely upon them for guidance.
Posted by: Bob Moffitt | March 13, 2012 at 09:22 AM
I couldn't get past the first two paragraphs. Too many horrible, horrible memories. I have to put them out of my mind, or I can't function.
Posted by: Holly M. | March 13, 2012 at 08:51 AM