Ryan’s World

By Ryan Berry

I am back and I’ve already been questioned if I am going to resume my column. To be honest, I never quit writing about my family. I have a Facebook Page dedicated to the column and every now and then when they did something that caught my attention, I would write about. Since a lot of readers have been out of the loop for the last couple of years, I’ve decided to share a few of those columns before I start writing new columns. They haven’t changed so I have plenty of fodder. This one comes from a little over a year ago.

It has been a while since I’ve had the opportunity to journal my thoughts in a column. My family is probably rejoicing because they are usually the focus of my thoughts. However, with my oldest daughter’s latest trip to the doctor, how could I resist?

We tease our oldest daughter about her many ailments that she presumes she has. Tease may not be the correct word I’m looking for here. It may be better stated that we roll our eyes when she announces her latest ailment.

We have instructed her to never, and I repeat, never logon to Web MD or any other site where she can put in her list of symptoms to get a diagnosis. One diagnosis she proudly announced to us was that she had drop foot. Drop foot is real and people with drop foot have a hard time lifting the front of their foot and usually drag it when they walk. As a reminder to those who may not have seen my Facebook Page – my daughter is a shot put thrower and has no problem with lifting her foot in the shot put ring.

Drop foot is not a disease, but rather an anatomical or muscular difficulty. Oh yeah, and one more thing can cause it. It can be neurological. Hmmmm! Maybe she did have it after all. We’ve felt for some time that she has had issues with her brain and the messages it sends.

We’ve also endured several real health issues with this child – cellulitis (a night in the hospital) and concussions (trips to the emergency room). One would think she could at least get a normal concussion, but nooooooo. Her first concussion came from weight lifting and no, a weight was not dropped on her head and she didn’t accidently run into weight room equipment. That would be fairly normal. Her concussion came from trying to outdo everyone else in squats and then nearly passing out and falling backwards. Another concussion came as she tried to de-pants her boyfriend and his reflex caused him to swing around and accidently hit her in the head.

How could we forget the overdose that sent her to the emergency room? She overdosed on caffeine.

I promise I am not making up this next one. Her latest trip to the doctor was because she had a tick in her eye. I’m not talking about the kind of tick where you blink uncontrollably because of a neurological condition (see above and her brain messages); this was the insect variety of a tick. Although she got the tick out right away, her main concern was that it may have laid eggs in her eye, which it did not do.

I am a little disappointed in the doctor and I wish we could have warned her. Never, ever give my oldest daughter any ideas of what could have happened. The doctor told her that if the tick would have bitten her eyeball she would have had to have surgery on the eye and would have had to wear an eye patch. That’s all we need. An eye patch and we could have replaced the drop foot with a peg leg. She could have been a pirate. But then Web MD would have probably told her she also had scurvy.