Lynda --The First Day at Millcreek and After Millcreek

This picture of Lynda was made at Millcreek the first day we took her on September 2, 1981.  She was healthy and could sit straight and run like the wind.  As so many people have said through the years....to just look at her you wouldn't know anything was wrong with her.  This is a perfect example.  She celebrated her 10th birthday at Millcreek on September 21st.  It just about killed me for her to be going even for respite care and then for her to be there for her birthday....well, if you're a parent I don't have to explain.  I appliqued this jumpsuit for her to match a yellow one that Kevin had.  We had a family picture made right before Millcreek and in the picture she had one arm wrapped around her Daddy's neck and the other hand up in front of the applique (of course).  LOL


After the seizure and the stroke on January 21, 1982 she was in the hospital at Magee and then in Memphis at LeBohneur.  A couple of weeks later, the photograph below was taken.  I was able to take her with me to Scott Center since I taught the multiply disabled class.  She wasn't really ready to go back to school but with this special situation, she went.  In the picture below, someone is having to hold her to make sure she didn't fall while I took the picture.  She didn't have balance.  She couldn't walk and as you can tell here, she couldn't even sit alone.  I can describe it with words but you can't really get an idea of the severity of the stroke unless you were there or perhaps by seeing a picture.  You can imagine how overwhelming it was for us to see her with such major changes when we went to Magee thinking it was only a minor thing.  A seizure.  We thought it was like all of the ones she'd had for the previous ten years.

Our sweet Lynda with actual bald spots on the side of her head.  This happened before the stroke.  Mine is beginning to look a lot like this since July 30th when she went into the emergency room in Oxford.  It's amazing what stress will do to your hair.

I want to urge anyone with a child with special needs who cannot tell you what is going on at school or daycare to take notice of any thinning of his or her hair.  This was our first clue that something was going on.  The body's reaction to stress is often to shut down the growth stage of hair and prematurely force the hair into the resting stage.  Where a person usually loses 100 hairs a day, forced premature shedding causes about 300 hairs a day to fall out.  It can be caused by illnesses, medications, or stress from schedule changes for children with autism or situations considered abusive.  Please let this information help you identify situations that may be causing your child with special needs to  experience stress.  It may not be anything that would cause us stress but for a particular child (work that's too difficult or they don't understand) it can cause all types of health issues, behavioral issues or something you might not equate with stress;  hair loss.

I hope this is information you will never have to use but maybe knowing what we've learned the hard way will benefit some other parent in detecting stress in their child and get whatever type help is needed.