Creating Life as we know it...

Creating Life as we know it...

by Liv | Published on July 13th, 2009, 4:06 pm | Life

The date was December 2nd, 2003- Shannon and myself had just returned from our first Doctor's appointment for Serenity whom was but a mere collection of plasmic goo at the time. Shannon was working at the Vet on High Point road and life then was so much different. It was black and white compared to these days. This was before my Grandma and Grandpa died, before we went to London, back when we drove a huge gigantic 1979 V8 Station wagon affectionately called the "USS Griswald" after the similar based wagon in National Lampoon's Vacation. We had recently drove the thing hauling a U-haul behind it, cross country from Arizona to North Carolina and were attempting to rebuild our lives after the .dotcom bust of the late 90s. There were weeks were we struggled to buy diapers, and the car which broke down on occasion was patched together in some last minute MacGyver fashion as I yelled "Captain I don't know how much longer I can keep it together." Some how we managed. We were alone, void of family. On one occasion, a few high-school friends came over one night for a barbecue, but eventually even they would stop coming around. Clearly the city I had grown up in had changed in the few short years I had been gone. Our lives were changing. I took a crap job installing satellites for some Tech firm start-up out of Cary and we made ends meat. Life consisted of days of watching movies like "Saved" downloaded from the internet and ebaying used junk for an extra buck. Nine months goes pretty fast, and by the time July rolled around our house was filled with my parents, Shan's family and we all waited anxiously for the event to happen. Life was about to happen.

One night while after dinner at Hayble's Hearth it happened. We drove in to the Women's Hospital, and there on July 13, 2004... Serenity popped in to existence. Of course there was some screaming, grunting, and a waterfall of blood and placenta somewhere in there... but as Dr Ian Malcolm would say "Life will find a way"... and it did.

Five years later a lot has changed. I'd like to believe I'm a different person. I have a huge social network. I've gained personal success in so many ways, yet still I wouldn't be half the person I was if it wasn't for my children. Someone could argue that the day Serenity was born, a portion of my self came in to this world. Just as she couldn't know the life before her, I could not have expected whom I would become in the next five years. That's life.... and that's what birthdays celebrate: life. Ren loves Cheeseburgers and Noggin, she loves to sing and dance to the credits at the end of movies, she's "little miss priss", and my little monkey. Today she celebrates being 5. She wants a Burger King Cheeseburger, a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and a ride on a real roller coaster. The cake is on it's way, the burgers we've got to go get, and the roller coaster... We'll I'm still working on that... Some things never change...

...but that's life, a work in progress....

Happy Birthday Serenity!

[Questioner]

Our kids change us so much, and in so many wonderful ways. Congrats on your dear child's birthday!

[DeannaB]

Wonderfull story we should all take a moment to reflect back on the moments that change all of our lives. Happy Birthday Serinity

[A Person]

Promise her a trip to Canada's Wonderlandin Toronto

Name Year Type of Roller Coaster Intensity
1 Dragon Fire 1981 Steel 5
2 Mighty Canadian Minebuster 1981 Wooden out & back 5
3 Ghoster Coaster 1981 Wooden junior sit down 4
4 Wild Beast 1981 Wooden double out & back 5
5 SkyRider 1985 Steel stand up 5
6 Thunder Run 1986 Steel sit down 4
7 The Bat 1987 Steel shuttle/boomerang 5
8 Vortex 1991 Steel suspended 5
9 Flight Deck 1995 Steel inverted 5
10 Taxi Jam 1998 Steel junior sit down 2
11 The Fly 1999 Steel wild mouse 4
12 Silver Streak 2001 Steel junior inverted 4
13 Time Warp 2004 Steel flying 4
14 Back Lot Stunt Coaster 2005 Steel sit down 5
15 Behemoth 2008 Steel sit down 5

Happy birthday!

[Liv]

Love too... though it's a bit far for us right now....

I leaning towards Santa Land or Tweetsie Railroad.... Unless I can come up with something closer. Carowinds is a bit too much for us right now...

[BecauseHeLives]

Promise her a trip to Canada's Wonderlandin Toronto

Name Year Type of Roller Coaster Intensity
1 Dragon Fire 1981 Steel 5
2 Mighty Canadian Minebuster 1981 Wooden out & back 5
3 Ghoster Coaster 1981 Wooden junior sit down 4
4 Wild Beast 1981 Wooden double out & back 5
5 SkyRider 1985 Steel stand up 5
6 Thunder Run 1986 Steel sit down 4
7 The Bat 1987 Steel shuttle/boomerang 5
8 Vortex 1991 Steel suspended 5
9 Flight Deck 1995 Steel inverted 5
10 Taxi Jam 1998 Steel junior sit down 2
11 The Fly 1999 Steel wild mouse 4
12 Silver Streak 2001 Steel junior inverted 4
13 Time Warp 2004 Steel flying 4
14 Back Lot Stunt Coaster 2005 Steel sit down 5
15 Behemoth 2008 Steel sit down 5

Happy birthday!

Nah! Take her to Cedar Point.

Congrats Liv! Children to tend to make us all better people.

[Questioner]

Love too... though it's a bit far for us right now....

I leaning towards Santa Land or Tweetsie Railroad.... Unless I can come up with something closer. Carowinds is a bit too much for us right now...

From the stories I have read about the effects on the brain of the extreme roller coaster rides, keep the kiddies on the less extreme rides please.

[SouthernFriedInfidel]

Love too... though it's a bit far for us right now....

I leaning towards Santa Land or Tweetsie Railroad.... Unless I can come up with something closer. Carowinds is a bit too much for us right now...

From the stories I have read about the effects on the brain of the extreme roller coaster rides, keep the kiddies on the less extreme rides please.

IIRC, we never put our son on a coaster ride until he was like 8 or 9 years old -- and that was the Gold Rusher at Carowimds. Pretty benign. Later, I introduced him to Busch Gardens and the Loch Ness Monster and the Big Bad Wolf. It took him a while, but he finally warmed up to the serious coasters. Now, he really looks forward to park visits for them.

[A Person]

This report BRAIN INJURY ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA details the findings of the Blue Ribbon Panel Review Of The Correlation Between Brain Injury And Roller Coaster Rides

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Findings
1) There is evidence that roller coaster rides pose a health risk to some people some of the time.
Equally evident is that the overwhelming majority of riders will suffer no ill effects. Most
major categories of at risk populations such as pregnant women or persons with heart
conditions, epilepsy, back or neck injury or prior orthopedic surgery, among others, are already
warned against riding. People of small stature are usually excluded. Thus, there is risk, but
effort is made to warn those at risk to prevent injury.
2) No systematically acquired comprehensive database, longitudinal history or natural history data
was available. The Panel’s review of the 57 cases of patients who reportedly sustained craniocerebral
injury related to roller coaster rides over the past 38 years revealed no evidence of ride related
brain injury absent head contact. Furthermore, of the 51 non-fatal injuries, the majority
sustained neurovascular injuries, and of the six fatal injuries, all suffered undiagnosed
neurovascular abnormalities such as blood vessel abnormalities, malformations or aneurysms.
These are risk groups, like those listed in section one above, but unknown to the rider. It is
unlikely that the rider’s physician, much less the amusement ride owners/operators, could have
known that these persons were at risk before the fact.
3) The committee has questions about the methodology of existing measurements of two
significant variables on roller coasters as they relate to occupant acceleration: linear and angular
accelerations and their duration. Location and type of accelerometers were found to be less
than ideal and not as directly relevant to the linear and rotational accelerations of the head as
desired. However, improvements in precision and relevance probably would not result in
accelerometer findings of more than a 20% difference from those already obtained.
4) The accelerations experienced by roller coaster riders are far below experimentally derived
injury thresholds for healthy individuals. The highest advertised roller coaster acceleration
levels are 6 g’s for 1 second, although instrumented testing suggests a lower maximum of 4.5
g’s for 0.5 seconds. In comparison, significant research has been done on healthy individuals
regarding the level of sustained acceleration at which blackout can occur and the lowest
reported threshold is 5.5 g’s over a period of 5 seconds. Animal and other experimental
research regarding serious brain injury suggest a much higher threshold (35 g’s or more);
however, it is not clear how this threshold applies to the healthy, human population.
5) The conclusion supported to date is that the risk of brain injury from a roller coaster is not in
the rides, but in the riders. That is, there are some people we already know should not
participate in roller coaster rides. The 6 reported fatalities were in a shared, logical, but
infrequent risk group that could not be established before the fact.

It seems that the risk is not age - provided the child is not too small for the restraints - but risk factors such as neuro-vascular conditions.

[Questioner]

I was just referring to little children. Their small stature and immature brains, and brains larger for body size than what is found in the teen or adult do put them at higher risk. That is why most rides that throw the body around have height restrictions. That is all I was referring to.