FIRST ASSIGNMENT
Story Statement
This memoir is about the journey I took to save my son and how I lived to tell the story.
SECOND ASSIGNMENT
Antagonists
Tom & his family. Jamey’s school(s). For different reasons, they are antagonists for both Jessica and Jamey.
Both family and schools are based in upstate, rural, redneck NY. Tom and his family go through life with their heads buried in the sand. They would much rather deny than deal with something unfortunate. Their goal is to pretend like everything is perfect 100% of the time. When Jamey was diagnosed with autism his aunt said, “No, I don’t believe it. His dad Tommy didn’t speak until he was four because his siblings spoke for him.” And the same woman said to Jessica, “You’re wasting a lot of time and money on early intervention since there is absolutely nothing wrong.”
The schools have basically the same problem. They don’t acknowledge Jamey’s medical issues and expect way too much from him. They don’t know how to handle him in a way that is helpful or nurturing which causes a lot of anxiety and feelings of inadequacy for the boy. Both family and school make matters that should be solvable, impossible and Jamey unnecessarily falls through many cracks. The school causes a lot of stress on Jessica by nit-picking over every move Jamey makes and not taking into consideration his unique special needs and medical issues.
Family and friends constantly second guess the medical decisions Jessica makes which causes her feelings of incompetence. Finding out that Jamey’s doctors oppose one another makes life even harder. Picking one treatment over another for Jamey is the hardest thing she has to do. It causes her to second-guess herself and live in a constant state of anxiety and stress over whether she did the right thing.
THIRD ASSIGNMENT
Breakout Title
Ring Around the Chromosome
Two Intertwined
Labyrinth
FOURTH ASSIGNMENT
Comparables
This Boy We Made: A Memoir of Motherhood. Genetics, and Facing the Unknown by Taylor Harris. In this memoir, Taylor is a mom of a boy with rare genetic disease who is in search of the truth about her son. Ring Around the Chromosome is also about a mom who is constantly trying to find answers about her son’s rare genetic diseases.
Bottled by Dana Bowman is mainly about a mother recovering from alcoholism while raising young children. In Ring Around the Chromosome, recovering from alcoholism while raising young children is a major theme throughout the memoir.
FIFTH ASSIGNMENT
Hook Line
A mother of three young children transforms her fear into strength as she faces her autistic son’s rare genetic disorders while confronting her own brain cancer. Her life appears to be storybook perfect on the outside, but she secretly struggles with eating disorders and alcohol abuse. One gives her control while the other takes it away.
SIXTH ASSIGNMENT
Inner Conflict
The protagonist’s son struggles with his health from the moment he is born. He is born with birth defects that are indicative of a bigger problem. Jamey is born tongue tied, has hypospadias, and cafe au lait spots that show up on his skin by the dozens. He has ear infections, strep throat, bronchiolitis, and sicknesses of the like every single week of his first year of life. He is diagnosed early on with Neurofibromatosis 1, autism, ADHD, and the extremely rare Ring Chromosome 17 Syndrome. He then struggles with PANDAS, Lyme disease and co-infections - bartonella and babesiosis, Common Variable Immunodeficiency (CVID), and Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy (CIDP). Boston Children’s Hospital discovers a deficit in C4 cells which prevents Jamey’s body from fighting all illness and sets him up for potentially serious diseases in the future. The mystery over why Jamey keeps fighting sickness and can’t get over diseases circles back to a rare deficit in C4 cells. We have the important answers but can’t predict the outcome.
Hypothetical Scenario regarding Inner Conflict:
The protagonist has trouble coping early on in her life and everything she does seems to be a struggle. She is unaware of the malignant brain tumor that’s growing in her left frontal lobe. To get through daily struggles, she relies on food and/or alcohol to comfort and numb her feelings. When her children are born, the struggles continue yet she finds periods of good health and sobriety. The birth of her third child brings her the greatest challenge yet when his constant health scares seem to have no resolution. She embarks on a quest to find out why he’s been sick since birth and only seems to get sicker.
Hypothetical Scenario for the Secondary Conflict:
The protagonist faces drinking scare after drinking scare and realizes that if she doesn’t do something about it, she will die. Her struggles continue even after counseling, Antabuse, and AA. After researching the Internet for possible solutions, she comes across a clinic in Ireland that offers Antabuse implants -a year long solution! The protagonist commits to a trip to Ireland so that she can be the sober and strong mom her children deserve.
SEVENTH ASSIGNMENT
Setting
Everyone seems to turn a blind eye to the Military Radar Towers camouflaged in the rolling hills of Beaver Creek, NY. My close family members and friends have wondered if the radiation coming for the towers had something to do with the cancer clusters among the several children in our small town. And what about my brain cancer at age 35? Could the radiation have caused the ring chromosome syndrome and other genetic defects Jamey was burdened with? Beaver Creek is a small town filled with people who were born and raised there along with their parents, grandparents, great grandparents, great-great grandparents, etc. It reminds me distinctly of Walnut Grove from the book/ tv show Little House on Prairie. In Beaver Creek, everyone knows everything about each other, and newcomers are generally not welcome. Only a handful of businesses exist in Beaver Creek. There is a post office, a local tavern (cleverly named The Town Tavern), a mediocre pizza place, a hardware store, and a gas station named R&C’s where most of the items on the grocery shelves are expired a month or more before. Real grocery stores are forty miles away and so are any decent restaurants or fast food chains. The landmark of the town is a blinking light on the main street. Because it is hard to decipher whether you’re even in the town, I tell first time visitors to “look for the blinking light, turn left, and you’ll eventually find our house.” It was the only big, white, Greek revival house on the street. Then I’d add, “Be careful though because there are often more four wheelers or snowmobiles on the streets than there are cars.”
Subsettings -
*Boston Children’s Hospital. This is where Jamey is diagnosed and treated for a few serious disorders and sicknesses and gets indefinite ongoing care.
*Infusion Center of Southern Connecticut - where Jamey spends years receiving IVIG infusions to cure Lyme disease and co-infections.
*Yale-New Haven Hospital -where Jessica has craniotomies twice to remove malignant brain tumors.
*Lewistown, Ireland. A small suburb of Dublin that resembles the dreamlike setting of the movie/musical Brigadoon. People are far and few yet the surroundings are breathtaking. Picturesque, multicolored two-storied storefronts border windy, cobblestone streets. Jessica makes a last, desperate attempt to cure her drinking problems by seeking out an Antabuse implant clinic only available in Lewistown and a few parts of Europe.
FIRST ASSIGNMENT Story Statement This memoir is about the journey I took to save my son and how I lived to tell the story. SECOND ASSIGNMENT Antagonists Tom & his family. Jamey’s school(s). For different reasons, they are antagonists for both Jessica and Jamey. Both family and schools are based in upstate, rural, redneck NY. Tom and his family go through life with their heads buried in the sand. They would much rather deny than deal with something unfortunate. Their goal is to pretend like everything is perfect 100% of the time. When Jamey was diagnosed with autism his aunt said, “No, I don’t believe it. His dad Tommy didn’t speak until he was four because his siblings spoke for him.” And the same woman said to Jessica, “You’re wasting a lot of time and money on early intervention since there is absolutely nothing wrong.” The schools have basically the same problem. They don’t acknowledge Jamey’s medical issues and expect way too much from him. They don’t know how to handle him in a way that is helpful or nurturing which causes a lot of anxiety and feelings of inadequacy for the boy. Both family and school make matters that should be solvable, impossible and Jamey unnecessarily falls through many cracks. The school causes a lot of stress on Jessica by nit-picking over every move Jamey makes and not taking into consideration his unique special needs and medical issues. Family and friends constantly second guess the medical decisions Jessica makes which causes her feelings of incompetence. Finding out that Jamey’s doctors oppose one another makes life even harder. Picking one treatment over another for Jamey is the hardest thing she has to do. It causes her to second-guess herself and live in a constant state of anxiety and stress over whether she did the right thing. THIRD ASSIGNMENT Breakout Title Ring Around the Chromosome Two Intertwined Labyrinth FOURTH ASSIGNMENT Comparables This Boy We Made: A Memoir of Motherhood. Genetics, and Facing the Unknown by Taylor Harris. In this memoir, Taylor is a mom of a boy with rare genetic disease who is in search of the truth about her son. Ring Around the Chromosome is also about a mom who is constantly trying to find answers about her son’s rare genetic diseases. Bottled by Dana Bowman is mainly about a mother recovering from alcoholism while raising young children. In Ring Around the Chromosome, recovering from alcoholism while raising young children is a major theme throughout the memoir. FIFTH ASSIGNMENT Hook Line A mother of three young children transforms her fear into strength as she faces her autistic son’s rare genetic disorders while confronting her own brain cancer. Her life appears to be storybook perfect on the outside, but she secretly struggles with eating disorders and alcohol abuse. One gives her control while the other takes it away. SIXTH ASSIGNMENT Inner Conflict The protagonist’s son struggles with his health from the moment he is born. He is born with birth defects that are indicative of a bigger problem. Jamey is born tongue tied, has hypospadias, and cafe au lait spots that show up on his skin by the dozens. He has ear infections, strep throat, bronchiolitis, and sicknesses of the like every single week of his first year of life. He is diagnosed early on with Neurofibromatosis 1, autism, ADHD, and the extremely rare Ring Chromosome 17 Syndrome. He then struggles with PANDAS, Lyme disease and co-infections - bartonella and babesiosis, Common Variable Immunodeficiency (CVID), and Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy (CIDP). Boston Children’s Hospital discovers a deficit in C4 cells which prevents Jamey’s body from fighting all illness and sets him up for potentially serious diseases in the future. The mystery over why Jamey keeps fighting sickness and can’t get over diseases circles back to a rare deficit in C4 cells. We have the important answers but can’t predict the outcome. Hypothetical Scenario regarding Inner Conflict: The protagonist has trouble coping early on in her life and everything she does seems to be a struggle. She is unaware of the malignant brain tumor that’s growing in her left frontal lobe. To get through daily struggles, she relies on food and/or alcohol to comfort and numb her feelings. When her children are born, the struggles continue yet she finds periods of good health and sobriety. The birth of her third child brings her the greatest challenge yet when his constant health scares seem to have no resolution. She embarks on a quest to find out why he’s been sick since birth and only seems to get sicker. Hypothetical Scenario for the Secondary Conflict: The protagonist faces drinking scare after drinking scare and realizes that if she doesn’t do something about it, she will die. Her struggles continue even after counseling, Antabuse, and AA. After researching the Internet for possible solutions, she comes across a clinic in Ireland that offers Antabuse implants -a year long solution! The protagonist commits to a trip to Ireland so that she can be the sober and strong mom her children deserve. SEVENTH ASSIGNMENT Setting Everyone seems to turn a blind eye to the Military Radar Towers camouflaged in the rolling hills of Beaver Creek, NY. My close family members and friends have wondered if the radiation coming for the towers had something to do with the cancer clusters among the several children in our small town. And what about my brain cancer at age 35? Could the radiation have caused the ring chromosome syndrome and other genetic defects Jamey was burdened with? Beaver Creek is a small town filled with people who were born and raised there along with their parents, grandparents, great grandparents, great-great grandparents, etc. It reminds me distinctly of Walnut Grove from the book/ tv show Little House on Prairie. In Beaver Creek, everyone knows everything about each other, and newcomers are generally not welcome. Only a handful of businesses exist in Beaver Creek. There is a post office, a local tavern (cleverly named The Town Tavern), a mediocre pizza place, a hardware store, and a gas station named R&C’s where most of the items on the grocery shelves are expired a month or more before. Real grocery stores are forty miles away and so are any decent restaurants or fast food chains. The landmark of the town is a blinking light on the main street. Because it is hard to decipher whether you’re even in the town, I tell first time visitors to “look for the blinking light, turn left, and you’ll eventually find our house.” It was the only big, white, Greek revival house on the street. Then I’d add, “Be careful though because there are often more four wheelers or snowmobiles on the streets than there are cars.” Subsettings - *Boston Children’s Hospital. This is where Jamey is diagnosed and treated for a few serious disorders and sicknesses and gets indefinite ongoing care. *Infusion Center of Southern Connecticut - where Jamey spends years receiving IVIG infusions to cure Lyme disease and co-infections. *Yale-New Haven Hospital -where Jessica has craniotomies twice to remove malignant brain tumors. *Lewistown, Ireland. A small suburb of Dublin that resembles the dreamlike setting of the movie/musical Brigadoon. People are far and few yet the surroundings are breathtaking. Picturesque, multicolored two-storied storefronts border windy, cobblestone streets. Jessica makes a last, desperate attempt to cure her drinking problems by seeking out an Antabuse implant clinic only available in Lewistown and a few parts of Europe.