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My Son’s Year-Long Fight Against a Mystery Illness Changed How I See Love And Healing
The doctors had no answers
I'm so glad 2024 is over.
It was a challenging year.
Globally, 2024 was marked by conflict, economic hardship, and climate disasters. Personally, it was defined by my 11-year-old son’s mysterious illness.
It began with a simple sore throat back in October 2023. I could never forget the date because we spent Halloween in a hospital isolation room. The medical staff in the children’s ward were in costume — witches and superheroes fussed around Lakota, settling us into our home for the oncoming days.
He took no notice.
He was too sick.
Weak and listless. Poked and probed. Gaunt and dehydrated.
A mother’s helplessness
He’d been vomiting up to twelve times daily for the past three or so days, and this was our second emergency visit. This time, he got a bed. I was stressed and tired but relieved. We were in the right place for Lakota.
I didn’t know how to help him.
As a parent, that has got to be the worst feeling to experience.
Helplessness.
I’d tried everything I could at home — paracetamol, hydrolytes, plenty of fluids, a trip to the GP, dispensed his prescribed antibiotics, drew him warm baths, held him close when his body wracked, almost continuously.
Nothing worked. My boy wasn’t getting better.
That was when panic set in, and being a mother of five, with Lakota the youngest, it takes a lot to faze me in the face of the “sickies.”
I’ve dealt with the whole shebang and then some with my lot.
Chicken Pox, broken bones, severe, third-degree leg burns, RSV, bronchitis, tonsillitis, gastro, a broken jaw, severe ongoing asthma, colds and flu, C-C-COVID, multiple surgeries, and so on.
But this was different.
I couldn’t determine the cause or see a clear recovery path. My baby was sicker than I’d ever seen him, and there was nothing I could do to take it away for him.
“Give it to me instead,” I told God, Jesus, the universe, the Holiest of Spirits — whoever, whatever listened. Always at the end of each day when Lakota slept. When everything was quiet, I’d pray and weep desperately, and I’m no crying lady.
I was scared.
At first, they thought it was a stomach bug. Like a parasite. The first emergency trip resulted in a round of blood tests and a strong antibiotic on top of the course he was already taking.
He continued vomiting.
Relentlessly in the car on the way home from the hospital at 2 a.m.
The following morning, Lakota was disabled with stomach pain. After a call to our GP, I was racing to a medical center to have his appendix checked via ultrasound before landing back in the emergency room.
Appendix cleared.
He continued to vomit.
Back at the hospital, doctors ran every test imaginable — CT scans, ultrasounds, an MRI of his brain — but found no answers.
“It could be a brain tumor,” they told me.
W-what?
I can’t describe how those days felt while waiting for the test results.
To be in the dark about something so utterly, significantly terrible.
Even considering that this scenario could be our path.
Those types of things don’t happen to us.
I couldn’t let myself play the “what if” game — I just couldn’t. I had to stay strong for Lakota and my daughters at home who were as worried as I was.
Lakota’s father’s support wasn’t forthcoming, which deepened the strain.
We’d separated about a year and a half earlier. It was tough, but we pulled through, and all went as fine as could be expected for the first year — until he learned I’d filed for a divorce.
The shit hit the fan, then.
He became bitter, and I became the enemy for reasons I don’t understand.
He convinced himself I was a manipulating bitch. He thought I was trying to poison the kids against him, and he lashed out a lot, becoming increasingly hostile despite my attempts to keep the peace.
“Think about it. Why would I jeopardize your relationship with the kids?”
The kids need their father. And, frankly, I need a slice of time in the world to be an adult — a woman. Without tending to others for a bit. I couldn’t figure out why he was twisting untruths in his mind to the point that he believed it.
“You know me,” I told him. “I’m still me — Kim. The woman you married.”
I remember asking him to come and stay a night at the hospital with Lakota so I could have a little break and sleep in my bed. The pull-out beds they set up for parents in the hospital would break your back if they could. I was dying for my bed and a better sleep.
Lakota was stable. Just one night.
“He’s got two parents,” I said. “Please.”
That didn’t get far.
Instead, he called back later when he was drunk, telling me how stressed he was about it all as I dealt with the medical whirlwind alone.
He was stressed.
I’ll refrain from telling you how I feel about that.
The word selfish comes to mind.
Each time Lakota asked when Dad was coming to see him, I barely knew how to respond so as not to upset him.
When do phone calls become actual parenting?
How could he not show up?
Lakota didn’t say anything about it. He was too sick. But I could see the hurt in his eyes. He needed his father. I knew he internalized his father’s lack of presence. How could he not?
The doctors put Lakota on “gut rest,” which meant he acquired an extension in the form of an IV and couldn’t eat or drink for 24 hours. Still, there were no answers as to what was wrong with him.
His vomiting somewhat decreased a few days later, and they discharged him from the hospital.
“There’s nothing more we can do,” they said.
He continued to vomit up to eight times daily. Sometimes more.
A few days later, we were back in the emergency room.
This time, the doctor on duty sent us home. I reminded her of Ryan’s Rule — a Queensland-based process that allows patients or their families to escalate concerns and request an immediate clinical review if they feel their care is inadequate.
“He’s isn’t what I call vomiting,” she said. “It’s only clear fluids coming up.”
I wanted to scream.
“Yeah, because he can’t keep food down.”
Still, she sent us away.
I remember feeling unheard. As though we were falling through the cracks in the medical system. No one was taking Lakota’s symptoms seriously now that the doctors had eliminated the major red flags. No one was helping us to figure out what was happening to him or to stop him from vomiting.
Nausea wafers didn’t work.
Omeprazole didn’t work.
It was as though his body was shutting down.
But he remained resilient in the face of whatever took hold.
“You have to fight this,” I told him. “Tell it to get out of your body with all your strength.”
The turning point
That afternoon, I called the GP again. I told him what happened at the hospital and that we desperately needed help. He was like a shining knight then. He called a specialist practicing in a different hospital and arranged an after-hours meeting. At about 7 p.m., he instructed me to immediately get Lakota to that hospital.
It was like entering another medical world.
Those doctors and nurses listened and provided the highest level of care during our stay, and this was a smaller, country hospital — not like the big, mainstream hospital I’d been taking him to. They even followed up with phone calls after Lakota was discharged, and they gave us a referral to see a gastroenterologist at Sydney’s Royal Children’s Hospital, who performed an endoscopy in late December.
And, low and behold, his father showed up to visit him this time.
Lakota loved it.
He was so happy to spend the day with his father, even if it was on the hospital grounds. At least he knew his dad cared enough to show face.
God bless his cotton socks.
The specialist doctor said it was a severe case of gastritis, but the vomiting continued through the oncoming months, and he had no idea why.
He prescribed Lakota daily medicine, hoping it would help to ease the symptoms and treat the cause.
Faith became my rock.
I clung to it like a lifeline, believing with every fiber of my being that he would get better. Even on the darkest days, when progress seemed non-existent, I reminded myself that miracles happen every day.
All I had to do was keep the faith.
For most of 2024, Lakota underwent multiple medical studies. Some were invasive, others not. We trekked to Sydney and back several times and had many Zoom calls with the specialist. We never left home without vomit bags.
On my part, over the year, I took him to see a psychologist, an intuitive naturopath who prescribed herbal potions and pills, an array of psychic healers, and a shaman witch doctor.
I remembered a psychic telling me years before that I had healing hands. Whether there was truth to that or not, I did not care. I had to do something.
So, I started to use my hands intentionally, performing light work practices with Lakota each night before bed, mentally drawing the illness out with my hands as I rested my palms on his stomach and head.
I taught him how to bring God’s light into his crown and through and around his body.
I showed him how to protect himself energetically.
I gave him obsidian and clear quartz crystals to keep beneath his pillow to help balance and revitalize his physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual planes and provide spiritual protection.
I talked about envisioning himself healthy again.
We spoke positive mantras together.
We performed the ritual every night without fail.
The vomiting eased to about three times daily, but he still had little energy.
He’d had to quit the soccer team.
He couldn’t go to school camp.
He missed out on birthday parties.
At the end of the first-year quarter, when Lakota was finally well enough to attend school again, he could not withstand the entire school day. I was forever receiving calls to pick him up early, and many days, he didn’t make it at all. So, at the suggestion of the school principal, our GP gave him an early leave exemption, which lasted the entire year.
That helped.
It eased the pressure on him because he knew I’d be there to pick him up about lunchtime. He tried so hard to stay strong.
The year rolled on. It became the new normal. I remember thinking how strange it is that a chronic illness can transform into a version of normalcy. Lakota could live a somewhat everyday life if you didn’t count the daily vomiting, medications, and stomach pains.
Until…
A glimmer of light
October 2024. I don’t remember the exact date the vomiting stopped. It was a painstakingly slow process.
First, he’d vomit once or twice daily for a week or so.
Then, one time only.
Then zero for a day.
Then, a vomit or two the next.
I’d check in with him.
“When did you vomit last?”
“Yesterday.”
I’d almost hold my breath. Counting the vomit-less days. Hopeful but reserved. Not daring to believe this might genuinely be the end.
One day, just like that, it stopped.
It felt surreal like the world had shifted back into place after a year of chaos. I watched Lakota tentatively reclaim pieces of his childhood — smiling, playing, kicking his soccer ball around the backyard, and dreaming again, one moment at a time.
The shadow of sickness had lifted, with it, a newfound appreciation for every little joy.
My late grandmother was a beautiful human being. She was warm, compassionate, and kind. Those qualities are what shone from her like a radiant stream of light.
Once, years and years ago, she told me that health is everything.
“You have nothing if you don’t have your health, Kim. Look after yourself,” she said.
She was right.
Your health is everything, whether you’re raising your kids energetically, having life adventures, having peace of mind, or showing up in the world.
Going through Lakota’s year-long health crisis made me stop and think about how we can deal with anything that comes our way if we have our health.
Without it, you’ve nothing.
Well, that and faith.
Lakota and I still perform our light work together each night before bed.
We always will now.
Thanks for your time!
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