 
 When the teacher asked Kayla to draw a butterfly, the picture she made caused a lot of surprise. Kayla drew a syringe—a needle. It took us some time to realize that a "butterfly" is also the name of the fine baby needles that doctors had often used on Kayla. "They hurt when they put them in my arm," she explained.
Kayla makes the doctors and nurses empty their pockets before letting them examine her, to be sure they're not carrying any butterflies!
The story of how Kayla became so well acquainted with doctors and their needles begins in 1995, the year she was born.
My husband and I are experienced parents— we have six children, including two we've adopted. When Kayla still wasn't rolling over at 7 months of age we knew that her development was delayed. She was an extremely tired infant who would fall backwards whenever we sat her up. On her first birthday she was admitted to hospital and assessed for a week, but the hospital staff couldn't tell us what was wrong with her.
At nearly two years of age Kayla was still a sleepy child who was not walking or talking. Then one day she fell back against the radiator at her day care centre (hitting her head so hard she developed a concussion), while at the same time wetting her pants. This the doctors recognized as an epileptic seizure.
To be honest, I was a little bit relieved to finally have the doctor's diagnosis of epilepsy. At least now there would be a protocol to follow to treat her, and we could take it from there.
Kayla was put on the antiepileptic drug Depakene, and it was as if she suddenly woke up. This sleepy child, who had only moved around on her bottom, suddenly started walking, climbing on couches, running everywhere! Her speech started to come too, but more slowly. Thing were looking up! 
The seizures continued, though. First we tried adding on the antiepileptic drug Frisium (which gave Kayla behaviour problems) before finally settling on Tegretol. It was a bumpy time. The seizures improved, and Kayla's condition stabilized somewhat.
Then in February of 2000 things seemed to go suddenly backwards. Kayla became extremely groggy—she just couldn't seem to wake up.
"Things aren't going well in my head… Things are turning in my head," Kayla would say. "Help me get out of my head."
I drove my Kayla to the nearest hospital—we live in a rural Quebec community 45 minutes away. The hospital staff finally sent us home at 2 o'clock in the morning, telling me that my daughter probably had gastritis and prescribing Tempra to reduce her fever.
I didn't agree with this diagnosis. When Kayla was still groggy the next morning, I called her own pediatrician, whose instructions were clear: "Get her to a to a hospital right away."
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