Just Keep Swimming

Dom’s Story told by his mother

In the Spring of 2003, Finding Nemo was released. We were introduced to a little fish named Nemo who had a very over protective parent and was born with one average sized fin and one smaller fin. As the movie progresses, Nemo learns to trust in himself and his father, Marlin, realizes that Nemo can take care of himself.

Whenever I think of Dominic, I think of that movie. A tiny fish born with something that made him different from all the other fish.

When I was pregnant, I wanted to find out the gender of my baby. I wanted a boy but everyone in my family thought I was having a girl, after all, I came from a family of three daughters. Dominic’s father had two sisters, so it seemed like the odds were in favour that I would have a girl. Well imagine my annoyance when, during my sonogram appointment, he decided to position himself in a way that we could not tell the gender. Try as the sonographer might, she could not get an angle to see the gender. My little baby did show his parents what he thought of us disrupting his nap time. He gave us the middle finger. That sonogram picture was used as the cover of our baby shower invites.

Everything Dominic did was done his own way, no matter if it was harder or a little bit scarier. My labour lasted for three days. He refused to sleep unless he was being rocked or listening to Elton John’s “Its a little bit Funny”. He was never a picky eater and a running joke we had was that I would bring home any food labelled as EXTREME HEAT only to have him shrug and say it wasn’t spicy at all.

On his first birthday, he had his first seizure. It was one of the scariest moments of my life. He stopped breathing, his lips turned blue and I thought I was going to lose my baby boy. Luckily he started breathing again and ten minutes later, he was trying to jump out of my arms to play with his new toys. We spent a few years trying to figure out what was the cause of his seizures. We spent many long hours at the Stollery as Dominic had EEG’s, MRI’s and even once, a week long stay where he played video games from morning until night. No seizures occurred while there but naturally he had one a few days later at home.

We were told that he may have learning issues, that it would be best if he didn’t go into a pool in case he had a seizure. Well Dominic being Dominic became an avid reader of such books like The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings and The Wizard of Oz. He took to water like a fish and was soon doing laps underwater. All by the time he was in grade three. In kindergarten, he would tell his aunt about the lifecycle of the butterfly, from little caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly. And yes, he did use the term chrysalis.

Dominic’s seizures occurred in the part of the brain that affects speech and how sound is interpreted. This led to Dominic having a stutter as well as having hearing issues. The result of every hearing test came back that everything was working as it should be but his brain was not properly interpreting the information that his ears were receiving. These two issues made it very hard for Dominic to make friends in school. Not to mention that his vocabulary was quite extensive compared to his peers.

There were quite a few birthday parties where, even though his whole class was invited, only one or two kids would show up. He was so excited when he received his first party invite, I teared up. He didn’t understand why other kids didn’t want to play with him. Dominic worked very hard to correct his stutter, attending speech therapy on a weekly basis for three years. Every Wednesday afternoon, was spent in an office watching Dominic learn to stretch out his words and to learn to take a breath before speaking. I am forever thankful to Cheryl Oxley for helping him overcome that stutter.

Dominic played every sport available to him, soccer, baseball, lacrosse. Every summer and school break was spent at the YMCA camps where he learned to love art and cooking, and made so many memories.

During one of those camps was the first time I learned how fearless he was. He noticed one kid being pushed under water by another, he swam over and stopped the bully from hurting that smaller child. After the incident I asked Dom why he did that instead of getting help. He just said that his heart and brain told him it was the right thing to do. This moment would be repeated throughout his short life, Dom rushing in to help a smaller kid.

After Dominic’s passing his father found out about a party Dom had attended where two girls were intoxicated. Dominic acted as their personal bodyguard, making sure that no one took advantage of them. He never told us, but his friends did.

See Dominic was very humble and selfless. Coming from separated parents, he saw how his mom and dad made sacrifices to ensure he never went without. There were definitely times that Dominic’s father and I struggled financially and as much as we tried to shield Dominic, he knew. He would never tell us if he need new school supplies or if his shoes had holes. And with his love of converse and large feet, there were constant holes on the side of those shoes. He had a closet full of new jeans, shirts and hoodies but he would only wear a select few of his favourite jeans and hoodies.

His laugh was loud and full, you could hear it from the basement to the second floor of our house. He was sarcastic and sure of himself as he grew into a young man. He loved making fun of his aunts and I when he became taller than us. Dominic and his stepfather had a running joke about Matt Damon, and those two loved pulling pranks on each other and of course teaming up to pull pranks on me. When we welcomed a new baby boy into our lives, that brother was never called a half brother, he was just Dom’s annoying baby brother or Troglodyte, as Dominic so lovingly called him. As much as Dominic said his baby brother was a pest, I would constantly find them together, Dominic showing him a new YouTube video or a game or a book that he was reading.

When we brought home our daughter, Dominic was 16 so he should be completely over having a crying baby around but he wasn’t. One of my favourite pictures is of Dominic holding his baby sister’s hand while she is in her bassinet and he is on his phone watching a video. Her little hand wrapped around his finger. In reality, Dominic was completely wrapped around her little finger. She could not cry without him picking her up and she seemed to know that, as she would start crying to get his attention the instant she saw him. I have never seen tears dry as fast as hers did when Dominic would pick her up and cuddle her.

He and his father were best friends. You could see their connection whenever you were around them. Their mannerisms were identical and let me tell you how annoying it was trying to argue with someone who looks like you but sounds and acts exactly like your ex.

The last time I saw Dominic’s smile was on May 9th, 2021. Mother’s Day. His siblings, stepfather and Dom came in and surprised me with breakfast and a stuffed owl. A gift that he and his brother had been giving me since his brother, DC, was born. Dom said he was tired and wanted to nap. This wasn’t unusual as Dominic tended to stay up late on weekends gaming online.

When he still hadn’t gotten up four hours later, I went to check on him. That was the moment that my world stopped. As I watched his stepfather try to breathe life back into my baby boy, trying chest compressions to restart his heart. As I lay beside him begging for him to wake up. It would later be found that Dominic had a massive seizure and passed in his sleep.

I remember all the nights I would rush into his room when I heard him having a seizure, of the mornings he would come to the breakfast table with a new bruise thanks to him hitting something on the floor that he hadn’t cleaned up. When I’d tell him about his seizure and how he was too big for me to lift him back into bed, he’d just shrug and we would make up elaborate stories about the cause of the bruise. Not because he didn’t want classmates to know he had a seizure but because he liked to joke about his epilepsy. It wasn’t a seizure that caused his black eye, it was when he took a punch from a bear while he had been protecting a family of deer and rabbits. Sometimes I think about those days and wonder, what if. Why didn’t I check sooner, why didn’t I hear anything. Why was this seizure so different to the thousands of others he had in his life. I’ll never have an answer to those questions but that’s how epilepsy works. Even when you think you’ve gotten a grasp of what Epilepsy is, some new research or study comes out that changes how you think of it or treat it.

Dominic would be the first to explain about epilepsy to anyone who asked. How his brain was like a computer that would overheat because it was working so hard and fast that it would need to restart with every new update. That’s how he viewed his seizures, his brain restarting.

Epilepsy was never the reason not to do something, it became an afterthought in his life. A pesky annoying clothing tag in an otherwise comfy sweatshirt.

Dominic did not get to turn 18, he didn’t get to go out to bar, he didn’t get to walk a stage to receive his high school diploma. What he did do, was spend 17 years, 9 months and 26 days showing everyone how to “Just Keep Swimming”. Every time I have grieved in the last 9 months and 11 days, every time I have not wanted to get out of bed, I can hear his voice saying “I’m ok mom, I’m ok”. I heard that voice when I walked the stage for him and received his much deserved high school diploma. I heard that voice when his close family and I threw Dom a party on what would have been his 18th birthday. My baby boy was just so full of light and love. Throughout, and maybe, because of all the struggles he overcame due to his epilepsy. My hope is that his life and memory can inspire others living with this condition. That it can comfort the scared first time parents who received the news that their child has epilepsy. That it can give that frightened overprotective mom the courage to let their baby learn to swim even though she was told to be careful and not take risks. That it can give a child who is feeling weird the strength to get up each day and find the joy in living.

Epilepsy does not stop you from living, it makes you realize how precious life is.

Just keep swimming…