My sixteen-year-old son, Rocky, is about to spend 48 hours locked down in a glass-walled hospital room while he undergoes continuous video and EEG (electro-encephalogram) monitoring. Constant parental supervision is required.

GAAAAAH! I don't wanna go! I! Don't! Wan! Na!

Let me emphasize that I am very, VERY grateful that Rocky is receiving this evaluation. Earlier this year, his teachers and I noticed that he was becoming spacier and spacier. His grades tanked. He began to struggle emotionally and behaviorally. I chalked all this up to the combined effects of autism and teen angst until I read a great book, Adolescents on the Autism Spectrum, by (my imaginary BFF) Chantal Sicile-Kira. She noted that 25% (!) of teens with autism have seizures that can interfere with learning and cause behavioral and mood changes. Aha! I got Rocky in for a preliminary EEG lickety-split, and the results were abnormal. Now he's having this two-day evaluation to determine if he has a treatable seizure disorder.

This isn't my first time at the EEG rodeo. I've spent many days in the hospital with my younger son, Taz, who was diagnosed with epilepsy seven years ago. It's a miserable experience that I liken to being incarcerated with my child without! a! break! for! two! days! straight! I've learned from past hospital stays that I cannot ever, EVER get caught committing a crime that would result in jail time. Just a few days in EEG captivity, I'm ashamed to admit, brings out the absolute worst in me. 

For example, no matter how hard I try to stop myself, I frequently dissolve in fits of inappropriate giggles at the sight of my poor child, who has to walk around with a gazillion multi-colored wires protruding out of a gauze turban that protects the electrodes glued to his scalp. I know this is wrong of me, but I can't help but think that he looks like something out of a really bad Ed Wood movie.

And it gets worse. More than once, I -- well -- I broke wind in the presence of a nurse. (What can I say? That hospital food is a gastric nightmare!) Then, I caught her eye, nodded in the direction of my innocent child, and mouthed the words, "Poor baby has bad gas." Blog forgive me.

I blame my insanity on the nonstop video monitoring, which totally messes with my head. At first, I always feel like I'm being watched like a hawk for signs of Munchausen-by-Proxy disorder, where the mom intentionally makes her kid sick to get attention from others.  As a result, for the first several hours of the evaluation, I'm afraid to get within 10 feet of my child, and I compulsively keep my hands out where they can be seen at all times.

But then I start to worry that I look too cold and distant, like the so-called "Refrigerator mother" who was blamed for causing autism back in the 1950s. I become intensely self-conscious, moving around the room like a Stepford mom-bot with proprioceptive issues.

By day two, I am a cowering mess. I try to hide in the camera's only blind spot, and I keep expecting white-labcoated scientists to burst in and try to coax me out from the corner with cheese. Paranoid and bored and cabin-fevered to the limits of my sanity, I actually start wishing my kid would have a big ol' blue-lipped seizure already so that the EEG techs will declare that they have enough data to send us home early.

With today's EEG, I am hoping I can atone for my past transgressions. Here are my goals: 

• I shall NOT giggle immaturely at Rocky's gauze-and-wire turban head, even though his thick, three-inch Jewfro will necessitate a turban *snort* as swollen as a ready-to-burst Jiffy Pop tin.
• I shall take responsibility for my own bodily functions (note to self: avoid the hospital's bean soup).
• I shall act naturally on camera. After all, it is my son, not I, who is the focus of the video monitoring. Yes, I shall just be me and treat the whole event as good practice for the future, when I have my own reality show (as we all undoubtedly will someday).
• I shall NOT wish seizures on my son... even though I sort of hope he does have a seizure disorder, the kind that can be successfully treated with medication that miraculously eliminates all of Rocky's attentional, academic, emotional, and behavioral struggles. (What? A girl can dream.)

 Wish me luck! Let the captivity begin.