Search Results for: blog stuck in between when we have to wait for answers

How Close Is Britney To Losing Her Kids? —The Answer

The world can now stop speculating as to whether Britney Spears’ erratic behavior will cost her time with her children. A judge has spoken and the answer is… NO—at least not for now. This afternoon a L.A. Court Commissioner issued a ruling in the custody fight between Spears and her former husband Kevin Federline. In it the judge confirms what the rest of the nation has been saying for a while—Brit Brit is a “habitual, frequent and continuous” user of alcohol and controlled substances. As a result, the former Mouseketeer must now undergo twice-weekly random testing. The judge also added … Continue reading →

Test Results, Cold Oatmeal, and the Mysterious Nurse Diane

Several days ago, my son’s pediatric nephrologist phoned with the results of his kidney biopsy. The phone call was one day late. One day is practically eternity. First, let me say that prior to our leaving the hospital, I asked this doctor when we would be informed of the results. Her reply: “Possibly Monday, but by Wednesday at the latest.” To my experienced ears, that meant Wednesday at the earliest. I was right. Wednesday came, and it was nearly noon and we still hadn’t heard a word. Now, just to give you some background, we were waiting to hear what … Continue reading →

Back in the Land of Limbo

Over the weekend, my sixteen-year-old son Garrett was hospitalized for a kidney biopsy. During a previous routine examination, we had learned that his kidneys were spilling trace amounts of protein. This is an early sign of renal disease, and the current strategy is to find it in its earliest stages to hopefully stave off major problems later on. In the past, children with juvenile diabetes either got kidney disease or didn’t, and nothing was done until the child began showing signs of serious illness. Now kids are routinely screened for these trace amounts of protein to get to the problem … Continue reading →

One Friday in the Hospital Waiting Room…

Yesterday I was sitting in the Children’s Hospital waiting room while my son had some lab work done. As I watched the clock (along with some obnoxious kids program on TV), a family entered the room. They could have been any family in the United States. There was nothing terribly unusual about them–a balding bespectacled father, a slightly heavyset mom, a teenage daughter with an Ipod hanging around her neck, and a red-headed, freckled son who looked like a young Ron Howard. They were the kind of family you might picture living next door, or appearing on a sit com. … Continue reading →

Syndrome Soup: When Your Kid Has a Mixed Diagnosis

Although some special needs children have a very specific diagnosis of ADHD, autism, or Tourette syndrome, etc., many children have symptoms from a variety of disorders. For example, a child might have Tourette-like tics, with ADHD-like inattention, OCD-like anxiety, and bipolar-like mood swings. Add a dash of learning disabilities, and you’ve got syndrome soup. Many neurological disorders have cross-over symptoms, and many are commonly seen together, such as ADHD and Tourette syndrome. Sometimes these mixed-diagnosis kids have a long list of disorders which seem to utilize every letter of the alphabet, or they might be in limbo with no specific … Continue reading →

A Toast to Parents of Special Needs Kids

With the year 2006 coming to a close, let’s consider the milestones our children have reached these past twelve months. As parents of special needs kids, we already know that comparing our sons or daughters with other children their age, or with a teacher or doctor’s random expectations, can be discouraging. So we don’t. We learn to make comparisons only with the past. What steps have our children taken this year, no matter how small or unsteady, which have moved them just a little bit further down their own path? Were there any “miracle moments,” or breakthroughs? What about silly … Continue reading →

Stuck in Between–When We Have to Wait for Answers

There’s a strange and awful place that we sometimes have to go when we have a child with a developmental delay or chronic illness. It’s like a halfway point between two doorways: The “everything’s going to be alright” doorway, and the “my world and my child’s world is shattered” doorway. And we stand there, in limbo, waiting to see which one will open. The Agony of Waiting We find ourselves in this in-between place when we’re waiting for the doctor to call with results from our child’s blood test or biopsy. Or when we’re waiting to hear the psychiatrist’s analysis, … Continue reading →