The search begins
Faith. I have always danced a very fine line when it comes to faith. Over the course of my life, it has taken me much more strength to try and believe than it did to just dismiss it all. If somewhat of a relationship existed between me and a God, I completely lost that relationship after Carter arrived. It caused me to question every single thing in my life. How in the world can there be a God? There are women abusing drugs while pregnant, leaving their babies in garbage cans, abandoning them and then there is me. The me that did everything right.
The anger that I talked about, that anger made me despise the world. My depression was creating a thicker and darker cloud around my head. I was suffering, Casey and I were suffering, Carter was suffering. Everything in my life felt like it was falling apart. At this point, I had pushed every person that was remotely close to me as far from me as I could. Getting out of bed was difficult, how am I supposed to maintain friendships? And our next traumatic experience was right around the corner.
I remember this moment clearly. Carter was about 3 months old and we were getting him buckled into the car for a run to Home Depot. He spit up, as babies do, but this was different. It was a handful of liquid and it didn't stop. I brought him to our pediatrician at the time and was told it was reflux. It would go away. Well, it never did. No medication stopped it, no diet changes stopped it. As he grew, he ate more, which means he vomited more. It was all day every day, hundreds of times. No one could tell me how to stop it. I had always been under the impression that if you had an ailment, you could find an answer and treatment with the appropriate specialist. This was my first experience on our journey that proved that theory completely wrong.
This was around the same time I really focused on Carter's lack of eye contact, body movements and lack of head control. Thus, we started our journey of endless specialist appointments to find the cause. We were seeing his first pediatrician multiple times a week and getting nowhere. My fears grew and my family was convinced I was going crazy. I have never been more scared in my life. I was scared for me and I was scared for our future. The thought of raising a special needs child was debilitating. At this point, I had never spent any amount of time with children who were disabled. All I knew was that our lives would be very difficult, and our dreams of what we wanted from life and our family were dead.
I did not want a disabled child. I wanted to run away. It took a long time for me to come to terms with how I felt then. But in order to move forward, I needed to acknowledge my feelings and the place they were coming from. So, we pressed on. Our first pediatrician ordered many tests, including a CT scan and a repeat newborn screen. Once we received normal results on these tests, she refused to take any more of my fears seriously. She noted that it was "all in my head." The last time we saw her was a day that I was frustrated and crying. I can't verbally explain the way it feels when no one believes you. It is a helpless, knot in your throat, I want to scream but no one will hear me feeling. I was adamant about moving forward with more tests. She proceeded to take my child out of the room, away from me, and send in a nurse to talk to me about God.
A God I did not want to hear about. A God I did not have a relationship with.
I took Carter and we never saw that pediatrician again. I took it upon myself to visit 2 more pediatricians, both who were convinced it was all in my head, again, after multiple tests came back normal. Fired them both and kept moving forward. At this time, we had Carter attending outpatient Physical therapy and Occupational Therapy. In between the constant irritability and vomiting, progress was very slowly being made. It was here that I was informed about a local pediatrician a lot of the therapy patients saw. I immediately made an appointment.
She listened to my concerns, she listened to my fears, she listened to my list of everything we had already done. Her response once I found a mildly appropriate place to stop talking, "This is quite the mess, isn't it." We were set up with a chromosome microarray, and a neurology visit. One person. All it took was one person to believe me. Months and months of fighting and it was finally feeling like we were moving forward. Looking back, it feels like it went by fast, but it did not. It was hard to get to and it was hard to get through.
But we got lucky. For once. Maybe we would even find that reason I keep searching for...
This was around the same time I really focused on Carter's lack of eye contact, body movements and lack of head control. Thus, we started our journey of endless specialist appointments to find the cause. We were seeing his first pediatrician multiple times a week and getting nowhere. My fears grew and my family was convinced I was going crazy. I have never been more scared in my life. I was scared for me and I was scared for our future. The thought of raising a special needs child was debilitating. At this point, I had never spent any amount of time with children who were disabled. All I knew was that our lives would be very difficult, and our dreams of what we wanted from life and our family were dead.
I did not want a disabled child. I wanted to run away. It took a long time for me to come to terms with how I felt then. But in order to move forward, I needed to acknowledge my feelings and the place they were coming from. So, we pressed on. Our first pediatrician ordered many tests, including a CT scan and a repeat newborn screen. Once we received normal results on these tests, she refused to take any more of my fears seriously. She noted that it was "all in my head." The last time we saw her was a day that I was frustrated and crying. I can't verbally explain the way it feels when no one believes you. It is a helpless, knot in your throat, I want to scream but no one will hear me feeling. I was adamant about moving forward with more tests. She proceeded to take my child out of the room, away from me, and send in a nurse to talk to me about God.
A God I did not want to hear about. A God I did not have a relationship with.
I took Carter and we never saw that pediatrician again. I took it upon myself to visit 2 more pediatricians, both who were convinced it was all in my head, again, after multiple tests came back normal. Fired them both and kept moving forward. At this time, we had Carter attending outpatient Physical therapy and Occupational Therapy. In between the constant irritability and vomiting, progress was very slowly being made. It was here that I was informed about a local pediatrician a lot of the therapy patients saw. I immediately made an appointment.
She listened to my concerns, she listened to my fears, she listened to my list of everything we had already done. Her response once I found a mildly appropriate place to stop talking, "This is quite the mess, isn't it." We were set up with a chromosome microarray, and a neurology visit. One person. All it took was one person to believe me. Months and months of fighting and it was finally feeling like we were moving forward. Looking back, it feels like it went by fast, but it did not. It was hard to get to and it was hard to get through.
But we got lucky. For once. Maybe we would even find that reason I keep searching for...
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