Et Cetera…And other things.
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| Our Family 2013 |
I’ve been writing about all of the “other things” that are
part of WAGR Syndrome. I remember
reading about WAGR when Evie was first diagnosed with it; reading about the
cancer, the aniridia and possibility of vision impairment, the genitourinary
abnormalities and what it all could imply for her future; for our future. I remember the “R” in WAGR being the least of
my concerns. “I can handle whatever the ‘range
of developmental delays’ may come,” I thought.
But it’s not that easy…
This “range of delays,” you see, creates an enormous sense
of uncertainty. As Evie was growing and
maturing, I couldn’t tell what her future would look like. Would she walk? Would she talk? Would she read? Evie started to “miss” the milestones that
often mark the growth and development of babies from her early infancy. I remember getting mailings from the hospital
where she was born. They would read like
this, “At age 6 months your baby is now doing this…” No, my baby was not. At age 18 months, when my baby still wasn’t
talking or walking, I just started throwing the mailings away without
opening. They weren’t going to be able
to tell me anything about my baby anymore.
Starting at about three months, Evie was getting speech and
physical therapy in our home. She also
had an early learning specialist who would work on more general development
skills. All of those people meant so
much to us. They had gentleness, hope,
and understanding for what we were going through that was hard to find in every-day
life. They challenged Evie, and she
would rise to the challenge. They taught
me how to push her; that’s not easy to do…as a mother I didn’t want to watch my
child struggle, but the therapists helped me develop the gut to tolerate it by
knowing that I was doing Evie no favors by letting her just survive in life
without the skills to thrive in life. Somehow,
each of them had the ability to put me at ease by helping me focus on where
Evie was at today rather than me worrying where she’d be, or not be in the next
week, month or year.
Evie sat up for the first time when she was 15 months
old. She started walking with assistance
when she was about two years old. She really
started to use words around age three years, but it wasn’t very
understandable. Despite all these
delays, we knew Evie was quite “bright.”
She could use sign language quite well and could communicate most of her
needs through sign language that her speech therapist had taught us. She memorized songs and could hum them and
sing them without the words, and they’d be spot on.
When Evie was around four or five years old, I had applied
for her to get covered under a county program that helps pay for therapies and
assistive technologies for children with developmental delays. Evie was turned down because they said she
didn’t qualify under their conditions. I
couldn’t believe that she didn’t qualify, her delays were obvious; so I filed
an appeal. In order to strengthen our case, I would up taking
Evie to a barrage of assessments which yielded reports that clearly
demonstrated her delays. That appeal
process was mentally draining. I felt as
though all I could do at that point was focus on Evie’s deficits. That’s what parents HAVE to do when they are
fighting for services for their child.
They HAVE to walk a tightrope with positive outlooks on one side and
negative reality on the other. So, even
when people would say, “But, Tammie, look how far she’s come,” I’d have to say
to the courts, “Look at everything my child CAN’T do…”. If you know any parents going through an
appeal for services, or an IEP (Individual Education Plan); be patient with
them, it’s not easy. You can really start to feel like a negative person when you
have to focus on the deficits; and that’s NOT me, but I had to be that person
for Evie’s sake, as her mother and advocate.
Despite Evie’s delays, she is in a mainstream classroom with
some pullout time for special help on math and reading. She still gets speech therapy and is learning
Braille and cane-traveling skills. Evie’s
friends are amazing, and the school district we are in has encouraged me to
continue to communicate closely with them on how Evie is doing, and what, if
anything we need to change or alter for her.
Evie has a great memory, but her logic skills are
lacking. She can memorize her
multiplication tables, but she doesn’t understand how or why the numbers equal
what they do. Evie can listen to me read
a chapter, and she can read words herself from a book, but I don’t think she
quite “comprehends” what is going on.
She might be able to give you the “facts” of the story, but interpretation
would be lacking. She’d write a book
report that Sergeant Friday would highly approve. “Just the facts...”
The hardest thing for me is to watch her struggle with her
homework. She doesn’t like me to correct
her, she easily becomes enraged. (And I
do not use the “enraged” lightly here; I call it “Unleash the Dragon” because
it is such a fit.) However, she doesn’t
want to walk away from unfinished work either, and that really complicates
things. A neuropsychology report from an
evaluation she had a year ago says that Evie’s IEP goals should be written to
mastery. In other words, Evie’s anxiety
about unfinished work is such that she agonizes over moving on to another topic
before fully understanding the current topic.
That’s not really how our education system works. Often, the students have to keep up with the
pace set by the majority; so we will have to see how Evie does as her
curriculum continues to grow increasingly difficult.
Having touched on the “R” here, (and there was much more I
could have expanded on), tomorrow I’ll begin talking about the Et Ceteras that
have not necessarily been well documented in the medical arena; but that,
through the IWSA, families who network together have, through shared stories,
determined are “other things” that are typical of people with WAGR
Syndrome. Toe-walking, tight heel
chords, speech apraxia, Sensory Processing Disorder, disrupted sleep…the list
goes on and on! Thanks for hanging in
there with me as I tackle this topic from a “mommy” point of view.
P.S. I hope my typos are few and far between, but with our Polar Vortex, and having Evie home with me from school, I think I may be missing things in my proof-reading. :)
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