Speak Life

Pardon me while I beat a dead horse, again, but I keep hoping that maybe some day, just maybe, my message will reach the medical professionals who need to hear it.

I shop for 2-4 weeks at a time, and when you do that for 5 people and 6 pets, you have a ton of groceries.  I tend to chat up the cashier to pass the time, and I just like being friendly.

The other day, the cashier noticed my Light it Up Blue reusable bags.  She told me about her grandson, who had been diagnosed with CP and autism as a small child.  The doctors told her daughter to not expect much.  Her daughter couldn't get much help and support from the school system.  She pulled him, and together, she and her daughter homeschooled him.  Now, he's an overachieving high school student, setting the bar high and running with his future.

Gee, let me think.... Where have I heard that story before?

Oh wait, that's right--my own child.

See, here's the thing.  Doctors only know doctor stuff.  They can't predict the future, and they need to stop trying.  They can give a diagnosis, they can try to give a prognosis--every parent wants that, we all want to know how our child might fair with this diagnosis we've just been given--but they cannot predict the future.

I feel awful for the children of parents who take these predictions at face value.  The children of the parents who allow that negativity to be the life that is spoken over their children, and sit back and do nothing, or do the bare minimum, because either, why bother, or they don't know better.

If you are a medical professional and you happen to be reading this, please find a different way to phrase your prognosis. You can't predict the future, so please don't be so arrogant as to pretend that you can.  I don't care what school you went to, how many years you've been a doctor, or how many statistics you've memorized, you simply do not have the right to pretend to predict the future or speak negativity over a child's life.  Encourage the parents and their children.  Help them find services.  I'll never forget taking that binder in my hands, hearing the words, "we'll see you in six months," and feeling so stranded.  Six months?  Are you outta your freaking mind?  How about tomorrow?  Don't abandon your patients like that.

We figured it out on our own, with the help of other parents who figured it out on their own.  Pioneers.  I remember that word, a word another mom used to describe us moms.  I will always be here to encourage other moms figuring it out on their own.  But it shouldn't have to be this way.

We shouldn't have to fight so hard against the proclamations from the very professionals we seek out for help.