Some mothers get more....

I have been blessed with two wonderful, beautiful, unique children. Anyone who knows us knows Braydon is an extra special child and I am not just saying that because he is mine. Braydon was diagnosed with cancer when he was two. He completed three and a half years of chemotherapy in April 2008. He is just amazing and brave and a MIRACLE! Never has his life been easy but it has always been beautiful. Not many 6 year olds have a testimony. It was through Braydon's illness that his parents were saved. God definitely brought us to it to bring us through it! We will forever stand on that fact.

I think part of me must have thought that once God healed Braydon and we completed chemotherapy that this would all be behind us and just a vague memory with an incredible story behind it. I honestly believed he would come out of this whole illness unscathed. We had been told and "warned" of all the possible side effects (some permanent) that the high doses of chemotherapy might cause. I just didn't see that happening to Braydon. We believed in the opposite for him and prayed for it daily.

I know God did not bring us this far and bring Braydon through cancer with such an amazing testimony and story for him to continue to struggle. Let me explain whats going on.

Braydon has Sensory Integration Dysfunction. Sensory Integration Dysfunction is a neurological disorder causing difficulties with processing information from the five senses (vision, auditory, touch, olfaction, and taste), the sense of movement (vestibular system), and/or the positional sense (proprioception). For those with SID, sensory information is sensed, but perceived abnormally. Unlike blindness or deafness, sensory information is received by people with SID; the difference is that information is processed by the brain in an unusual way that may cause distress or confusion. One of the possible causes of this disorder is lengthy hospitalizations. We have definitely had our share of those. Chemotherapy can also cause many of the symptoms of this disorder. Children with this disorder have lots of "symptoms" ranging from poor balance to chewing on inedible objects. On a checklist in the book I am reading about SID Braydon had 13 of the 15 symptoms.

Lots of times these can present like behavior problems (disobedience) but are truly out of the childs control. We are definitely having a hard time with Braydon right now but we are just trying to be patient with him and love him through this! It is so hard and really progressed at a difficult time for all of us. It seemed to get worse during my pregnancy with Deacon and has continued.

Braydon is in speech, occupational, and physical therapies now and has been for some time. He has shown some considerable improvement in lots of areas, but no improvement in others and even regression in some. Due to this his therapist along with his oncologist have suggested Nuero-Psych testing to test for a possible learning disability.

Please join our family in breaking off that diagnosis in the name of Jesus. We believe fully that God can heal him of any and all late term effects that his cancer and chemo have had on him. We hope you are believing and praying for the same.

I didn't know when I had children that I would be a mom to a special needs son. But instead of looking at it like a problem, I will choose to look at it like a blessing. Please read an amazing and all too familiar story.

SOME MOTHERS GET MORE
Written by: Lori Borgman Columnist and Speaker

My friend is expecting her first child. People keep asking what she wants. She smiles demurely, shakes her head and gives the answer mothers have given throughout the ages of time. She says it doesn’t matter whether it’s a boy or a girl. She just wants it to have ten fingers and ten toes. Of course, that’s what she says. That’s what mothers have always said. Mothers lie. Truth be told, every mother wants a whole lot more. Every mother wants a perfectly healthy baby with a round head, rosebud lips, button nose, beautiful eyes and satin skin. Every mother wants a baby so gorgeous that people will pity the Gerber baby for being flat-out ugly. Every mother wants a baby that will roll over, sit up and take those first steps right on schedule (according to the baby development chart on page 57, column two). Every mother wants a baby that can see, hear, run, jump and fire neurons by the billions. She wants a kid that can smack the ball out of the park and do toe points that are the envy of the entire ballet class. Call it greed if you want, but we mothers want what we want. Some mothers get babies with something more. Some mothers get babies with conditions they can’t pronounce, a spine that didn’t fuse, a missing chromosome or a palette that didn’t close. Most of those mothers can remember the time, the place, the shoes they were wearing and the color of the walls in the small,suffocating room where the doctor uttered the words that took their breath away. It felt like recess in the fourth grade when you didn’t see the kick ball coming and it knocked the wind clean out of you. Some mothers leave the hospital with a healthy bundle, then, months, even years later, take him in for a routine visit, or schedule her for a well check, and crash head first into a brick wall as they bear the brunt of devastating news. It can’t be possible! That doesn’t run in our family. Can this really be happening in our lifetime? I am a woman who watches the Olympics for the sheer thrill of seeing finely sculpted bodies. It’s not a lust thing; it’s a wondrous thing. The athletes appear as specimens without flaw - rippling muscles with nary an ounce of flab or fat, virtual powerhouses of strength with lungs and limbs working in perfect harmony. Then the athlete walks over to a tote bag, rustles through the contents and pulls out an inhaler. As I’ve told my own kids, be it on the way to physical therapy after a third knee surgery, or on a trip home from an echo cardiogram, there’s no such thing as a perfect body. Everybody will bear something at some time or another. Maybe the affliction will be apparent to curious eyes, or maybe it will be unseen, quietly treated with trips to the doctor, medication or surgery. The health problems our children have experienced have been minimal and manageable, so I watch with keen interest and great admiration the mothers of children with serious disabilities, and wonder how they do it. Frankly, sometimes you mothers scare me. How you lift that child in and out of a wheelchair 20 times a day. How you monitor tests, track medications, regulate diet and serve as the gatekeeper to a hundred specialists yammering in your ear. I wonder how you endure the clichés and the platitudes, well-intentioned souls explaining how God is at work when you’ve occasionally questioned if God is on strike. I even wonder how you endure schmaltzy pieces like this one — saluting you, painting you as hero and saint, when you know you’re ordinary. You snap, you bark, you bite. You didn’t volunteer for this. You didn’t jump up and down in the motherhood line yelling, “Choose me, God! Choose me! I’ve got what it takes.” You’re a woman who doesn’t have time to step back and put things in perspective, so, please, let me do it for you. From where I sit, you’re way ahead of the pack. You’ve developed the strength of a draft horse while holding onto the delicacy of a daffodil. You have a heart that melts like chocolate in a glove box in July, carefully counter-balanced against the stubbornness of an Ozark mule. You can be warm and tender one minute, and when circumstances require intense and aggressive the next. You are the mother, advocate and protector of a child with a disability. You’re a neighbor, a friend, a stranger I pass at the mall. You’re the woman I sit next to at church, my cousin and my sister-in-law. You’re a woman who wanted ten fingers and ten toes, and got something more. You’re a wonder.