AN ORDEAL

Raising a child with disabilities is not something many people know about nor care. The alteration of one's life as a parent, coupled with the disappointment of the reality that your child is not ‘normal' and is ostracized in the mainstream, that your relationship with your spouse becomes altered in ways you never thought you'd see, take a toll on the parents.

But for the parent, there is only struggle and sometimes emotional pain. It stems from watching your child, no matter how old and in what stage of development who is suffering from physical pain, it is the ordeal that is suffered time and time again.

As the doctor ordered tests for my daughter, I realized it was going to require suffering from physical pain on her part, without any sense of reason in her mind. They will stick her with needles, conduct x-rays and physical invasive tests. She will be confused and frightened and defensive as this would all transpire.

Then the tests began. Of all the tests that occurred, two stand out.

The first was taking blood from her from both arms. Here we coax her into allowing a stranger to take her arm and stick a needle under her skin. As they inserted the needle, we needed to hold her down and keep her arm immobile and make sure she doesn't try to move the rest of her body. When they were done on one arm, we shifted to her other arm. By this time, she had enough and the pain overcame her, as she cried and sobbed, ripping the heart out of my chest. I felt so bad, sad and angry at God.

The second event was to take an X-ray of her lungs, and here she got her revenge. I was asked to leave the room as they set up the x-ray machine. In her wheelchair, she sat as they tried to get her ready for the event. Suddenly there was pandemonium and kayos as my daughter went to work slapping the help around causing them to retreat.

It was the hospital staff that now had the ordeal, and this caused me more pain, these wonderful people trying to help her and she being afraid and taking it out on them.