Wednesday, June 6, 2012

The alphabet soup life - June 6, 2012

Sometimes I really, truly forget that not everyone has to deal with what I have to deal with. That not everyone is running around coordinating therapies and specialists, prescriptions and insurance companies, appointments and more appointments. Really? This isn't normal? I've never known anything different in childrearing, and I totally lose myself in it all.

Today, for example. We had an appointment to pick up her SMOs (after which we got extra super awesome cupcakes from a brand-new local bakery, I should add). Meanwhile I'd spent all day talking to the therapy practice that we were hoping would do her AAC evaluation - I'd called a month ago to be put on the waiting list but figured if I hadn't heard back in a month I'd squeak my wheel in their direction. So I did and there were many back and forth calls figuring out details (calls that may not ever have happened if I hadn't made that "just checking" call yesterday, I suspect), an appointment was set - and their office is an hour away, so I had to make sure we could get back to our side of the world in time for the standing OT appointment my kid always has.

(As an aside, we are SO lucky that almost all of our appointments happen within a 5 mile radius - so far we only have had to travel a good bit for the pediatric dentist, because we love her, and we very rarely used to go to a Shriner's Hospital that was about 3 hours away, but we stopped when we got Medicaid and that made the traveling unnecessary.)

Anyway, yeah, sometimes it feels like my life - the life of a parent of a child with special needs - is all about this type of schedule. Not the schedule I envisioned, which would've been full of summer camps and museums and playdates. But I'm not complaining either - things are actually going very well, my daughter thrives in these therapies, and the progress she's making is astounding.

I just wonder what everyone else does with all that free time they so surely have. (I kid. I kid. All parents are busy, no matter what, I know.)

I am so used to this alphabet soup life that it doesn't make me blink at all anymore, I guess.

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