Ambulance Driver Files A Day in the Life | Kelly Grayson
After KatyBeth was born, and we came to realize that she’d have disabilities, learned all the twenty-five dollar words no parent should have to learn, we set about getting her the help she needed.
We applied to all the various governmental programs that she was qualified for, and it didn’t take us long to discover one thing: those programs aren’t about minimizing a child’s disabilities. They’re about managing parental expectations so you can learn to deal with having a handicapped child.
I can boil ’em all down to this: Sorry your kid’s a turnip. Now buck up and learn to deal with it.
A lot of wonderful therapists worked for these programs, and they were frustrated at every turn by unworkable standards and governmental controls. The Missus and I decided rather quickly that we’d find a private therapist for Katy, even if it broke us.
Enter Melanie Massey.
We’d long heard that she was the best physical therapist around, and she specialized in early childhood development, a niche all too hard to find.
During KatyBeth’s initial evaluation, Melanie bluntly asked us, “What are your goals and expectations?”
We both answered, “Zero disabilities. That’s our goal. Our expectations, we’ll manage along the way. But if our daughter has limitations, we want them to be defined by God’s plan and the limits of human capability, not because we were willing to settle.”
She smiled and said, “Good, because that’s exactly what we shoot for around here.”
To be a good physical therapist, you have to have a healthy streak of sadism in you. You have to be able to find satisfaction in pushing people farther than they thought possible. That’s how you push those limits, and redefine your expectations of what is possible.
Well, Melanie and her staff were the most dedicated and gentle bunch of sadists God ever put on this Earth. They understood that therapy for children is far more than cleverly designed exercises and fancy machines. Their particular brand of magic is making even the most arduous of exercises fun.
There’s a short essay called Welcome to Holland that they give to parents of children with special health care needs. I’ve quoted it here before, but it bears repeating:
I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability – to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It’s like this……
When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip – to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.”
“Holland?!?” you say. “What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.”
But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay.
The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place.
So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around…. and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills….and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy… and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.”
And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away… because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.
But… if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things … about Holland.
Those wonderful people in Holland that you’d never meet otherwise? Those Rembrandts?
That’s Melanie Massey.
She gave us something more than just a child with greater strength and mobility. She gave us hope, and that’s something that no insurance carrier can put a price on. If they could, I’d be paying the copayment for the rest of my life.
Yet, despite all the hope and joy she restored to so many parents, she still had not been blessed with a child of her own, something we all wished for her.
Well, I see that particular prayer has been answered.
And that just makes my year.