More whiny crap

When I had my son at the psychiatrists office the other day, as that doc laid out possibility after possibility, I asked things like 'how will I ever get him a normal life? How can he be independent if he can't drive?' and the doctor told me I was getting ahead of myself and worrying for nothing. The neurologist said the same thing.

I shut my mouth because I just didn't have the energy to try to make them understand. I knew, too, that they could really only do their job if they are unemotional. But me, as his mother, it's impossible not to think ahead. For me, my job seems to be defined as much in the moment as thinking ahead. When they say x is a possibility and they look through their books to see how to treat x, I am looking ahead to see how x may impact y and z.

Doctors don't get that. I'm sure they think of parents as obstacles - I think a lot of doctors look at a patient the way my son looks at a pile of Legos. It's all about what can be built. I think docs see everything as pathology that can be fixed. Give it a pill, a shot, some surgery and anything can be corrected.

Or it dies and they say well, we did all we could. And maybe they did.

But for a parent, doing all we can means thinking twelve steps ahead all the time. And I have to wonder - no, I spend a lot of time wondering if all the goddamn pills this family takes is missing the point.

Ok, granted, the medical issues need all the pills, etc they can use. But does everything need to be fixed? Is Asperger Syndrome something that needs to be fixed or accepted as another norm? My personal experience is that being medicated out of bi polar manias medicates the genius which is so much the gift of madness. I don't miss trying to fly (I don't even remember it) but I do miss the all encompassing creative madness.

My children have these issues. Ok, I tell them. Everyone has issues they have to deal with. When you point to other people and say I wish I could be normal just like them, I guarantee that those people have issues of their own, maybe even just like yours. You don't like yours and I understand why, but these are your issues. This is what you have to deal with, that's just the way it is.

Be grateful, I say to my daughter, that if you had to have something it was something they could treat.

And I tell them that not everything that people make such a deal out of needs to be fixed. The things about them now that make it difficult to fit in are later what will make them stand out from the crowd.

I don't know. In one respect, the docs are right. It's hard to think clearly about any one thing when you can't stop thinking of ALL the things. That's my problem. I can't stop thinking and then the gears kind of come to a grinding, smoking halt and when I try to think of anything at all, solutions, ideas, who to call next, what web page to google, I can't think of any answers at all.

I just got stuck trying to figure out which letters to type next.

Urgh.