By: Dr. Michele Dewar
Although it is said that being a mother is not an easy task, that children do not come with a manual and each child is different in every way being a mother changes our lives completely, it fills us with new goals and feelings that we had not experienced and begins a stage full of new experiences, learning, but above all full of emotions when knowing such a pure and unconditional love.
As a mother, you are in the care of your children 24 hours a day, satisfying all their physiological needs, and feeding them as healthily as possible, so that they do not lack anything. Depending on the age or stage they go through, you help or support them in their tasks and activities. This is day to day, but as the days go by, you also organize those family vacations that they long for, those parties to celebrate their birthdays, meetings with their friends, and school excursions. You visualize their future and try to have the necessary tools to choose a good career, among many other things. Nothing compares to the peace of knowing that they are safe in your care and that you are doing your best as a mother.
But what happens when the health of your children is not in your hands? How does your life change when a child is born with a disability or a congenital disease? What do you do when, after several years you discover a birth disease in your teenager, and you never detected it?
I am sure there are millions of mothers in this situation. And I don’t know if it’s the same for all of them because each condition is different, but I think it crosses our minds on the first day that you find out that a child is sick and you automatically become aware of your own mortality and therefore For the first time you begin to wish with all your soul that you can live for many years to always be able to take care of your son because you feel that no one would take care of him like you.
When your child gets sick you realize that many children also get sick and are in the same situation and that not all of them recover in the same way or do not have access to the same treatments to recover their health or maintain its stability. You begin to appreciate that you are privileged to have the necessary resources to offer the best to your child.
It is not until your child gets sick, that you understand the intense pain of any other mother or father in the same situation. That pain that nothing heals, that hurts deeply and makes it difficult for you to breathe until little by little you learn to cope with it. You realize that there is no greater pain than seeing a sick child who often does not understand why this happens to him. That a sick child paralyzes anyone and that seeing him suffer or in pain is the most exhausting thing there is.
Until a child gets sick, you understand when prayer chains are made on social networks, and you understand the desperation of parents so that everyone asks for their health. Many people see it badly, that they do not respect the privacy of the patient, that they do not have to show it, or nobody has to know that they are sick.
Until a child gets sick, you realize that what people may say, give their opinion or criticize, you don’t care at all, and you start to blindly believe that together, prayer will be more powerful. In the same way when they ask for some financial support to pay for some expenses and then criticize if they managed to go on vacation, when it is well known that vacations are part of the treatment of any illness. Making the patient laugh and distracting them is essential for their recovery.
When a child gets sick the world stops and you understand that no one and nothing is more important than living and enjoying life daily. You realize that you would give anything to see him healthy, even your life. You faithfully believe that God will listen to your prayers and every day you ask for that miracle that your heart longs for so much. At the same time, you wish with all your soul that they will soon find the cure for all diseases.
When you have a sick child, you become more empathetic and want to help every human being in the same situation. As a doctor, I would like to know the complete story of each sick child and thus together look for better treatment options. In my case, my knowledge of medicine has often been fundamental in helping my son get ahead (but that’s another story), but it is well known that the patient’s parents become specialists in the subject and that they learn so much that they even reach diagnoses and treatments even more accurate than the same treating doctor (like the movie “Lorenzo’s Oil”).
When you have a sick child at home, you realize how your way of thinking changes, how you do not want to, and cannot make any long-term plans due to the uncertainty of knowing how their health will be in the future. You understand each family with a sick child as they must plan their vacations perfectly, and take them on the trip carrying a mini outpatient hospital with suitcases full of medicine, supplies, and medical equipment.
How do you know if the city you are going to has support for emergencies? Where do you go to refill a portable oxygen tank? Are there dialysis and hemodialysis machines? Or, if the hotel you arrive at has spaces designed so that they can slide well in wheelchairs with wide spaces (especially the bathrooms).
Until you have a sick child, you learn that not only the patient suffers, not even just the parents and the sick, but experts in psychology say that siblings are the ones who experience the most pain and must learn to cope with the situation many times. Let us not neglect the siblings who also carry pain and uncertainty in their hearts.
Life changes you in that precise second when you hear the doctor’s diagnosis. You follow each instruction perfectly well and go to each laboratory test and all kinds of studies to arrive at the most accurate diagnosis and treatment.
Then the time comes when they tell you that there is nothing more to do, that it is just a matter of continuing like this and waiting to see what happens.
It was at that moment, as a mother and doctor, that the concern arose of wanting to exhaust all the possibilities of offering my son the best to recover his health or improve his quality of life.
I became interested in regenerative and anti-aging medicine with stem cells and went to get certified.
This summer he began his treatment with more than three hundred million stem cells and exosomes intravenously, and I am sure that soon I will be able to tell you a success story in detail with a headline that says: The miracle that both I longed for it finally arrived!!!!
I thank all those who, with their medical knowledge, financial support, words of encouragement, emotional support, sincere hugs, and prayers have accompanied us. Thanks, with all my heart.
