Special Awareness : I am grateful for...

Special Saturday is now hosted as and when you wish to link up to it now, rather than prompts coming on a Saturday.  Despite this, it's aim remains the same.  To raise awareness of the daily highs and lows of living with a special needs condition within your life.  Whether you are the person with special needs; the parent or carer of someone with special needs; the friend of someone with special needs or just had your life touched (and usually improved) by knowing someone with special needs.

The last prompt given by the administrators was :

I am grateful for ...

 

 

I was very excited to see this prompt because I like being able to sit and think about the good points on life.  It is very easy to see the negatives in things, especially when you have incidents occur like we did this week.  It is easy to let frustration drain you.  To make you question your faith in fairness.

I participate in a weekly blog hop called 'Reasons to be Cheerful' whereby you have the opportunity to share the things that have made you happy in the course of the week.  It is surprising what you can find - even in the crappiest of weeks.

So this is a good opportunity to do the same but on the subject of Special Needs.  Someone with no experience of having Special Needs in their life would probably wonder what on earth could make you happy about it.  So here is what I am grateful for...

* I am grateful, that my son, J1, who was born eight weeks before he should have been is here with us today.  I am grateful that we live in a day and age where science and technology was able to keep him alive in those first tentative days.  We didn't know in the first few weeks or even months that brain damage had occurred.  Everyday I wish it hadn't.  Especially knowing that it occurred in the last hour of the birth.  It's a tough pill to swallow.  We will never know what specifically caused it.  It could be one of many potential factors.  Apparently.  But if the choice was between having him with us, exactly as he is today or not at all I wouldn't change a God damn thing.

* I am grateful that we got a quick diagnosis.  Within weeks of him seeing the right consultant we had it confirmed he had the condition Quadriplegic Cerebral Palsy.  This made getting the right help for him; physiotherapy; occupational therapy; speech and language therapy; hydrotherapy easier.  I will not say easy, because nothing comes easy. But at least with an actual diagnosis, you have a hope in hell. 

 

* I am grateful that J1 can speak.  He didn't start to speak until he was five.  The most important part of this ability, apart from the wonder of here him saying 'Mum' for the first time, is that he can tell us if he is in pain and the generally where the pain is.  This is incredibly important, particularly since he has such problems with his hips. 

 

* I am grateful that despite his huge physical disabilities J1 is a very placid nature.  He does not have any behavioural problems.  Although J1 is physically demanding when it comes to caring for him as he must be hoisted whenever he needs moving; he can not sit unaided; he has to have extensive physiotherapy - he is not a challenging child.  He is very accepting of the fact that he must be hoisted; he must be tightly strapped into equipment; he must have the extensive physiotherapy.  Saying this, as I have mentioned in numerous previous posts, as he is getting older he is developing more sense of awareness of the things he can not do and this is beginning to cause a little frustration for him.  However, on the plus side of this the fact that he is developing the awareness in the first place if fantastic.  It is wonderful that he is becoming socially aware, and hope this means that he can start to join in some after school activities and gain some social independence.

 

* I am grateful for all the wonderful people I have met through J1.  I did not know that so many giving, kind, selfless people existed in the world.  I am always very wary of the fact that there are some awful, evil people in the world that pray on the vulnerable but am also now aware that there are many people out there who have the compassion to care for them as well as I can care for him.

 

* I am grateful that when fate decided that my child would have the special needs that he does, I had the character and strength to know that I would cope.  As a single mother some (brave) people asked if I would give him up for adoption.  They are not people I speak to anymore.  Anyone that would think a Mother would give her child up because they were not able-bodied, or had any kind of special need are not the sort of people that I wish to have in my armoury of friends.  I do not look at J1 and think he is my disabled son.  I look at J1 and think, he is my oldest son.    His disability isn't invisible.  It is there for the world to see, but in the world of my love for him, it doesn't exist at all.

 

If you have a post, comment, thought or anything related to Special Needs that you would like to share, link it with the Special Saturday facebook page and twitter @Specialsat #specialsaturday.

 

I am also linking this post to the Love That Max Special Needs blog hop.