Age and Experience

We went to see a very old doctor today, the only man who can fix Elizabeth's arm. It's hard to get in to see him now because he only takes a few people at a time, but Elizabeth's arm has been very sore and Mom has been calling and waiting for a good time. Today he said, "How about you come in today around 11:30". He's been sick for some time so we haven't been able to see him; but we found something out that we haven't known about him even though we've been going to see him for almost fifteen years.

He has a 56 year old brother who has Down's, and he was fourteen when this brother was born. He remembers him as a baby and has cared for him all his life.

This man is one of the most gifted doctors I've ever met. He can tell by watching someone walk whether or not they've had a lotheadache and he can tell be touching the sides of your neck whether you've had a cold in the past few weeks. He knows a tremendous amount about a lot of things and today he picked up Jonathan and said, "Ah, this is good. This is very good. You don't know how blessed you are."

Apparently, he could tell by one look at Jonathan that he is affected by Down's in perhaps the mildest way possible. There are four levels of Down's: his brother had it the worst and Jonathan has it the best, from what he saw today. He said that when his brother was born, his muscles were so weak that he was like "a little lump of Jello". He couldn't move his arms and legs at all. The doctor said he's seen other babies with Down's and very few are ever able to move with the strength Jonathan has. "He's very strong," he said. "Look at how hard he can kick!"

The biggest problem he's seen with babies like Jonathan, he said, is people trying too much to make their baby do things the way everyone else does. "It's like when you have a little tree," he said. "You want it to grow big and strong, so you give it twice as much water and fertilizer as you would normally. And guess what? You drown it! Give it the same amount of water as you would normally and just be patient...and the tree will grow."

Jonathan's body will do what it needs to do, he said, and so will Jonathan's mind. "Be patient," he said. "Everything will take twice as long, but that's okay."

This was probably our combined blessing of the day, because we were just loving and living with Jonathan as we found him, not realizing how very blessed we've been to have what we've been taking for granted. A little guy who's legs we have to hold down when we're changing his ostomy bag because he wriggles all over the changing table and can make a really big mess!

For three days in a row now, he's also been nursing more and more normally. It's as if he suddenly decided he would rather nurse than have a bottle and it's only when he gets really hungry 'cause he can't quite get enough that he's getting a bottle now. There are more and more feedings where he's only being nursed - and in the past, after he went one day like this he wore out and couldn't really nurse again for several more days. He's definitely getting stronger.