A Mother's Love

     So I just received a phone call from my 20 year old daughter who lives in Washington D.C. She is there for the summer doing an internship for the Metropolitan Police Department. She will return to college her in Ohio in the fall for her last year. She is majoring in psychology. She is then going on to a school where she can kind of skip the Masters part and go ahead and get her Doctorate. Her focus is criminal psychology. She happens to be one of my ill children. She has POTS Syndrome, Peripheral Neuropathy, Fibromyalgia, Dysautonomia, Hypothyroidism, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.........and I think that may be it.
     So, anyways, I get a call from her a bit ago and she is crying so hard I can't understand her. She had another one of her episodes and ended up throwing up all over herself in the shower. Poor thing. She was so upset. She can barely do anything beyond her internship because the body pain and fatigue is so severe, let alone the dizziness and constant sweating. She has no social life because she is far too tired to ever leave the house.
     Her doctors have just filled out all the appropriate paperwork and she has gotten the approval for a service dog! I think that will help a little bit. At least she won't always be alone. As her mother, my heart aches for her. She became ill in middle school and it slowly got worse until her Jr year when she was no longer able to function like a normal child. It took quite awhile but we finally were able to get her diagnosed. She has been through countless tests and even more medications and the bottom line is that there is nothing that they can do for her. A few of her symptoms are managed with medications but over all there isn't much hope.
     The one thing I have learned through this journey with my daughter is how amazing she is and how proud I am of her. I tell her all the time that I want to be just like her when I grow up. Not only did she graduate high school with honors but she went on to college 2 1/2 hours away with the help of their disability program and worked through the summers to graduate a year early. Amazingly enough, she also pulled off studying a semester in Austria. It was very hard on her physically and sometimes emotionally but it was an experience of a life time. At 20 years old, she is an amazing young woman with great faith in God, super human motivation and a strong will. She is determined to live her life and not let her illnesses have her curled up in a ball feeling sorry for herself. I think we could all learn something from my daughter.....ESPECIALLY me !!! Please keep my baby in your prayers. I'm going to end here for tonight. Peace and Love