Diagnosis

Today on Facebook I saw a post from a mom with special needs children pages that a young girl has been turned down for a transplant (I didn't read to see what type) because she is menatlly retarded.

A few years ago we took Trey to see a group of doctors that did testing on his mental status. He was 5 and some of the things like button his shirt or change his clothes, drink out of an open mouth cup, etc were held against him because Jason and I do those things for him. Because he only uses one hand he doesn't button buttons, it's hard to do buttons when you only have one hand. He always has to have a drink to keep hydrated we don't do the open mouth cup thing, now at 8 he can drink from one, but we always use a sports bottle because he carries it everywhere. At 5 he was our baby and we dressed him and undressed him. Still at 8 we do this but he can do both dress and undress on his own. There were of course other things they said or asked, blinded by what they wanted to diagnose him with I have now forgotten what all of those questions or statements were.

They told us they wanted us to bring him back a year later, age 6, and they wanted to diagnose him as mildly mentally retarded. We were both shocked and speechless. Hurt we decided we were not taking him back there. When we told the doctors what they told us they asked why we would have a problem with him being diagnosed with mental retardation we just said "NO". We don't and neither have any of his teachers feel that Trey is retarded, such a bad word, just slow, delayed, learning disability, just our baby.

Today I read this on facebook and I was again hurt. To think that one day a doctor will diagnose him with this bad word and we wont be able to say no or change their minds. It's sad to me. I worry what if Trey ever needs something and is turned down because he isn't functional enough. How can people, anyone, do this to a person?