Last week, my wife and I received a letter in the mail informing us that our daughter’s GI doctor was leaving the Children’s Hospital in our city and would be joining a new practice in the state of Ohio. We had been to see this doctor only a month prior, and he had given us no indication that such a move was imminent; so I am sure you can appreciate how taken aback we were when we received the news.
Let me be clear, by no means do my wife and I begrudge this man’s decision in any way. We fully understand that, just like us, he needs to make the decision that is best for him and his family. Rather, the emotion we are experiencing is sadness. When you are the parent of a special needs child, your trips to the doctor are not only more frequent, they are also filled with more anxiety. For starters, there is no such thing as a routine check-up. The reason you are even taking your child to see a specialist in the first place is because things are not “normal”. As a result, the parents of special needs children develop special bonds with their child’s doctors and specialists. In my humble opinion, it is a much deeper bond than the affinity parents of healthy babies feel toward their child’s pediatrician.
I have no doubt that whoever replaces Dr. Cole will be up to the task of caring for our daughter, Lily. However, it will definitely take some time to establish the same type of bond we shared with the departing doctor. And, in some ways, because Lily is older now and no longer requires a feeding tube, there is no way that the bond can be the same. But maybe that’s not such a bad thing after all.
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