Sheriff Sarah

Sheriff Sarah

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Parenting a Liver Child, part 2

I wanted to follow up on yesterday's blog post. I had originally intended to drive a different road then the one I traveled and wanted to drive down that road today.

How many of us who parent these wonderful liver kids deal with the dilemma of not coddling the sick child? By this I mean, do we unconciously treat our liver kids different from our healthy kids? I know this is a difficult question to answer. Parenting a liver child is not always black and white or cut-and-dried. There are those of us whose kids have a) had the Kasai surgery but are doing well and there is no need for a transplant at this time; b) those who urgently needed and received new livers; and c) those of us who are anticipating (anxiously or otherwise) a transplant for a child dealing with ascites or varices, etc.

It's hard NOT to give an extra dose to the kids in group c. When you daily deal with the thought a liver may not come in time, how else are you supposed to act? But it's not here that I want to dwell. I want to deal more directly with showing an abundance of affection, love and attention to the liver child in group a or b than we may show to our other children.

Has this ever been an issue for those of you with liver kids? I would love to have a discussion about this and hear your thoughts. I don't pretend to have all the answers and I'm still walking through so many different things even though Sarah is doing very well 17 months post-transplant.

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