I'm in a tizzy over something that didn't even happen directly to me. We were enjoying a nice outing at the park last night—listening to a Cajun band. Dave's sister and I were on a blanket with BabyS, Dave was following TinyE (our daughter),around the park and TinyE was entertaining a group of elderly observers by prancing and running in circles. Just a nice, relaxing, end of summer night. With a few pesky bugs

At one point I saw a woman talking with Dave, off in the distance way across the park (because when TinyE goes running, she really gets around…) Later, as we were driving home, Dave told me about their conversation. Apparently this woman also had some deficiency of her right arm and was dolling out urgent advice about how we needed to get TinyE to a surgeon right away and FIX HER ARM. As you may notice from the picture above, our daughter has something called upper limb deficiency.

Dave replied that we're already seeing a very good hand surgeon, and the woman's response was "Yes, but does she DO ARMS?!"

I can't begin to list how many levels of offensive this qualifies for. Let's just skip the obvious one, about giving advice to strangers. And let's skip the other obvious one, about giving parenting advice to strangers.

Let's go right to the biggies that are gnawing at me (and again, I wasn't even there!):

Don't walk up and start giving medical advice about my daughter when she's right there. She might be two, but she's not an idiot. She knows you're talking about her, and now she knows you're saying something's wrong with her. Shame on you.

Don't inform us that something on our daughter needs "fixing". She's not your business. And obviously, you aren't aware that she is already using her small right arm in extraordinary ways, every single day. She is incredibly functional….. more so than most people, because she is adapting to a limb difference that this world does not automatically accommodate.

And finally, don't make statements that assume we aren't already doing everything we can for her. You insult me, and even more, you insult the incredible devotion my husband demonstrates to TinyE, every day. Because I go off to work during the week, but Dave is at home with her. And for the first year or so of her life, he was the one doing her physical therapy at home… even when it made her twist and cry. He was the one who made a list, and checked off the exercises every day, just to ensure it would get done. He was the one who applied the miniscule baby splint to her tiny little thumb every day, to make sure it got a good stretch during her nap.

And now he's the one who packs everything up and takes her to pool therapy once a month—an hour away from our home. And he's the one who packs her up (now, including BabyS) and takes her to "land" therapy once a month.

He's the one who drives us all to the appointments with the surgeons, the geneticists, the specialists. And he's the one who holds us all together, especially when I just can't.

Most of all, he's the one who always says, "She's going to do anything she wants to do… baseball, soccer, play the piano… anything."

Fix her arm?! What's wrong with you?

*For the sake of my audience, this post does not include the profanity that automatically populated the original rambling.

To learn more about Deficiencies of the Upper Limb, visit the Pediatric Orthopedic Society of North America website.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 22nd, 2010 at 7:58 pm and is filed under Community Board. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.