Putting The Person Before The Diagnosis

Me and My Babies

Shortly after Jaden was born, I wrote many essays, yet to be published, with the intention of sending them off to every Doctor's office and newspaper across the country. To let everyone in the medical world know that Jaden was so perfect, he was beyond perfect, and why was this little life so controversial to everyone!? Of course the older and more perfect ( I know, you can't be MORE perfect), he became, I would revise my essays. The only reason I never sent them off was because, they weren't quite concise enough, so I would start another one, each one sounding a little more detailed than the last. I still hope to, within the next few months, Start sending them off to the Newspapers and Parenting Magazines. The re-occurring theme in all of my writings was the analogy I kept using which was this: That if each and every one of us was introduced with a Diagnosis before our name, imagine the world of prejudices we would encounter.

"That's Sam, he's got Diabetes and High Blood Pressure, he won't be able to do too much physical work today." "That's Peter, he has Pre-Cancerous lesions and gall stones." "Meet Tom, He's got Arthritis, Asthma, and clogged arteries." "That's Jan, she's got ADHD and Hypoglycemia." "That's Susan, She's got Cancer and Heart disease." "That's Michelle, she has Uterine Fibroids and get's Really Bad monthly Migraines."

Imagine a world, where all of us were introduced by a diagnosis first! I corrected a teacher the other day who had informed us she had another Downs Syndrome child at her school, where I replied, "It's better to say, A Child with Down Syndrome, So you don't put the Label before the child". I then went on to give her a few of my Analogies, to which she appreciated the information and said she had never heard it put that way. I think when you use opportunities to gently inform someone of other ways of saying things, and let them know how powerful their language really is, it really can be eye opening.