Kudos

I got some very unexpected kudos yesterday.  My supervisor was asking me something about fragile x.  Here’s the convo.

Supervisor:   With all your medical knowledge you should be a doctor.

Beth:  No way.  I know how my kids work and that is about it.  The internal stuff…nope.  That is what real doctors are for.

Intern:  Oh don’t be modest.  My mother has her masters and she says that you are a 100 times smarter than she is.

I was a little taken aback.  The interns mom had been Matty’s kindergarten and first grade teacher.  I had her demoted.  The class was too much for her.  It was taking a ton out of her.  In turn, the children were suffering.  I was done when she sent me a note saying that she had to drag Matt to the changing table. 

She confided in me about a month before her last semester was over in the class.  She was grateful to be moving to a different room.  The room had been way too much.  She didn’t know what she had signed up for until the first day of class.  She said that she had walked in and almost cried.  There were two autistic children, a few downs syndrome boys, and one boy in a wheelchair.  She had no idea this is what her job was going to be.  It was the toughest job she had had in her entire life and she was glad to be done.

I sat down last night and pondered why this woman would say that about me.  This woman comes from a heap of money.  She has never had to struggle like I had.  Yeah, she deals with everyday life stuff but that is it.  When most people grow up at 18 to 25, I grew up extremely too fast at 15.  I had to use the instincts that God instilled in all of us just to make it through the day.  Luckily, I was blessed with the gift of resiliency and a strong will to live.  I know that if it wasn’t for that, I would not have survived that horrible time in my life. 

When Matty appeared a year after I stopped being a ward of the state, instinct took over again.  I had no basis for good parenting so I rolled with it.  I went in search of answers.  I’m like Tom Hanks in Cast Away.  I would have analyzed how to hang myself too.  :lol: 

The same has been true every step of the way with Matt’s diagnosis and every other trial.  I learn from each and everything I do.  I don’t think it makes me smarter.  It just makes me a survivor.