Lessons from Katherine by Glenda W. Prins

Author:Glenda W. Prins
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780994529
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
Published: 2013-01-06T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Life Expectancy

Our new home was a two-story, late-fifties colonial. Our bedrooms were upstairs and we liked getting Katherine washed and dressed before bringing her down in the morning. Her favorite outfit was a pair of red corduroy overalls that I had made for her. They had a design of trains on the fabric, and I added a little ruffle on each of the straps, which were connected with metal buckles. We called them the train pants. Whenever she wore them, we would sing and chant, ‘Here comes the train. Choo-choo. Choo-choo,’ as we pulled them up her legs and clasped the buckles.

Katherine loved it! Whatever we sang, whatever little ditties crossed our tongues were okay with her. We developed a new daily routine with Katherine in our new home. Every morning after we got her dressed and carried her downstairs, we had to stop in front of the round mirror in the hallway. As she smiled at herself, it was our job to say, ‘Good morning to Katherine.’

I say we had to stop in front of the mirror, because if we ever tried a short cut to the dining room through the living room without stopping at the mirror we heard about it. Fussing would ensue, and Katherine would whine until we made the required stop. ‘Unnh, unnh,’ she would say, and we knew we had missed something essential. We didn’t try it very often! It was a happy moment in the day.

Occasionally, I brought Katherine with me when I popped up to the seminary to check a book out of the library or pick up my mail. She was a little darling among my new friends. The seminary receptionist, Michelle, formed a particular bond with Katherine and greeted her playfully whenever we appeared at the front desk.

So things were going well. Katherine had new doctors and a good school program. I was enjoying seminary. Tom didn’t have a job yet, but since he was occasionally hiking back and forth to his business in Ann Arbor as we made this transition, we weren’t yet too worried about it.

The next doctor we met was an orthopedist. We felt like this was simply precautionary, one more person in the coterie of professionals that would be available to help us. We went to a physician who was highly regarded by United Cerebral Palsy for his compassion and kindly manner. Indeed, we liked him very much.

What he had to tell us, however, we did not like. He discovered that Katherine’s left hip was once again sublexed. We were totally dumbfounded! The course of treatment he proposed was casting her—again in a spica cast—for nine months! We’d been through this before and knew how hard it was. Her previous casting was for six weeks—this would be six times as long. To say that we were shaken would be a gross understatement.

I think we agreed to meet him again as we staggered out of his office. One issue would be our insurance—we had just signed

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