About little Josephine, by her parents.
Josephine is our first child who we waited for and wanted for 3 years. Everything was going wonderfully well until the famous date: the 21st February 2008.
| During a check-up for our sweetheart's two years, the paediatrician to whom we had mentioned her problems with keeping her balance, asked us to admit Josephine to hospital for a day for a series of tests, to lift any doubts of a possible retardation…A week later our life changed: the verdict was announced, Josephine was suffering from a very rare, dramatic illness where there's no treatment, MPS III. Our world fell apart, we couldn't feel the ground beneath our feet, and we could no longer breathe. |  |
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| Suddenly a question sprang to our minds: "Doctor, the baby we're expecting for July, is it also ill?"….There's one risk in four that this child will also be ill. We who had never known any tragedy, who had everything going for us, who thought (very selfishly) that "this only happens to other people", there we were, with life attacking what we held the most dear, the most precious, the people we loved with an unmeasured love, our children! Luckily on the 19th March a ray of sunshine again came to light up our lives, our son didn't have Sanfilippo disease. Since then we are learning to live with the idea that our daughter is ill. Our son Nathanael was born on the 15th June. And we want to believe that our Josephine will pull through. | ||
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Medicine is making progress and we are persuaded that it won't be too late. Our happiness is now different; obviously it doesn't correspond to what we imagined. But we have to continue to be happy for our children. We had a choice, sink into despair or continue to smile, laugh, joke, to simply be Audrey and Damien and we chose the second option. |
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It's true that it may be easy for the moment because Josephine isn't three yet, she's in the development stage. After that, well we'll see. For the moment we make the most of things.
And after all "what doesn't destroy you makes you stronger" doesn't it?
