She was beautiful… perfectly imperfect…. my child…. disabled… and she taught me more about life in her 36 short years than most people can ever learn in a lifetime…. This blog is about her…. her life… her struggles… and my imperfections…Hopefully it will help someone with their own life…their own struggles…
Where do I begin? I suppose the best place would be from the very beginning… I started dating Aaron at age 15… married at 19…Ashley born 13 months later by C-section… breech birth… wouldn’t cooperate….7 lb 4 oz…. children raising a child…
She had colic… lots of it… and an umbilical hernia… I remember my granny telling me to feed her a little whiskey and tape a quarter to her belly button… Never once did I feed her the whiskey… but I can promise you, every time I visited my granny there was a quarter taped to her abdomen… you didn’t mess with my granny!
Every time Ashley received her vaccines she became extremely ill… high fevers… lots of whimpers… would just lay in my arms and let me rock her… this would last for 2 to 3 days and then magically disappear… wish I knew then what I know now… but that part of our story is for another day…
She was a thin, pale child. Breastfed until age one… craved fats after she started eating table foods… would actually eat the fat on any meat before she ate the meat itself…Disliked fruits and vegetables… but loved her meat…
Ashley was always small for her age… wore the same size as years old… until puberty… then all that changed..
Didn’t start walking until 14 months… everything seemed slightly delayed… but she always met the milestones…never worried once about her mental capabilities… but motor skills were another story…
I am not sure I what point I started to worry.,. but my mother’s instinct… as immature as it was… told me something was wrong… something was just off… I took her to several doctors… even a specialist or two… and was told basically it was in my head and there was nothing to worry about… I was even scolded by a few… informed I was wasting their time..
And then she started passing out… she would get hurt… start crying… turn blue… pass out… then come back to… and still the doctors told me there was nothing to worry about…. her pediatrician even told me he did it as a child and he turned out ok….
Her story… is my story…her family’s story.. Ashley was the oldest of 4 children… finally diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome after graduating high school… If I am being totally honest… I was sometimes embarrassed by her… if a stranger ever met her… you would have just considered her odd… maybe tried to pull a way… until she was diagnosed with brain cancer, I let my ego stand in the way of fully appreciating the gift God had given me… I can’t bring those regrets back and correct them… but hopefully our story will help someone else…❤️
Hangry Farmacy 