(or So What Did You Eat Today?)
We just got home from a weekend conference where we had hoped that our older son would realize that he is really not so alone in this world. I’m not sure that this objective was met – it’s hard to get much in-depth emotional processing out of a 6-year-old. I, however, came away with a whole host of revelations of my own.
But to get to those, I need to start at the beginning. You see, my son was born with a very rare, very serious metabolic disorder that, if left untreated, causes irreversible damage to the central nervous system. Or to be exact: brain damage.
It is hard to fathom that the very foods that so many of us eat, and take for granted, are toxic to the hundreds of thousands of people with inherited metabolic disorders.
To protect both his and my anonymity, I’m not going to name the specific metabolic disorder that he has. His specific diagnosis isn’t all that pertinent, and I hope my own thoughts on this topic apply to anyone raising a special-needs child, far beyond the reaches of our very small metabolic community.
the unSecret Garden 