Overwhelmed to Empowered

When your child is born with a congenital or chronic illness, your life changes forever and it is easy to become overwhelmed. Most times you are the first in the family to have a child with their particular condition and you begin to feel a loneliness and separation that you don’t think others can relate to. And to add to your sense of desperation, you are inundated with Specialists, appointments, treatment plans, a plethora of medications and required follow up visits. The time to learn is short but the need to learn is essential for the successful care of your child.

In this book, Overwhelmed to Empowered, I share my experiences and hindsight moments of lessons learned in an effort to show you that you are not alone and that you too can shake the feeling of being overwhelmed and embrace the sentiment of being empowered. To further assist you with your challenging but rewarding journey, I have created a log to help you maintain vital information such as appointment reminders, family history, immunizations, contact information for the dozen of Specialists that you will surely encounter, new and confusing terminology and a place to record questions that arise between appointments. This information will ultimately make your appointments more efficient and provide valuable data to each Specialist that could result in a change of treatment plan and/or medication. And because we all like to record data differently, the log is available as paper and as a mobile App. Remember, you represent the voice for your child. You are in the driver’s seat and the doctors that you chose, work for you. Give them the resources that they need to be productive and valuable for you child.

-- Jillian Theorgood