Sometimes when you are behind, the best way to catch up is to start right where you are. We started this website to share the girls story and help promote awareness for Psoariasis and Psoriatic arthritis but so much has changed since their diagnosis in 2007.
In time I will update their story but for now, I want to share where we are today.
Today I picked the girls up from Dragonfly Forest, a nonprofit camp for children with serious illness and chronic disorders. Dragonfly is more than a camp, it is a feeling and a family. As a mom, I get emotional thinking about the people and the experience of Dragonfly. I am not sure I have the words to accurately explain the gift they are in our lives.
Katelyn started attending Dragonfly 5 years ago. It was then that she returned from Dragonfly with the spot on her leg which we thought was a mosquito bite. Seeing a picture of Katelyn from Dragonfly 2007 brought back the memory of that summer and the trying months that followed. That “mosquito bite” was the beginning of our journey with Psoriasis.
I am always asked how I deal with not one, but two children with Psoriasis. As I have heard many parents of chronically ill children say, you don’t have a choice – you just do it. Methotrexate and the many injectable medications used to treat Psoriasis are scary drugs with nasty side effects.
We were lucky and did not let it get us down. Whatever the girls were up for, we did. When they were tired or sore, we slowed down but we never gave up.
Dragonfly is a lot like our journey with Psoriasis: I am pretty sure the words No or CAN’T are not in the Dragonfly vocabulary and that was our attitude when the girls received their injections. I am not discounting the terrible side effects and difficulty of these diseases, I’m just saying it is a state of mind and an attitude. It’s how you deal with whatever life throws you.
I think this great video from Dragonfly says it all!
Dragonfly Forest