I should have known better.

My first mistake was getting “comfortable”.

As comfortable as anyone can when you have three special needs kids.

Everyone was doing well, no major incidents for two years (*knocks on wood*). I was well-adjusted to our current status, our version of normal. Our version of perfect.

Were there hiccups? Well, sure. We have two girls on the verge of tween-dom and all the drama that comes with. Drama we’d been through with the now-teen.

But overall, we were good. We had things handled. IEPs in place, regularly scheduled doctors visits…in fact, we’d gone down in occurrences of those (from quarterly to every third, or half a year).

During our month of hell, part of the trauma was dealing with issues with Kennedy and Denver and their new doctor’s ways that we didn’t like and his poor poor choices. Situations we are still coping with, but wish so much up in the air, we are in a holding pattern (I hate holding patterns).

Then there is Molly.

Several months ago we were hanging around the house. I had my hands on Molly’s shoulders, and she moved. Immediately I noticed something odd. A very pronounced clicking when she moved her shoulder. I asked her if it hurt, it didn’t. I knew it wasn’t right, but with the chaos of all the crazy around this house it got pushed to the background.

Then today we had her regularly scheduled autism checkup with her geneticist/neurodevelopmental doc. We love this man (if not the hospital he’s affiliated with), and he’s been great with Molly from the start.

So I said, “I know this isn’t your area, but could you check out this weird thing?”

He checked her shoulder, had me do the same to look for a specific issue, then had her lie down and rotated it, checking everything. As she sat up, she decided to show him how she can bend her fingers in hyper-flexible ways. “Isn’t that cool?”

And so, the doctor explained to me that Molly has no connective tissue in her right shoulder. When it’s rotated, it becomes dislocated and pops back in. It is bone on bone.

Add in the hyper-flexibility in her joints…and he thinks we’re looking at a connective tissue disorder–one that we aren’t specifically testing for yet.

First step–we must go to an orthopedic doctor for her shoulder and determine the best course of action. She’s to stop goofing around with it (she finds it a neat trick), and take it easy on it, even though it doesn’t hurt.

As for the connective tissue disorder (he did not specify which as of yet)…it’s a wait and see. Deal with her shoulder first, watch for other symptoms (migraines, heart palpitations).

We are once again in the “hurry up and wait” world.

I hate being here.

With a white hot passion.

I was definitely stupid to get comfortable.

I know better.