Since January 2002 our two kids have been served by Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. We’d learned the previous October that our second child, Q, had an incurable disease that leads to a kidney transplant and will lead to a liver transplant. It’s been a long relationship, as our eldest started with neurology and therapies in 2000.
We were mostly faithful to each other. There was that one time I flirted with a hospital in Alabama – drove to, advocated with, got the rare insurance approval for transplant out of state – only to have the team here step up and approve Q for transplant instead of letting her get “sick enough” to go on dialysis. Besides that terrible time, our love affair with CHOA has been strong.
This past week, our oldest child had his last appointment with CHOA as he ages out in February when he turns twenty-one. The transition has taken a few years. Starting with “Teen Clinic” and his slowly taking over his own care, where I am rarely, if ever, in the room. The transition has been well thought out. I understand it’s a fairly new system of transition with the overlap while seeing both the pediatric and adult transplant teams in the same year-long period. A year ago we took a tour and then in June, he had a regular appointment to meet his new adult care team doctor at Emory’s Transplant Clinic.
Sure, I’m there for back up, but if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, he could do it; he IS doing it. He came on his own, checked in on his own, and carries his own insurance card and pays for the visit copay. He left before I did with Q and their doctor said how impressed she was with him, saying she uses him as an example of a transitioned child to teenager to a young adult transplant patient. She said she wasn’t worried about him at all.
Happy to work me out of a job with one of the kids. I could hardly think of a better way for him to process out of the little kids’ hospital than to have the confidence of the doctor who has seen him flourish over the last five years.
