Empathy

This is a convo between a special needs momma and I this morning. I am sure when you read my response that the test came back negative you probably were not expecting me to say sorry... but in that moment my heart broke for her. See she has a kiddo who is complex like mine and has no diagnosis. No one knows what is causing the complications they are seeing and the muscle biopsy just came back negative. See muscle biopsies are not the first step... instead they are closer to the end of the line of diagnostic tests. No one wants to cut a kids leg open and take a chunk of muscle out and agreeing to that test as a parent is hard, but you do it when you need to find answer for your kid and as you wait for the results you pray they find something so they can help your child.
Most people take their kids to the doctor and the doctor tells them what is wrong. In the undiagnosed world that is not the case. Our kids stump the doctors. Just treating symptoms as the pop up is like playing wack-a-mole with a band-aid.
But the hard thing is when you tell people the results came back negative, most people celebrate and you look like the mope because on the inside your heart is aching because it feels like 10 steps back and where do we go now.
This is something I had no idea about before having the girls. So I just wanted to share this with you all because there are times when test results come back negative and it is awesome but there are times where it is like a knife to a parents heart. Was this mom "wishing" for her kid to have mito, no, but they need answers to best help a sweet little girl and mito was the logical thought but now that they don't think that is it... where do you turn next? 
So if you find yourself in a situation were parents are trying to find out what is going on with their kid and something comes back negative, I would highly recommenced starting with "how are you feeling about that." I didn't this morning because I know this mom well and I knew how she was feeling when she wrote those words. I get that it is hard to explain, but I just wanted to share in case it could help you better support someone at some point and show them love. There are times to rejoice for negative results and sometimes there is frustration and anger and my goal is to love people for how they feel in the moment.