Raising a child with a rare and complex disease is a full-time job… or more.

Constant advocacy.

Almost every interaction regarding the child requires additional effort to bring people or the system up to speed. And this gets piled on top of the normal activity and chaos of life…work, school, the other kid, loss of a family member.

There is help available, but that is just one more task to manage. Applying, interviewing visiting nurses or personal care aids, scheduling, handling unexpected absences, and managing performance. While the extra help is welcomed, it comes at a cost.

On top of this, add frequent admissions to the hospital. Each hospitalization completely disrupts the family, interferes with work, and creates new challenges.

Time management. Fatigue. Relationship tensions.

This burden gets multiplied when dealing with multiple medical systems. These systems do not communicate well with each other. Big Academic Medical Centers may have more capabilities, but often they are too far away to be feasible for emergency care.

Brittany opens up and talks about these challenges and how she and her family manage them. More importantly, she talks about the personal toll this all takes.

Flexibility is critical when talking about raising a child with a rare disease.

It has been a long time friends.

The Raising Rare Team has been dealing with a number of challenges since Season 5 ended. As a result, we have not been able to reconnect and publish an episode until now. We are so glad that you came back!

In our Season 6 Opener, we talk about some of those challenges including frequent hospital visits, mental health, job changes, and other family members. But we also talk about some of the kiddos’ favorite books and the reasons that we love to share our discussions.

And there is a surprise…

Listen all the way to the end and then post a review that includes a comment about how our surprise makes you feel!

Season 5 has been fantastic. We feel so thankful to our guests for sharing their stories.

Which emotion-character from “Inside Out” are you? Sanath and Brittany reveal the characters they relate to the most. Rare parents experience the full range of emotions, sometimes in the period of a single day, and it can get very tiring.

In the season finale, we talk about the need to step away from the grind of advocacy, social media, and all the other commitments we choose to make. We talk about retreating into our cave to discover the next leg of the journey.

We are taking a bit of break too. We plan to be back in early 2025. Until then, please go back and listen to our other seasons. You will be surprised by how many of our previous guests have become well-known names in the rare community.

Mentioned in this episode:

Invitation to Check Out The Atlas

The Atlas