Precerpt from Raising God's Rainbow Makers: Ordinary Accidents, Potential Extraordinary Consequences
When Doah was about fifteen months old—still sporting his tracheotomy, still fragile in all the ways that made our life both vigilant and strangely normal—we decided to spend a warm January in Florida with Donny’s grandparents. They had not yet met any of the children, and Lizzie was already nearly nine. It was time. And Pittsburgh in January offered plenty of motivation to head south, long before the rest of Donny’s family began their annual retiree migrations. So we packed up the car—three kids, medical supplies, catheters, suction equipment, diapers, toys, snacks, and the kind of determination only young parents with medically complex children can muster—and drove to Daytona Beach. Compared to the cross‑country hauls we would later make after moving to California, it wasn’t a long drive. But for a family with a child with spina bifida needing regular catheterization and a baby with a trach who required constant monitoring, it was long enough. We arrived in good time, introduce...