The entire ride home was surreal. Joel, our new son, waited until he was strapped in his car seat to open his eyes. Danielle had tried all evening to wake him up, but he kept his eyes sealed shut the entire time. As soon as he was alone with us, he popped open his beautiful brown eyes and gazed into mine. I melted and knew right away this child was meant to be. He was meant to be ours.

I sat in the back of our second hand Infiniti, the car I always felt so cool driving, and checked out my son. I looked at his toes, his fingers as they curled around mine, his little dimple on his chin and his amazingly long eyelashes. He was perfect. He was ours.

The next few months went by so fast. The cool Infiniti was replaced with a safer SUV. I stopped working and devoted all my time to my newborn son. Joel was such an easy baby, that life was easy. He rarely fussed and he slept through the night by six weeks of age. He would happily spend time in his swing while I cleaned up the house and did the laundry. Life was wonderful.

Joel was always an active baby. He climbed out of his crib by 8 months. He walked before his first birthday. He had an incredible pain threshold. We always just thought he was a tough little boy, until one day he burned his finger. He was 18 months old and ran up to a hot grill. He placed his finger on it and it turned beet red. Joel didn't even flinch. We knew then there was something wrong.

After different evaluations Joel was diagnosed with Sensory Intergration Dysfunction. We had never heard of such a thing. As a former teacher, I thought I knew about all kinds of dysfunction. This one, however, was new to me. We found out it was new to many people, and often people questioned the validity of such a disorder. We knew we wanted what was best for our son, and began therapy right away.

Joel did well in therapy, and we began to see some changes in his behavior. He became more cautious when he played. He started to sleep under the covers. He let us hug and kiss him more. It was so wonderful to see these little triumphant changes in him. We knew he was getting better. Though we knew there were some things with which he would always struggle, we were seeing some of his idiosyncrasies fade away. We were on the right road.

Through it all Joel was a trooper. He not only had therapy twice a week, but he also had to have tubes put in his ears due to chronic ear infections. Though he never complained about the pain in his ears or the jostling and body brushing in therapy, we knew he was uncomfortable. He handled everything with such strength. We were so proud of him.

After four weeks of therapy, we all received a some shocking news. Joel's life was never going to be the same.