Here Comes the Sun - a Column by Joelene Wand

Reflections after a year of early intervention therapy

In September, my husband and I marked a year since my son Jude, then 9 months old, started early intervention therapy, the standard of treatment for managing speech, movement, and balance disorders in those living with Angelman syndrome. A doctor who’d been treating Jude for sleep…

Overcoming fear after an Angelman syndrome diagnosis

At 11:12 a.m. on Christmas Eve last year, I sent a text. Our son, Jude, had just turned 1, and over the past four months we’d become increasingly worried that he wasn’t meeting his developmental milestones. He was a month away from being assessed for cerebral palsy (a common…

Here comes the sun after our son’s Angelman syndrome diagnosis

Nothing can prepare you for the beautiful and chaotic roller coaster of raising a child. For a brief moment, we felt as though the path we’d expected to follow went completely off course when we learned our one and only child would live a life of significant disadvantage. My name…