Blog Lessons from Alan

By Rob Conley

My wife Jennifer and I have two children, 13-year-old Austin and 10-year-old Alan.  Austin is a great kid: very intelligent, athletic, and quite the typical 13-year-old middle-schooler in many ways.

Alan is anything but typical.  We learned Alan might be different while we were still expecting him.  He was about six months “old” when we went for a regular ultrasound checkup with the obstetrician.  The ultrasound specialist seemed to have this “look” on her face and kept checking things over and over and finally informed us there appeared to be a defect in the interior walls of Alan’s heart. She sent us for more testing at Baptist Hospital.  Well, to speed this along, we found out later that day that Alan would have Down Syndrome and would require heart surgery soon after birth.

Since then, Alan has been through open-heart reconstructive surgery, Leukemia, and numerous minor things for his ears and eyes.

Can you guess Alan’s favorite person in the whole world?  Well, if you guessed nurse Kelly at Vanderbilt oncology clinic you’re correct.  To Alan, nurse Kelly can “fix” anything.  When Austin broke his arm, Alan wanted nurse Kelly to fix it.  When I was pretty sick a couple years ago, Alan wanted nurse Kelly to fix it.

Alan loves life.  During his short ten years, Alan has endured some pretty significant health issues, but Alan is always smiling and simply enjoys all the attention.  He loves going to the hospital.  He loves going to see the nurses and doctors.  He loves pretending he is the doctor and listening to the doctor’s heart with the stethoscope.

Alan loves church.  Alan loves school.  Alan loves birthday parties.  Alan loves holidays.  Alan loves to eat.  Alan loves family.

Alan loves.

I have often said that when it comes to loving people and loving life, I think Alan is the one who is closer to what God intended as “normal” and the rest of us are a little “off.”
Maybe we can all learn a lesson from a cute, little, blond-headed boy with Down Syndrome.

This is a picture of Alan trying to “act” mad.  He isn’t doing very well, huh?