Friday, October 2, 2009

Happy Birthday to Holly, and A Loving Tribute to the memory of Dr. Stanley van den Noort, M.D.

Today is my friend Holly's birthday. She is a physician, wife, mother, cancer survivor. Despite the fact that we have only seen each other one time in our lives, she is a very special friend who came into my life during a most difficult time. We live many time zones apart and before this day passes, I want to send her my heartfelt good wishes on the occasion of her completion of yet one more solar circumnavigation.
Happy Birthday, Holly.

* * *

http://sciencedude.freedomblogging.com/2009/09/18/legendary-uci-researcher-van-den-noort-dies/57369/

Stan was my wife’s neurologist for almost twenty years, and since I took her to almost all of her visits with him, we became good friends and allies in managing her battle against the chronic progressive nature of MS. He treated her through the remission that accompanied her second pregnancy and the nursing of our baby and watched our two little sons grow up, as we usually brought them to his office at UCI.

One afternoon In 1999, the OC Department of Child Protective Services took our boys from their elementary school in Irvine to Orangewood Children’s Home on allegations of abuse against me and failure to protect against my wife

Three days later, after a CPS in-home investigation and evaluation, which included full disclosure of my wife’s MS and my spousal caregiving and parenting role, we reported for a hearing before an OC pro tem dependency court commissioner after CPS formally agreed in writing that our sons could return home. Our attorney told us that such agreements were rare and only given in those cases where CPS regarded parents highly and judged them as low risk.

At that hearing, after objection to the agreement by an attorney from the contracted law firm representing the children, the pro tem commissioner imposed an additional requirement by court order: “Father not to be sole caregiver of the minor.” (sic)

That order was neither discussed nor debated in open court and no one raised the issue of my wife’s MS and my caregiving role.

That judicial indifference to the presence of the disease of MS in a family and lack of discussion by any of the attorneys present created a situation that made it impossible for us to comply with the court order. There were times when my wife had to lie down for a nap when I was the only other adult at home with the children. I clearly explained that to social workers who visited our home, whose response was that we were therefore in violation of the court order and would consequently lose the children.

I explained the situation to our attorney and implored him to seek a modification of the court order, because MS prevented us from being able to comply. He told me that he attempted to do so, but failed.

The inevitable happened. CPS took our boys away again and this time placed them in a “sibling assessment facility”.

During this time, Stan, who had known our family for some ten years, went so far as to write a letter to the dependency court on our behalf. He knew what kind of parents we were and he was unfailingly supportive. It was incredible to him and to us how lack of awareness of the disease and its effect on a family could be so ignored by officialdom.

My wife’s MS definitely worsened under the stress caused by the emotional pain of having our boys taken away. Stan did what he could to help us. He was a wonderful physician and a great friend. Our boys finally were allowed to come home ten and one half months later and the court finally dismissed the dependency case in December, 2000.

Through relapses, remissions and exacerbations, Stan was always there. He got my wife into a late-stage clinical trial for Copaxone after her body rejected beta interferon, and she remains on that injectable medication today. That may be the reason she is not in a wheelchair full-time after some thirty years of living with MS.

Stan was a wonderful clinician and researcher, a great professor and dedicated dean. But to us, he was a beloved healer and friend, advocate and ally, and rock of support. We have missed him for the two years since his brain injury, and now we will miss him forever.

May his memory be a blessing to all who knew and loved him, and may our story be of comfort to his family, especially his beloved wife, June.