Child Life On Call: Parents Of Children With An Illness Or Medical Condition Share Their Stories With A Child Life Specialist

Episode 9 features an interview with Liz and Jamie. Shortly after Jamie was born, she developed a heart murmur and began passing out. Her mom, Liz, walks us through what it was like to witness such terrifying scenarios and how she began to become an advocate for her daughter. Despite being told that nothing was actually wrong with Jamie, Liz pushed harder and demanded tests that led them eventually to her diagnosis, Tetralogy of Fallot, a rare and serious heart defect.  Years after the surgery to correct the defect, they'd come to learn that Jamie had been infected with HIV during a blood transfusion. Throughout this episode Liz talks about how she made some of her toughest parenting decisions: how to tell her child that she had the AIDS virus and how much information to give her. She talks about how she coped with not knowing how long her daughter would live for, experts had guessed it would be about two years. Unlike most childhood diseases and illness, there were no support groups for children with HIV a