Aurora is a beautiful example of resilience throughout life. She has persevered through trauma after trauma, transition after transition throughout her journey with hope and curiosity all along the way. Aurora’s mutation appears mostly through mental health and intellectual challenges, causing many mood disorders and mental illness not found in most people, let alone, children.
During treatment, she is always understanding of the help she is receiving and wants to know as much as she can about her diagnoses, making her an inspiration for her doctors, therapists, nurses and we, her parents. Not to brag, but even though Aurora is always considered a “tough and complicated” case with everyone she has worked with, she is also always considered a favorite because of her sense of humor, imagination and creativity. Aurora loves to draw, write, dance, act, play and listen to or create music.
She is constantly on the go! We received Aurora’s GRIN2b diagnosis at the age of seven following a genetic test after receiving an autism diagnosis. The geneticist contacted me to explain the breakdown of the findings when there was an anomaly in her DNA. This anomaly was found to be GRIN2b-a mutation we and her doctors had never heard of. Luckily, Aurora’s psychiatrist was an inquisitive and caring doctor who immediately began the work of researching what it means to have this mutation and what it would mean for our family moving forward.
Since then, we have been able to receive so much help for Aurora in ways previously unavailable to us. Life is still hard, and we take it minute to minute rather than day by day, but with the knowledge we are guarded with now, we are filled with more hope than ever before.
