Maddie turned 18 this week. Of course I knew this was coming.. but I still wasn’t ready. We have been working on college scholarships and planning graduation events, but somewhere along the way I forgot that with graduation and college, my “little” girl was going to become an adult.

Unlike many parents, I’m not worried about Maddie being a responsible adult. Maddie has been responsible pretty much her entire life. And it’s not that I can’t let go.. I will and am..

But here is the deal.

For 18 years I have spent pretty much every breath that I have in me protecting Maddie’s health. I have spent thousands of hours in doctor’s offices, in waiting rooms and researching diseases and cures when the specialists didn’t even know what to do or how to treat her.

And then, starting at 12:01am on Maddie’s birthday, I started getting the emails.

“You have been unlinked to Maddie’s account”

“This email has been removed from the account”

“You have been removed from this account”

over

and

over.

I have been removed and unlinked from Maddie’s life.

There aren’t even words to describe how that feels. Maddie didn’t choose to unlink or remove me. An automated system that just the day before wouldn’t allow Maddie to make a single decision for herself now requires her to make all of the decisions and excludes me from even seeing her account!

It hurt.

But more than that, it scared me.

I wasn’t ready and I hadn’t downloaded all of Maddie’s files. I realize now that I should have been more proactive, but dang.. just living in the trenches is hard enough. Someone should have warned me! That automated system should have sent me an email 30 days prior saying that unless Maddie authorized it, I would be removed from her accounts.

For those of you out there that have never had the struggles that come with having a child with 13 different diagnosis codes and almost a dozen different specialists, I’m sure you think I’m overreacting. Just hang with me a moment…

This week along with Maddie’s birthday, she has had some ongoing and new health issues. She saw her primary doctor who did blood work and is working to get in to see two of her specialists next week. Both specialists will need to see the results of the blood work. None of these three doctors work together or are part of the same network. My job for the last 18 years is to be the manager and provide all of the paperwork and logistics for each of the various doctors. Now it’s Maddie’s responsibility. A responsibility that Maddie will take the lead on, but truly wasn’t ready to take on. As she said, when the doctor’s office calls with results from the blood work, she isn’t even going to know what they are talking about! And Maddie is an educated patient!

I can’t help but be a little terrified.