Whilst staying in St Thomas, a nurse told me a symbolic story about how parents come to terms with handicapped children. For a normal child you buy the guide books for New York a map, a dictionary and you get the flight tickets. Then get excited about the things you will do there, see Manhattan, museums, shopping etc. Then a handicapped child is born and it is like the tickets have suddenly been swapped for somewhere else like Amsterdam. You have to get new guide books, learn a new language you dont know much about the place. When you get there you have friends in New York that wish you had gone there, they send you postcards. But you have to get rid of the New York guide books because Amsterdam is your country. There you discover that there are museums and tulips and other things that New York doesn't offer. I had never heard this story but the same day i picked up a Catholic Life magazine and there was the same story. Amazing! Raphael's disability was never a problem, we were happy for him to achieve as much as he could. It felt like our destination was St Thomas hospital, not Amsterdam or ~New York. In the end Raphael's plane tickets were for heaven.