Coping with acute and chronic medical conditions
When a young person is living with a medical condition, the hardest parts are often the ones no appointment covers. Dr. Wald works on the emotional side of that, alongside the family's medical team.
Signs a young person is struggling to cope with a medical condition
This is the work Dr. Wald trained for: her internship at University of Florida Health was in clinical child and pediatric psychology, and her postdoctoral fellowship was at Kennedy Krieger Institute and Johns Hopkins Medicine, where psychologists work alongside the medical team.
Children
Younger children say little about the condition and a great deal through their behavior. Bedtime gets harder. Old fears return. The visit goes smoothly and the parking lot afterward does not. Some become unusually good, because being difficult starts to feel unsafe. The real questions arrive at odd hours, blunter than adults expect.
Adolescents
Adolescents feel the distance from friends most sharply. A teenager may skip explaining an absence, resent a routine that used to go unquestioned, or stay quiet to avoid another appointment. Irritability at home is common, because home is the only place the strain gets to land. Some are fluent in the language of their care and still cannot say they are frightened.
Young adults
Young adults take over their own care while managing school, work, and independence. That can look like missed follow-ups, reluctance to ask for accommodations, or a private worry about the future that never gets said. Many feel older than everyone around them, with nowhere to put it. Others handle every detail well and only notice later how much it took.
A reasonable response to something genuinely hard
Fear before a procedure, anger at a routine, grief about a season or a trip that was missed: these are what a person does when the ordinary rules of their life change without their permission. They are not a second illness layered on top of the first.
Dr. Wald starts there. Rather than treating the reaction as another problem to fix, she helps the family understand what it is doing, then builds the specific skills that make the next hard hour manageable. Her work is psychological support alongside medical care, never a substitute for it.
Families recognize the shapes it takes: a child composed through every appointment who comes apart at home, a parent so practiced at coordinating care that being a parent has quietly gone missing, a sibling who has learned not to need anything this month. None of it is a character flaw, and all of it responds to attention.
Request a free 15 minute consultationHow therapy for medical coping works
Dr. Wald is a psychologist. She does not diagnose or treat medical conditions and does not advise on medical decisions. Her work is the emotional and behavioral side of living with one, and it is designed to fit around treatment rather than compete with it.
Understand what the family is actually living
Not the chart, the week. The appointment schedule, the flashpoints, the conversations everyone is avoiding, and what has already been tried. Dr. Wald asks about the child, the parents, and the siblings, because a medical condition is rarely carried by one person alone.
Build skills for the specific hard moments
The night before a procedure. The waiting. The daily routine that has turned into a nightly argument. Preparation is its own work: knowing what will happen, in what order, and which parts a young person still controls. Skills are practiced in session, then in real life, and revisited whenever treatment changes.
Coordinate care and plan the return to normal life
With the family's written permission, Dr. Wald communicates with the treating providers and, when it helps, the school, so the plan is understood everywhere. Returning to a classroom after an absence deserves as much preparation as any appointment. Classmates ask questions, work was missed, something visible may have changed. A young person who has rehearsed an answer walks back in with more of themselves intact.
How Dr. Wald helps
The Coral Gables office sits on South Dixie Highway, a short drive from Miami's major pediatric hospitals, which matters when a family is already spending time in waiting rooms. Families travel in from Coconut Grove and Key Biscayne, and telehealth throughout Florida, Maryland, and the PSYPACT states means a hospital stay need not mean a missed session.
Coordination with the treating team
With written permission, Dr. Wald consults with the pediatrician or specialist involved in a young person's care, so the psychological plan and the medical one fit together.
CBT for medical stress
Cognitive-behavioral work on the thinking and the avoidance that build up around appointments, procedures, and uncertainty.
Mindfulness for pain and waiting
Attention and relaxation skills for discomfort, for the long wait between a test and an answer, and for the minutes before something difficult.
Motivational interviewing
A collaborative way of working with adolescents and young adults taking on more of their own care, without lectures or ultimatums.
Parent and sibling support
Family systems work and parent training, so caregivers get to be parents again and a well sibling is not left to manage quietly on their own.
Coping with a medical condition is one of Dr. Wald's areas of specialty. Where worry has spread well beyond the clinic, anxiety treatment for children and adolescents covers that work, and a young person whose confidence has taken a hit can read about therapy for low self-esteem and bullying. A free 15 minute consultation is the place to ask whether any of it fits.
Steady support alongside medical care
Describe what the family is facing and hear how therapy could fit around treatment, in Coral Gables or by telehealth.