Another Reprogramming

It has been a busy month. I can't believe that February is getting close to being over. Rob and I celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary on Valentine's Day. How has it been that long? It seems like only yesterday that we met, but then again it also seems like a lifetime ago.

Emily has still been having headaches. She has been averaging about three per week. It has been exactly four weeks today since her shunt was reprogrammed the first time and we went to see the neurosurgeon today to have it done again. The original setting was at 100 and she was bumped up to 130. She was going to bump her up again today to 150, but when we got in there she decided to go higher. Her pressure is now set at 200. I am praying hard that this works for her.

While I was in her office, I talked to the doctor about a concern I have been having lately about Emily's short term memory. There have been many times when I am very surprised at Emily's lack of recollection on things. And I'm not talking about the usual thing like "What did you do at school today?" question and then getting the reply like "uuuhhhh, I don't know." Of course, I get that from both kids. And I'm also not just talking about not being able to remember what you had for breakfast or dinner. But there have been times when we will discuss things as a family like places we have gone, or things we have seen, and Emily will absolutely have no recollection of it. I will talk about something with her that we might have already done together just within the past couple of months and she may not remember doing it at all. When I talked to the neurosurgeon about it, she just nodded her head and said that short term memory loss is normal and is to be expected because of the intraventricular hemorrhage she had. My heart just kind of jumped up in my throat in that instant. I mean, I have done enough research on my child's condition that I really already knew this, but she has surpassed so many of the other textbook cases that I guess thought she would not have to deal with any of these types of problems. We talked about Emily's intelligence level and how well she is doing in school and her reading level, etc, and the doctor said that the good news is that as Emily gets farther along in school then there is a very good chance that she should be able to compensate well for any memory loss issues that she is faced with. However, she does want to go ahead and set up some testing for her just to see where she is at right now. They will call me to get that scheduled.

Before we left to head home from Pensacola, Emily had a horrible accident in the parking lot. She was trying to skip to the car and she just tripped over her own feet and took a terrible nose dive across the parking lot. It was H-O-R-R-I-B-L-E!!!! She really skinned up her knee and hand. In fact, she had skin dangling from her hand in two places and one place on her knee. I had to lift her up with one hand out of the middle of the parking lot and carry her to the car and all of our stuff with the other hand. Thank goodness I had some of the Neo to Go stuff in my purse to spray in the cuts to clean them up and then I dug out the emergency band-aids out of the car to put on her. Poor thing was so pitiful and was hugging me and telling me she loved me and thanking me for taking care of her. It was just so sweet. And then while I was trying to make the 45 minute drive home from Pensacola, she was crying, "Do you have any idea how much pain I'm in right now?!?!" She literally had me crying, too!

On a positive note, Ethan is so excited because he will be playing baseball this year. He had so much fun playing basketball and although he is pretty upset that this Saturday is his last game, he is very excited to be playing baseball. Tonight will be the baseball assessments and he is pretty pumped about it. Emily has decided to play tennis again. So, I will be one very busy mama this Spring and Summer. Let's just pray that the kiddos can stay healthy and can enjoy their activities.