just a little update on baby of mine. 3 specialists later we still don't have much of an answer as to what is exactly
wrong with greta. it's a little frustrating but patience and faith i guess will have have to become my friends.
the MRI came back some what normal. there were 2 area's of concern one w/ her
corpus callosum being thinner than normal and two that the area's in her brain that have fluid are bigger than normal. they are both within the realm of normalcy but still of notice. dr. filloux wants to see her back in 2 months if she is still having her head tremors for further diagnosis and back again in another year for a MRI to check her brain again. dr. filloux also thought that maybe at some point we should see a geneticist to make sure it was not a chromosomal problem. he then referred me to see another pediatric ophthalmologist, dr. dries and also to a government funded program called
"early intervention" for children under 3 with disabilities.
dr. dries gave me the best news of all, which is that greta
can see. i have thought since the beginning that maybe she was blind. he did a number of tests on her and said that he agreed that her vision was very poor for her age but that she was not blind. that was a huge sigh of relief for me. however, greta is not doing the things that she should with her eyes at this point (tracking & focusing) and her vision is quite weak. he seemed to believe that it was probably due to lack of development in her brain in the vision department. he didn't know why this was and how it happened but acknowledged that this was
not normal. dr. dries wants to see her back in 2 months for further testing and suggested "early intervention" as well. he did however
LOVE her name, kudos to me.
now we are on to the early intervention stage. who knew such a thing existed? well, i couldn't be happier that it does. my RN that is on grets' case is names suzanne and i love love love her. she came over last week and observed greta for an hour and half and came to a few conclusions. she concluded that yes, greta was a prime candidate for early intervention because of her vision and that although greta is on target for most milestones, her vision is terrible and because of that she has little or no neck strength. most babies lift their heads because the have a reward by seeing something, but because greta doesn't see well she doesn't know to lift her head so we have to teach her. suzanne taught me a few "exercises" (not the jane fonda type, unfortunately) that i could do to help greta with her neck strength. so far, they seem to be helping. she also told me to buy greta visually stimulating toys. greta responds to noise quite well and has made the connection that sight and sound go together. she looks to see what she is hearing, even if she is not seeing it, and that is a good sign. suzanne is scheduled to come again next week and this time she is bringing a visual therapist.
i am not sure how i feel about the whole situation. even though there are no for sure answers i am glad we are moving in the right direction. how awesome is it that we live in a time where we can have the answers? greta is still a bobble head sometimes and we still don't know why. like i said, patience and faith right? plus, i don't know what it's like to have a child that doesn't have special needs so i guess this
is normal for me. bring it on. one thing that i do know for sure is that I LOVE MY DAUGHTER. she is wonderful and i know that she will be okay because of how much we love her.
....even if she does have to wear these at one point.
amazing..... brooke was the only one who took pictures while in san francisco and it was minimal at that. we had so SO much fun. a lot of time was spent giggling (paige's directions, sonoma county girls, brooke's $500 one stop shop, donna @ dollar rental car, my darling figure, classic "pamisims", etc.) and even more time shopping. we decided that next time we probably would save money in the long run by staying at an all inclusive resort. i think most of our husbands wanted to divorce us after we were through, pretty much A LOT of money was spent. it was good to see bister (baby sister) paigey. she is all grown'd up and has a darling apartment in san ramon. thanks again to paige and nate for hosting us!
