Good morning! Well, this week my daughter started back to school. Wow. Where in the world did the Summer go? This is her junior year...her JUNIOR year! It really hit me the other day. We don't have that much more time left with her! Alison is such and AMAZING person and we (DH & I) have a great relationship with her. I totally love that girl young woman!
This year is quite different than the other years. Not only is she a junior, but she is starting school knowing that she has a HUGE fight ahead (more on that below). I whipped up this card over the weekend for her. I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut out he bird and branch (it's a file from Echo Park). Ali loves birds of all kinds...whimsical birds, realistic birds, majestic birds...if it's a bird, she loves it! :-) I thought a long time on what I wanted this card to say. I mean, "normal" sentiments didn't feel right. With what lies ahead for her, wishing her a great year just didn't seem right. Don't get me wrong, I sincerely hope and pray (literally...pray often) that she will indeed have a great year, but I didn't want it to sound like a platitude. Instead, I chose the Just a Note sentiment (from the Sentiment Sampler by Paper Smooches). For a little extra texture, I ran the bird through my Cuttlebug using the Swiss Dots embossing folder. A polka dot bird. Teeheee!
So, here's the photo I took this morning of her. Isn't she SO beautiful? I cannot even tell you how proud I am of her...words just fail me.
We finally heard back from Alison's neurosurgeon at Seattle Children's. They took so long because they met several times to discuss her case. As it stands now, the medication (two anti-seizure meds) seem to be holding them off for a week to two weeks, then she has break through seizures. Not only that, but the medicine is starting to become toxic to her (Dr.'s words...not mine). The bad news is that the scar tissue is located extremely close to the part that controls the left side movement. What they (and we) have decided is that they will do two surgeries. For the first one, they will put electrodes all around the area causing trouble. He described it as "brain mapping". Then, three days later, they will go in and remove as much as they can making sure to stay away from the movement parts as best they can. So, in a nutshell, she will be having two major surgeries with some definite risks. There is a 67% chance that the surgery will be successful (no more seizures). Those are not as great of odds and I would have liked, but it looks a lot better than the alternative (continuing break through seizures and toxic medicine). All of this will take place in a couple of weeks.
If all things go VERY well, she will be able to return to school after 5 weeks. Trying to make up that much work after having brain surgery will be hard to say the least. We're not sure what will happen, but have decided that we will make decisions as we need to. Since she has already gone through brain surgery once...we definitely don't have rose colored glasses on...we know what it's like. We know how long therapy and recovery takes. Having said that, we are SO incredibly grateful to have an opportunity to fix this for her...AND having one of the best surgeons out there today!
Thanks so much for "listening"! I have found that talking/writing about it really helps me process everything.
Hugs, Laurie