Miracles Still Happen

We are absolutely thrilled.

Zara sailed through her MRI with no adverse results to the general anesthesia or the contrast dye.

But even better? Her MRI was completely clear!

Some days I still can hardly believe it.  Her reflexes are completely symmetrical and aside from some low muscle tone issues, she’s checking out completely on target.

They really have no answers for what exactly was going on or why it happened.  In their minds it was simply stereotypies (pronounced “stare ee ot u peez”) which is a muscular movement that looks like a seizure but isn’t.  It sounds like one of those ambiguous syndrome type terms doctors use when they have no idea what is going on but they can’t find anything specific.  😉  At any rate, kids usually grow out of them and they are completely benign.  They have no idea what causes them or what makes them eventually go away.

Maybe it’s true.

But I still wonder.  Would stereotypies have caused a child to stop rolling? And even more, would they have caused a child to start fisting with her left hand so much so that she would crawl into a room, plop that fisted hand in her lap and play with the other?  Would they have made her weak on her left side and caused increased reflexes on that side?  Would they have made her need to learn that her left side is there when she was learning to walk or playing with her hands when she previously had no issues?

We’ll never know.  But I think she had more than stereotypies going on and God healed her.  Then again, I’m just the mom with a boatload of faith; not the one with the neurology degree.

It really doesn’t matter.  Because either way, we get to stop worrying about what’s going on inside her little cranium!

No matter what happened, I knew I would still know God is good.  We had a lot of dialogue going on, He and I, in the days leading up to Zara’s last checkup.  So many questions. So many emotions to give to Him.  Today I am overflowing with so much thankfulness for this miraculous gift of health He has given our baby girl!

I would also like to give a huge shout out to the team at Johns Hopkins for the incredible treatment we received from the day I first called them to the day they said we could follow up with her pediatrician.  The hospital is absolutely eNORmous, but we were always treated with the utmost courtesy and respect from people who showed us which direction to go (and often took us part or all of the way there) to neurologists who called or emailed us directly.  I loved that at her follow ups the neurologist herself was the person to come out to the waiting room to get us.  It felt so personable to see doctors come out and greet their patients and chat with them for a minute.  I also loved that anesthesia let me go with Zara while they put her to sleep.  Zara was super stressed the day of her MRI (she has white coat syndrome all the way by now). Not only did anesthesia offer to premedicate her, she insisted the nurse let me administer the medication rather than make Zara even more upset.  And then they let me walk her back to the room and hold her while they put her to sleep.  A quick kiss and I was out the door so they could intubate her.  Only a few minutes and I’m sure Zara wouldn’t have remembered them forever but I know she would have been TERRIFIED to be taken from me and I would have cried my eyes out to watch it happen.  I love that modern medicine has made such enormous strides toward finding cures for so many things; and I am equally happy that medical practitioners have made such enormous strides in taking care of patients and family’s emotional needs.  Johns Hopkins, you are pretty amazing!

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