8 Week update

I've thought a lot over the past few days on how I was going to write this blog post, or if I even wanted to write about what we have been going through the past couple weeks.  But then I realized that this is what we are dealing with, and it's all part of Annabelle's life, which I want to keep documenting and also want to share with everyone. 

Almost three weeks ago I noticed Annabelle had a strange vertical eye movement that would last 3-5 minutes.  It was when my parents were visiting, and my mom suggested I call the pediatrician, which I did.  They suggested I try to catch it on video tape.  The following day around the same time she did it again, and this time I was able to get a couple minutes of video.  We went in to see the doctor and she seemed concerned and said it wasn't something she had seen.  She suggested that we go to see an ophthalmologist along with scheduling an EEG with a neurologist.  The following day we got into the eye doctor who said everything with her eyes are fine, but he was equally concerned after watching the video, and also wanted her to have a MRI done.  Meanwhile, it happened a few more times, never more than once a day and usually about the same length of time.

Fast forward to this week.  Wednesday she had the MRI and the EEG which she was so good for.  She had to be sedated for the MRI so she would stay still which was a very scary experience.  We made an appointment for Friday to go over the results.  Friday we found out that Annabelle's brain isn't like other people's brains.  First, she has something called Polymicrogyria, which is a brain development abnormality from before birth.  Unfortunately, there is no cure for it, and we won't know what extent it's going to affect her until she reaches certain milestones to see if she's developing at the same rate as other children.  There is a very good chance that she will need extra help and love when learning how to do things that so many children accomplish easily.  Things such as walking, talking, and learning new things.  The thing we are grateful for is that it's isolated and not throughout her brain, so we are hopeful that it's a mild case.  Another thing this conditions can include are recurrent seizures (epilepsy).  This is where they are worried about her strange eye movement, that they may be a seizure, although the EEG came back with normal brain activity.  The second thing that they found is that her Corpus Callosum, which is a nerve bundle that connects the right and left hemispheres of the brain, is thinner than average.  Because of all this we are going to schedule genetic testing to make sure she doesn't have any other conditions.  We are praying that the genetic testing comes back that everything else is OK. 

In the mean time, we just have to wait this out and keep working with her and giving her all the love we can.  We are going to meet with some people from early intervention to start working with her to develop her motor skills with occupational and physical therapy.  It's good we caught this so early, some kids don't get diagnosed until they are in their teens and are having problems with learning.

On top of everything yesterday while I was changing Annabelle I scratched her little cheek with my wedding ring.  I included a picture of her little scratch.  When I was taking the picture I got what seemed to be my first smile from her which I caught a picture off and included it.  There are also a couple pictures of her getting ready to go to the hospital, her and daddy after he came home from work, waking up with Clyde & Apollo watching, and her holding her little doll while we were playing.

In light of all this information, please keep Annabelle in your thoughts and prayers.

Brian & Mandy