Cold & Rainy Friday night!

Selah did good again today.  She did PT & OT, she stormed a bit between them, her heart rate went way up but her blood pressure did ok.  She was also reassessed by the rehab team at the hospital and they were actually encouraging.  They may ask St Mary's Rehab to look at her again.  She was turned down by them about 4 weeks ago because she was not responsive.  They feel now she might be accepted, which is great!!!

With Selah, not only is she dealing with the brain damage from the accident, she also had many delays before this.  Although she is 8 yrs old, she was more like a 18 month old.  Also you have to factor in that she was just hearing English for a few months.  There is a Russian doctor in rehab and he has talked to her in Russian and she did not respond to that anymore than she does to English.  She didn't seem to understand much of what was said to her in the orphanage and did not follow simple commands there.  She is very delayed so rehab, even OT & PT is hard for her.  They can't evaluate "if she can follow commands" since she didn't BEFORE the accident.  Now we had taught her one thing "come here"  We worked hard on that as we felt she needed to understand that in case of an emergency.  She also knew when I would say "let's eat" "let's play outside"  and she would respond by walking with me.    Anyhow she has a lot of things that make it harder for her to be evaluated by tradition rehab.  Thankfully her OT therapist REALLY gets it and helps us with that, in dealing with others.

We had a good conversation with the doctor here who is setting up the Fish Oil study and she was very encouraging.  Hopefully she will get into the study by next week.  There is alot more that I will share tomorrow after I go over the studies.  We are so excited....

Tonight we went to Mt Morris, to our good college friends' home.  They threw a surprise 17th birthday party for our son Steve:)  We had a wonderful night with our friends, what a blessing to have long term friends here with us!  We've been friends for almost 30 years, you just can't replace a friendship like that!!!  Love you Dan & Charlene! 

 

Dan & Charlene's youngest daughter with her buddy Sam!

 

praying a blessing over Steve

 

Andrew and Steve

 

This morning my kids were still wearing shorts, now it is freezing!  It's already raining here, although it has nothing to do with the big hurricane that is coming.  We are really hoping for snow! 

Tomorrow I will have a longer blog and talk more about the fish oil study and my wonderful son Steve!!!  I can't believe he is 17 years old!  Doesn't seem possible to us!!!!