What a week

Wow, we got home last Thursday, which means that it's been a little over a week we've had Elsie in America.  It seems longer than that.  Wednesday and Thursday's doctor's appointments were a bit overwhelming.

Wednesday we met with Emma's neurologist.  It was the first meeting with him, we've had Elsie home less than a week.  We thought, "bring her along, he'll probably tell us he needs to review Emma's records with some other doctors.  Elsie will sleep because it'll be nap time, and it'll be no big deal."  And then sometimes our thoughts/expectations are not reality.  Elsie was crying and fussing the whole time and the doctor had a lot of important stuff to share with us.  He wants Emma to have surgery as soon as possible.  The complications in her spine will lead to incontinence and loss of function in her lower extremities if we don't do surgery.  She's doing so well now, which is really a miracle considering the state of her spine and spinal cord.  We don't want that to change.  So, surgery, ASAP.  October 8th to be exact.  It's a major surgery.  It'll take 6-8 hours and there will be an incision from her neck to her tailbone.  She'll be in the hospital about a week.

This is not an easy pill to swallow when you're trying to adjust to instant family of four.

And then the next morning...an EEG with an active little one.  Stick electrodes all over her head without sedation because that'll mess with the results.  Oh yeah, she screamed.  Does any 2 year old like to be restrained?  It was plain awful.  She finally cried herself to sleep, which was expected since they told me to bring her tired so I got her up at 4am.  These EEG technicians are just asking for a recipe for disaster.  After it was finished we went to see the doctor and he basically told us that the results are inconclusive and we need another test, an MRI, to see more.  We're trying to figure out if Elsie has epilepsy and needs to be on medication.

Please pray for us.  We're tired.  We're dealing with a lot.  We're overwhelmed.  We know Jesus tells us He won't give us more than we can handle and we're clinging to that promise.  We don't have to handle all of this, because He is.  It's all in His hands and we can trust.