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Showing posts from March, 2009

Orphanages Can be Used Greatly by God

This article by our mission board's founder spoke to my heart for orphans. Orphanages Can Be Used Greatly by God (Why We Cannot Just Leave Street Children on the Street) by Doug Nichols (Missionary to Children in Africa, Asia, and Latin America since 1968) It is very discouraging to read articles which are basically negative in regards to caring for orphans and street children in orphanages. Of course, a loving home is better than an orphanage, but does that mean we should give up on orphanages altogether? We do realize that there are some unacceptable orphanages in the world, but creating more loving God centered orphanages could bring glory to God and save thousands of children the pain and abuse they face every day on the street. We need to support both adoption and orphanages. Although placing a child into a loving family should be our goal, it is not always possible. An orphan or a street child is not taken directly from the street to a home. There is usually some type of ...

Poor sick Gracie!

(Multi-tasking is my middle name! Two snuggle bugs often need my attention at the same time, like at this bridal shower a few weeks ago!!) Gracie is recovering well from the surgery after a miserable weekend. She is apparently allergic to codeine so she spent the entire weekend without adequate pain control at home and was so extremely itchy that she scratched herself bloody. (we can't give benadryl because it lowers the seizure threshold so she would be more likely to have a seizure.) By Sunday night, I was really struggling with not being able to help my sweet miserable daughter who was arching and whining and fussing constantly. I realized, as I broke down and Josh sent me to bed, that I hadn't slept more than a few hours since Wednesday! I slept 12 hours, Gracie (mercifully) slept all night, and I went to work all day Monday. Monday night Gracie developed a fever above 103 that took hours to get down with tylenol, motrin, washcloths, and pacing our tiny living room with Gra...

Gracie doing great

Gracie's surgery went well - she received some morphine so still asleep with occasional eye opening to glare at us if we make too much noise... ;-) good to see her looking fine! We're settled into our room on the neurology floor for the night.  thanks for your prayers!

Prayers... great and small

(Gracie has been sitting up so strong lately, especially enjoying Grandma's rocking chair! Ana enjoyed her first day of being able to play outside on our patio! It's still too cold for Gracie to enjoy being outside, our little Liberian princess!) Gracie goes to surgery on Friday - I'm nervous mostly about the post-op period as I'm not sure she'll realize that she can avoid certain movement to avoid pain... pray that the surgery to implant the vagal nerve stimulator goes smoothly and recovery is FAST so that she doesn't miss out on too much of her therapies. As always, at our LONG pre-op appointment today, the girls attracted quite the attention between beautiful Gracie the jokester and (relatively) obedient adorable Ana helping her big sister and walking with her hand on the wheelchair. Gracie got weighed (16kg), sitting up on her own on the scale, then Ana wanted to get weighed (10kg). As Ana got off the scale she turned around and saw letters on the scale, po...

VNS

Gracie and I went to see the neurosurgeon today to discuss Vagal Nerve Stimulator ( http://www.epilepsyfoundation.org/answerplace/Medical/treatment/vns/ , http://www.vnstherapy.com/ ). I figured that it wouldn't be the right option for Gracie since her seizures have dramatically improved off lamictal, but... Josh and I are praying about whether it might be the right option for Gracie! It's a day-surgery procedure where a small cable is connected to the vagal nerve in the neck and a small implant is placed near the chest muscle (kinda like a pace-maker). It runs a steady low dose of electrical stimulation to the vagal nerve which somehow prevents seizure activity. If she looks like she's going to have a seizure, we can pass a magnet over the implanted battery and it bumps up the voltage slightly and aborts the seizure. No one really knows why or how it works... that's the field of neurology for you!! The median patient has a 50% reduction in seizures, so for Gracie t...

Reunited

The girls fared well in our absence - no seizures, no sickness, they slept pretty well (sounds like better than average, at least!), and Grandma and Bapa stayed sane! We've spent the last few days in "re-entry" with some discipline issues and a little insecurity on Gracie's part so she's been back in the Ergo being carried around again. But she seems to be doing better now. Now, Gracie is just itching to get back to school. She really misses it when she doesn't have school - home is so boring!! After a week of school vacation, our new foot of snow today got us yet another snow day! She also didn't get to go to speech therapy or physical therapy and tomorrow she'll miss horse therapy because of a consultation with the neurosurgeon who places the vagal nerve stimulator. I'm not sure that we'll do VNS at the moment since her seizures have been excellent since stopping lamictal. But it's worth finding out more about. The trip.... well! It was i...