Things have been a bit of a roller coaster since the last update. We have had some great days and some pretty intense ones. The good always offsets the bad though and we are very grateful to be able to enjoy so many happy days together as a family. The happening of the past month are discussed below in chronological order….
Amanda has almost all new Therapists! Most of Amanda’s therapists changed at the end of August when she made the transition from early intervention services to school based services. She kept her vision therapist but everyone else changed. She now has 9 different therapists that see her for occupational, physical, speech and vision therapies, as well as for special education. She gets her current therapies in the home rather than in a school setting because of her immune system and her neurological responses to viruses. Amanda was a little shy at first with the new therapists but is quickly warming up to them. They are a great group and we are excited to have them working with Amanda. A few of the new things they are doing with her include helping to teach her to climb up on the couch, to ride a tricycle, and to crawl. She continues to do all the strengthening exercises, stretches, balance exercises etc, as well as work on her fine motor function, speech, education, and vision. She seems to be making good progress in all areas.
Katie showed in her second ever horse show in September. She showed a huge appaloosa named Classy. She did very well and earned a 5th place ribbon. We were all proud of how well she controlled such a large horse in the show. Way to go Katie!! Katie is also doing extremely well in school. Her first progress report was excellent and we just found out that she will be in a group doing higher level math because she scored in the 94th percentile in the State on her standardized math test. She is such a bright kid and the best big sister to Amanda. We are blessed to have Katie in our family!
Amanda has been in the hospital twice in the past few weeks. The first visit was a brief stay following what appeared to be a seizure that followed an intense crying and then vomiting spell. My parents had her at the time but I was able to talk with them over the phone and help walk them through the procedures (which they already know by heart but it made me feel better to talk to them as I raced home). My parents, along with one of her therapists, Kelly, did a great job of getting her through the seizure in good shape. Our wonderful neurologist, Dr Wooten, did a lot of coaching over the phone and helped everyone stay calm. We are blessed to have such a great doctor for Amanda. She ended up spending the day in the ER but seemed no worse for wear afterwards. That was Wednesday September 26. She was fine until Monday October 1.
On Monday October 1, 2007, Katie woke up with a sore throat and congestion. Moments after finishing her morning medicines, Amanda had a seizure in my arms. We gave her Diastat to stop the seizure and it seemed to work. We decided to take her up to Raleigh to see Dr Wooten and get an EEG since she had 2 seizures within a week after only having one seizure in the last two years (the one in March). On the way to Raleigh, just north of Wilmington, she had another seizure. We stopped on the side of I-40 and put her in the recovery position. Some wonderful people stopped to help and called 911. The good Samaritans stayed with us until the ambulance arrived and one came by the hospital as well. Thanks so much to those folks! When the ambulance arrived, we gave Amanda another dose of Diastat and she was taken back to the hospital in Wilmington. After they deemed her stable enough to travel, she went by ambulance to Wake Med hospital in Raleigh where she stayed until Thursday. We then met again with Dr Wooten can came home. After a myriad of tests, speculation is that the first seizure (Wed 9/26) may have been the result of a kidney stone passing & that the two on Monday 10/1 were likely caused from a viral illness. We now have a better approach of dealing with potential illness (we give Tylenol and increase seizure meds during risky times) so we are hoping these breakthrough seizures at time of stress or illness will become less frequent. We have gotten our first real test of this approach this week as Amanda currently has double ear infections and lots of congestion, but has had no more seizures. We are very thankful for that!
So about now, you may be wondering where the good news is… Well, it is always better to end on a happy note so we left this part for the end. We had a visit from the Hearts-N-pawsTM (
http://www.Hearts-N-paws.org/) and paws4peopleTM (
http://www.paws4people.org/) staff and service dogs during the weekend of Oct 5-7! They came down to participate in Riverfest, an annual arts, crafts, art, exhibit, food, etc festival in Wilmington. The goal of the weekend was to increase awareness about service dogs and help raise some money to offset the costs of training Amanda’s future service dog. Yes, this all happened the day after Amanda was released from the hospital but it was a great homecoming gift! Kyria and Heidi from Paws4people and 2 of the dogs, ELLIE and COLT, stayed with us. You can probably imagine how much fun Katie and Amanda had!! It was wonderful. Candace and Ashley, also from Paws4people, stayed with friends but participated in the event as well with Ashley’s mom’s service dog. At the event, we sold Amanda bracelets for $2 and Amanda t-shirts for $10. We raised almost $2,000 over the weekend and lots of people learned all about what service dogs can do. We got to dog sit on Saturday night while everyone went to dinner. Katie and Amanda had a wonderful time with the dogs (as you can tell in the pictures!). Amanda’s donation site is up and running on the Paws4people website at
http://www.amanda.paws4people.org/ if anyone would like to make a donation to help offset the costs of training her dog. All funds donated at the site go straight to the service dog organization. We also have extra bracelets and t-shirts for sale, so please let us know if you would like anything. We can be reached by email at
sdivance@yahoo.com or by phone at 910-452-0365.
Also, Amanda was featured this month’s paws4prisons newsletter and I was asked to contribute to next month’s newsletter so please sign up for a free copy at
http://www.paws4prisons.org/. I have some more big news here but I am going to wait a week until I tell you about it to keep you in suspense…
We are still planning to do the constraint therapy at the end November at University of Alabama Birmingham. The program lasts a month and she would get 6 hours of intensive therapy each day on her weaker side. Certainly, our attendance is contingent upon whether things go smoothly the next few weeks. I also have to have my gall bladder out so we are trying to get things scheduled so that everything works out well. There is never a dull moment in the Ivancevich house.
Thanks for all of your prayers, kind thoughts, and help! We are blessed to have so many wonderful people in our lives. May God bless you and yours this day and always!
Susan
P.S. I really am going to start updating the blog much more frequently so stay tuned…..
