ELLIE and Amanda Together at Last

It has been a long summer with some real ups and downs but we are ending it on a wonderful up! ELLIE arrived Sunday and we spent all day Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday doing transition training. We went all over town in restaurants, stores, etc and ELLIE did just great. It was really fun for us too since we hadn't eaten out much in Wilmington in the last 4 years. Kyria and Terry were wonderful (as always) in helping to train us to work with ELLIE. There is definitely a lot to think about. They left this morning to go back to VA so this was the first day ELLIE was here without their help.

ELLIE went to work with me today so that we can increase our bond. She did GREAT! Most of the people who came in my office today were not aware that she was sleeping under my desk :-) ELLIE will be with me just about all of the time for the next week and then will stay with me most of the time for the next month so that we can solidify our bond. Amanda has been petting her and giving her treats and bonding as well. They enjoy their time together. We will wait until the bonds are strong before we include ELLIE in Amanda's therapies. Kyria and Terry will be back in October to help work with Amanda's therapists. I will post pictures when I get the time (this is our crazy busy couple of weeks with school starting etc).

Amanda is doing well. She was pretty silly while Terry and Kyria were here so that was nice. She is still bruised in her groin from the angiogram but it is healing up. She resumed her therapies today and had a good session with her speech therapist. We did find out that some of Amanda's blood tests did not get run due to a lab error so we will be doing some more blood work over the next couple of weeks. So far, only one blood test came back slightly abnormal. It deals with how well the body can break up a clot once it forms. The test was normal in the first test and slightly low in the second, so we will be doing a third to see if it is an issue or not. We will go back to Hopkins in 6 mos unless we need to meet with a hematologist sooner.

Other than that, Dan & I are just frantically getting ready for school to start. Hopefully we will have our syllabi complete before school starts :-). We hope you are all doing well. Thanks for all of your love, support and prayers!

God Bless!
Susan