Amanda Lost Her First Tooth

Amanda lost her first tooth last night and is well on her way to losing a second. The tooth fairy gave her $3 for the tooth. She looks so cute with her missing tooth. She kept working at her tooth til she got it out. Now she sticks her tongue in the spot a lot. What a cutie! She is having a great week. Lots of walking and lots of silliness. She now walks just holding on to my fingers. Hope you all have a wonderful day!

Good News from Hopkins

We just got word from Hopkins that Amanda's aneurysms are stable and do not need to be looked at again until next year - yippee! The neurosurgeon who evaluated them commented again that he felt they were of low risk of increasing in size because they are of a fusiform shape (widened blood vessel, not berry shaped) - double yippee! If they stay stable for another year or so, we may get to stretch out testing to every other year. Only one blood test came back slightly abnormal and we are awaiting the interpretation of that one. So, overall, very good news from Hopkins. Praise God!

Amanda has been doing wonderfully lately. She is making so much progress both physically and mentally. We are quite excited. Amanda went to the big paws4people race this weekend and walked all over the place. It was a wonderful event put on by UNCW students to raise money for paws4people. It was a big success. Thank you students! It was also wonderful to see all of our paws4people friends again.

Tomorrow Katie turns 10. Wow, double digits arrived really quickly! She is having a Rock Star party on Sunday at Sweet N Sassy with 9 of her closest friends. She also got straight "A"s on her report card this term. Way to go Katie!

All and all, things are going really well at the Ivancevich household these days. Amanda has not had another migraine since starting back on the Topamax and she has been so happy. Katie is growing like a weed and enjoying school. Flowers are blooming and the spring semester is almost over for Dan and me. We are looking forward to a relaxing and productive summer.

God Bless to All!

Susan

Getting Ready for Easter

No final word from Hopkins this week so we will have to wait until next week. BTW, both Amanda and ELLIE did absolutely FABULOUS at Hopkins. Looking forward to tomorrow and the wonderful news Easter offers us all in the resurrection of Jesus! Happy Easter to all!!!!! God Bless!
Susan

Back from Hopkins

We got back last night from Hopkins after a full day of tests and driving. Amanda had her detailed MRI study of her brain blood vessels and structure. On first pass, Dr Jordan indicated that her brain looked good and she could see increased myelinization showing she was laying down more pathways in her brain. She also thought the aneurysms appeared stable and unchanged from the prior studies which is wonderful news. They still have to do more precise measuring but so far, all looks good. Praise God! We should get final reports on both the blood and MRI later this week or sometime next week. It is nice to be home with what sounds to be good news!

Hopkins Visit and Horse Show

We are at Hopkins now. Amanda had the hematology appointment today with Dr Keefer. What a wonderful guy! He was very thorough and helpful. He ordered more blood tests for Amanda to be sure we have comprehensively evaluated any clotting disorder possibilities. Amanda was so brave and didn't even cry when she had to get stuck twice to get all the blood collected. We should hear something about the results by the end of the week. His big question is whether blood vessel abnormalities led to the stroke in utero or the stroke in utero was caused by a clotting disorder which led to the blood vessel abnormalities. It is kind of the chicken and the egg question and it's answer has important ramifications.

Tomorrow Amanda has her MRI and appointment with Dr Jordan, the vascular neurologist. the MRI is at 9:00 and the other appt is at noon. Hopefully, we will head home in the afternoon after receiving good news that everything is stable. We are faithful that will be the result. I will post again tomorrow night or Wed morning.

Saturday was a fun day for both girls. Both Katie and Amanda showed May at the CCHA horse show on 4/4. Both did really well. The pictures show how much fun they had. If you want to see more pictures, you can go to my Facebook page and look under photos. After finishing up the horse show on Sat, we then spent the afternoon working the Azalea Festival booth for paws4people and then came home and packed so we could head to Baltimore on Sunday morning.

We hope all is well with all of you. If you ever want to see Amanda's horse video or new video with ELLIE, you can type in Amanda Ivancevich in Youtube and both will come up. The poster of the horse video spelled hippotherapy wrong but the video is still great. The video with ELLIE gives you a pretty good picture of how Amanda is doing these days from a physical standpoint.

Thanks for all the prayers. Until manana....
Susan