Headed Home Again!

The neurologist has been by and we are being discharged right now.

He confirmed that she'd had a small-moderate stroke on the right side of her brain.

He said he was encouraged by her age and relative "plasticity" of young brains and that the thalamus and basal ganglia were not affected.

Both he and Kup called this a watershed stroke. What this means is that it was not caused by a blockage, but by hypotension probably during the bypass. So, at some point, the little vessels out on the very tips did not have oxygenated blood in them for some period of time and that tissue is permanently damaged.

He said that most of the time this can be overcome by physical therapy and in most cases children with this injury end up being able to enjoy the things in life that almost everyone else does including having a family. There is no cognitive damage and she is still as sharp as a tack.

He said that some do not recover and we certainly should not expect her to be a star athlete.

We have already been working with her making her walk and use her left arm. She can walk about 30 yards at a time several times if she rests between, but then she will need to lay down for a while. Her left arm just sort of hangs at her side and she swings her left leg to walk, the knee hyperextends, and there is no push off of the left toes. Hopefully the physical therapists will be able to give us some methods and exercises to help with this. Right now we are just trying to get her strength back up.

She does not seem to think it's a very big deal. She is happy to be going home--hopefully for real this time--and we can't wait to have her there. I don't know what to expect when she starts playing with Rain and Parker.

I guess she will do what she has always done: She's made the best of what she has and never thought a second about what she didn't. Pretty good lesson.

So, here's what I have: A beautiful family, a little girl with a fixed heart, so much love and support from so many people, and more blessings than I deserve. Lucky I have Brandy and the kids to do all the deserving for me!

Brandy will take over posting again now as we enter the next and hopefully less intense phase of Maya's life. Thank you so much for your prayers and support.

Kevin