Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Today Hannah's streak was broken. Before today, she had strung together 7 good days. Today, she called at noon to come home...stomach ache and headache. We had already planned a trip to Dr. Egnor's office, Hannah's neurosurgeon today for a visit anyway. This is the doctor that Hannah had written about last year as the "wonderful Dr. Egnor." He asked to see her after I contacted him last week about the issues she had been having.

He looked at her today and confirmed that he also did not think her issues were related to any swelling or inflammation in the brain. Not only did her MRI not indicate that, but none of his tests on her today did either. He said that from her latest scans, her brain looks "perfect." What we all believe so far is that she does have some type of posterior fossa syndrome, which is most likely causing her vomiting. So, as soon as she started on the new combination of medicines, the vomiting stopped. However, the stomach pain has continued. This is most likely because the stomach pain is NOT a result of the posterior fossa syndrome. It may be something caused from the vomiting that has damaged the stomach lining. So, this will take more time to resolve. It does seem to be getting slowly better (thus the 7 good days.)

Dr. Egnor did speculate that these stomach aches may not be coming from her stomach, due to the location of her pain (lower belly, which is below the stomach.) He wrote a script for a urinary test to check for some type of urinary infection. Wouldn't that be nice if it was that easy? We'll see.

We come home and baked...yes, baked. Hannah made brownies for her class for their pajama party tomorrow. We also made cupcakes for Colby's birthday for her to take to school on Friday. Colby's 12th birthday is Saturday! Hannah has designated herself as party coordinator to do things make the cake, serve the guests drinks, and be the entertainment coordinator.

Hannah is due to take a swimming test tomorrow to earn her next level medal. She has practicing for the last few weeks. This test requires her to swim 6 laps fully clothed, including shoes! She also has to tread water, and do quite a few other things. It's designed so that if the swimmer falls into the water fully clothed, they could survive. I think that's pretty difficult. We'll keep you posted.

I think we're making progress, slowly but surely. As our friend "the hat man"...Mr. and Mrs. Griffin from Boston always say, "Keep on keeping on." That's what we're doing!

♥Kim