Nora's Blog: November 2009

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Giving Thanks

I am thankful for these two little turkeys.

Happy Thanksgiving

Love Lori, Alex, Emma and Nora

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

We are still here. Not much going on. Alex is traveling, I am busy with the girls' schools, ballet, parent council, volunteering, playdates, speech, dentists, etc. etc. etc. Oh, and let me tell you Nora does NOT like people messing with her teeth. I was holding her in a full body restraint and the dentist still couldn't get in there.

Nora has a cold so isn't really sleeping well. I haven't gotten the girls flu shots yet. Vaccines freak me out so I am still undecided. There aren't any H1N1 vaccines around anyway, unless we stand in line for 3 hours. And Nora is super good about waiting in lines, NOT.

I am actually wondering lately if she has an attention issue. She doesn't sit still for longer than a few minutes. Having her sit and eat is crazy. She bounces around from one thing to the next all day long. It's exhausting. For me anyway. I still have concerns about her being on the autism spectrum. If she is, she would get WAY more services than she gets now. We go see her neuro in Dec. so we'll discuss these things then I guess.

Same old stuff going on here.
thanks for checking in
Lori

Monday, November 9, 2009

Me and me

Me May 2009

Me-Fall 1971 (6-9 months?)

One of the blogger dads-Ken- who's blog I read is having a contest, to show a picture of me when I was a baby and now. check out Blogzilly.

Alex just ordered a photo scanner. We haven't had one that works in a while. This is the only baby pic I could find. I'll have to upload some from the '80's

Thanks for checking in
Lori

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Rain Rain Go Away

Nora's school photo. We did retakes on Wed. They weren't much better.

It has been pouring for days. Not much to say so I posted some pictures.

Thanks for checking in
Lori

Nora's history

Nora Frances was born February 7, 2006. She was a healthy girl, 8 lbs. 8 oz. Before she was born, we found out that she had an arachnoid cyst in her brain. Of course I was petrified but the doctors assured me that most people with these cysts never even know they have them. In future ultrasounds we found out that she had 3 of these cysts. When she was 5 weeks old, we had her 1st MRI done. Everything looked ok and we were told not to worry about the cysts unless there were problems. Nora developed on time up until around 9 months. She developed a "head tic" which I reported to her pediatrician. She said to "keep an eye on it". She also wasn't making good eye contact and she wasn't really responding to her name. By January, she wasn't crawling and we were starting to worry. We went to doctor after doctor after doctor. We finally went back for another MRI in March which showed some other brain abnormalities including agenisis of her corpus callosum and heterotopia. Then we finally saw a neurologist in March who scheduled an EEG in April. As soon as they saw her EEG we were sent to the hospital to start the anti-seizure drug ACTH. It has to be injected every day so we were trained on how to give the injections at home. Nora stopped having the seizures after one week on the meds.

Apparently the head tics we saw were seizures related to Infantile Spasms. The EEG showed hypsarrhythmias in her brain waves. If not treated IS can cause severe brain damage. Nora wasn't diagnosed until she was 14 months old. Even so, Nora showed development even on the anti seizure drugs (which usually slow down development). She started walking (well, taking steps) in May,2007. Since then, she's continued to develop and show us what an amazing little girl she is.