Now, the Neurologist's Report

It has taken a few days - okay a week - to gain perspective on the past month.  Thanks for all the prayers, dear friends.

So, the Neurologist's report.  Dr. Abigail Collins - our second favorite Pediatric Neuro (Dr. G Steve Miller will always be first!) came face-to-face with a miracle.  Her PA met with us first for all the basics.  Then he took his report and a copy of Ashley's CT Scans and new MRI to consult with Dr. Collins.

On stage

As they returned to the room, Dr Collins was saying, "Amazing!  This is just amazing!  Have you seen her MRI?  It is so Amazing!"   We had not had a detailed explanation in years and, frankly, memorizing MRI reports is no longer a priority.  I had decided that a new priority was empowering Ashley to make informed decisions on her healthcare.  She needed to hear and see what her brain was doing and how it had survived.

With her Cousin - Children love her

Dr. Collins then pulled up the images on the computer.  She indicated the primary point of the stroke, the arterial branches that were affected and then explained what the missing parts of her brain controlled: inference, muscle coordination and other things that got lost in the translation.  "Amazing" kept being interjected - "amazing she walks and talks;  amazing how can accomplish so  many tasks;  amazing how she reads." 

4-wheeling in the San Juan Nat'l Forest

And we heard once again: "if she had been an Adult, she would be either vegetative or dead."

At Disney World

After being home just a few days, the printed Neurologist report came.  It is filled with basic stuff and then words like, "nondysmorphic, normocephalic, atraumatic with anicertic, noninjected sclerae."  Huh?   I was relieved she read she had normal mucous membrances.  And bowel sounds.  Then bunches of numbers about reflexes and coordination testing and future plans.

I read the report - dry reading for sure - and all I could hear in my soul, "Amazing!  Just Amazing!  How her brain has rewired!  Amazing!"

Going into Surgery

Yup.  Amazing.  Amazing, she is alive.  Amazing, she walks.  Amazing, she talks.  Amazing that the original diagnosis was so wrong.  Amazing that man is so limited in their foresight.

I learned lately that Hope is the most important gift you can ever give a person.  Hope that God hears them.  Hope that things will be better.  Hope for tomorrow.  Hope that what they see today is not the end.  I watched Ashley look at her MRI and I saw hope.  She understood her brain damage.  But not once, not for one second did she hear "disabled", she heard the most beautiful word:

Amazing!