Annika's CI Surgery

Monday, June 29, 2009

Camping

Annika did go camping over the weekend. She doesn't have much to say about it but smiles and says that she had a "great" time. It did storm over the weekend so I asked her if she had a storm. She says, "yes, and my chair was wet in the morning". So neat for this child to say in the same breathe there was a storm and her chair was wet and that was more of the problem instead of being scared of the storm.
Annika is having a really rough time right now so the camping trip could not have been planned better. She is going through some anxiety issues and changes. Hopefully this will get better with time.
Tomorrow she will head to her weekly speech session at the hospital. We have now moved into the new building so she will get to see Angie in her "new" room. Annika loved the room when we visited it before because it had a sink in the room that was just her size. It will be fun to hear how her session goes tomorrow.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Annika is going camping

This has been a real rough past week for Annika. All I care to share is that there are family issues going on so those that believe in prayer please just pray for our family. That being said, Annika is so excited. She is going camping with her Aunt Cassie. They have done this every year (except for last year where it didn't work out) for the past 3 years. Cassie's family does an annual family camp out so there is other kids for her to enjoy and of course there is campfires, biking, swimming, and all that goes with the camping experience. I can't wait to here the stories she has to tell once she comes back.

On that note, Annika got into trouble with her mother yesterday. When I came home from work, she was watching "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" so I do understand that she was doing something she enjoyed. But anyway, I came home and tol d her that she needed to get ready to go because we were heading over to work on our community garden plot. She wasn't very thrilled with this idea but I told her that she needed to get ready. She looked at me and then said "I know, I know just chill out Mom!" Okay, I don't let my teenagers talk to me that way so her is little miss princess and she just says it how it is. Part of me wanted to laugh because she picked this up from her brothers or someone on TV and yet I knew that if I didn't give out some type of reprimand for this I would be getting a phone call from school because of disrespect. When we spoke about this again later in the evening, she did say yes she got into trouble but then had her sly little grin on her face so there is more coming from this little girl!!!!
Oh my, I am so looking forward to her teenage years!!!!!!

Monday, June 22, 2009

Finally swimming

We took Annika swimming at the lake finally. It has been so cold here in Minnesota that it is taking the lakes a long time to warm up. The lake wasn't very warm even yet but she had fun anyway. She then was able to do some dock fishing, playing outside, blowing bubbles, and then of course we tried s'mores with the kids. The adults ate the s'mores, the little kids just wanted to eat the chocolate.

Yesterday we spent the afternoon hanging out at our friend's farm. Annika loved the baby kittens they had. Oh we could have left with our choice of the kittens but since we have 2 naughty cats at home already I was not convinced that this is something we need to do.

This week she will be able to be the "teacher". Annika's PCA has her grandkids this week and they are 2 years old and 3 years old. So Lisa has told Annika that she can teach the kids this week. We will see what happens but it will be a good week for Annika to have some time playing with other kids and just enjoying her summer.

Como Town







Sorry it took me so long to post the update on the trip to Como Town. I had misplaced my camera and just found it last night. The kids had a great time at the amusement park, even though they were only able to ride 3 rides in 3 hours (also add about 20 minutes of playing in the "park" there) as the lines were incredibly long. Annika got very tired during the wait on the last ride but all in all the kids were great. The good news is that we did come home with the same children we went there with. This was a joke between my friend, my son and I. Marcus came along with me to help out with the kids and such. I told him that he just needed to help us make sure that we bring home the same number of kids that we went there with. Marcus just smartly told me that okay, at the end of the night I will just grab 3 kids and we will leave. We told this to Denise and so we had a laugh about this. Rose really wants us to take her back there sometime when the lines aren't so long so she can ride the rollercoaster. She says, I have never rode a rollercoaster and the line was way too long to wait for that ride!!!

Friday, June 12, 2009

Annika is excited for today

All Annika talked about last night was that she was going to go today to ride rides. I am taking her, her cousin, Rose and her friend, Noah down to Como Town tonight to ride on the rides. We were sitting at supper and she just kept talking about it. Though we thought it was pretty funny when she said, "I will get on the yellow bus and go there". We went to the Como Zoo on a class field trip a few weeks ago and we were not able to ride the rides when we were there for that. I promised her that we would go back down there another day to ride the rides. So Annika just thought that she would get on the bus again and that is how we would get down there to ride the rides. Hopefully I will have some pictures posted from tonight in a couple of days. It should be an interesting trip. I am taking a 8 year old, a 7 year old and a 6 year old down to an amusement park with the only other adult with me is my 18 year old son. He is really good with the kids and they are all old enough to stay together but there should be very interesting stories tonight.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

The past few months

I decided that I would add one more post this morning so I wouldn't be overwhelmed tonight with all that I need to post. Part of the reason that it has been difficult for me to keep up with Annika's blog is that she has had a rough past few months. It all started probably back in late February when she had her first seizure at school. The staff was great and they handled it very well. So that really didn't seem like a "big" deal-we increased the medication and went on with life. In March, she was supposed to go in and get her quarterly Botox injections and that appointment was postponed due to conflict with the doctor's schedule. So it was almost mid-April by the time we got her in to do the Botox. Lisa went with us and basically told the doctor that if he was going to serial cast her this time she was going to take her and run. He thought this was pretty good and decided to inject her with Botox in two areas. Well, let's just say that Lisa changed her mind after watching Annika go through the procedure. Thankfully, Annika does not remember anything about the injections due to the sedation she is given before the procedure. It is hard for those there to watch or to participate in but the benefit of it outweighs the guilt of putting your child through this. That being said, we believe that we will do serial casting in one of the areas over the botox injection just to see if we get better results or not. Well, shortly after the botox Annika had two grand mal seizures at school. Two days in a row (1 on one day and then 1 on the next). This whole activity sent her into a tailspin. Now Annika was tired, lost skills, and just basically was not Annika for several weeks. We have spent the past 2 months doing additional testing (including a 24 hour EEG), changing up medications, and just praying that Annika would gain back her skills and just become the "Annika" we knew. I think we are finally getting there. We had to add an additional seizure medication to her routine and this is not something that Annika is very thrilled about. Taking 5 different medications every day is not the desire of anyone!!! I just wish that we could "open" up her brain and just find what is going on in there and just fix it. Unfortunately, that is not a possibility so we play this "game" of waiting and then trial and error with different medications. Her neurologist thinks that we have figured out what to do but he did tell me that if it didn't help that I could call him and basically tell him that he had no idea what he is doing. It is great when you have a doctor who can show that he is human and he is not "always" right. Unfortunately or fortunately (however you want to take it), it doesn't look like I get to tell him this now. She is really starting to come out of her "fog". Or at least the best we can tell since where you would notice it the most is at school and the frustration she would have when it just took her so long to process the work or she couldn't remember things that she knew previously. That being said we are still working with her at home on "school" work and we are seeing some good changes. The biggest one is that she even wants to try to do her "table" work. She is so close to learning how to read that I would be so proud of her if she really learned how to read this summer. This may be a very "high" goal but if anyone can do it, it would be Annika.

Where does the time go

Wow, I can't believe it has been over 4 months since I posted!! Everyone would tell me that I needed to update this but I just never had the time. Anyway, what has been happening around here with the princess. Well, the big news is that school is out and she is ready for the summer!! Well, maybe. She is not very thrilled that she is done with Kindergarten and all her older "friends" graduated on Sunday, including her big brother Marcus. She cried almost as many tears as Mom as we got ready on graduation Monday. She just keeps telling them "I will see you at school tomorrow." She does realize that she won't but I think she keeps hoping that she will. Now it is summer and that means, as soon as it warms up around here, she is going to enjoy time out at the lake. Lisa and Annika intend to spend as much time as possible at the lake and enjoying the water, fishing, and of course the wonderful sunshine. Like I said as soon as it starts here. We have not had it over 70 degrees for almost a week now. Today it is supposed to start to warm up so we are looking forward to this!!! I will post more later on today as I have pictures to post and more blogs to enter but for now I have to get ready for work.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Last Day of School








Today is Annika's last day of school. She is really going to miss Kindergarten and the teachers that she leaves behind today. She even had a little bit of an attitude this morning that we were not prepared for. When she finally told us what was bothering her she said that she didn't want to go to school today. She thought that if she didn't go to school today it would not be her last day of Kindergarten. I took her to school and we took pictures with her teachers. They assured her that all her friends would be moving on to first grade with her so that made things a little better. When she came home, she proudly told us that she had fun at school today. All I can say about this year is that I could not have asked for a better year and I can definitely say that this has a lot to do with the teachers that she had and the hard work they put in. I can only pray that next year will go as well as this year has. Some of her teachers will still be with her next year and that will help out a great deal. She will also still see her kindergarten teachers as they are in the same building and she is happy about that. Goodbye to Kindergarten-watch out first grade!!!!