Wednesday, March 19

3/19 Update

Hello all.   Anya had her 1st EEG when she was about 2 weeks old. It was normal.  Her 2nd, at around 2-1/2 months, showed very slow signalling w/ continuous spikes representing all her neurons firing at once.  Although that did not mean she was having seizures, it did indicate she was at high risk to do so.  Her 3rd EEG, at around 5 months, showed the sames spikes but the signaling was slightly faster (but still markedly slow). Which meant things were improving...  Anya's had her 4th EEG done last week.  In the 1/2-hour long procedure she had only 1 spike occur and the background signalling speed was "Normal".   YEEE  HAAAA!!!  That's my girl!!!!!  We are trying to schedule her MRI next.
 
This past week has been a really good one for Anya.  Happier than ever and doing well with her playing and misc therapies.  We made it a whole 12 days between vomiting cycles (she's sick again now, started yesterday).  With her new J-tube she's been consistently getting near 1000calories/day (excluding yesterday and today).  Although her sleep patterns have regressed, at least she is happy when she is up.  For the past few weeks she's been waking at around 3am and just wants attention.  Anything for the princes... 
 
I remember writing about a year ago that she just needs DESIRE in order to thrive.  Happy to say 'She now has it...'  She desires attention. She desires play.  She's got the desire we prayed for. She going to do it....  

Saturday, March 8

3/8: Seattle Doc went well

We felt our trip to Seattle to see Dr. Klinghart was well worth it (but time will tell).  He seemed very knowledgeable, caring, proactive and offered much hope.  We finally, after so long, have a solid plan of attack and protocol to follow to address Anya's issues from multiple angles.  We won't get into it too much until we know if we're on the right track.
 
As many of you know we recently moved to the Madison area.  Aside from getting burglarized on Wednesday afternoon the neighborhood is very nice.  That's right...  I (Pete) was with Anya at her Neurology appointment while Katie stayed home to give the boys a nap.  She decided to take a nap her self and awoke to find two guys robbing us.  They fled when they saw somebody was home but Kate was pretty shaken up as you can imagine.  We are just thankful nobody got hurt.  I don't want to get into too much detail because I'm not sure if this website (babyanya.org) was the homepage on the computer they stole, so they potentially could be reading this.  If so, please find a safer hobby and sorry if our attack dog licked your hand too sloppily.
 
Oh yea, the point of this website.. Anya...  She has been having more frequent vomiting spells (every 4-5 days) and is down to 15.5 lbs.  On Wednesday (the morning of the robbery) we had Anya's G-tube replace with a J-G tube.  This will allow us to continue feeding Anya directly into her small intestine and by-pass her stomach while she is sick.  With this she can continue caloric intake even while sick which may be huge for her. EEG on Monday and MRI coming soon.  Fingers crossed.