Sleeping in Seattle

Annie's blood pressure has been staying relatively low--a definite answer to prayer. (And remember, the lower blood pressure equals no gagging & throwing up!) The downside to her lower blood pressure is that she spends most of the day dozing. The Clonidine patch she wears is also used as a sleep aid. Hooray. I was just thinking yesterday how Annie is just too hyper and needs more sedation.

So Beth & Debbie came today and tried to wake her up. They didn't do too badly--she was marginally cooperative with their therapy. I'm kind of embarrassed at how out of shape she is for just being in the hospital a week and a half. But it has been two weeks since she had any formal therapies. Really, though, the other problem is this Clonidine patch. It's hard to do jumping jacks when you're asleep. The docs tell me she'll adjust to it.

BJ, her speech therapist, was here yesterday too. BJ bribes Annie to "talk" by giving her a sip from her sippy cup if she makes noise. Annie is very motivated by water--so when she hums, she gets water from the sippy cup. Beth, on the other hand, likes Annie to use the syringe rather than the sippy cup, because she can practice grasping the syringe with her right hand. That's one thing that actually got better in the hospital--because the only way we could get Annie to be still enough to get a good blood pressure reading was to offer her a syringe of water to keep her right hand busy. So her right hand grasp is good.

Another thing we noticed today is that when you push the ball to her, there's no lag-time before she pushes it back to you. Used to be you'd have to wait and cajole her into moving her hands to push the ball. Now, as soon as you push the ball to her, she pushes it right back--not with alot of strength, but remember, she's asleep on that patch. She even puts her left hand on top of the ball and rests it there. Subtle moves in the right direction.

There are glimmers of a non-adynamic Annie.

Thanks for every prayer,

Jean

Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him. Psalm 37:7