Finding the Silver Lining

Annie decided to stop drinking from her sippy cup about a month ago. She was drinking less and less toward the end of July, probably because the lid on the cup was getting rough spots on it from her teeth. But because I couldn't find a grocery store that stocked the same type and color of lid as she had before, I got a purple lid instead of the pink one. And, being the sensorily-rigid kid she is now, she rejected it. Purple was not pink, and pink was the only acceptable color for a sippy cup lid--everyone knows that. So I kept offering it to her, and even prayed about it, but she would have none of it. Of course, I then supplemented whatever she would drink from a cup with syringes of water put directly in her g-tube. It made me sad that she seemed to be in danger of losing this skill--drinking from a sippy cup.

Until last night when we were in the ER and Annie leaned forward to drink from my bottle of water. I asked Bill to grab her sippy cup out of her bag, and offered it to her. While she was drinking, Bill asked, "So when did she start drinking out of her sippy cup again?" I was holding my breath while she sipped--I didn't want to say anything lest she realize what she was doing and decide to reject the purple lid again.

You want to know why we were in the ER. Well, at 10:30 last night I was asking myself the same question. So here's the Reader's Digest version: Yesterday afternoon, I was in the kitchen getting something for Annie--I forget what. While I was in the kitchen, I think Annie decided to reach forward for a toy that was out of her reach. Typically, when this has happened in the past, she might reach forward to the point of getting up on her knees and then falling forward onto her tummy--a position that she hates. So I was in the kitchen when I heard Annie starting to cry. I went back into the living room where I found Annie on her tummy, trying to turn back over and sit up again. Only her right shoulder was stuck and since she doesn't use her arms/hands to move herself, she just twists and turns and it wasn't working--so I picked her up and she was hysterical, because I think she also bit her tongue in the fall forward. So I began calling--okay--YELLING--for Olivia and Jack, who were in other places of the house wondering who died, and did they really want to go find out?

They eventually were sucked into the vortex of screaming and crying in the living room, and I exited to the kitchen again to frantically decide how much hydrocortisone and Tylenol Annie needed to recover from this insanity. After giving her 10 mg. of hydrocortisone, and getting out her favorite toy, the decibel level began to return to normal. I checked out her arms and shoulders and couldn't see any deformity, but she whimpered a few times when she moved her right arm, so around 7 PM, we decided to take her down to the ER. (Did I say that this was the Reader's Digest Version?)

At the ER, they felt around her arms and her shoulders and her collar bones and could find nothing amiss. At 10:30, it was agreed on that we would keep an eye on her for a day or so, and if she continued to complain, we'd go back down for an xray. Well, here we are the next evening, and she seems fine--and she's still drinking from her purple sippy cup.

Jean

"And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose." Romans 8:28