God is in Control

I keep telling myself this every day, especially after yesterday.

Mara was seen at Children's Hospital yesterday for right facial palsy. If you look at any pictures of her crying hard, you can see that the right side of her lip does not open when she cries and her left side dips down. The cranial 7 nerve was damaged somehow and that has caused the paralysis (temporary?) of her face. We didn't tell many people because we didn't want anyone to worry excessively. She is doing very good and it is not impacting her eating or development that we know of. But...the neurologist has ordered a ton of testing to rule out how this may have happened and any other problems that may be associated with it. It may have happened during delivery from being in the birth canal too long, or from genetics or something else. The neurologist is a very thorough guy, so we are going to cardiology for an echo, ENT (ear, nose and throat docs), eye doctor, plastic surgeon, and a neuromuscular Doc, not to mention getting an MRI and chest x-ray done along with blood work (already done) and a developmental screening for in-home services. With this said, nerves do regenerate, but they take a long, long time and some may not regenerate at all.

Needless to say, this was all very hard for us to take in. It was like being thrown a curveball when you were expecting a gentle soccer kick or beach ball toss. But Mara did a great job with the blood draws and Trav took the rest of the day off to hang with her while I trudged back to work. As Trav said, 'we ate pizza (he did), we took out the trash (he did), we paid some bills (he did), we washed dishes (he did), we slept (they did).' I am jealous!!

I cannot reiterate enough, Samara is doing fine! She really is. Even with being so small, they are not worried, just thorough. But prayers for her continued health are needed. We believe that she will be healed from this but know that we have to be patient, and I am not good at that. I just keep thinking how kids might make fun of her when she is in school and it breaks my heart. "Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding..."

On the happy side, she is rolling everywhere and won't stay still. She is gnawing at her hands every minute and working on reaching towards toys, all developmentally appropriate (there goes my social work-ese). She is laughing here and there, smiling tons, talks all the time (we had to hush her in church cause people were laughing), and is getting over her cold. All this in time for her 4-month-old shots next week! AAAHHH it never ends...