Drill Sergeant June

In the past four and a half years my life has taken such an unexpected turn. When Maisie was born, we healed and grew together. I felt so bonded with my little girl over that shared experience. Maybe that sounds crazy, since she doesn't remember any of it.

Watching her overcome obstacle after obstacle, working hard and growing up into a beautiful little girl, was so inspiring. She beat all the odds.

And for a while now, I've felt as though the odds came back to bite her in the butt. 

She's been struggling so much, to speak, to eat, to even sit up. She has been experiencing a lot of unexplained pain and a lot of really brutal seizures.

As of three days ago she weighed 18 pounds. She's 32 inches tall. Four years old and the average size of a fifteen month old baby. She looks like a little girl, she has hair and her face looks like a four-year-old. But she's the size of a child more than half her age.

All of these things have been weighing on me for the past few days.

What is the reason?

Where is the answer?

A new neurologist joined the team at Maisie's hospital several weeks ago, and he was very interested in her case. He requested that we meet with him, so we did. After fifteen minutes, he said, "She is suffering from severe brain damage and will never recover past this point." I didn't talk about this ill-fated appointment because it makes me so angry. How was telling me that useful? How will that help?

I'm bringing it up now because he was wrong. 

After last Teresa week's session, Nadine suggested we book an appointment with a different physical therapy center. It has a more holistic approach, but they have the training and certification to start pushing Maisie's muscles harder than we thought possible. So I called them, and we went last Thursday. The therapy session started with literally a half an hour of Maisie doing nothing but sitting up. It was hard. After ten minutes she cried out of sheer exhaustion and frustration. She fell ever few seconds when her muscles gave out and/or she lost her balance. But the therapist just kept righting her. Again. And again. It was so frustrating for Maisie. But she did it. And she was so proud of herself when she realized this accomplishment. Before we went home, the therapist asked me to do exactly the same thing, just sit, for half and hour every day. It would be hard. She would cry. It may come to nothing. But it just might help.

We went back in yesterday. I spoke with the therapist and explained that we had sat together for half an hour every day. She had hated it. But she was slowly coming to understand the accomplishment she was achieving.

The therapist, who's name is June, was pleased. And then she pulled out a walker not unlike the one to the left. And she strapped Maisie in. She had a lot of support for her upper legs and torso, and she was not happy about getting in but once she was in the right position, a miracle occurred.

Without any prompting, she started taking tentative steps forward. Then she started really walking. And laughing. She was so happy. I didn't realize how sad and frustrated Maisie has been until I saw her complete and total joy at finding herself mobile again.

June's approach to physical therapy is not like anything I've encountered before. She has a tough, drill-sergeant attitude that is very intimidating, but she also has complete and utter faith in Maisie. She also believes that no progress will never be made in once-a-week therapy session. Maisie will make no progress if she does not keep up her therapy at home. So, for the next two weeks, we'll be renting a walker from the physical therapy center. Maisie is to walk for at least five minutes every day. The longer she can go, the better.

We've been so focused on what Maisie can't do that we never realized we should push her to do what she can. If she can take a dozen steps every day, that's a dozen steps and five minutes of glee that she didn't have last week.

She bit the odds right back, didn't she?