Blessed

This time of year has always been my favorite. I love the crisp air and the changing color of the leaves. Fall Festivals...enough said. I love getting together with friends and family and celebrating what we are thankful for. I love how everyone gets caught up in giving to others. I love baking old favorites and trying new recipes and I really love setting up the tree. If Brandon would allow it I would have the tree set up all year round. There is just something therapeutic to me about  the glow of Christmas lights.

I can so clearly remember this time last year. Struggling with being thankful in spite of the disappointment of Nati being denied a medical visa. Going through all the motions of the Christmas season while being so painfully aware that one of my children was missing. That our family was separated by oceans and that all I really wanted was to be together.

So, as you can imagine, last night was pretty magical ...

Blessed.

*** For those of you that have been praying for the medical side of things I wanted to write a quick update. Nati had his MRI on November 23rd. We were able to talk with the medical team and they agreed to try a lower dose of sedation than suggested for Nati's weight. We were thankful for their cooperation but unfortunately he still struggled to metabolize the medication and it was a pretty rough 24 hours. We will continue to talk with our medical team to discuss our options for avoiding this in the future. 

We also met with our pediatric ophthalmologist and decided together to postpone the eye surgery for now. Since Nati is compensating and not having trouble with basic everyday things it is not harmful to wait and might in fact be helpful as we continue to determine which eye muscle(s) need to be operated on. This is complicated further by Nati's lack of English and inability to perform the basic eye tests needed. ;)

We also met with our Neurosurgeon again yesterday to go over the Xray and MRI results. While there is narrowing around the spinal cord he does not believe that is is overstretched as we had been told previously. This is a huge praise!!! What this means is that Nati's risk of spinal cord damage is significantly reduced if he were to be in an accident or fall (which he does daily). He will not require surgery at this time as a surgery is far more risky than waiting and watching. This also cleared us to be able to start therapy so we received referrals for PT, OT and Speech Therapy yesterday. The other thing these images revealed was that Nati's scoliosis of his thoracic spine is more severe than we initially thought. So we have been referred to a pediatric orthopedic surgeon to rule out surgery and hopefully be fitted with a brace to help correct the curvature. 

Life continues to be crazy, as we adjust to being a family of 7 and tackle Nati's medical needs, but we are so thankful to be spending this Christmas season together as a family.