Saturday, September 18, 2010

Cross Country Season Begins

Cross Country season began today. My runners this year are Katie, Molly and Emily. I have to give a lot of credit to Katie. She has never liked running, yet has faithfully run on the team each year, even though those early years were tough as she ran in the shadow of her older sister who was always one of the top runners in the league. This year our team does not have any other varsity girls, so Katie is it. (For a team to place they must have at least 3 runners - 5 for guys) Running is such a mental sport and for her to train knowing that she is the lone runner is not much motivation for her. Add to that the fact that running is not her favorite thing and I just figured that she would quit this year. But she has been consistently training, made the decision to continue being a part of the team and I am proud of her for her perseverance.

Varsity Takes Off - Katie is in maroon

Molly and Emily run on the Junior team (Juniors run 1.5 miles). They had a terrific first race. They medaled for the first time (the first seven runners get medals) - Molly placed 5th and Emily placed 6th, and their team placed 2nd out of about 20 teams. Their coach had worked out season goals for each of them based on their times of last year - Emily beat hers by 30 sec and Molly came within 4 seconds of hers. So they will now get new season goals! They have been training more consistently this year and it has paid off.

Start of Junior Race


Thursday, September 16, 2010

Show and Tell



Eric teaches Radiological Anatomy at Georgia Tech in the fall and he thought it would be neat to make a 3D image for his class of Anna's spine (pre-surgery). So he made the little movie above where you can watch her spine rotate around. He also made some images such as the one below

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Before and After....

I want to publish a before and after picture to show you just how dramatic a change the surgery brought.


Isn't that amazing! Thank you Lord!

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Anna is Home

I'm sorry for the lack of updates - it was a very hard juggling act with Anna in the hospital and life continuing at home with everyone else. But Anna came home last night. She is still in quite a bit of pain and doesn't move around well at all. Her muscles have greatly weakened; for example, she cannot hold her head up well at all due to the effects of the traction on her neck muscles. The two things she needs to do - eat and walk - she doesn't want to do, so most everything gets turned into some sort of fight. Some of the nurses, although they provided great care, were very easily manipulated by her into giving her what she wanted, so we are also dealing with quite a bit of attitude. Challenges abound....sigh.

We appreciate continued prayer for her recovery and now that we are all home hopefully I will be able to update more often.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Surgery Update

Anna's surgery went well. The surgeon commented that she is "remarkably straight". He was quite excited that he was able to straighten her more than he expected. This was an answer to prayer. She started with a 95 degree curve. The traction reduced it to 68. I don't know what it is now, but we are thankful that is is straighter than anticipated. I'll have to get the actual number later.

One interesting side effect is that for the first time I have heard her cry. Because her lungs and diaphragm were so affected by the curve, her body compensated in some strange ways. One was that when she cried no sound came out. But in her room tonight she cried and it was a normal healthy cry. Sort of weird to be excited about a cry. I'm sure at some point I'll miss having a child who doesn't make a sound when she cries - it makes it much easier to ignore!! But for now the cry was rather amazing.

She is currently in a lot of pain, and is on a morphine drip. They hope to get her up tomorrow - we will see. We are very thankful that God answered our prayers for a straight back. Thanks for your prayers and will keep everyone updated.