MRI Results

Dear Friends and Family,

Today was a difficult day for us as Rachael and I spoke with the doctor at length on Mia's condition. The end result is, they don't know what is wrong with her. The MRI did clarify a few things, including the fact that she does in fact have a septum paluseoum (the part that combines the two sides of the brain). She also does indeed have the other part that they initially thought she did not. So that is an answer to prayer. The doctor said that functionally, all of the parts look to be there and that it appears to be in place. He did say that she was very abnormal though and wonders if the issue has to do with her nervous system not being able to communicate properly with her body.

According to the doctor the troubling thing is she is still unresponsive. He said that he tried different tests including a pin prick on the finger, or squeezing her hand but she was not responsive. He is thinking that there is some sort of neurological issue that is effecting this. He believes it is likely some sort of rare chromosomal issue that she has and said it is possible that we may never get a diagnosis nore a cure.

Tied into all of this is the hardest part, her breathing. They tried a stress test today on her where they basically removed the ventilator to see if she would attempt to breath on her own. She did not take the large breaths that they would have expected but a lot of very short shallow breaths. Unfortunately those breaths are not enough to sustain her so they put her back on the oxygen. The doctor mention the possibility that she might never be able to breath on her own and that we might have to make the call to take her off the ventilator and let her go. Now, he's not saying that is necessarily the path we are on, but he is warning us to be prepared for anything.

With that said, when we visited Mia today, she was much more responsive then she has ever been in the past. We are actually finding it odd that the doctor said she is unresponsive to touch because she was very responsive to our touch today. She is even a little ticklish under her arms. She also did move much more today, including her hands, arms, feet and even her head a little bit. Yesterday, the most we saw her move was just a tiny bit of her one arm.

We also noticed that today, she has appeared to be at least trying to take more breaths on her own. For the past couple of days, the ventilator would show that it was doing all of the work. However, yesterday and especially today there were several periods that she was taking short quick breaths and sometimes even some full breaths. On this end, to us it appears that she is making some good progress. We are hoping that tomorrow will show even more positive signs in her ability to control her breathing as well as her response to touch.

The unknown in all of this is that the medicine (phenobarbital) that is controlling the seizures is also apparently keeping her heavily sedated. What is confusing to the doctors is that they say the amount of medicine she is receiving should not be keeping her this sedated and that she should still be somewhat responsive. We witnessed this as there was a very large difference between when they administered the drug and how much she tried to breath on her own as well as how responsive she is to touch. The question is, does she still need the medicine and if so, why does her body not try to breath when she is on it.

As you can see, there are a lot of unanswered questions for us here. We have two paths that we could be headed down by only God knows what path it is that we are on. We are praying for her healing and ask that all you also continuously pray for her complete healing as well. We know that God is in control and that not one little sparrow falls without him knowing and how much more so for our little Mia.

God is with us, and Rachael and I will praise him no matter what the outcome. Thank you all for your prayers and support. At this moment it looks to be in God's and Mia's hands. We do not know how long this process will take, it could be days, it could be weeks. Everything depends on Mia continuing to show signs of improvement like she has done each day so far.

Robert