Every day my youngest daughter's capacity to overcome the odds that are stacked against her completely amaze me. Yesterday she had a dual sensory assesment at her school to look at the support she needs to take into account her visual and hearing impairments. In fact Daisy is multi-sensory impaired, all her senses are not wired like yours or mine so every day tasks take so much longer, she has to work twice, three times as hard as any other child just to do simple things like sit at a table and play with a toy. She has to remain balanced, focus her hearing and vision, explore using touch and taste and smell, all of these things she does with a system that does not function in the way it should. What we discovered, or rather confirmed that everyone in the room already knew, is that Daisy is a bright little cookie. There is so much going on in her brain, but she needs to be given the resources to help her use it. The biggest problem continues to be speech, which is limited, however, her communication (using signs) is coming on leaps and bounds - just because she does not speak it does not mean that she does not understand or need to tell you how she feels. One of the outcomes of yesterdays session was to really work on her signing, progressing hopefully to using British Sign Language. I hope that as she begins to use signing more and more this will equip her for later life and help her assert herself and get other people to understand that lack of speech does not mean that she does not have feelings and comments to make on what is happening to her.

Today Daisy wore her new bone conductor hearing aids to school - what a transformation, the teacher told me she has been so vocal, it's like a light bulb has gone on with her ability to hear more clearly...of course we are now waiting for the proper digital ones to arrive so that she can have even better sound quality...

Daisy started the new year in Rainforest Ward - just to make her mark that hospital life would continue, despite our wonderful birthday, Christmas, new year break....The stay was for a new hickman line, two repairs to her hickman line were too risky for infection so she was prioritised for a line change, removing one from the right jugular and placing a new one into the left jugular. Fortunately this was relatively straightforward inspite of the interventional radiologist (who has worked on Daisy before) commenting, yes I remember Daisy, she has very wiggly veins....don't you just love these doctores and their casual asides...

This year will see lots more hospital stays - the likelihood of an ileostomy to bypass Daisy's non-functioning colon is looking more and more strong. Tests that were conducted over Christmas seem to confirm this although we will get the official results when we meet with Daisy's main Gastroenterologist on Monday. This takes us into yet another new territory - another bit of plumbing to contend with and what essentially is very major surgery for a little girl with a lot going on. Our hope, if this is the route we go dow, is that this will put an end the awful pain that she is experiencing, mainly at night time.

This is not the only surgery she will have this year, we are still waiting for the date for the tendon releasing surgery - she now spends more time off her feet than on her feet and if this surgery is not done soon Daisy will be unable to walk. Following this surgery will be around 6 weeks in plaster casts - fun for all involved and then a two week intensive rehabilitation stay at GOS. The only good thing with all this surgery and hospital stays is that it is all planned, hopefully we will see less emergency admissions this year and instead have more planned stays focussing on improving Daisy's quality of life.
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