I had a lovely talk with the insurance company today - seriously! The rep was actually helpful. I wanted to check on our coverage, since we should have a few little invoices coming in over the next couple weeks. And we saved ourselves $2000! (Both Jeff and I thought our deductible was $5000 per year and it turns out to be only $4000.) Too bad December and January ended up in different calendar years... at least the covered expenses would have stacked up nicely.

I'm sure lots of you folks are semi-curious but way too polite to ask so I'm gonna tell ya - brain surgery is expensive. Not as bad as we thought - we were pretty sure that in one week we'd hit $200k but we'll probably be hanging out around $100k instead. That's thanks to the surgeon who only charged $12k for the surgery. I think we got a deal. Only three days worth of claims have gone through and the total thus far is a little over $58,000.

Anyone else want to claim splurging like that for their Christmas this year??? No Scrooges around here, no siree!

And just in case you ever have the urge to get some really cool shots of what makes your brain tick, the price tag of Sada's evaluative MRI was $4,909.35. She'll have one of those photo shoots once every three months for at least the next few years, then every six months for a while until it goes to annually. HELLO!!! We'd better get some framed 8x10s for that price!

Sada had her OFFICIAL Physical Therapy evaluation today at Now I Can, and compared to the eval last week it was like looking at a new girl. She could run, jump with both feet, and her balance getting up and down steps was almost normal. The obvious limitations start with static balance - whenever she's not moving it's really hard to not fall over, including when she's moving and stops suddenly (and she's had lots of practice at home avoiding little people, so it's not lack of trying). Even on hands and knees, when she lifts her left arm and right leg, or the other way around, she has a really hard time not falling over.

The most interesting thing we noticed is her natural tendency to use her right side instead of left. She's been left-handed since she started writing (before that she was ambidextrous). And she still writes with her left hand, but she's been throwing and leading with her right arm this week. And her control is SO much better with her right side with follow-through and form. Things that make you go hmmm....

She's improved so much during the last week that it looks like the longer-term effects are finally showing themselves. Maybe it's the brain swelling going down, or the overall pressure decreasing so the inflammation from the surgery is more obvious. Who knows - we have a surgical appt. Monday to ask questions. So, we start 6 hours a week of PT next Tuesday - the ultimate exercise program... and she thought dance was intense!

I had a couple of great conversations with Sada today. One involved what to eat for lunch, and the other was figuring out what to do to stay busy this afternoon. The great part was it didn't look like she was watching a basketball game while she talked to me. Her eyes stopped bouncing!!! The surgeon said (and the opthamologist reiterated) that the bouncing vertically was a result of surgical trauma and would go away eventually. Eventually came fast!

She was super ornery the rest of the day, and we're supposed to be very aware of mood changes, but since nothing else bad symptom-wise showed up I'll chalk that up to not being an only child in the house anymore and having to fight for mommy attention. :-)

Some say "Christmas comes but once a year...." but not if you're lucky enough to be one of our kids! In the Belgian/Canarian traditions that were ingrained when the mama and papa both lived over thataway, we decided to celebrate "Kings Day" and actually give all the kids the gifts that didn't get given on the normal day of gift-giving. Miraculously, all Christmas shopping was in fact done before Christmas Eve (must have been those angels helping out again). But our days have been so full of hyperbarics and hyper-babies that it got put off until Alexis, 7 going on 27, decided that Jan. 6 would be present day since we'd already talked about the European countries closest to our hearts (Belgium, France, Luxemburg, Spain) celebrating their major gift giving on the day when the three kings showed up to see baby Jesus.

Sada and Alexis volunteered to keep Paige and Jason busy by building block towers upstairs while I went downstairs, threw a few things into 5 different bags and took them back up with the announcement, "Don't count the number of presents - enjoy them. You get what you get and don't throw a fit." The last is the mantra the kids repeat when one of them decides to throw a tantrum at dinner. Between desperately needed winter clothes and a few books and art supplies, our "Dia de los reyes" was a hit and Christmas is FINALLY over!!!!

We did everything just before Sada's second hyperbaric appointment this afternoon. She'd spent most of the afternoon sitting down, and was pretty tipsy when she put on her boots to go outside to the car. When she got home after doing an hour dive, she walked in a straight line across the kitchen without holding onto the couch or counter, and she was taking bigger steps. Maybe she was just more confident in herself at home after being away, but it could also be the extra oxygen from the dive helping reduce pressure on the brain stem. Let's go with the latter and I'll have sweeter dreams tonight ;-).

Sada's had a very relaxed weekend - on purpose. When she woke up Saturday morning, her eyes looked slightly bigger than normal. Not bug-eyed like the night we took her in, but just enough to show there's some increased pressure. Without nausea, vomiting, or any other symptoms there's no need to take her back to the hospital, but it means that the fourth ventricle isn't draining all the extra CSF and equalizing it like it should. It means that she gets to keep doing hyperbarics religiously this week, and she's sleeping like a princess on a feather bed with 4-5 pillows underneath wedged up so her head is slightly elevated all night to let gravity help with drainage.

Jeff did a little bit of ortho-bionomy (really light muscle work) today to help release her stiff neck muscles and help with drainage and found some humongous lymph nodes while he was at it. She hasn't had any low-grade fevers so her immune system seems to be keeping up with the extra work, even though her body is obviously working over-time to get back to normal. We can't do alot of extra lymphatic drainage because dumping everything too fast or loosening up junk too quickly will overload her liver after dealing with all that was pumped in through the IVs. So we're going for the "bit-by-bit" approach - followed closely by "wait-and see." If patience is a virtue, this family is going to have virtuitousness coming out our ears by the end of this year!

Hyperbaric chambers are good for more than the bends and wound healing! After doing 2 one hour-long sessions Wednesday, Thursday and today, Sada is quite literally seeing some definite improvements. You could chalk it up to time and coincidence, but we were told it could be at least a month or two before any changes started occuring.

Sada's been seeing a small circle in the bottom center of her visual field in the left eye, but today it seemed to be a bigger oval and she could see color. Beyond that, while she was covering her right eye and looking around to "test" her left eye, she was moving it 3/4 of the way towards the outside... and since she came out of surgery she's never been able to move it beyond center. Wahoo!!!

It's not a massive change but it is very significant. It means that the inflammation in that area is going down, and more sight recovery is probable instead of possible. Those O2 molecules pack a pretty powerful punch when you get them into the right places with a little extra pressure!

Isn't starting out clean a great feeling? Not that 2008 has been bad, but it has been rather eventful. It all started with a 1-month pregnant mama and all that jazz, then we followed with highlights like a 3-room basement flood involving a bathroom demolition, a new roof put on 1 day before Jeff's birthday, cutie girl #5 born at home on Jeff's birthday, and ended with a showstopper - but no heartstoppers, thankfully.

I'm thinking this year's resolution will be to find at least one quiet moment a day... even if it takes locking myself in the bathroom and plugging my ears while little fingers inch their way under the door. After all, sometimes it takes full concentration to appreciate the subtle joys of life!