Mattie

Many people have been asking so here is a little update on Mattie. We hope that she will be able to come home sometime next week, as long as something does not happen in the meantime. She has been doing really good and is using her left arm and leg. She won't use her arm as much as she should but her body is figuring out that it is there. She started crawling yesterday and that was really exciting. Every once in a while she will have a difficult time with the left leg but as time goes on it should get better. When she gets released she will do outpatient Physical and Occupational Therapy twice a week in addition to her therapy that she receives at home. Mattie is very happy and waves at everyone. All of the nurses, doctors and even the cleaning ladies love her. I'm glad that people react to her so well. She has such a beautiful smile and laugh that lights up a room. Her hands are little with little pudgy fingers and that gives her the cutest wave. The stroke did not affect her speech but it did affect her swallowing a little bit. We have to put a thickening solution in her drinks. The next step in the journey is the angiogram and this hopefully will diagnosis why she had the stroke. There are couple of different ideas but nothing is confirmed at this time. We know that people are praying for us and we continue to ask that. Right know we just want Mattie healthy and home............................



For the anyone who does not know what happened is the story. Keep in mind this is a shortened version of it and I left some details out. A few weeks ago Mattie had croup. There was one day she was having a hard time and ran a low grade fever. She was doing good the rest of the week and on Thursday Dan and I took the kids to his parents house and we went out for a little bit. When we went to pick the kids up his parents made a comment about Mattie not using her left arm. We noticed it and decided to take her to the Phx Children's Hospital Urgent Care in Mesa to have it checked out. The doctor thought the same thing we did that she probably injured her shoulder and it could have happened many ways. While waiting for the x-ray results we were playing with her and when I would tickle her left foot she would not even move it or laugh. When we got her to laugh the left side of her face was droopy. We asked the doctor about it and he thought it could be something along the lines of bell palsy because of the croup virus and with her having Down Syndrome anything is possible. He called the neurologist at Phx Children's Hospital and she thought the same thing but asked us to come in for a CT Scan. The Dr at the Urgent Care did not feel comfortable with us driving because of the unknown problem and he had her transported by ambulance. On a side note Mattie was asleep at this point and she slept through the entire ride. At the hospital the CT Scan showed that she had abnormalities on the right side of her brain that was consistent with a stroke. She was admitted and a MRI was performed early Friday morning (actually it was more like 4 hours later at 8 am). The MRI confirmed that she did have 2 strokes. We know that a artery in her brain had thinned out. She had the fever on Wednesday and when your body gets a fever your brain kicks into high gear and wants more oxygen, blood and nutrients. Due to this and the thinned out artery platelets where not able to pass thorough the thin part of the artery and they built up until nothing could pass through and it burst and this is what caused the stroke. When you have a stroke you have bleeding on the brain and swelling. We were in ICU for 4 days and there she received 2 blood transfusions in order to get her blood levels built back up. She was also there to be monitored since she was at risk for other strokes and seizures because of the swelling in her brain. While in ICU she started showing progress and her blood levels stabilized and she showed no signs of increased swelling. So know it is a waiting game and letting her body heal so additional test can be done to determine why she had the stroke. There are a couple of different reasons but nothing can be confirmed.