A small Miracle

Today Scarlet started walking. I know for most it's a part of life and not considered a big deal when one walks at 14 months but, for us it was.
At her twelve month well-check visit January 5th her Dr. decided to draw her blood to make sure she wasn't Anemic because she hadn't been gaining much weight. Two days later her CBC came back showing she was Anemic, and her platelets and White count were both abnormally high. At this point they weren't too alarmed they simply increased her antibiotic that she's been on since October for recurrent kidney infections and put her on iron supplements thinking this would bring all numbers back to normal. As the weeks went on she continued to have her blood checked and the numbers continued to get worse.

Mid-January she was referred to a Hematologist-Oncologist at Texas Children's and has over gone more than 50 tests. The diagnoses as of today has still not been confirmed but, after spending seven hours in the Oncology department on Tuesday they discovered new things going on with her body and have started to narrow down the possibilities.

In early February she started seeing a Physical Therapist and was assessed to see if joint pain might be the cause of her not walking. They decided that pain was not the cause but, lack of energy and the fact that she was sleeping 18 hours a day. They told us not to be surprised or alarmed if she didn't start walking until after 18 months or a few months after being diagnosed.

Thankfully the iron supplements have helped with the Anemia and her numbers have improved. In the past month she has started to be awake more, she had her first temper-tantrum, and is becoming quite a bit more active.

On Thursday afternoon while we were with her Physical Therapist she took her first step. I thought possibly it was a fluke but, still made sure she knew how exciting this was. The next day my Visiting Teachers stopped by and she took another step. Three hours later Daddy was home and she was taking five steps at a time. Had you asked us two days ago if we felt she might walk any time in the next two months we probably would have said, "No".

Though we still don't know what's exactly going on with her it gives us so much hope to see her cross this milestone. It doesn't guarantee that she doesn't have some of the things they are considering but, it definitely goes against some of them.

Scarlet we love you sooo much and are sooo proud of you:-)