Our Little Sunshine
January 13, 2005 by · Leave a Comment
Well I know this update on our Sunshine will make you all smile. After 10 long months, Savanna is finally ventilator free! Words cannot express how elated, thankful and humbled I am by seeing this miracle arrive. We do still send her to school on her vent, but that is just to protect her from the germs of the other 14 kids in her class and to keep her from getting to worn out. As soon as she gets home from school, the ventilator comes off and stays off until naptime and bedtime, which was “normal” for us before.
I had tried everything in my power to help her get off the vent over the last several months. Some days I was filled with such despair as I would look at her and see her spine curvature worsening and her not being able to come off her ventilator for even 5 minutes. There were several times that I thought she had become ventilator dependent. Those are the days that God would gently remind me to look with my faith, not with my eyes and trust that He would heal that in His time. Boy, how many times do I try to “speed up” God’s plan instead of waiting on Him. During those 10 months, He was strengthening her immune system, so that she could start school in September. I wasn’t sure if she would even attend school during the Dec-March cold/flu season. She has attended regularly. I just keep her home when the weather is too bad to get her out or if she starts having a runny nose.
What a blessing school has been. She enjoys it and I know she really needs the stimulation. She loves to learn. Her favorite things to do at home are reading books and doing her flashcards. Her speech has improved tremendously. She can speak in sentences now and people can actually understand her while talking with her on the phone. She is a prissy thing. Her nails are always painted and she loves having “tea parties” with her grandmother or playing with her best friend, Kaitlyn. I think she thinks the kids in her class are too little for her. You know she thinks she is about 6 or 7 years old! She’s become quite bossy, the princess in her chariot. Her daddy has been working with her daily on driving her wheelchair and she is having fun with that. She drives the opposite way when he tells her it’s time to come home, so he has resorted to tricking her by saying, “Let’s go see Kaitlyn” (who lives next door). She says okay and starts driving that way and then when they get home, he tells her “Oh yeah, Kaitlyn’s not home.” Pretty bad, huh?
I am attaching a few recent pics of Savanna. The first one was taken Monday morning at home with her school nurse (notice there is no ventilator attached) and the second one was taken in front of Savanna’s tree. My cousin is an assistant principle for the White Settlement school district and the elementary school decorates Christmas trees every year and displays them in Veteran’s Park to raise money for different organizations. This year they chose to raise money for MDA and the 4th grade class heard about Savanna so they dedicated their tree to her. It was decorated in her favorite color (purple) and Muppets. You can see how Savanna is beaming in front of her tree. The only hard thing was convincing her we could not take it home with us (they donate the trees to needy families).
I thank you all for your continued prayers of healing for our Savanna. I also thank you for encouraging me when my faith has weakened and believing with me for healing. As I have told some of you, I really feel that 2005 will be a year of healing for my family. I am excited to see the miracles that will be happening for Savanna as we have already started to see. I ask for your continued prayers for a full-time day route for Tim at FedEx. His supervisor told him that there should be a lot of movement this year. I will look forward to giving you all another Savanna praise report in the near future. They certainly beat the “Savanna prayer requests” emails, but as God has shared with me, you cannot experience the fullness of the rainbow without the difficulty of the storm! I hope you all have a great day!
Love,
Mindy