quotables and post-botax

Hannah, at dinner yesterday, staring at her napkin, says, "I'm just watching the news so I know what's going on in the world."

Isabelle, while talking to my parents on Skye (the webcam), says, "Grammie, there are a lot of bones in our hands and they're what hold our fingers together and help them to move."

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So Hannah had botax on Friday. She did great. She had 6 injections total, without sedation. She cried hard during the procedure but once it was over (it took under 5 minutes) she was fine. I, on the other hand, could have used some mild sedation. I was pretty emotional and stressed.

Now we're 4 days post-botax and there are some small differences that we're seeing. We noticed that over the weekend, she was pretty cranky and tired which may have been a side effect of either the botax itself or the overall change in her tone and her reaction to that. We gave her some Motrin for about a day and she seems to be getting back to herself now. We went to the mall on Sunday and brought her walker, but she wasn't up for walking that much and was also doing quite a bit of in-toeing and dragging of her left foot which was a little disheartening. That's one of the things I had hoped would be improved after botax. But from what I've been reading and hearing from people, in the short term it can be more difficult for kids to move around post-botax because they've learned how to use their tone for mobility and suddenly it's gone or much better. So hopefully once she adjusts to things that will improve.

When we stretch her, Hannah's range of motion seems better and she's definitely easier to stretch. She also seems to be having a little bit of a better time pulling up to stand and for the first time the other day, she tried to get her right foot under her first instead of just using her arm strength to pull up. She is also doing a pretty good job of walking up the stairs while holding onto one of our hands and one of the railings. And the amount of time Hannah can tolerate sitting cross-legged or with legs out straight seems longer.

So there are a lot of little things but not one major breakthrough, which is I think the way it goes with botax. I hope that we can take full advantage of this window to help her along in some of the areas we've been working on. I'll report back on this as we go along.