Sarah's MRI

This post should have been out about a month ago, but we are playing catch up.

Way back in August, Sarah had an MRI at Children's Hospital.  It was nothing to be too alarmed about. She has an eye condition we discovered when she started kindergarten called Nystagmus.  Basically it means that her eyes shake back and forth instead of being able to hold still.  She has tilted her head since she was a baby when she looks at things like this:

We found out through an eye exam that the head tilt is her way of being able to position her eyes so they hold still so she can see better.

There is no cure for her condition.  In March, we took her to see Michael's ophthamologist and he suggested getting an MRI for a couple reasons.  One, the kind of nystagmus she has originates in a certain area of the brain that interestingly enough, her brother has a brain tumor.  So given that unusual connection, and from a health insurance standpoint, this would be a good time to get a picture of her brain to check for anything unusual and to be able to monitor any changes in the future.

So our life is awesome enough that we got to have two children sedated on the same day (I guess you've got to find awesomeness wherever you can).  We had it done at Children's on one of the same days that Michael had radiation.  I went with Michael across the street to his radiation therapy and Tim took Sarah to get the MRI. 

She was super nervous and so we chose to have her sedated so she could hold still for the hour that it took to take the pictures.  The gas mask they put on her smelled like Skittles candy she said, but she started feeling like she couldn't breathe and got scared.  Right after that, she fell asleep.  When she woke up, about 90 minutes later, all she could remember was the scary mask.  She was also super "sleepy drunk" and could hardly sit up and slurred her words.  It was actually really humorous and gave us a good laugh.  We sat Michael next to her (he and I joined them as she was waking up) and that made her happy to have him with her.  The first words when she woke up were, "Well, hi Michael!"

Here's our not-so-great iphone pics:

She was also super excited they give out crackers at the hospital

Not sure why the sour face in the picture except that she was pretty disoriented when she awoke

Everything turned out normal on her scan so we will just be monitoring things over the next several years.