it's been one week...

i have no idea why i've used lyrics from 90s music for both of my blog posts, but we'll go with it.

as the title says, it's been one week since receiving word about gommy's PMG. a week ago at this time we were in the MRI room hoping that he wouldnt wake up during the scan. the week since has been filled with lots of prayer, some tears, conversation with family and a lot of research.

based on that research we know that epilepsy/seizure activity is likely, as are physical impairments. that's the baseline right now. we found that 60% of kids have perisylvian PMG...meaning the PMG affects the perisylvian region of the brain...and after doing more research the perisylvian region is the area around the sylvian fissure, which connects the frontal and temporal lobe (apologies to any real doctors out there reading this). perisylvian PMG typically comes with feeding issues, which in turn can lead to speech delays...but as far as we know now our little fatty pants dominic has no issues feeding...so i think we might be in the clear there. we meet with our pediatrician tomorrow, so i'm sure he'll be able to give us more information on what all we need to be thinking about.

it's hard to rely on statistics, but based on the journal articles we're reading, i think we can fairly certainly say that gommy will have seizure activity, physical impairments, and perhaps learning disabilities.

last night the wife and i were going to bed and just before falling asleep i had a terrifying realization...i rolled over and whispered. "we have no idea what to do if gommy has a seizure"...to which she replied "you're right, we need to ask our pedi about that".

that was it for sleeping right there...fortunately the wife couldnt sleep either, so we went out into the living room and finished a bottle of wine while laughing about the terrible finale of walking dead and other random things from the day. for the first time in a week, sleep came easy after that.

i feel ok. i'm on an emotional roller coaster. there are days where i'm up as up can be and the next day i'm just kind of meh. i'm ready for it to norm out a bit.

this past weekend we visited twisty's parents...and we went for a run around her block...about 3 miles. on that run we realized something we already knew...that our life's purpose is to be parents to our two beautiful children...and that all this does is make us want to parent harder. to love deeper. to be more committed to what we are about. our true north lies in our children and in each other, and perhaps the gift from all of this is the opportunity to never take parenting for granted, or to get bored with the process.

speaking of our two beautiful children, i cannot even tell you how good of a big brother tooties is to gommy. we've made a concerted effort over the past two days to have them interact more--the best therapy gommy can receive is interaction with his older brother. and my goodness his older brother has taken that role on with zeal and enthusiasm. from pouring water on gommy in the bath, to interacting with him while gommy's in his excersaucer, to teaching gommy how to say "ba-ba-ba"...to this morning tooties teaching gommy what a lion says, and what a cow says, etc. i wish i had an older brother like vincent. those two...well. they're a match made in heaven. literally.

i've come along way since last wednesday. i'm sure next week will be even better than this week. and so on and so forth. life will settle down and we'll get into a routine soon enough.