Today Was A Good Day

Today was a good day.  The best day.  A day where our appointments started to change.  A day where doctors talked to me about my son's potential and not his prognosis. Today was a good day.

This good day hasn't come out of nowhere.  This day came from work and planning, an online degree in neurology and Gominic's bad-ass little attitude where he refused to let others define him or what he would do in life.

This day came after lots of questioning and soul-searching, and sleepless nights and wondering if we were doing everything in our power to help our son.  Today a neurologist told me that he wanted me to adopt him.  My supermom status has now been made official.  It's cool if you want me to adopt you too, I've pretty much nailed this mom thing.  Also, I think I just realized where Gommy got his larger than life-I've got more intelligence in my half-brain-than you have in your full brain-attitude.  But today was a good day, and I can't help but feeling on top of the world.

Today came after we were knocked on our asses from a dream of all things.  Big Poppa had a dream where he saw Dominic standing in diaper on chubby little baby legs just bouncing and smiling like babies do.  This may not sound like much, but it made us realize THAT WE HAD NEVER PICTURED OUR KID STANDING!  Isn't that odd?  But this is our reality, and it made us a little sad for once.  We love our world and wouldn't change it, but for a second we felt robbed.  We don't remember what it feels like to take these things for granted.

But of course, Gominic never leaves us wanting for long, so this weekend he drank his bottle from a straw(this takes a lot of muscle coordination that doesn't come easy for him) and said his first repeat word "Push".  Oddest first word ever, but that's Gominic's style.  He's a non-conformer.

And today, we went to a spasticity clinic where we were evaluated by 5 doctors and therapists for hours.  It was exhausting for all us, but it was also wonderful.  They were extremely pleased with his cognitive abilities and said that his physical abilities did not measure up, even though they were really impressed with how mobile he had become with all his limitations.  Because of all of this, they said that by treating his spasticity, we could hope for a lot of progress.  We landed on a neuro-stimulator that relaxes the muscles.  We will also evaluate him after a month to see if we want to focus on certain areas with Botox.  I'm totally J.

They had a lot of hopes for his future, it won't be easy but they think we will get there.  My son may walk and talk!  Wow.  Just wow.  It won't be without effort though, if these treatments don't work, we will start looking at surgical options.  These could involve removing some of the nerves from his spine or inserting a pump that will deliver muscle relaxers directly to his spine.  These may sound extreme, but with a kid as motivated as him, I am going to do everything I can.  That kid is awesome.  I love him beyond words.

We then had a wonderful appointment with his optometrist.  His lazy eye has completely corrected itself through patching!  At one point we were discussing surgery for this, but Gominic doesn't always need our help.  He has also lost his tunnel vision and had no more neurological vision impairments!  He of course will still need glasses soon because he inherited our terrible vision, but that has nothing to do with his diagnosis.  His optometrist couldn't believe the difference in Dominic and said that in just 3 months he was a different baby.  He predicted that someday, we would be walking through the mall and no one would be able to tell what we had gone through.  Today I believed him.

Today was a good day.