Prayer Request & Update

Hey Family & Friends, 
Man, it's been a while since I have posted anything on our sweet Henley. I wanted to start by asking for prayers for her tomorrow. We will be arriving at Cooks at 6:00 for a LONG day of MRI's and appointments. She will go in for her 9th MRI of brain and total spine tomorrow and we will meet with Dr. Roberts afterwards. The MRI should take about an hour and a half but there is a chance that they will choose to flip her on her stomach mid-way through the scan and do the spinal MRI in two different positions. This could obviously add some extra time to the scans.  

Due to a recent diagnosis of pneumonia in August (I think this is #5 in her life). The Anesthesiologist was concerned about her lungs during sedation. So please pray for her lungs to be strong and for their to be no complications with the anesthesia process. No matter how many times we do this, putting her under still makes me a nervous wreck.  

Tomorrow we will be looking for some answers on some new little issues Henley seems to be having. One of which is that she tells us that it hurts in the middle of her back when she breathes. I mean, that's all, just when she breathes. This girl is such a trooper and has an incredible pain tolerance. She is also complaining a lot more frequently about her legs hurting and getting really tired when she walks. At this point we can not make it through the grocery store or Target without her needing to ride in the cart for most of it. She is also complaining about a new area of her head hurting on a pretty regular basis.  

We have had a few different tests this summer that lead us to believe that her issues with low muscle tone are getting worse. We have noticed even more of a gap between what her friends can do and what she can do. For instance: Henley can't balance on one foot for longer than one second. She can not pull herself out of the bathtub or pull up from a laying down position. She can't put one foot in front of the other without falling over. For a 3 year old this might not be a big deal, but she will be 6 in 2 months. She just has lots of problems with her balancing, strength, and stamina. Just the act of walking is utterly exhausting for her. We are realizing that this makes life tough when you are constantly on your feet moving in school from 8-3pm.  

We recently started up Dancing after taking the last year off. It was very apparent after her first class that she had lost a lot of strength that she used to have because she came home with ripped tights and sore knees from falling through the entire class. When I asked her what she liked best about her first day back in dance, she replied "When we got to sit down". She told me she fell a lot and didn't want to go back because it made her legs really tired. I decided after many tears that maybe I needed to take her out and look for something we could do for "physical therapy" that was actually fun.  

This brings me to our new exciting endeavor with Henley, Hippo Therapy! (Physical Therapy with Horses) Oh my goodness. Henley is SUPER excited. We went last week for an evaluation and they felt like she was a perfect candidate for this type of therapy. She actually started today and as silly as this sounds it brought me to tears to see her enjoying therapy so much. What a blessing to finally have something that she loves and is excited to do AND it's going to actually HELP her! Win Win! 

Henley also started Kindergarten last week and that is a whole other post to make. She had a really rough first week, but we are very excited about where she is in school and are hopeful this will be a great year.