Emmi's story

So, here goes nothing! I am not one to share personal things online, nor do I let people into my personal trials unless I feel that they really are people I can trust, but I just feel like I want to document the last year with Emmi so that one day, she can read all about the grey hairs she has given me!!

Last May, when Emmi was 8 months old she woke up one morning and I could tell she wasn’t feeling well. I figured she had caught a bug and it wouldn’t be a big deal. I had just stared my job at the Credit Union and I didn’t want to send her to the babysitter since I didn’t want her to pass her bug to the sitters little girl, so I called Brady and asked if he might be able to take the afternoon off. He said he would head home around noon. My sister was at my house spending the morning with me, and she said she wouldn’t mind helping with the girls if Brady had to stay a little later.  

As the morning wore on, Emmi seemed to be getting worse. She had a fever and I was trying to keep Tylenol in her to help her feel a little better. She kept getting really hot and then she would throw up so I was getting worried and called the doctor. We made an appointment to go in at 2 for him to check her.

Emmi had just thrown up and seemed like she wanted to be up for a little bit, so I brought her out and let her sit on the couch with us. After a minute, I noticed that her arm was really stiff and was trembling a little bit. She had a really weird look on her face so I yelled her name to get her attention. She didn’t respond. I picked her up and kind of shook her a little to get her to respond or look at me. She was slobbering a ton, way more than normal and her little body felt hot. I panicked and called Brady and asked him to get home. Luckily, he was just up the street.  I kept yelling at Emmi and trying to get her to look at me. When Brady walked in he said “get in the car now!”  My sister took Landry and got her into the car and said “Im walking home, you don’t have time to take me home when Emmi is like this.”

The drive to Primary Children’s was the longest drive of my life! I had no idea what was going on and Emmi kept throwing up. When she would throw up, her little lips would turn blue. I was so scared and I kept yelling at Brady. I am so grateful that he remains calm and can deal with my craziness in those situations.

When we got to PCMC, I rushed Emmi into the ER. I told the nurse what was going on and he said it might have been a seizure.  Her temperature was at 102. At this point, she had quit throwing up and was sleeping. They came in and checked her and said that she had most likely had a seizure, and all the throwing up was from how hot her little body kept getting. The told us we needed to go see our pediatrician as soon as we could get in. Then they said to watch her and sent us home.

A few days later, we went to see Dr. Havlick. He said she definitely had a seizure and sent us to PCMC to have a brain scan to make sure there wasn’t something else going on in her little brain. Luckily, those results came back good so the attributed the seizure to the high temperature.

Prior all this happened, Emmi had been babbling and saying dada and making noises like she was trying to talk. After the seizure, she didn’t say anything. So a few weeks after, they figured something wasn’t right and put her in therapy. As you can imagine, I spent hours wondering what was going on with her. I was so scared that whatever had happened wasn’t good. When we stared therapy, they did an initial test on her to figure out what type of therapy she was going to need. When they did her initial testing they said she was so far behind, she would most likely be in therapy for the next 2 years. We opted to start physical therapy first to try and help build her muscles since they were so weak and she was so far behind in all of her motor skills. The first few months of therapy felt pointless. We loved her therapist but Emmi didn’t seem to be making a lot of progress.

Things seemed to level out, Emmi wasn’t making much progress, but she wasn’t digressing either. Here and there she would start something, like picking things up with her fingers, so I just said “little progress is better than none.” One of my initial goals for her was to have her eat her first birthday cake by herself. I was sad when her birthday came and that didn’t happen. To be honest, I was starting to feel discouraged because I didn’t know what was going on with her and I didn’t know what else to do to help her.

One day in November, a few days before Thanksgiving, I was in my bathroom getting ready for the day when I noticed Emmi moved. She pulled herself with her arms and kicked her legs for them to follow. I got so excited and told Brady that I thought Emmi was trying to crawl. Of course, she wouldn’t do it again. Well the next night, she started doing it again, but she realized what she was doing and just kept going. I was so excited she was crawling!! The next day, she started babbling and kept going on and on like she was telling us something. It was just like her little brain woke up!

She kept progressing and started standing up while holding onto something, then she started walking a little bit while holding onto things. Then, on Easter, we went to my family’s Easter egg hunt at my Grandmas and Emmi got a little frustrated because she couldn’t run with the other kids. When we came home that evening Emmi stood up and started walking on her own!!! We were so excited.  Then this morning, she finally started feeding herself.

She still doesn’t say a lot, and she isn’t the best at walking, but she is progressing and that’s all that matters. She failed her the autism test but her doctor and I agree that we don’t think she is autistic. We both agree that whatever is wrong, we will just continue to go with it until she is at a point where she can receive a diagnosis or until she outgrows whatever she has.