One year!

It's crazy that it was one year ago today that Grace was our little WWII victim! She had surgery January 5, 2007, came home from the hospital on the 6th and her implant device was activated February 7. What a change this last year has been for her. Last year she was barely hearing 70 decibels with hearing aids and now she has near "normal" hearing results with her cochlear implant. She is chattering more every day and even starting to use 3- 4 word phrases. Some things still take some translation but she is starting to be a little parrot. I'm learning that I probably use more words that I don't want her to use than I should (i.e. "crack whore"...funny story I will expand on if anyone wants to hear it that hasn't.)

This was in the hospital that night after surgery. If she had been 2 years old, she would have had to go home that night! I was glad for the overnight stay because otherwise I would have had to remove those bandages myself and I didn't want to have to do that. She wouldn't leave my arms until they brought in a bed where I could lay down with her. She had to have oxygen by her face all night and an IV in her foot. Seeing this picture makes me miss our dear friend the binki. He solved a lot of problems at our house.

This was the next day at home. She was up and around again that day. I couldn't believe how fast she recovered. They said she would recover within 3 to 4 days though. It was kind of funny though to see her try to do things she had done for a long time because due to the location of the surgery, her balance got a little messed up for a while so she'd be walking along and just fall for no reason or crash in to a wall or something.

This is Gracie today. I could barely pull her attention away from "The Incredibles" to snap a shot. She still falls down as you can see by her chin but it's not because of her balance. This chin injury I assume was the result of an attempt to climb the TV in the living room. My CSI skills, as I said when I told this story last night, led me to a skin-like chunk of something on the TV stand I found while dusting later. Since I found her on the floor near the TV after I heard her little ottoman go scooting across the floor, the thud and then the screaming but this is just my guess. My dad asked if I had sent the tissue sample to the lab for DNA testing but I didn't so I will have to continue to speculate on the true cause.