Get to know Sarah

I’m not even sure where to begin this blog.

Life is not always fun. It can be messy, inconvenient and just plain difficult at times. Sarah has been through more of her share of difficulties than anyone I know for just 16 years (almost 17).

When Sarah was just 8 years old, she began to complain of headaches, and eventually she would throw up pretty regularly. At first it was one bad day followed by a few good days. Eventually it was a good day followed by a string of bad days. Finally when I would take her to a doctor, I would carry her to a wheel chair from the car to try to not expend her energy for the day. She was SO weak and tired all of the time. Our homeopath said there was something wrong with her brain. Her doctor said he was a man of science, and that he didn’t believe in “that stuff”. I got him to agree to a CT scan, where we discovered a tumor in my babies brain.

Sarah’s world changed overnight. Nothing was the same for any of us. She underwent brain surgery two days later. While they saved her life, they damaged her brain stem and her vision and Sarah could no longer even stand up without falling over. She would start years of physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech. Each therapy healed her in a different way. I remember doing metronome therapy when she was 10ish years old, and the dramatic change that happened. She went from watching Curious George to Apollo 13 overnight. Her brain worked better.

Over a year ago Sarah got her permit to drive. We started out in a parking lot in a Toyota Tundra with an extended cab. You could not get any bigger. The truck gas pedal was difficult to control for a new driver, and Sarah ended up with 3 wheels on the sidewalk at the school parking lot that we were practicing in. This was going to be harder than I though. I bought the little red Prius that you see me delivering soap in now, and we continued to practice.

Then towards the end of 2019 Sarah did a driving eval at Courage Kenny. I found out that her vision was worse than I thought. Her eyes were not tracking together, which meant that Sarah did not have very good depth perception. There was also some healing that needed to happen with her brain to speed up her response time for her to drive. So at the beginning of 2020, Sarah started vision therapy.

Therapies are a work in progress right now, but recently Sarah has started to see double on occasion. This is a really good thing. It means that her weak eye is turning back on, and she is learning how to make her eyes work together.

We still have lots of work to do, but I am expecting God to heal Sarah’s brain enough to get her driving by herself one day. Then you can see Sarah deliver your soaps to your door in our little red Prius!!