Surprise this is life.

Hi Everyone,

I've started this blog to share my views as a mother, spouse, friend and full time employee in hope that I can bring inspiration or help to anyone looking for support in regards to the similar matters in their life. I am not a nurse or a doctor nor do I possess any medical degree or educations. I am a simple mom that has been dealt more than she could have every expected in her life and is trying to understand and hopefully help other parents find some kind of solutions or inspirations too.

My life took a turn for the unexpected last March. Both kids were sick at the time with influenza B. My son was 9 months old and my daughter was three. In the middle of the night, my daughter throw up and wet her bed and was unresponsive through our many attempts to communicate. We rush her to the hospital. Had I not been insistent they would have turn us away. They kept my daughter under observation and when we were going for chest x-ray, she started having seizures. There's no words that can explain what how helpless a mother feels when she sees her child going through seizures, no knowing what is causing it and not being able to help. She was then rushed to an acute care hospital . She was diagnosed the following day with acute necrotizing encephalitis. I will create another post to explain more about encephalitis. We were 6 weeks at this hospital and another 16 weeks at a rehabilitation center. My daughter had to relearn everything. Today she can walk with her AFO (braces) and needs a walker for longer distance. She speaks but in longer sentence the words will be blurred. She is no longer potty train and the battle to get her to this point is still going on. There a lot of reward system implement for this.. She is very emotional and gets frustrated easily.. This one, we are still working on. This one is a long learning curve. As a result of this illness, my daughter has acquired brain injury. This is a new fact of life for us and once that we are still getting use to. She is currently on a dairy free and gluten free diet in hopes that this will help her recovery. So far, she is more focus and less prone to emotional outburst. I can say this from the few slip ups that we have. I've seen the difference.

My son was saved from encephalitis even though he had the same flu and he was just an infant. However, he has been introduced to a whole of therapy that gives him great pleasure to interact within. He's dairy intolerant and we've had to adjust our diets to complement his diet and support his needs. Every day, I hope that by including him in our activities, that he will never feel left out or less important than his sister. After all, I'm sure that most mothers feel this way.

I can say that my life keeps me busy and that at any given point, I have my agenda close by to schedule another meeting to help our family get on track. I'm the one that most of my friends will turn to for advise since I will give them the most truthful and honest opinion that I have or might be able to point them in the right direction. As an individual, I've experience more than most people will have in a lifetime. Is this a good time? I'm not sure but time heals all wounds.

For this, I am call MommaBear because I will protect my family with such a fierceness to ensure that everyone is well taken care. Whether this means staying up late to research new means to cope, recover or adjust our life.

Take care until next time,

MommaBear