Friday 24 June 2011

Lessons Learnt

Long time no blog... Yet again. Hectic is one word I suppose you could use to describe things lately. In short, and without going into too much detail, here’s what’s been happening. Rebecca is now 4 months old, the time is flying by. She’s coming along nicely, continuing to do well, putting weight on and is really alert, looking around doesn’t want to miss anything and is taking everything in around her. She’s also started to chuckle and babble in her own little way which is so cute.

For the last 6 weeks however, Rebecca has been wearing an orthopaedic harness. She was born with a dislocated hip as well as her skin condition Ichthyosis. So in order to help the hip to develop in it’s correct position, she has had to wear the harness. We were at first concerned as to how wearing the harness would affect her skin. Would it rub her skin raw for example and would it be soft enough for her. Turns out it isn’t as bad as we thought it would be, and Rebecca has taken to it much better than we thought she would. The alternative to the harness though, would be surgery to reposition her hip, which in turn would mean that Rebecca would need to be in a plaster cast which would go up to her chest and she would have to have the cast on for up to 16 weeks. This would definitely not be good for her skin, as it is so fragile, and vulnerable to infection and blisters frequently. So the harness was the best option, as regards causing as little trauma to her skin as possible. The good news is, after regular weekly, then fortnightly visits to Manchester Children’s Hospital for checks, her hip is doing really well. The consultant is really pleased with her progress, and says it is doing much better than she expected. It is looking very promising that the harness will be removed in around 4 weeks (well, just less than 3 weeks now as I type this). Anyway, that’s the EXTREMELY short version of events about this, but the whole thing has been... An ‘experience’ shall we say.. Let’s just say a strongly worded letter is being written to the hospital (it’s a very long story which I really don’t want to go into at the moment).



Rebecca wearing her harness and still smiling

Other recent events have made me think a lot about everything generally too (nothing to do with skin just in case you were wondering by the way). Let’s just say I’ve learnt a few lessons along the way, including the fact I’ve learnt a lot about myself. Things have happened that have made me think about things differently. Some of the things that have happened were negative, but from them, if anything it did me a favour or should I say the people involved have done me a favour by behaving the way they did, so thanks for that (again I won’t go into it here as it’s more trouble than it’s worth in all honesty). I also learnt the true meaning of friendship from this.

They say things happen for a reason, and I’ve always been a strong believer of this. Recent events have also kicked me into touch a little as regards the fact that I need to regain my self confidence, to be more assertive in my ways as I’m far too soft and polite for my own good sometimes haha. Also to push myself that extra mile to achieve more, to find it within me the motivation to follow through tasks and goals I set myself (although so far in life I have always achieved what I set out to do, things have slipped slightly of late).

The question now is... Could I possibly fit anymore into a day? And my answer to that is simply this... I honestly don’t know but I’ll give it a damn good try.