A Journey filled with Beauty

It was a wonderful night at the pageant with so much love and support. These two friends started this journey together a year ago.  Ricki was recovering from 2 brain surgeries and a vocal chord surgery and was facing yet another surgery to remove 2 more tumors in her spinal cord. Unsure of what her future would hold she determined she wanted to participate in the Cache Valley's Outstanding Teen Pageant. Some of the teens dropped out and there wasn't going to be enough participants. Ricki's friend Emily joined the pageant to support Ricki. Emily went on to become Miss Cache Valley's Outstanding Teen, giving her many service opportunities and Ricki  faced her road to recovery with grace and much determination.  Though this past year has taken them on different paths they both finished this journey with more confidence in who they are and with greater abilities to love and lift those around them. I am so proud of the beautiful young women they are becoming.

It's Nice to Be Normal

What a wonderful week it has been! Rick and I have been in awe of Ricki this week. She is an amazing young women with such determination and strength.  For the first time in months Ricki felt well enough to attend school for the full day every school day last week. To many, this is an easy every day occurrence but for Ricki it is a little miracle! One day she came home so excited saying "it is so nice to feel normal" she has had minimal pain and more energy than she has had in a long time. There have been no complaints of her stomach hurting, nauseousness, or pains in her arms.  It appears that this new nerve pain medicine is working for Ricki. We have our fingers crossed that it keeps working...Her only complaints for the week have been having a headache twice, the tumor on her leg has become very tender, and she lost the feeling on the right side of her lower lip. She has also had a rash that has come and gone but it hasn't seemed to bother her much. Overall, Ricki has had more energy and has found joy in the simple things of life this past week.

Ricki's eyes always light up when she has the opportunity to work on pageant things. We have had such a rough couple of months I was not going to let her do the outstanding teen pageant this year but, it brings such a light to her eyes we couldn't turn her down and decided to let her participate again this year. Saturday she was in seventh heaven because her grandmother bought her some fun shoes with "heels" for the pageant. She is growing up into a beautiful young women!  She had practice for the pageant and they let me go in and record her practice interview. It was exciting to see the improvement she has made in the past year. Being a part of these pageants has helped her in regaining her communication skills and increase her confidence that she can do hard things. She has been practicing her talent..this year she is going to do a tiger to the song "eye of the tiger".  So here we come sparkles, make-up and all the bling!

First visit to Primary Children's Hospital in 2015

As we begin a new year we are so grateful for the wonderful hospital staff and doctors that have cared for Ricki since her diagnosis of Neurofibromatosis Type 2. Today we watched again that same care  and kindness as she went in for an EGD ( scope of her stomach). She has been having stomach pains and nausea daily for about 3 months. They did the scope to check for tumors in her stomach and we were excited they did not find any evidence of tumors. It still doesn't explain the pain but we can eliminate that possibility. She had a wonderful anesthesiologist..I think it was a dr. Clark. She is a little tricky to work with because of her vocal chord reintrvention and he took great care in protecting her vocal chord and didn't even complain of a sore throat! 

So... Back to her stomach pains - Her neurosurgeon Dr. Bollo thought there was a possibility that it is being caused by some of her tumors on her spine and gave her a prescription for Neurontin ( a nerve pain medicine) it hasn't helped yet but we are still hopeful. 

We were just finishing up the night when she discovered another bump on her left forehead..she has been getting them off and on since the middle of October. They just show up and go away usually within a day. When we went to our geneticist last month he told her she was a puzzle. We have laughed because later she said to us"I wish I were just a 5 piece puzzle instead of a thousand piece puzzle" She is such a sweetheart.