A little girl takes her first wobbly steps. She is four years old.
Today was a day we thought we would never see. Our daughter took her first steps today.
This may not seem like a big deal, but when you take into consideration that our daughter, who is now four, almost died almost two years ago, and that she was (is) in a wheelchair, then you can probably understand why we say this.
Our daughter, MacKenzie Grace, is now four years old, and she nearly died after nearly freezing to death. By the time she was found (by me, her mother, Heather), she was lying motionless in the snow, her little face and lips blue, and looking more dead than alive. When I picked her up in my arms, she was limp and wasn't breathing.
At the hospital, doctors and nurses worked valiantly to save her life, but they didn't offer much in the way of hope for her. They said that she would be brain damaged, and she wouldn't be more than a vegetable; but slowly (but surely), she is starting to "come back", and today was a very big step in her continuing therapy. She has been receiving ongoing intensive physical, occupational, and speech therapies, and today, they had her up at the parallel bars, her legs encased in heavy, steel and leather braces, and she took her first wobbly steps with the aid of a walking frame. She looked up at the therapists and then looked at me, and an earsplitting smile came across her pudgy face.
As you can imagine, all of us--me, Chuck (he's my husband), and the therapists--all cried at the sight of our daughter taking her first tentative steps. Of course, her little brother, our other adopted child, Gage (he was adopted from Guatemala; he is two) was there, too, to witness the event, but he is too little to know of the significance of the situation. All he knows is that his big sister is in a wheeled "thingie" that rolls, and he has accepted that. He knows that she isn't like most little girls, but he still loves her. He knows that she is his big sister, she just needs some help in doing things, and he has accepted this in his little mind. All little Gagie did was look at his big sister, his huge, dark eyes wide with a combination of wonderment and puzzlement.
There will probably be many more days like this, with our daughter standing between two bars, on wobbly braced up legs, her tiny hands holding a wheeled walker, as she works on walking and improving; and there will probably be many bad days where she will cry in frustration or pain, as the therapists continually manipulate and work with stiff muscles, inactive from long periods of dormancy, and try to work them back into functioning again. This is the life that little MacKenzie has now, and it is something that she--and us--has learned to deal with on a daily basis. On weekends, or on holidays, when the therapy department at the local children's hospital isn't open, we work with her, doing the therapy and stretching exercises ourselves, hoping and praying that something will happen to where Mackie can walk or talk, or do anything a normal four-year-old girl should be doing. Of course, it will take a lot of time, but eventually, the old MacKenzie, the old laughing, smiling angel we knew when we first adopted her into our family from China, will emerge, and we will finally have our little Miracle Child back.
(((((Karen))))))
This is a beautiful story, so heartwarming...God Bless Michelle
p.S Forgive me for not keeping in touch sooner, we had a death in the family
Today was a day we thought we would never see. Our daughter took her first steps today.
