Great News – Day 89

 

For those that did not see the Facebook post, Katie’s biopsy test results came back clean, NO Cancer, so back to plan A.  Katie has returned to LA today and Janie will go there for the surgery in a week.  On Wednesday, November 17th, they will remove the bone tumor from her femur, perform a bone graph to fill in the missing bone and then add a steel strengthening apparatus.  The surgery should be less than four hours with a two-night stay in the hospital.  Aside from the pain, the bigger issue will be the long recovery time (a couple of months) before she can put her full weight on that leg. Our prayer is for a successful and uneventful surgery, a pain-free recovery and that Katie will be able to join the family in Salt Lake for Thanksgiving!

Carly is continuing to progress.  She works with great determination in her rehab sessions each week.  While Carly’s daily progress is very slow and sometimes hard to discern, when you reflect back, you can notice the changes.  Her speech is constantly improving and more importantly, she is initiating speech on her own a lot more.  Speech Therapy is also where they are working on memory issues. Now that she is much more verbal, we see there are gaps in her short term memory and retrieval skills. These should continue to improve.  In Occupational Therapy, she baked a cake on her own following directions with very little assistance.   She also helped Katie and Abi make the infamous German Chocolate birthday cake for Carl’s upcoming birthday on Monday.

Last week was the National Ability Center Horse Show.  Carly and Abi both entered and won ribbons.  Abi won first place in her class taking home the blue ribbon.  Carly won third place taking home a yellow ribbon.  Hadley, who is Carly’s Speech Therapist took time out of her busy schedule to drive up to Park City for the horse show.  It was great having her there to support Carly.  Hadley has really connected with Carly and invested a lot of time preparing for their sessions and getting to know the entire Mimstribe.  We went out for brunch after the horse show and really enjoyed our time together.

Without a doubt, our time with the horses has been the highlight of the girls week.  Abi has really excelled in her riding skills.  The connection that both Carly and Abi have with the horses is amazing.  Just the thought of going to the barn gets Carly noticeably excited.  You can quickly see the benefits of the horse therapy in Carly’s balance, better control of her left arm and sense of accomplishment in riding.

Abi, Hadley and Carly at brunch

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