Can It Be?

Can it be? Claire has now gone 10 whole days without a seizure! She is awake more often and seems to have more energy. It is great!

But, with the good news comes some bad: Claire is not tracking with her eyes any longer, and more than one doctor has suggested that she may have cortical visual impairment. This is where a person's eyes work just fine, but the brain cannot process what the eyes see. We see Claire's opthamologist on Monday, so we will know more then, but in the meantime, we have started to work with the BEGIN program, an early intervention program here in Georgia for visually impaired children.

We are also concerned about Claire's responsiveness to her environment. Certainly, if her vision is impaired, it is going to be harder for her to process the world around her, but even beyond that, we aren't seeing her demonstrate a tremendous amount of interest in engaging with the outside world. Simply put: Claire seems content in her own little world. When she is awake, she stares intently, moves her arms and legs, and makes cooing noises. Sometimes she smiles. Sometimes she even appears to laugh.

I hope I can find a way to tap in to her world and start interacting with her more. We try to sing to her, talk to her, read to her, and show her toys, but we're not sure how well we are able to reach her.