Nearing the 1 year mark!

Posted by: cjwallis on: April 16, 2010

• In: Meredith Wallis
• 4 Comments

It’s been a while since I updated, and a lot of wonderful little things have happened.  Last spring while Meredith was in the coma at UK, Laura Campbell was at home with rotating family members watching a robin feed her baby birds in a next in our backyard.  I don’t remember seeing it last year, but I was told she named one of the babies Robert.  This year we have another robin (or the same one?) who has made a nest and we’re ALL watching it feed the baby birds worms.  None have been named so far, but there’s still time!

We had a family gathering at a state park in West Virginia over spring break and that was a wonderful time of being with cousins we don’t see very often.  And on our way home from the vacation we stopped and adopted a puppy as a surprise for the girls!

Meredith finished doing the Interactive Metronome program (what we called “cowbell”) a few weeks ago.  She had lost all interest in it and wasn’t really gaining from it, so we discontinued it.  But I know it helped her in a lot of areas, particularly her attnetion span and her motor skills. 

Meredith continues to make great progress through tutoring and therapies and from her helpful teachers and classroom buddy, Terri Nichols.  She’s doing 2nd grade level math now, her handwriting is improving and her art working is looking closer to what it was before the illness.  She’s getting horse therapy and aquatic therepy once a week in addition to her OT and PT.  And we hope to be starting vision therapy soon too which will help her gain some coordination. 

In one week we will reach the one year mark of when this all started for Meredith.  Josh and I are going to speak about the blessings of it, through the highs and lows, next week in Sunday School.   So many people in that class and in our church were there along side us through it all.  (And many other friends too who we would welcome to come and worship with us next Sunday!!)  A Jars of Clay song has been playing in my mind this week as I remember where we were a year ago and praise God for where He has brought us:

While we wait for rescue
with our eyes tightly shut
face to the ground using our hands
to cover the fatal cut
though the pain is an ocean
tossing us around, around, around
You have calmed greater waters
higher mountains have come down

I will sing of Your mercy
that leads me through valleys of sorrow
to rivers of joy.”  Alleluia!