Therapy | Lessons from my daughter

Today was the day!

Emily’s first cheer competition!

She woke-up at 1am feeling nervous and wanting her phone so she could listen to music!

I truly don’t know if she slept again but at 6:30am when I went in to wake her up, she was awake!

Before her performance, I went out back to see how Emily was doing, one of the other mom told me how Emily gave an interview to our local newspaper. Apparently, when the mom told Emily she did good on the interview, Emily replied; “Well, that wasn’t my first time!” LOL, that’s my girl!

The videographer (Jonathan) was a little shaky but here is our team’s performance! Keep your eyes on Emily at the end of the video, she wipes her eyes, I think the emotions of what they just did in from of a big crowd got to her. 🙂

Emily’s team’s performance on YouTube

And here are some pictures, these smiles tell the story better than I can.

We got there around 8:30am, left for lunch than returned. Awards were at 4:30ish

Emily got an award!

Look at her and B. holding their banner!

Our girls were so happy!

Thank you again to our coaches (Megan, Chloe and Celine) and to Julie who’s always there to fill in and help with the routine.

Thank you Cheer Olympia

Thank you for creating this opportunity for our girls.

One of our girl has epilepsy. She was nervous this morning and by the time she got to the coliseum, she already had 2 seizures and had another one while waiting to perform. Her mom calls them mild seizures. I don’t know how familiar you are with seizures but in my mind (someone who doesn’t know much about seizures), I can’t fathom going to compete as part of a cheer team after having 3 small seizures. That’s dedication! This girl, is one of my heroes!
Another one of our girl had 2 years of physio therapy before she could walk.
This is also true of Emily, doctors and therapists agreed she would never walk. She started to walk independently just before she turned 4.
One of our girl who is full of spirit, really flirty and sassy, needs one of our coach to hold her during the performance but this doesn’t stop her. She is a huge part of this team.
Another girl, who’s becoming a real friend to Emily, has attended her younger sister’s cheer competition for years… Now, her sister is there, cheering for her. She loves cheer so much that she joined 2 teams! How’s that for dedication!
- Emily and B cheered super loud for her when she took the floor with her other team. The smile on her face was awesome when she saw her teammates cheer for her.

Our girls are amazing and I am so glad they have found their cheer club!

Next competition is in 2 weeks and it’s away! Our hotel room is booked and we are getting excited for a road trip with our team!

Is this how the hockey mom and other cheer parents feel? It’s like we’ve entered an alternate dimension where our girls are integral parts of a team? Where they contribute, chat, share meals and now go on a road trip?!?!

My eyes are tearing up, just writing this, which makes it hard to type!

The motherhood thing has really turned me into a crying mess.

We have a facebook page: If you want short updates and timely pictures of the little things that are happening in our life, please like and follow Lessons from my daughter’s page.

You can also find me on Twitter at @plebrass

I am on Pinterest too: Lessons from my Daughter

Find more about about Cri du Chat syndrome at 5p- Society

Surgeries

Nothing recent, lucky for us but over the years, Emily had 3 surgeries.

Two for her eyes and one to control her drooling.

Emily has beautiful eyes

When Emily was little, she had a lazy eye (strabismus)

We patched her strong eye in the hope to reinforce her weak eye for aesthetic of course but mostly because Emily’s brain only uses one eye at the time. We were worried her brain would eventually stop using her right eye which could have meant that eventually Emily could lose her eye.

You are closing one of your eyes right now and slowly realizing that Emily doesn’t have 3D vision.

This no 3D vision combined with her mobility issues will forever create challenges for Emily as a change in color or texture on the floor could be a step. Whenever we are somewhere new, you can see Emily moving slowly and feeling ahead with her foot to confirm if it’s flat or if it is a step.

Back to her surgeries, the patch didn’t do much for her other than upset her so the surgeries were mentioned.

After asking for a second that said to put glasses on her, we got a third opinion, who said the surgery would be better so we agreed on the eye surgery.

Emily had her first eye surgery in Montreal when she was 4. We knew when we went in for her first surgery that she would need a second one. The first one loosen up some eye muscles while the second one tightened the other muscles. The surgeries were on both of her eyes and corrected the strabismus and her “V” syndrome (where she used mostly the top of her eyes)

Emily recovered nicely from the first surgery and a couple of years later, she had her second surgery in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She recovered really nicely once again and today, her eyes are straight unless she’s exhausted.

And against all odds, I believe that sometimes, she uses both of her eyes together, this is mostly for table work and the black 3d glasses that were only at Disney awhile back but are now in theaters everywhere seem to also work for Emily.

This takes us to Emily’s third surgery when she was 7 or 8.

By that time, Emily was a drool machine. She always struggled with drooling and it got worst as she got older. In first and second grade, other kids react to that one kid who is always wet, wiped her mouth on her clothes and have a chin that is always irritated. Emily started to be self-conscious so we consulted and decided to go with another surgery.

Emily had her tonsils removed, some of her saliva ducts relocated lower in her throat and some of her saliva glands in her mouth burned.

She, once again, recovered quickly! She is quite a trooper!

Look at my girl, no more drooling and gorgeous eyes!

Surgeries are not for everybody and we didn’t chose to go that way easily. We looked at options and weighted the pros and cons. In our case, these were worth it!

A to Z Challenge 2016 – Lessons from my Daughter (PR) #800

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NEW!!! We have a facebook page: If you want short updates and timely pictures of the little things that are happening in our life, please like and follow Lessons from my daughter‘s page.

You can also find me on Twitter at @plebrass

I am on Pinterest too: Lessons from my Daughter

I just discovered StumbleUpon but I have no clue what to do there: I believe you can find me under plebrass but I need to spend quality time there.

Find more about about Cri du Chat syndrome at 5p- Society

Emily has a her own page in the family stories , you can find it here: Emily