His mercies are new every morning

Yersterday, Monday, July 13th, we went to the helmet place in Torrance and got an adjustment. That went fine, and they said that her head looks great. As long as her head continues to grow, we will continue with the helmet. Sidebar: daddy saw that traffic on the 405 northbound was terrible, so he thought he would take the senic route back to UCLA. We went west to Redondo beach on surface streets, then just above that, Manhattan beach. Lisa decided we needed to relocate to Manhattan Beach after she saw her first Chocolate/Shoe store. Not Chocolate SHOES, but the best chocolate while you try on the best shoes. I just drove faster. Note to self, my detour added about an hour to our return trip. Lisa said, you could have just stayed in the carpool lane, we would have been fine. Man, I intensely dislike it when she's right. :-) Then, we had a 2:30 appointment with the neurologist. It was very busy there, and service was slow. First we saw this nice lady, she was a "fellow" neurologist. She looked Mia over and tested her reflexes. She answered lots of questions we had. We asked if our prior diagnoses was wrong, when we were told Mia would never have any higher cognitive function. She said, it totally depends on the individual. She said Mia had the most damage in the back half of her brain. Then she gave us a very lay person list of what areas control what functions. The very back of the brain controls ( or interprets) sight. Then, moving toward the front of the brain, speech, legs, eating, and finally, personality. (if any medical professionals are reading this, all mistakes are mine, not hers). The fellow had asked us if Mia could see and if she had a vision test. Mia clearly demonstrated for her that she could, in fact, see and we told the fellow about the diagnosis of being nearsighted when we visited Childrens Hospital, Los Angeles. She said that it is possible for other areas of the brain to take on new roles as a result of brain damaged areas. For example, Mia might be able to see because the part of the brain that controls hearing is doing the role of interpreting sight. (Or, God could have sent spare parts from heaven, and answered our prayers :-) ). They were not as impressed as we are about Mia sign language ability. They said that's good, but being a proud papa, I wanted them to do cartwheels in the halls, yelling that everyone should come see the miracle child with their own eyes.
The fellow neurologist left us to go talk to the doctor in charge, the attending neurologist. And we waited. And waited. And waited. (Now I know what Noah must have felt like). After 40 days and 40 nights, we saw the attending neurologist. He didn't have anything new to add, but I asked him about the possibility of needing a shunt in the future. He said that it was unlikely for her to need one this late in the game, as she hadn't had a problem with pressure in her brain from too much fluid after her stroke, but that we should just keep an eye out for the symptoms of building pressure, headaches, vomiting, unable to look up with her eyes. So that was good news.
This morning, we saw the bum surgeon (Not his official job title) for a check up. He said it looks good, but we forgot to ask for a percentage! (Shoot!). Mommy made an appointment to have Mia's bum dialated next week, while under anesthesia. So far, so good.
We have several hours to kill now, so we going to the beach at Maibu before the Nicu followup appointment this afternoon, then we are coming home. :-)