Maria Update

In August, Maria went to the Muscular Dystrophy clinic at Sanford Children's Hospital. During that consultation it was pointed out to us that Maria stands quite crooked and it appeared that she had one leg significantly longer than the other. (We just thought that leg bent, hip out posture was teenage attitude.) So, they sent us off for x-rays and referred her on to another specialist.

Yesterday, Maria was seen by this specialist. He told us that her legs are the same length, but her right side is so weak that she cannot hold her pelvis level. This throws everything off. She has developed a bit of scoliosis as a result as well. The right side weakness goes back to a stroke-like episode she had almost two years ago. We had an MRI done at that time, but it did not show evidence of a stroke, so we've never known what to call it. This doctor said that sometimes that happens. He actually has another young patient who had the same thing happen.

So, the good news is that strengthening her right side should resolve the issues. The bad news is that her MG (a form of muscular dystrophy) is going to make that difficult to accomplish. She did have intensive therapy through the hospital after that stroke-like episode and perhaps therapy will be recommended again. At that time, her speech as well as use of her right side had been affected, but she worked hard to regain what she had lost. I guess it is hard to get back everything you lost and she does still struggle with these things, especially when she is tired, but she seems to do pretty well.

So, now to keep going forward. She really wanted to join the Seahawks, a community USA Swimming team. I was worried that the energy demands of practice would be too much for her MG. On the other hand, we don't have a Special Olympics swim team so that isn't an option any more. The doc sided with Maria, pointing out that swimming would be excellent exercise to get that right side stronger. So, she started this week. The coach is a special education teacher and seems very willing to try to make this work for Maria. We signed up for the two-week trial and we'll see how it goes.