We survived.

Whew. It has been a hard week.

First of all, thanks for all the encouraging posts. It means a lot to us to know that people are thinking of and praying for us.

Our first trip to the doctor was on Monday. Yes, I am saying our first trip.

We had the appointment with the specialist and he was really great. He spoke nearly perfect English and so it was nice not to have the language barrier in the way. Cate was scared, but didn't cry - she just held her arm in front of her face the whole time (this, by the way, was adorable). He basically concluded that the only thing that he noticed was she has slightly lower muscle tone than most children, but that he wasn't really concerned about it. He said he thought that Cate was probably fine but that it was routine to do an MRI and some blood tests at this stage, since she is already almost 17 months and not walking.

We initially expected to have to wait a while for the MRI but he was so nice to us and got us in for that afternoon. The hospital had NO ENGLISH anywhere so he thought he would help us out, and he was free for the day (this, I might mention is a specialist with a 4 month waiting list!). He said he wanted to practice his English. We gratefully accepted his offer to help.

A few hours later we had to give Cate the sedative. It was a horrible experience. It was a liquid medicine, but she closed her mouth and refused to take it and then was screaming at us for making her open her mouth. We ended up spilling half of it and so the nurse didn't know if she would go out with it. They tried giving her more, and Cate just sat there coughing and gagging on it. It was supposed to take anywhere from 30min - 1hr for her to fall asleep. It worked. She fell asleep in the waiting room of the MRI lab. But...it couldn't be so simple. When we tried to put her down on the machine thing she started to stir. So we had to wait for another hour. This time when we put her down she woke up completely! ahhh. So the doctor said she had to have more of the sedative. We gave her more and this time she puked half of it up. Did I mention this was a hard day? Long story short, we had to reschedule the MRI for Friday, because after the third try she woke up AGAIN. So there she was, 2.5 doses of sedative, very upset and we still had to have a blood test done. We were at the hospital for almost 8 hours. Cate finally fell asleep in the taxi on the way home and slept for the next 4 hours.

It was so hard for us knowing that we had to go back there in just a few days. Our poor little love was so upset.

Yesterday we had the second appointment. This time they had to give her the sedative through an iv. Cate was a trooper. She just kept pointing at her hand which was all bandaged up to hold the tube in place. The doctor gave her one dose of the sedative and we just weren't prepared for how she would react. She kinda jolted and made a weird noise and then acted like she was drunk. We were totally freaked out by it, but the doctor assured us it was totally normal. Apparently 30-50 % of kids don't fall asleep from it however and Cate, of course, was one of them. So she had to give her a second type. This time Cate fell asleep in like, 30 seconds and was totally limp. It's such a scary feeling to see her like that. I actually started to cry as they put her on the table and had to leave the room. The MRI went off without a hitch, and 30 minutes later we were headed home.

The tests are complete. We won't have the results until September 17. In the mean time, Cate really seems to be getting stronger. We bought her some sturdy shoes, at the advice of my sister-in-law, and it's helping stabilize her which, in turn, makes her a lot more confident.

Here is a picture I took of her after Monday's appointment. She woke up after 4 hours of a deep sleep and was very hungry. The whole time she ate she leaned her head against the table. It was pretty cute. Notice her bandage from the blood tests. She kept pointing at it and saying "off".

We are on vacation now! I am so thrilled to get away and see more of Korea. We are leaving for Seoul tomorrow morning. Will post pictures when we return!