I believe in Miracles

First of all I love Jamison's smile, but it is sometimes hard to get a genuine smile out of her. That is why I love this picture. Even though she is not looking at the camera, that is her real smile...the smile she wears when she is in her happy place...swinging.

I will back up and give a quick history of Jamison and why I believe in miracles. When she was born we had all kinds of surprises. One being that something was wrong with her eyes. After spending two days thinking she was absolutely perfect in every way, the doctor told us they were bringing in a specialist because they could not get a good look at her eyes. The Opthamologist told us after examining her twice that she was definitely blind in one eye and most likely totally blind. Shock set in! It also brought a rush of a bunch of different doctors to examine her again. After talking to a geneticist, we were told she might also be mentally retarded. A lot to take in in a matter of hours. We did not even know what to do. We were blessed enough to have a great deal of support there with us. After seeing another doctor the next day we discovered that most likely she could see out of one eye. It is not take us long to know that she was not mentally retarded, so we moved on with life...just like normal (at least normal to us.)

We had more doctors appointments than normal, but since she is our first it just became common place. She had a therapist come to our home and work with her biweekly to help her develop properly and adjust to having sight in only one eye. At two months she was diagnosed with glaucoma, which required eye drops in both eyes twice a day to make sure her pressure did not escalate to the point of needing surgery or losing her eyesight in her one good eye. She was a trooper and we started her on the eye drops a two months of age. Later we were told her eyesight was pretty bad, even to the point of being legally blind without glasses. We just rolled with the punches and went forward the best that we knew how.

Here comes the part that never ceases to amaze me. Just under a year ago we took Jamison off her eye drops for the first time in four years. Now, to put that in perspective, glaucoma is not curable, yet her pressures were doing well enough to take her off. We are not sure if she actually has glaucoma now, but the fact that she is doing so well is a little miracle to me. She had an appointment today, and her pressures were up a little, but her optic nerve (which with glaucoma manifests damage) looked totally normal. We will be back in ABQ in a week to see a glaucoma specialist to have a consult, but it is still a miracle to me that she does not have damage or out of control pressures considering where she came from five years ago.

The next little miracle. Today we had her prescription checked, and it improved dramatically once again. Her original was +3.50 (which means little to me because I do not wear glasses) and now it is +.50. Now I am no genius, but I do know that is a huge difference. The doctor said that she basically needed to wear her glasses to protect her eye at school (after all she only has one eye with vision and we do not want to risk damaging that), but at home it is not all the necessary to wear them. This is amazing to me considering how bad her vision used to be.

Jamison teaches me little things all the time, but today she reminded me once again that miracles exist today. Some people might say it is coincidence, but I say it is the blessings of our Heavenly Father!