Learning to Advocate

This is our new friend, Michael. He is one of the nurses at Vanderbilt and handled Alex's blood draw so beautifully on Thursday. It was both interesting and fun to watch Michael and Alex interact during this office visit. We were called back and Michael looked at Alex and said, hi, what is your name? She told him and he said, nice to meet you, Alex. She said, "nice to meet you too". Then she looked him in the eye and said, "I have rules". He smiled and said, "okay I can do rules, tell me your rules". She showed him the back of her hand and said, "I want you to poke me here not here", pointing at the inside of her elbow. "I sit on my mama's lap and watch a movie and you tell me before you poke and I take a deep breath". He laughed and said, "okay, I can work with that". It was really sweet to watch my five-year-old daughter advocate for herself like that. This is not something we had talked to her about ahead of time and not something I expected from her. This has certainly been a challenging season in her life but it has been really incredible to see how God is working in her little life. She is typically shy when we see new people at the doctor so I was pleasantly surprised. We also found out that Michael and Alex share a birthday so there was an instant bond between them. She said he is the best blood drawer...EVER!! It went exactly according to her rules and she took her deep breath and then the stick and she said, "that didn't hurt one bit"!! We have been thankful for the nurses, doctors, and other precious people God has put in our lives along this journey.

Clinic days are never something any of us really look forward to but we do try to find the positives on those days. Alex says one of her favorite things about doctor days is getting to play with the train set. This particular day brothers, Paul and Boone, joined us and she really enjoyed getting to introduce them to the trains. Boone especially loved pushing all the buttons and Paul was a huge help with his younger brother and sister.

Something else to enjoy about clinic days is playing with these fun light-up toys on the wall. Paul, Alex, and Boone had fun playing with these while we waited for medical records to be printed. The x-ray wall is really fun and they had lots of questions about the different bones. We had fun learning together.