Amazing

I know I have been silent for some time now. Silent and amazed! I have spent the past two weeks getting to know a young girl who is full of energy and wellness and life. And I am overwhelmed with gratitude.

I'm not quite sure what I expected the outcome of this surgery to be. To be totally honest, I don't think my thought processes went beyond "Take Shae to Melbourne, support her through surgery preparation and recovery, return to Adelaide and integrate slowly back into the old way of life". But that's not what has happened at all!

After Shae's first week of going to school for two half days, her cardiologist said that we could phase her back into full days - as many as she could comfortably handle. So, I was thinking of sending her on Mon Wed and Fri the following week. After all, there had been tears of separation anxiety, pain anxiety etc. on her half days. Surely three full days would be enough.

Well! You should have seen the little Energiser Bunny go!!!! After a gradual process of realising that not only did she like school, but that she could actually (for the first time) participate fully in all the physical activities engaged in there, she took to full time school like a duck to water! She went every day last week. And has been every day this week. She has engaged in PE classes that she previously spoke of with angst. She has fallen over and skinned her knees twice while engaging in phsical activities with gay abandon. I have watched her throw herself down the slide in the school playground and, feet no sooner having touched the ground at the bottom, race to climb the activity frame in order to repeat the act. Their class went on an excursion to Port Adelaide yesterday to visit the Maritime Museum, the Rail Museum and climb the lighthouse - and last night she whispered to me that she had done lots of walking and "I didn't get puffed out". Oh!!!!!

I had never realised what a difference this operation would make. How remarkable the change would be.

I feel like I am getting to know the real Shae for the very first time. She's gorgeous! And I admire her so much!