Challenges and Blessings

2012 appears to be a very challenging year for us but so far, all signs show that no matter what happens, everything will work out somehow.

Janina has been attending speech therapy classes especially since she’s very much delayed on this aspect. The pediatrician also told us that she appears to have verbal apraxia.  According to www.apraxia-kids.org, Childhood Apraxia of Speech is a motor speech disorder. For reasons not yet fully understood, children with apraxia of speech have great difficulty planning and producing the precise, highly refined and specific series of movements of the tongue, lips, jaw and palate that are necessary for intelligible speech. The root word "praxis" means planned movement. To some degree or another, a child with the diagnosis of apraxia of speech has difficulty programming and planning speech movements. Apraxia of speech is a specific speech disorder.

One of the challenging aspects of her attending speech therapy is actually the cost as a one hour session costs PhP 700.00 or approximately $16.00.  We meet the therapist twice a week so that’s roughly around P5,600.00 or $127.00 a month. On top of that, her big brother will be going to the big school by next school year and because we value quality education, we opted for a school whose tuition fee does not exactly cost peanuts.  So far, we’ve been able to make ends meet and I know that with His grace, we will survive the year. 

Inspite of these challenges, we have so much to be thankful for.  When Janina was born, she was diagnosed with PDA and ASD.  Simply put, the doctors found that her heart had a hole which they hoped would eventually close by itself.  Recently, the pediatrician noticed that Kuya’s chest seemed to be getting bigger, somewhat like that of a pigeon’s and she also noticed he had a heart murmur.  So we brought the two to the cardiologist (especially since it was time for Janina to have a follow up check-up).  The doctor recommended that they both get an ECG as well as a 2D Echo.  Upon hearing those words, my mind starts computing costs once again particularly because we  were advised that these would not be covered by the health insurance because they fall under congenital conditions.  But again, we tell ourselves that the most important thing is still the health of our kids and we go on with the procedures for both. 

When the ECG was done, the pedia said that everything seemed to be okay (breath of relief) but that she wanted to have the 2D Echo done just to be sure.  Today, we had the 2D echo done for both and amazingly, both of them have been issued with a clean bill of heart-health!  Praise God!!!  I’ve been praying and praying over this and I’m so glad that our prayers were answered.  My heart and my mind tell me that our answered prayers are all with the help of Mama Mary.  Maybe it’s because I am now reading the third installment of Mama Mary and Her Children by Fr. James B. Reuter, or maybe because while we were waiting for our turn to have the 2D echo, who talked to me about Mama Mary, the Bible and all the conversions he heard about. 

Yes indeed, it’s another Mama Mary miracle for me and I’m sure that there will be more to come :)