Annie had her second MRI two weeks ago.

So many of you prayed for us all day, and I wanted you to see what was going on with us that day while you were praying.

Like her neurosurgeon told us, MRIs will be part of Annie’s life for a long time to come, so this will be just one of many days just like this for Annie.

It was a grueling, gut-wrenching day for us as her parents (you can see it here in hubby’s eyes), but thankfully Annie is quite a trooper.

The most difficult part for Annie was the not eating. We kept her distracted as best we could, but doggone it, she wasn’t allowed to eat after midnight the night before and was HUNGRY by the time her appointment rolled around.

Note to scheduling department: For future reference, please schedule MRIs for toddlers early in the morning and not NOON. Thank you so much…

I have to say, the staff at Children’s Hospital in Dallas knows their stuff. They were SO good at dealing with a small child, and our experience here was NIGHT AND DAY different, in a good way, from our experience with her first MRI here in town.

They began by getting all of Annie’s vital signs.



They were SO GOOD, they gave Annie an IV without her even knowing it, and within seconds she was out.

It was difficult for me to see her, much less take pictures of her like this, but I wanted to be able to show KB exactly what Annie had gone through this day since she couldn’t be there with us.

Then they wheeled Annie away and for one hour we sat and tried not to throw up or rip our hair out by the roots as we aged ten years waiting for them to bring her back.

It was…excruciating.

Thank goodness for Scrabble on my cell phone and Poker on Hubby’s…..its a good distraction.

Finally, after an eternity, they brought my baby back to where we were not-so-patiently waiting.

She was groggy, but not too groggy to find her thumb.

We let her sleep for a little while.

Sweet angel.

The nurse decided it was time to wake Annie up, and gave her a bag of crackers for her empty tummy. She was a little disoriented at first…

…but not too disoriented to know that you say ‘cheese’ when a camera is present.

We had to leave immediately to walk the 17.2 miles from the MRI wing to the neurosurgeon’s office in some other part of the hospital. Thankfully we brought the stroller because that hospital is a small city.
Annie ate powdered sugar donuts that Aunt Dinah had sent with us.

It wasn’t long before she was her sassy self again.

You already know how our appointment with the surgeon went, and I didn’t take any pictures there.

Our very hungry and exhausted family stopped at Pei Wei on the way home…..none of us had eaten since the night before. Well, except for those couple of donuts Annie had….

Then Annie kept us laughing the whole way home. Somehow, she knew we needed a good laugh.

Ironic, isn’t it? She, the patient, cheered the parents up.

And in ninety days we’ll do it all again…

And Annie will once again be a trooper, and she’ll laugh, and somehow make it fun.

And her parents will survive.