My beautiful little daughter Ashleigh has faced challenges and difficulties that would make most adults stay curled up in bed in a ball. "Little" to "as we called her has the most positive outlook on life that anyone could want. What follows are some of the highlights of her young determined life. If you read the first article you already know she has some great qualities that were displayed at a young age. Picking up at age 4 she showed us ...
Bravery
Ball Caps For Women
We learned at age 4 Ashleigh's molars were starting to decay. The dentist informed us she was born with no enamel on her teeth and that all her baby molars needed to be capped with stainless steel until her adult teeth grew in. This procedure required she be put to sleep to insert the caps. Ashleigh is very strong mindedand as I have said extremely determined. When she was given the drug to put her to sleep she resisted its effects and remained awake. The dentist was not willing to increase the dose as she was a very small 4 year old. That trip to the dentist was wasted. It took several different visits to various dentists before finding one that simply was able to numb her mouth and insert the caps one at a time over several visits. Ashleigh faced all the pain and dentist visits without complaint. Once the caps were in place she could again eat without it hurting.
Focus on what you have not what you don't have
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Shortly after the caps were in place the family dentist discovered another issue with Ashleigh's teeth. She had no "buds" for the adult teeth. Meaning she would only have the babymolars the rest of her life. The only adult teeth she would have would be the front ones. This news was paired with a prediction on the gap between her front teeth. This gap the dentist felt would always be an issue as the muscle was over grown and at some future date need to be surgically removed. Ashleigh at each little snippet of bad news would just smile and say "At least I've got my steel teeth" or "At least it can be fixed". She chose to only see the good in her life not the bad.
Never Give Up
The next challenge Ashleigh faced started when she was 8 years old. She began complaining of stomach pain to the point of missing school. She then began to loose weight and her body stopped processing fatty foods. She was sent to a children's hospital and a specialist. Ashleigh had vial after vial of blood drawn. Test after painful test preformed. No answers and she still was losing weight. Her complexion became pale, her eyes sunken with dark rings around them. My beautiful little girl was dying right in front of me and no one had a clue as to why. Her mother is an ICU nurse and had asked to doctors to treat her lack of processing fatty foods with an artificial enzyme. Her thoughts were to stabilize Ashleigh's weight and then worry about the why is she sick. All the while these tests were done as an out patient, meaning she was still attending school and doing assignments. She many times went to school right after the tests. Never once wanting to miss school. I missed more work over her tests than she missed school! She was having blood drawn weekly and got so used to it that she just stuck her arm out waiting on the needle. After being sent to yet another hospital and stopping short of exploratory surgery, the doctor finally prescribed the enzyme Ashleigh needed. By this time she had lost 30% of her original weight and was a walking skeleton. The first down side to the medicine was the amount she had to take. As this medicine only replaced what her body was not producing she had to take 3 pills with every meal and 2 with any snack. An 8 year old swallowing pills is rare and Ashleigh had to struggle with this until she learned. Missing a dose resulted in pain as her body could not handle any fatty food on its own. Over the next 4 years Ashleigh took the pills till one day her body began another revolt.
Accept responsibility and make changes
After 4 years of the pills her body flipped around and began putting on weight like a bear going in to hibernation. The enzyme made her body super efficient in digesting and storing fat. This weight gain became an embarrassment for Ashleigh. Being in dance and having to wear tight skimpy costumes she wanted to loose weight. Stopping the pills had no effect other than stopping the weight gain. So the little trooper Ashleigh has become she with her mommy's help learned the Weight Watcher's Point System and convinced the owner of a women's only exercise studio to allow her to join in spite of her young age. The owner graciously agreed and Ashleigh commenced to exercising three days a week as well as keeping track of the points associated with her daily food consumption. Ashleigh exercised after school and soon became an inspiration for the older women in the exercise studio. Ashleigh got her name up on a "wall of fame" week after week as she consistently had great weight loss numbers. In fact several times she was the leader in weekly loss. Ashleigh being something of a social butterfly would talk to and inspire the other women while they waited on a machine to become free for use. As the women began to associate leader board name with the person they would ask for tips and advice from a 12 year old on weight loss. Since the club was a women's only I had to sit outside and wait while Ashleigh exercised. Often as other women left the building I would hear them comment on the success of the "little girl" they had just met. Nothing makes a parent more proud than the over-heard compliment about one of your children.
Lessons on Life - What I Learned From My Daughter Part Two