Because Its been asked time and time again..

Having a special needs child we get the same question asked alot. What exactly is wrong with her? Because if you have met her its sometimes hard to realize she has anything wrong other then she can't walk and has very little verbal skills. So I am gonna give a rundown so my new followers and even my old followers know what exactly are Audriannas disabilities and health problems.

I will start with the biggest one.

1. Audrianna has spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy thats where all 4 limbs are affected and shes also left sided weakness so her left side of her body is weaker then the other. she also has hightone in her legs and has had numerous procedures and surgeries to try and alleviate some of this.

2. She has a right sided cyst on her brain. This can't be removed and even if it could it would'nt fix anything because where the cyst is theres no brain tissue it is completly dead.

3. Schizencephaly: I'm still not quite sure what this is so I will give u wikipedias definition. - Schizencephaly is a rare developmental disorder of brain characterized by abnormal continuity of histologic grey matter tissue extending from the ependyma lining of the cerebral ventricles to the pial surface of the cerebral hemisphere surface. Type I Schizencephaly has a cord of grey mater tissue, either with no fluid cleft or with ventricular or cortical lips closing one end of an abnormal fluid cleft through the hemisphere. Type II Schizencephaly shows a cerebrospinal fluid-filled cleft of varying size and shape extending through the hemisphere from the ependyma centrally to the pia peripherally. Schizencephaly can be distinguished from porencephaly by the fact that in schizencephaly the fluid-filled component, if present, is entirely lined by heterotopic grey matter while a porencephalic cyst is lined mostly by white matter. Schizencephaly is probably a disorder in normal neuron migration during the second trimester of intra-uterine development, when primitive neuron pre-cursors (germinal matrix) migrate from just beneath the ventricular ependyma to the peripheral hemispheres where they form the cortical grey matter. Grey matter contains neurons, white matter does not. Individuals with clefts in both hemispheres, or bilateral clefts, are often developmentally delayed and have delayed speech and language skills and corticospinal dysfunction. Individuals with smaller, unilateral clefts (clefts in one hemisphere) may be weak on one side of the body and may have average or near-average intelligence. Patients with schizencephaly may also have varying degrees of microcephaly, mental retardation, hemiparesis (weakness or paralysis affecting one side of the body), or quadriparesis (weakness or paralysis affecting all four extremities), and may have reduced muscle tone (hypotonia). Most patients have seizures and some may have hydrocephalus. I am pretty sure hers is Type 2 we don't know why she has it

Periventricular Leukomalacia - AKA Peri-what- Periventricular leukomalacia (PVL), or white-matter injury is a form of brain injury characterized by the death of white matter near the cerebral ventricles due to damage and softening of the brain tissue.[1] It can affect fetuses or newborns; premature infants are at the greatest risk of the disorder. Affected individuals generally exhibit motor control problems or other developmental delays, and they often develop cerebral palsy or epilepsy later in life.

When it comes to Audriannas brain one side of her brain is completly damaged, where the other side just the white matter is damaged. White matter is the tissue through which messages pass between different areas of gray matter within the nervous system. Using a computer network as an analogy, the gray matter can be thought of as the actual computers themselves, whereas the white matter represents the network cables connecting the computers together. The white matter is white because of the fatty substance (myelin) that surrounds the nerve fibers (axons). This myelin is found in almost all long nerve fibers, and acts as an electrical insulation. This is important because it allows the messages to pass quickly from place to place.

The brain in general (and especially a child's brain) can adapt to white-matter damage by finding alternative routes that bypass the damaged white-matter areas, and can therefore maintain good connections between the various areas of gray matter.

We also don't know what caused this it is suspected that the chiroid plexxus cyst she had in utero on her brain never went away when they thought it did or that when it went away it left some damage. or that simply her brain never developed properly in the womb.

We were told she would never walk, talk, eat on her own ect and she does most of that sometimes she needs help. Like walking she cant do without a walker or holding onto something. She has come a very very long way in 5 years and she is defintily our miracle child.

Because of the brain damage she has she has seizures hers are absent seizures or partial seizures so she doesn't do the whole epileptic twitching and shaking hers are the silent ones. Its almost like when someone daydreams except Audrianna is not daydreaming and becomes unresponsive if she were to be spacing out and we were to call her name several times and she doesnt answer or respond thats when we know she is in fact having a seizure most of the time her eyes will both deviate to the left. the first seizure she ever had scared the heck outta me She looked like she was watching a ghost complete with the color drainage from her face. Thankfully she hasnt had many seizures this year. Last year alone she had several and even had to be taken by ambulance from her school to he hospital ( those are the days we wonder will she be ok?)

Because of her seizures she is on several medications because one alone doesnt seem to control them. Shes currently on 4 seizure meds.
She is also on melatonin which is a herbal supplement that helps with sleep because well without that I dont think she would ever sleep.

She has food, environmental and animal allergies.- So far these include Seafood,Eggs, Tomatoe product, Birch tree pollen, cats, and dogs.
she also has med allergies so far those are Botulism toxin type A- Yep no botox treatments for her ever, codiene, and morphine so yea kinda sucks after surgery cause she can only have tylenol or morphine we did have fentanyl after her last procedure. because of all these allergies she also gets a dose of benadryl at night. Did I mention shes allergic to mosquitos and may even possibly be allergic to grass pollen.

She developed Cold Induced Asthma after getting RSV when she was a year old.
She only has problems with her Asthma when she gets bad colds. And she always needs her nebulizer treatments when she has a bad cough.

She is Gtube fed because food bores her, She has no interest in food and never feels hungry. Which obviously makes it hard to know when she needs to eat. We feed her three meals a day and offer her a snack in between If she eats then she eats if she doesnt well thats what her feeding tube is for. Right now she eats all of her dinner and sometimes she will eat lunch and she never eats breakfast cause shes full from her overnight feed through her feeding tube.

she can not speak and we are currently in a battle with health insurance to get her a communication device.

She has vision problems and has been diagnosed as legally blind cause of her poor vision.

and she has constipation issues.

She also gets sick pretty easily

I think that pretty much sums up Audrianna for you.