Just Laurel

defects and decorations

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Yellow_ribbonTell me more (about SB) Mondays.

 

 

 

How far back can we find cases of spina bifida?  Is it a relatively newer birth defect?  I thought I’d do some investigating.

I was stunned!

Didja know ….

… that in the tomb of King Tut, there was discovered a wooden box with 2 small mummified fetuses?  Some historians believe that young King tutchildren5Tut had no children – but he was certainly old enough to sire children and indeed had a wife.  But the fact is there WERE two fetuses discovered and whether they were Tut’s children or not is beside the point.  The point is … they were there and radiography strongly suggested that one of the children “had a condition known as Sprengel’s deformity, with congenitally high right scapula, spina bifida and scoliosis.” Read more:  http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/tutchildren.htm#ixzz32p467ZkE

A little more google searching gave me some more limited information.  The actual first recorded case of spina bifida was in Arabia in the year 1085 AD.  The name was given to the condition by a Dutchman named Nicolaas Tulgius in the year 1637.  And the final fact I could scrounge up was that a fetus found in 1881 showed that spina bifida occurs in the first month of pregnancy.  (uh … they ‘found’ it?  Too many unanswered questions here!)

So there you have it – a bit of spina bifida trivia.

I feel it more important to share with you some trivia Fox News had today – to recognize it being Memorial Day.

Didja know …

The first Memorial Day was celebrated in 1868 – after the Civil War ended.  It was created as a special day where the graves of those who gave memorial-daytheir lives for their country would be recognized by placing flowers on their graves.  It was the day you were supposed to decorate the graves – hence its original name of Decoration Day.

Now here’s the stunner.

The Fox News correspondent gave us 3 numbers to pick from that was the amount of lives given for our freedom.  They ranged from 300,000 to 1.3 million.  And the answer is …

1.3 million.

So many lives given.  For us.

Please remember those who gave their lives so that we may live freely in the great United States of America.  Count your blessings folks.

Just Laurel

SB Mondays …

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Yellow_ribbonTell me more (about SB) Mondays.

 

 

IMG_20140518_153316921Let’s lay down the basics about Spina Bifida for those of you who are unfamiliar with it.  SB is a defect in the spine that occurs before a mom may even know she’s pregnant!

Jeremiah 1:5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.”

Now think of people who have broken their backs or their necks.  If the break was low on the spine, only the lowest part of the lower limbs is affected.  The higher up on the spine the break is, the more damage is done to the extreme of someone ending up as a quadriplegic.  So just because you “know somebody with SB” – that doesn’t mean you know everyone with SB.  They are all different with different personalities and abilities.  Just like any other person.  Duh!

We had Amanda with us all day on Sunday.  Short story is that she has not been sleeping well lately and it is affecting her health.  (details for another time)  So she looks a little ragged and she was pretty tired, too.  (Plus she needs a haircut – she keeps reminding me – and we’ll have to find time for that too!)  But I thought I’d share the photos I kept snapping of IMG_20140518_161027317IMG_20140518_161039116her asleep at the kitchen table.  That’s Amanda!

She finally perked up when Ted asked her to help him bottle some wine we were making today.  She thought she was something else bottling wine!  She filled the bottles then helped load the gadget that puts the cork in the bottle.  She was quite the corker 🙂

In the end she wanted pancakes for dinner!  By the way – notice her dvd of Frozen?  Her new fave!

So Amanda likes purple (notice her shirt), she likes Frozen, she likes helping her dad, and she likes when mom makes her pancakes.

I could tell you a whole bunch more.  And I could tell you lots of funny stories.  And I could tell you the things that upset me about her and SB.  But I guess we all have kids … And kids with quirks … and stories to tell.

IMG_20140518_180305000IMG_20140518_180308137IMG_20140518_180324336So Amanda is just my kid … and a kid who is her own person … like any other … except that SB dealt her a challenging hand.  The best thing I’ve seen in regards to being dealt this thing called SB?  There is a Facebook page called Take That Spina Bifida! … or TTSB!  Love it!  It’s a closed group but you can ask to join.  But I love this group because they celebrate all the things that SB kids and people CAN do!

So here’s to celebrating the uniqueness in everyone!  Since we were all created on purpose and for a purpose then we’ll just do the best we can.  (And we just may try and kick SB in the pants every once in a while.)

Just Laurel

 

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Galatians 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

 

1 Corinthians 12:12-25 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body.