Hope in an elevator

I meant to post this the other day and have had the busiest week so I'm just now getting around to it. Heidi (one of Landon's nurses) and I took Landon to therapy the other day to sit with Chelli and work on feeding stuff as well as the normal fine motor things that she does with him. She hasn't seen Landon eat since our last swallow study. I can't even remember when that was...last summer maybe?? Anyways, she put him in a booster seat and was demonstrating to me and Heidi how to help him to close his mouth around a spoon. We're trying to work on strengthening the muscles around his mouth by making him work more for his food (by closing his mouth). She also worked on biting with him. I've been that mom that cuts everything in super small bite-sized pieces for Landon since we haven't had him chewing on anything for probably a year now. (That sounds horrible now that I type it on here...we need to work on that more!) Anyways, she was showing us that even if he just attempts to bite down to make a big deal out of it...Landon LOVES praise. :) He chomped on a cracker a few times, not getting much off of it. We were happy he was at least trying.

Therapy went great that day. As we were getting on the hospital elevators to go to the parking garage, we got on the elevator with a teenage girl and her mom. The doors closed and the mom asked me very nonchalantly, "Does he have a vascular malformation?" I was pretty taken aback since not very many people know what that is or how to recognize it. At first I thought maybe she was a doctor, but it turns out that her 17 year old daughter, the one that was standing in front of me, had it as a child! The malformation was along her right cheek. Looking at her, I couldn't even see a glimse of where it was. As we got off the elevator, she told me that they put a shunt (if that's how you spell it) into the vein that was supplying the malformation and it made it go away. I was glad to get to meet her, even if it was only for the 30 second ride in the elevator. It gave me hope to see that her daughter had overcome this thing that has been haunting us for two and a half years. I'm so thankful to her for saying something and sharing her story with us. Heidi and I didn't know what to say when we were getting in the car. I think we were both hoping that one day Landon could be that person for someone else.