Adahlia is 17 days post-transfusion, or a little over half-way until her next one.  Its been so long since I updated readers on her silly ways that I thought I take a moment to share them.

Adahlia has several great passions these days, and pointing out buses and airplanes is one of them.  As we walk or drive, she will spot a bus and exclaim gleefully:  “ooo-ooooo!!” Doesn’t matter if its a school bus, city bus, short bus, or other bus — if its a big people-mover, she’s excited.

Its the same way for airplanes.  She’ll shout out an eager  “oooo-ooo!”  when she spots one and point it emphatically at it until whoever she’s with also registers the airplane.  Whenever she hears a plane or a siren that she can’t see, she points to her ear to let us know she’s hearing something.  She’s also started combining signs — she’ll point to her ear and then make the sign for bird to let us know that she hears a bird singing.

Adahlia also makes conversation:  She’ll also do a combination of signs when sitting with us at the table, adding in a myriad of facial expressions, babbles, grunts, gestures, and shoulder shrugs.  Its fantastic.  When I reply with “oh” or “really?” or “no!”  she’ll nod, or shake her head, and continue ‘talking’.  Its not unlike watching the base coach at a baseball game — they are utterly baffling, seemingly nonsensical, and very amusing, especially because they are so completely absorbed and serious about it.

Today was garbage day.  On garbage day, she’ll hear the big trucks roar up and ask me to lift her onto the counter so she can watch them from the kitchen window.  Up on the third floor, we’re at bird level.  Just the other day, we saw a scrub jay on the gutter less than an arms reach from the window.  Beautiful!

Adahlia adores water.  She’s got a pair of splashers with eyes and a mouth on the toes (each boot is supposed to be a butterfly) and after a good rain (or while its still raining!) we walk from puddle to puddle, stomping.   She remembers where the best puddles are and its impossible to tear her away from them until they’ve been good and splashed.

After her evening bath, I wrap her in her hooded towel that we’ve had since she was a newborn.  Its organic cotton — white with pale green trim.  She used to hate the hood but now she loves it.  She will tuck her chin so no one can see her face and walk out into the living room with her arms holding the towel shut around her.  She looks like a little monk, or ewok.  Then she’ll open her arms and flap them, while holding onto the towel’s edges, so that she has wings.  “Flap! Flap! Flap!  Fly away little birdie!”  I say.  She giggles.

She’s still digs music and bobs her head to the beat when we’re driving, gazing out the windows and well… grooving.  She loves the Mr. Ben and Red Yarn shows we attend almost weekly.  She likes to walk up to grownups she doesn’t know and begin dancing in front of them, bending her knees and bobbing side to side, until they start to dance too.  Then she breaks into a big smile and runs off.

Yes, runs.  She runs now.  She still needs a hand to go up and down steps but she’s off like a shot on level surfaces.

Adahlia likes to feed her stuffed animals and doll.  She’ll hold a water bottle up to their mouths so they can drink, too.  Sometimes, she also wants me to put socks and shoes on her husky puppy, one of her favorite animals.  Dogs remain one of her most favorite creatures — whenever she sees one, she barks “arf! arf!” and points or pats her leg to sign ‘dog.’

She’s got a thing for hats.  She gets excited when she sees a hat she really likes, and she often begs me to wear my wide sunhat around the house.  Her face lights up when I put it on, the way a boy’s face lights up when a girl wears a dress he favors.  She can be something of a tyrant about it — she knows what she wants and if she wants me to wear a hat, or put an otter puppet on my hand and to talk to her through him, well, she’ll warble plaintively until she gets her way.

We still go to playgrounds often, but we also recently found a red plastic baby swing at a local kids consignment shop.  There’s an amazing plum tree in our backyard, with a branch absolutely perfect, simply begging, for a swing.  In fact, it was one of the first things I thought the first time I saw the backyard.  I had planned to make an old-fashioned board and rope deal, but when I saw this, I couldn’t resist.  Its much safer… perfect for her age… and she loves it.

Adahlia’s a super-big helper around the house.  She loves the laundry room and always wants to go with me to wash clothes.  She also loves being carried back up the stairs in the laundry basket, perched like the princess and the pea on top of all the clean clothes.  In the apartment, she’ll help me dump them out onto the floor and after I’ve folded certain items, she’ll go put them in a drawer.

She’s mastered the art of getting into the big old rocking chair, and she likes to pull herself up into it so she can rock back and forth.

Adahlia still breastfeeds, but she also eats better now than she ever did before.  For awhile, I had to try every trick I could think of in order to get her to eat.  I would say, “Eat like a wolf!” and, growling, take a big, exaggerated bite of whatever I was trying to get her to eat.  She would laugh and mimic me.  But it worked.  I also tried everything I could think of to get her to take the blue-green algae supplement.  (Blue-green algae does a great job of removing toxins like heavy metals from the body, and it also helps with blood production.  Additionally, Adahlia ‘tested strongly positive’ for it, meaning that she needs it, and its important to me to give her the supplements she needs when she needs them.)  Nothing could get her to take the algae though — and I discovered why when I smelled it — it’s nasty!  (The manufacturers put it in capsules for a reason.)  Finally, I mixed it into a couple baby spoonfuls of vanillla ice cream.

Eureka!  Adahlia gobbled it up, and a new flavor — Algae Ice Cream — was born.  (Perhaps we’ll see it next at Jeni’s or Salt and Straw?)

Adahlia is still taking several other vitamin supplements, as I am still working off the nutritional analysis we did for her back in the Fall. She is growing well and steadily.  It still seems as though the only real DBA sign she has is the issue with making enough blood.  She is still taking exjade to remove excess iron from transfusions from her system.  Exjade is chalky and she is never eager to take it… but she always does, eventually.

Adahlia is also taking the homeopathic spagyrics for her digestion (they seem to be working) as well as yet another formula of chinese herbs designed specifically for her.  As she has changed over time, the formula has changed.  Gradually, we are needing less and less of the extreme herbs.  Unlike Exjade, Adahlia eagerly takes the homeopathics and the chinese herbs.  Seeing the formula move towards a less drastic, healthier-person formula, builds confidence in me that we will continue to see Adahlia improve until she is better.  Perhaps all better.  Perhaps no longer needing transfusions.

DBA is a very tricky blood disorder.  When I describe it to natural medicine professionals, they all remark on how it sounds like an autoimmune condition.  And I always confess that though biomedicine says no, I secretly agree.  Of course, there is a genetic component to DBA.   But there is a genetic component to most disease.  Having the gene for something doesn’t mean it will be expressed and that you will suffer from it.  And it doesn’t mean that you can’t get it to go away, or heal it, or work with it.

If there is an autoimmune component to DBA, well, that isn’t exactly a great diagnosis — it is very, very hard to turn an autoimmune condition “off” once its been turned “on.”

Yet, it isn’t impossible.

These past few days, I’ve also been doing daily intensive reiki treatments with Adahlia.  She seems to really enjoy it, and they’ve been strong sessions.  I give her a little full-body massage afterwards, too, and she completely relaxes it.  It amuses me greatly.

Adahlia can do this.  She knows how to make red blood cells and she has the vitality and power to make more of them.  To cure herself.   I know it in my bones.

For my part, I am doing absolutely everything I can, from all medical perspectives I know, to assist her in that process.

And in the meantime, I put an otter puppet on my hand and a wide sun hat on my head, and we play!