This picture of our sweet girl was one of the last ones taken of her the week before we headed to Iowa last May. During that visit with Dr. Menezes she began wearing a collar and then moved on to an Aspen and then her Minerva brace. I knew the day our friend, Christina Adam, of Grace Designs Photography took her picture it would be one of the last times I might see her small white throat and neck in pictures for a very long time.
Someone suggested I enter this picture that has been round the world thousands of times on Team Danica's blog and on hundreds of prayer cards on refrigerators and bulletin boards all over the country into the Parents Magazine cover photo contest. Could you please link here, vote for her and then share with all your friends and family asking them to vote too? I have been praying for an opportunity on a larger scale to share about Danica's story and raise Chiari awareneess. I wish I had heard of Chiari and some of the symptoms before that day they called me and said they found it on her MRI. I wish I had known NOT to believe them when the local neurosurgeon said the finding was "unrelated" to Danica's many neurological and physical manifestations of Chiari. I wish I knew the questions to ask before we rushed into Danica's first decompression when we finally found a surgeon who at least understood and believed her slumping brain was definitely partly to blame for all her pain and disability. I wish we had known that strange look in Danica's eye in some of her baby pictures was a sign of bone malformation. I wish there had been an article or a news story or something in the many childhood health books I read to clue me in. Now that we are moving past crisis I will be devoting as much time and energy as possible to raise awareness and funds for research. Please help by voting for our little miracle girl, Danica Jean!
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