What A Suitcase Means to Them

 For my sweet, sweet Asians, a suitcase means we are going somewhere.

 And who knows where next that somewhere might be?

Last year we only took a short vacation to the coast for a few days. We were kind of busy with surgeries and family and getting ready for Miss Joy. 

When the Asians see the suitcase, they pretty much assume it means one of them is going to the hospital. True, sadly it's true.

Monday, after our mega shopping trip, Joy and I headed over to a building next to the hospital for another sleep study where she would be fitted with a CPAP machine to help her bronchomalacia, the collapsing of her airway, which may be adding to her heart/lung distress.

Even the thrill of 20 stickers doesn't help with the non-glamour of this procedure. 

Don't get me wrong, the technicians were great and very compassionate.

Watching Joy endure on Monday night was one of the hardest things I have done so far. She has been with us exactly six months and her vocabulary is about 50 words, maybe. She (and Joshua too) is compliant and a great patient. She allows it all. Without complaint. I believe part of that is her culture, part growing up in an institution, and some due to her inability to communicate her discomfort. 

During the night, there were several changes made and some brain thumping going on to try to find solutions for Joy. It would have been easier if she could tell us that something hurt her nose, or it didn't fit just right, or she was uncomfortable. 

  

But she didn't.

She just endured.

Which broke my heart.

The new goal?

Helping Joy find her voice.

We made a big step on Tuesday when we went for an evaluation to get regular speech intervention, helping her speed up along the language learning curve.

You see, when you don't have a primary language (at age six), learning English is difficult. Very difficult. All we have to compare to is Joshua who could read, write, and speak Mandarin at an age appropriate level when he arrived in the US. He was practically fluent in English 4 months later. Joy, I think will take years to achieve the same fluency level. We think she had very little language acquisition living in a tri-lingual environment. And no academics.

But goodness she is a bright and eager learner. 

With the biggest smile ever! 

God blessed us with a daughter who smiles from the inside out making the journey with Joy wonderful.

Just wonderful!