Okay, so just had to share this great video of Noa with her oh-so-cutie cousin Elecktra who came to visit about a week ago. Notice how Noa rubs her arm! There is something so gentle and grown-up about the way she explores other kids... a lot of the time is sort of freaks other kids out, but Elecktra is as patient as one can expect a kid to be, especially when surrounded by the Land of Noa noisy toy collection!
It was at about the time this video that something quick strange began to happen... Noa began to SWEAT! What's the big deal about that, you ask? Well, until now, she didn't sweat at all - yeah, yeah, at first is sounds great, except that sweating is how our body cools down so NOT being able to sweat is a dangerous condition and even more so for a kid who doesn't talk and can't tell you that she is hot. Of course it's easy to tell - if you're looking at her - because she turns bright, bright pink. But if you're not looking (for example when its 90 degrees and she is on a school bus full of kids), it can be a bad scene.
We were told that not being able to sweat is a condition caused by some glitch in which the sweat glands are "turned off" in some way. There is no cure or fix for it, so if you have this condition you just have to stay cool.
SOOOOOO about a week and a half ago, I went to check on the sleeping Noa (something which we do on warm evenings because she tends to get overheated and isn't able to regulate her body temp --- so sometimes she's pretty pink). I looked at her and she looked fine. Then I touched her forehead and it was damp. I felt the back of her neck... also damp. It felt like sweat and I can't tell you how shocking that was. I called Ben and he felt her head and neck and then we were both perplexed.
It seemed so unbelievable to us, that we told ourselves it was some kind of mistake. Maybe she drooled on herself? Or maybe she was still wet from her bath (even though it had been well over an hour). The next night - it happened again. When I mentioned to our sitter, she reported having had the same experience - and like us - thinking she must have been mistaken.
On the flight to Arizona earlier this week, Noa fell asleep with her head on my lap and when she got up the sweat from the back her head left a wet spot on my pants -- since we'd been watching her the whole time, we knew it was the real deal.
So. What does this mean? That those glands suddenly turned on? And how? Or why? Does that happen sometimes? Could the stem cell infusion have contributed to this? We don't know at this point. And so far we've only noticed it happening in her sleep.
It's hard to explain how exciting it is to think that she may be able to sweat. But it indeed BIG stuff!
No comments:
Post a Comment