For over a year our daughter has been home from Hong Kong. For over a year we have dreaded one thing. And now we have been through that one thing and lived to tell about it. The stomach virus.

Last spring Kaki got Strep Throat. It was the first time she had been sick really since we brought her home a few months earlier. It was awful. She was a raging mess. So, we knew from that experience that when she got the stomach virus it was going to be worse, and it was. We knew that because she is a nonverbal twelve-year-old with intellectual disability. She doesn’t know what to do with herself when she doesn’t feel well and she can’t tell you.

Over the past three months things at our house have been much more peaceful. Kaki’s first year home was just hard. She was a behavioral mess and we were shell-shocked. We got her on a new medication and things really progressed well. She and I were getting along much better and she had not had a meltdown in a month or so. Until Tuesday. She got sick on Tuesday and I will spare you the details of what it’s like to deal with her with the stomach virus, but I will say the mental image that should come to mind is angry monkeys flinging poop at the zoo. She was angry. She didn’t feel good and was very unstable emotionally because she has no idea what to do with her feelings. The magical medication we have been giving her since October was not working. We now know that it has limitations. It can only make behavior better except in extreme circumstances like sickness. Good to know. Unfortunately, this particular virus decided to linger in her body for almost a week! It has been something akin to torture for all involved. But today she is at school and I am cherishing the normalcy again.

We are really praying that this little set back is just that, a little set back. Please pray for her as she begins to feel normal again that we will see the happy Kaki we have seen over the past few months. We really want to see that girl again for her sake and especially for ours.