Born with HIV.
Living daily with HIV and worrying about the stigma of that.
Hard first three years in two living situations.
Foster care.
Separation from her brother.
Seizures.

Then last summer and her vaccine reaction and hospitalization.  Missing her favorite week of camp. Taking a couple months to build up her activity and health again.

Four weeks ago it all went downhill yet again.  She was hospitalized yet again.  She had a horrible headache that once started did not end for even five minutes, nausea, confusion, light and noise sensitivity, unsteadiness in her walking, reflux like symptoms, ringing ears.  Two days of this and she was hospitalized where they ran many tests.  They found nothing.  They did not see a correlation to the events of last summer, even though she hasn't had headaches any other time.  

So they claimed stress and anxiety and sent us home.  Home?!  Where her symptoms did NOT change but in fact grew worse over time.  They didn't call.  Didn't offer suggestions, except to send breathing exercises for anxiety through email.  I emailed constantly.  I researched relentlessly.  I lost many nights of sleep... And still am... I finally found what I thought was "it."  All the symptoms FIT.  And looking back at her hospitalization over the summer, which I kept telling them was related, her same symptoms: headache, confusion, altered state, all ended the day she had a spinal tap.  Maybe coincidence.  But it fit what I found.  At the time we didn't pay that any attention because so much was happening, so many tests were being done.  But that's the day she got better with those symptoms.  Yet they said no.  It couldn't be.  It didn't fit.

They finally decided, with all of my emailing, to do a spinal tap because that was one test they had thought of doing in the hospital but hadn't.  And I was now glad they hadn't, because if they did it would again have been overlooked as the solution.  They scheduled it for this past Thursday.  And on that day... after being on home bound from school because she couldn't leave the house... after missing activities at church and school... all the symptoms she had... headache that never ended for even five minutes the three and half weeks prior, light and noise sensitivity for 3+ weeks, ringing ears for 1+ weeks, cold head, sore back, all gone.  GONE.  Immediately gone.