LONDON

As most of you know, Sophia was medivaced to London for an MRI. Here's the story: right around the 4th of July everyone in the family (except Mike) got sick. The kids threw up for 1 day only, no fever, nothing else. I never threw up, but spent an entire weekend in bed; chills, aches, my skin hurt. Anyhow, everyone recovered and about 2 weeks later Sophia began crying because her eyes hurt and she was seeing "fuzzy." It was late at night and she had been at a slumber party the previous night so I thought she was just tired. I sent her to bed without paying much attention to her complaints. The next day she said her eyes still hurt and she was seeing double. Uhh oh. I called the Embassy and made her an appointment for the next day. Long story short, within 3 days we were on a plane to London to rule out encephalitis and some other neurological concerns. Not only was she seeing double, her left pupil was turning towards her nose (technically a convergent strabsimus) and the acute onset of this can be swelling in the brain. Certainly not something to be dealt with in Moldova.

So Sophia and I hopped on the 3:45 AM flight and were off to London for 7 days. We spent a few days "Dr. hopping", had 2 days with no appointments whatsoever, and then ended our trip in a whirlwind of more Dr's appt's. The consensus is that she had some post-viral inflammation of a optical nerve which is causing her "squint" (or strabismus). The eye doctor was able to stop the squint and double vision was a regular pair of adult reading glasses. We went to the nearest drug store in London and Sophia picked up a pair of purple rimmed beauties. As soon as the glasses come off, however, her pupil almost immediately drifts back to her nose. Very strange. She will need to be seen by eye doctors who will monitor her progress. We were told the squint will either go away in a few weeks, a few months or not at all. I guess they like to keep all their bases covered!

As you can see from the picture above, our trip was not all doctor's appointments. Sophia and I went to Rainforest Cafe, nearly every museum in London, we took a bus tour and did lots of back to school shopping. It was great spending some quality alone time with Sophia.