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Through the Journey We Go!

 Dear friends and family of Seraya! Thanks for keeping up with the story of sweet Seraya Schutten. While it may seem that the upcoming updates will be a bit repetitive because she is on the journey we wanted to give you a small insight into this past week and looking forward.  See an update from B&A:  Each day this week she receives 1 hour of physio, which could include (doing stairs, stretching exercises, walking with a walker, sitting exercises, crawling on all fours and many more).  Seraya receives 1 hour of OT three times a week. They have been focusing on trying to help her to improve, on being more independent in her everyday tasks (eg. getting dressed, brushing teeth, doing zippers) and really trying to encourage her with certain activities, to use her left hand more. This will help to strengthen it, so that hopefully she will be able to use it more regularly.  Seraya is doing well with her therapy sessions, but also seems to get quite frustrated at times as it is a lot of h

Off to Holland Bloorview We Go!

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Good morning! One week ago we were working through the reality of the surgery day! We are so thankful to our Heavenly Father for His goodness towards our sweet Seraya.  Here are a few highlights of some of the timelines from post-surgery: Sunday - Seraya was able to go for rides in the wheelchair. She was doing a lot better with pain on Sunday also but she had to take it pretty easy still.  Monday - She was really good even started to stand on her feet slightly with our help still very weak legs but definitely getting better with movement.  Tuesday - Seraya got a walker from sick kids hospital to try. She did really well we still held onto her as she doesn’t have a lot of endurance. The physio person said she is one of 3 to walk so quickly after her surgery so that was very encouraging to hear Wednesda y - Moved to Holland Bloorview. B&A received a lot of info on how things are going to work. She will receive physio every day and occupational therapy 3 times a week. She will also

Update from the Surgery

 Dear friends and family,  Yesterday was a very big day for Seraya as she went in for surgery at 8:00am sharp. As parents there is a lot of emotions that lead up to this day and yesterday was the day led to leaving it all into the Lord's hands. We are thankful to our Heavenly Father for guiding the hands of the doctors. He is worthy of all the praise!  After the surgery we received a note from Brian and Alaina that read,  "Wanted to give everyone a quick update. We are thankful that all has gone well. The doctor has let us know that she did have lots of spasticity and he cut 50-60% of the nerves causing it. He thinks this will benefit her a lot. Alaina is just in with her now in recovery. All praise be to God!" As a family we are so relieved by this update. How incredible that our God in our weakness and frailty also provides this surgery and was definitely needed for sweet Seraya. We see in the last line of the message that we want to direct all praise to our Heavenly Fa

Seraya's Journey

 Dear Friends and Family of Seraya,  We wanted to take the opportunity to use this as a platform for updating those who are dear to our little Seraya. While Brian and Alaina would love to update, respond to texts, emails or phone calls but the reality is this is a big surgery for our dear Seraya and their focus will be fixated on their family. Please don't be discouraged by a  lack of response and the reason for the blog is to keep everyone in the loop. We don't know the frequency of updates but we will determine that based on the surgery.  The surgery! It is tomorrow and they are off to Toronto Sick Kids Brian and Alaina are entrusting their little girl to the doctors for a surgery. It would be hard to even explain the intricacies of the surgery but essentially Seraya in her challenges of being born has cerebral palsy. The elasticity of her muscles are misfiring with her brain and often operates in a "stretched" state with little elasticity. Essentially as she gets o