Karina's Page

That which does not kill us, strengthens us.

Karina - age 4 mos

Karina - age 2

Karina - age 6

Karina - age 8

Karina - age 9

Karina is the kind of child you just can't help but fall in love with. She is always ready with a hug for everyone. She does have her moments where she is so inattentive or super-sensitive that it drives me up a wall. But usually she is real sweet and loving. She also has a lot of patience for people who don't understand her. I was truly blessed with her.

Karina was diagnosed with Neurofibromatosis - Type 1, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and a language processing disorder when she was only 3. We knew she wasn't speaking properly and was walking funny. We thought she had some sort of ear trouble at first. Luckily the military doctor who examined her on that visit was a reservist who was a regular pediatric neuro-developmentalist with a nearby Children's Hospital.

At first the Hampton School district would not accept the diagnosis of NF and tried to label and place Karina in a class for mentally retarded children. I fought the Hampton schools for over a year to place her in a more challenging special education environment and to have the proper label used in her records. It seemed the only we could get a good education for her was to move. So we moved to York County and have had no trouble since with Karina's Individualized Education Plan (IEP) for her special education needs.

Karina has gone through many Magnetic Resonance Imagery (MRI) scans, ear and eye tests, and other evaluations over the past six years to check the progress of her NF. Luckily the only thing that has been noted is the strange cloudy areas in the language processing centers in her brain and many increasing cafe-au-lait spots. The clouds explain her language based delays, but nobody can explain her habit of looking out the corner of her eyes whenever she concentrates.

Nobody knows what the future holds for Karina, not even the doctors. Her NF may never progress further than it already has or she could start having any of the problems discussed on the NF information page . The nearest worrisome time-frame will occur in a couple years when she starts into puberty.