Dreams

If I could live anywhere 'I' wanted, this is pretty close to what I would choose.
The road at the bottom is a road we pass every time we go to my mother's house in Blessing.
All the veggies came from her garden this year. And...she has chickens too. This is one of her chickens and fresh eggs. So I guess I am really a farm girl at heart. In my dream this is the house
that should be at the end of the road. This house would be somewhere that
has true seasons...the Carolina's, Tennessee or perhaps Kentucky:)

It is ok to dream as long as we do not become discontent with what we have.

Tuesday

Today was a day for doctor visits. We left home at 7:40 this morning.
Nick drove us to the Fannin South Park and Ride.
We paid three dollars for all day parking and then bought 5 tickets for the Metro which came to $6.25 for a total of $9.25 which is cheaper than the valet at the clinical building. You have to walk a little but it is fun and the kiddos always enjoy it. Isaiah loves the 'train with the dumbbell' (that's dumbbell not dumb bell)
We arrived at the West Tower took the elevator up to the third floor walked across the sky bridge to get to the other elevator to take us up to the 11th floor. Barely signed our name and they called us back. I met a lady today whose 9 year old son was born with only one kidney and where the other kidney should have been was just a huge glob of cysts. They got a great check up and do not go back for 2 years:) As we suspected Nicks blood pressures are running high again so his medication was increased. We are at 15mg and can go up to 40mg before we have to add another medication. It is also time to take a look at the 'possible aneurysm' again. They are going to try and do something less invasive this time around but we will just have to wait and see. After seeing the doctor we went back down to the 3rd floor for lab work. Then reversed all the previous steps. We stopped in Pearland and ate at Subway, then headed back to Lake Jackson for my appointment. My blood pressures are also running high and I too got an increase on my medications. My iron is down from 78 to 58. This is still in the normal range but if it continues to drop we may have to look at other treatments options:( It was POURING rain in Lake Jackson!!! Of course when we got home the was no evidence of even a drop. Oh well, our time will come. All in all we had a good day and no terrible news. Nick's doctor said 'if anything drastic is going to happen these are the years when is normally does'. Our family seems to never fall into the 'normal' range so maybe this won't be the exception.







^A top reason we are thankful to be able to
recieve care at Texas Children's!

^Nick and Isaiah waitng for the doctor.

^ This is what they do while waiting.

^This car was at the Fannin South lot when we returned.
I wonder if they subscribe or pick one up daily?

Points

This is what Isaiah does with his HEB buddy points.

Assistance

Our Wal-Mart is in the process of remodeling.
I could not find anything I was looking for.
But....I did find the place to go for assistance.
I waited and waited and waited and waited and waited...
No one ever came:(

Grannies

Today would have been my granny's birthday. I have such fond memories of her.
Born Zella Mae Lowery and becoming Zella Mae Peters after she married my pap paw.
She is my dad's mother. She had six living children and around four that did not survive. She named them all with "J's" Jerry, Judy, Janet, Jackie, James, and JoAnn. Jackie is my dad. My parents divorced when I was under 2 so I spent a great deal of time with my paternal grandparents. As I got a bit older she gave me jobs to do. One of those jobs was to wash dishes. If I did it well pap paw would buy me Fruit Loops from the grocery. (They are still my favorite) She held on to my parents divorce papers and I now have them. (She thought ahead that I might some day like to have them) We sang the old hymns together (the same ones I still enjoy today) She always drank Tab or Diet Rite. ( She was severely diabetic, which is what took her) I don't know if my granny was saved or not. I can only hope that I will see her in heaven. For some odd reason I don't think I have much family waiting is that Blessed Land but if I do I would love to see her again. She died a short time before we went home to visit, November 10,1998. We went home for Thanksgiving that year. She was looking forward to our coming. Some of her last words were "my girl's a comin". She was talking about me. Ohhh how we miss those that have gone. Today is that day for me. I loved my Granny!!!

Monday

Ok, at this moment I have nothing else to do. I am literally hiding out from the Kirby salesman that has been at our house haggling with my husband for the past 3 hours (no joke). MSRP of only $2500.00 but he will offer us a great deal today for about $1100.00. Oh sure like I want to spend the next 3 years paying for a vacuum cleaner. We just bought a brand new $400 vacuum (we did not spend $400) so he said he will actually taking that $400 off the MSRP. Reason #1001 God gave women husbands.....haggling with salesmen. UPDATE: it is now after 10pm and they are still talking.............. UPDATE:it is now 11:20 and he is gone.


Anyway, Nicholas is doing well and the Shingles are starting to crust over. This means he is no longer contagious. Victoria is healing quickly. She sees the surgeon on Thursday and we are praying she gets released. If she does, my husband is taking off Friday (since Jaime is off as well) and we are going to celebrate Father's Day together on Friday. The plans are to visit with my in-laws, go to Matagorda beach, then a nice diner and a movie. (Gifts will be in there somewhere as well) There is not time to do all those things between church services on Sunday and Jaime has to work on Saturday so we are hoping for Friday. If she is not released we will just have to roll with the punches. She is not supposed to be out (However we did sneak out to a new park in Angleton today for about 30 minutes. There was no one else there so we felt fairly safe).

Nick got to drive Jaime around for the first time so it made for a fun trip.
That has been our day in a nutshell.

Not for the faint (photos)

Victoria is doing very well. I took her to the
doctor's office today so the nurse could
show me how to change and clean her wound.
NOT HAPPENING!!! I really thought I
was going to be able to do it myself....
until I saw the nurse pull the (shoestring)
out of the hole. I hit the chair and was literally wet
with perspiration. So...needless to say
a nurse will be coming to our house twice
a day until it is healed. For those of you who
are interested below are pictures. On
another note, Jaime has an ultrasound
of the kidneys done today.
PLEASE pray about those results.
We should know something on Monday.

MRSA

My dear friends, most of you are already aware of the details in this post but I wanted to give a bit of information to you all. Wednesday of last week Victoria complained of a mosquito bite. Nothing unusual. Thursday the kids and I went to the beach. By Saturday Victoria's bite was hurting and looked similar to a chicken pox. Sunday she was running a temp a fairly large area under her left arm was red hot and inflamed. I had an appointment scheduled for Monday and did not feel it was good to make her wait until Tuesday to see the doctor so I took her to the Urgent Care Center between church services. The Nurse Practitioner said it was an abscess and more than likely Staph. They swabbed it poked it and started her on two antibiotics. Today (Tuesday) it appeared considerably worse so I took her to see our pediatrician this morning. She in turn sent her over to see the surgeon. Who in turn told us that she actually tested positive for MRSA which is basically a severe staph infection that is resistant to most antibiotics. (Probably caused from bacteria in the water at the beach which got into the mosquito bite). The surgeon recommend a procedure that will be done under general anesthesia in the morning. They will make an incision (probably 3-5 inches) drain out as much infection as they can and then scrape out the rest. (He said he feels like it is very deep) She will be given IV antibiotics and pain medications. The wound will be left open, packed with gauze (to keep it from closing) and a drain tube inserted. The plan is for her to come home tomorrow. They are trying to work with our insurance and see if they can have a nurse come to our home twice a day for wound cleaning. Please pray for us during this time. If insurance refuses I will have to do it myself. I am sure I can but am a bit nervous about it. This all happened VERY quickly and has really caught us by surprise. Thanks to you all for your prayers.

Requested Results

A dear friend had requested my biopsy results so here they are......everything is normal!!!
I had a SBFT (small bowel follow through) yesterday, that lasted about an hour, and will see the doctor on the 18th for those results. Seems like everything is checking out good so far. And....my periods are virtually nonexistent at this time which should start helping with the anemia problem. I have my blood levels checked again on the 24th. Thanks for caring and sorry I have not been consistant with my updates.

Saturday

Isaiah's catch of the day!!!!
Doesn't he look happy?!?