When I grow up...

Jeff made a wonderful stew for dinner tonight.  MaggieMae complimented Jeff on it and told him, "When you grow up, you should be a chef."

What does the President (of the USA) do?

Tonight at dinner we were discussing with the kids why we support Mitt Romney for President (more on that later).  MaggieMae asked a follow up questions, "Since the President's job is to protect us, does that mean that his job is to tell Captain Righteousness (think Captain Kangaroo crossed with Green Lantern that appears monthly during Sunday School to teach the children about choosing the right) to get all the bad guys?".   Sigh, if only it were that easy Maggie.  Of course my initial reaction (besides laughing) was isn't that a conflict of what a lot of people interpret of "separation of church and state", probably violates many defense contract laws, civil liberties groups, etc.

Potty training twins is more than 2 times the fun!

Our kids are mildly interested in potty training.  We are leaving for a three week vacation soon, so I have no desire to push them in this area.  I am politely supporting them and letting them sit on the potty when they want or if I happen to notice them looking like they need to go.  Rosi is not as successful as William in this area.  She seems to be enjoying he opportunity to sit with mom in the bathroom and have a chat, read a story, or just enjoy a gentle breeze on her backside.  She has an unusual stance when on the toilet.  She has unusual flexibility for a 2 year old and can do sideways splits with her legs.  This is even more comical when she is sitting on the potty, with her "splits" posture pushing her feet against the two sidewalls in that bathroom.  She will occasionally throw in her arms to make it look like she is in the trash compactor of Star Wars.  Well, she is sitting in this normal position for her and she looks down at the water (a typical past time in this position) when she takes her hand and points down.  I am thinking, "well, I did not notice she did any 'business' " but I take a look.  That is when I notice she is dipping her one finger into the water.  I ease my mind by reminding myself that it is a clean toilet that even has the bleach tablets in it.  It is about this time that I see her bring her finger up to her face and stick it in her mouth.  


"Water!", she tells me.  

Vertigo....

I thought we had had enough excitement for our summer, but last Tuesday I had to call Jeff home from work.  I was not feeling good (at first I thought it was the Mango I was sharing with the kids, just because it was a new thing for us) and lay down for a few minutes.  After 10 minutes of the room spinning I called Jeff at work.  We decided to give it 15 more minutes in which I did not improve.  Jeff graciously took a sick day and came home to rescue me.  Clutching my head, I struggled to find the hallway.  Jeff held my free hand and walked me upstairs to our room to lay down.  I added my second hand to my desperate attempt to keep my head still, yet the room continued to spin.  This went on for about 4 more hours.  The next day Jeff stayed home to drive me to the doctor.  The spinning was much less, but after sitting on the toilet and having to brace myself between the two walls while still experiencing a roller coaster affect, I knew getting behind the wheel of our car was not a good idea.

Doctor asked me tons of questions mostly linked to other conditions (high blood pressure, diabetes, violent throwing up, etc) which all the answers were no.  He diagnosed me with simple "benign vertigo".  He said that it is probably a virus, etc in my inner ear that is causing this.  Usually people don't get it more than once in a lifetime unless there is an underlying cause (tumor, diabetes, high blood pressure, etc), hence all the previous questions.  Just as a side note, I have had vertigo at least two other times, but now close to this "severe".

He told me that there were three things I needed to do:

1. Drink lots of fluid
2. take Rx - Antivert
3. Get rest

When he mentioned the 3rd one, I asked him to elaborate what he meant.  He seemed befuddled by the question and said, "Well, you still have to function and you are a mother of 6, so I don't expect you will be in bed all day..."

So we drove home, picked up the Rx, and I went to bed for the rest of the day.  Sort of nice in the laying in bed sense, not good in the spinning room, and my family having to get a long without me sense.  First night I slept 8 hours, next day I took a 2 hour nap.  Second night slept 11 hours, took a two hour nap.  Third night slept 11 hours, took a three hour nap.  Are you seeing a pattern here?  I was getting between 10 and 14 hours of sleep every day.  And with all this bed time you would think I would be rested and alert.  Nope!  All I thought about was taking a nap.  I had to literally drag/guilt myself out of bed each time.  I knew I was spending way too much time sleeping.  By Sunday evening I had enough.  I ended up coming home early from church (leaving my Primary responsibilities to the Presidency) and going straight to bed.  I slept around 3-4 hours on Sunday too.  I stopped my Rx Sunday night and called my doctor Monday morning.  They got back to me later that day to tell me it was OK to stop taking the medicine, but that if the vertigo came back, I would need to come back in before starting on medication again.  It took 18 hours for that medicine to leave my body.  I literally felt a physical difference, emotional difference, as well as an intillecutal difference.  My mind was no longer clouded.  Thinking complete thoughts came easy to me again.  I felt wonderful.  

Now lest you think that I am exaggerating this in the smallest degree (which I am not) I will relate a conversation my husband and I had a few days ago.  I commented how exhausted and fragile I felt when Jeff agreed that it was really tough.  I responded by asking if it was as tough as pregnancies are.  He said it was worse, that when I had rough patches during pregnancy it only lasted a couple of days.  This was almost a week long.  Poor guy!

No tumors!!!!

Good news!!! No tumors found in the PET scan. Andrew is (currently) tumor free. He will have to get CT scans every 3 months for the next year, and every 6 months after that for follow up! What a great way to start the weekend/summer!!!

He will have to do follow ups for probably 5 years to make sure he is tumor free.  I will probably know more after our next visit in three months.

Just for general information, Andrew does currently have two lumps behind his right ear.  The doctor felt that they were simply from his lymph nodes and not a tumor.  Andrew still has them even after a round of antibiotics, so we are watching them for the next two weeks.  If they do not go away and/or they grow in size, then we will be going back in to the Oncologist to have a follow up on that, but it is the doctor's opinion that these are not tumors but something else if they do not resolve away on their own.  At this point he would check Andrew's other lymph nodes, but this does not seem to be a worrisome problem.

Awesome Readers!!!

Our kids do a great job of reading books.  Anna did double the amount of reading for the last quarter that she did the other quarters.  Andrew and JJ both met their goals for the 4th quarter as well.  We had promised them a dinner out, one of their favorite awards to achieve, so we all went to Village Inn (also one of their favorite places to eat).  We had lots of fun, and their behavior is improving when eating out.  We had lots of fun.

I don't feel like I am doing this memory justice, but I am tired and am really feeling the laps at the pool in my upper arms right now, so I am done.

Post PET scan

Andrew is all done with his PET scan.  He took his knew friend "Harpy" a stuffed Harp Seal (ain't we creative on names?) that his wonderful cousins sent with him.  We joked with the nurse that he brought his stuffed "pet" for the PET scan.  They put him under using laughing gas.  It was a little bit different than other times they have seduated him.  I guess I should really be keeping track of which type they use, how he reacts, etc.  Today he chatted with us for a couple of minutes.  I held the mask in place and watched as his eyes went blood shot within about 10 seconds.  The nurses and the anesthesiology made some jokes and then one of the nurses comes over and places her hands on his abdomen.  Two seconds later he was almost gone and she calls the other two over, Andrew starts fighting and tries to get up and then just sags back down onto the table.  She comments that happens often just as they slip off.  I guess it just shows how thick my skin is that I just said, "Huh" and walked off.  Afterward I wondered why I did not get more of a heads up, but no big deal.

It took a couple of hours (an hour or so longer than I thought it would) but they called me back.  When I got back to recovery I was surprised to see how "with it" he was only to realize he was not very with it yet.  We chatted a bit while we waited for him to feel up to dressing.  The nurse went over his "after-care" instructions.  She was telling us how he should go home and lay down, not eat greasy foods, etc.  I chuckled and told her this was the third time in the last month he had been sedated and I knew he wanted to go straight for the cafeteria and have a slice of pepperoni pizza.  She continued to go over how gentle we should be with him.  I continued to smile and tell her that we follow his lead.  She stopped at that point.  We asked them to not give him any anti-nausea medicine (Zofran) as it seemed to precipitate the vomiting last time.  They did not give him any and he did great!

Right now he is just hanging out playing video games.  He did fall asleep on the way home, so next time I need to make him more comfortable and hook up the familiar music faster.  I did not think of that until we were half way home (he was looking a bit sleepy) so I turned on some Reba and off he went!

JJism's

I have a friend who loves to hear stories about JJ.  It always gives here a good giggle.  Here is another one.

Two Sunday's ago JJ stayed in bed until a short while before 9:00 am church.  I woke him up and scooted him along as quickly as I could.  There was no time for breakfast, so I threw some cereal in a bad and grabbed a bottle of water for him.  JJ normally eats his cereal dry, so this isn't much of a change for him.  Usually our older children do not get a snack during Sacrament meeting.  It lasts a little bit longer than an hour.  JJ was enjoying the opportunity to munch away.  The sacrament is passed about 20 minutes into the service.  In our church they bring it around on plates with broken bread and then followed by trays of tiny cups of water.  JJ continued to munch away and when the water was brought.  The young man tried to pass the tray of cups to JJ but he declined holding up his bottle of water and telling him, "I brought my own".  Daddy tried to gently persuade JJ to take the blessed water, JJ being the ever stubborn pragmatist replied, "I have my own water dad!".

current update

Andrew was suppose to get a PET scan this week, but we found two lumps behind his left ear.  The doctor thinks Andrew has an infection and that they are possibly swollen lymph nodes.  He put Andrew on anti-biotics for a week and postponed the PET scan, rescheduling it for next Tuesday.  They needed to put it off if there is a suspected infection because in the scan an infection and tumor would both look the same.  The PET scan measures the rate of (radioactive) metabolizing sugar.  Both tumors and infections consume a lot of calories, so they "look the same" on a scan.

Today our family is fasting that if Andrew has anymore tumors that we will be able to find them and "get them taken care of", however we'd prefer that he not have any more tumors.

Got to run!