Staying Strong

Emily is doing pretty well now.  The flare actually started to get better instead of worse!  I am so grateful for that!  She has had a pain at the top of her sternum this week.  I'm not sure what that is yet.  I was planning on asking her doctor last Tuesday but somehow I managed to forget with the whole myositis flare coming up.  She's pretty much over her cold, and doing really well, actually.  I'm hoping that this newest Prednisone decrease will start to help the swelling come down more and more.  She's still got so much in the belly that makes it hard for her to do all sorts of things. 

Kevin is surviving no thyroid meds for a month.  It's getting a little more difficult day by day, but he's hanging in.  He had his labs drawn Friday, so hopefully his doctor's office will call back (and normally they don't return calls... grrrrr) to say that his hormone levels are at a good enough point to get the radiation pill this week.  That will mean a 3-5 day trip to the hospital for confinement, then a full body scan.  After that he can go back on his meds.  I'm hoping they actually call back this time.  He'd like to get back on with his life, please.

The last bit of news is my dad.  (Dad & Mom are pictured above)  I've been trying to not worry about this because I try hard to only stress about one huge event at a time and well, this didn't fit into the schedule until this week.  He's had angioplasty before.  He's actually had several.  I want to say he had 3 before his double bypass and another 2 after, but to be honest, that was at a time in my life when my little people were not sleeping well, where Emily cried all of the time, and I was so crazy between stress and exhaustion that I literally don't remember several of those years.  (At least now the crying is only for infusions and she sleeps, so I sleep!  I'm VERY serious about sleep.)  Anyway, it's been a few years since we've had to go down this road.  He went from being very depressed and not being able to do much to feeling pretty good.  I can't say he's been running marathons or anything but he's done well for almost 76.  Last week he texted me to tell me that his stress test results weren't great, and that it could be that one of his stents was involved in a recall.  (Holy crap!)  So, I called them tonight.  This has them freaked out enough so they actually went to a lawyer and had a will drawn up along with a living will & power of attorney.  That part freaks me out.  He may drive me absolutely crazy, but he has a wonderful heart and he means well.  He's very smart, very caring.  So, if you all wouldn't mind, please keep us in your thoughts and prayers yet again.  I am very, very grateful to have such a wonderfully caring community on Facebook.  My FB friends & the moms on my groups really have helped me to keep my sanity when I didn't think it was possible.  I cannot even believe the amount of things that we've had go wrong in the past ten months, but with the support of great friends and family, we'll be ok.  Thankfully, I learned what they mean when they say "Let go, Let God".