The Puddles

Madie is still sick.  She was running 102 this morning when she woke up.  Not too surprising since I didn’t wake her up last night to give her medicine.  So far Ben and Ainsley are not sick.  Let’s pray it stays that way.  Madie really wants to go back to school.  She hates staying home.  Of course, she also hates being trapped in her room.  She is only allowed out to go to the bathroom.  We have moved the computer into her room, so she can watch movies and play games during the day if she wishes too.  The doctor thinks that she may have strep throat, which is incredibly scary right now.  Not for Madie but for Ben.  He really, really, really, can’t catch that bug right now.  So if you are thinking of buying stock. . . Purell, Lysol, and Chlorox (or whoever owns those brands) would be good buys right now.  I think that I am buying enough of all of them right now to give those companies a nice profit.

Boy is doing fine.  And that is what he is . . . all boy.  It may be raining outside but I am close to sending him outside to walk up and down the block a few times.  He is so hyper right now.  He had school this morning and the teacher said that he was having trouble focusing. Oh my gosh, she is not kidding!!  Between the weather and the all day visit to the hospital yesterday (the doctor had an emergency and we waited three hours for our appointment) , even I am exhausted.  Ben is probably moving 100 miles an hour out of fear that if he stops he’ll fall asleep.  So . . . I am praying for sunshine and patience just to cover my bases.

The doctor gave Ben an excellent report.  She thinks that he is on a “boatload” of medicine.  (He is on seven meds if you don’t include his vitamins.)  So she took him off lasix yesterday and in a couple of weeks we will work on taking him off of two of his other heart meds that are keeping his blood pressure stable.  She thinks that pain on Sunday was from his coughing fit on Saturday.  It just really bruised him up.  He had all of his steri strips taken off and his stitches (from his chest tubes) removed.  He says that they didn’t hurt at all.  We are getting really good at helping Ben handle his medical procedures. We talk about it the night before and tell him everything that is going to happen.  Then when he gets there at the office, he asks the nurses to show him everything and explain exactly what is going to happen.  And then he insists on watching.  He is stellar . . . if we follow the previously outlined procedures for dealing with it.  Deviate from the norm and he is likely to have problems.

We go back after Christmas to see the doctor again.  We expect continued good news.  The doctors don’t like to look too forward into the future and make predictions so I don’t know what the future holds, but we will take it one visit at a time.  This cardiologist is different from our cardiologist in Nebraska in how she does things so we still don’t know what to expect in the visits to come.