Thanksgiving

All of us seemed to be going in different directions for Thanksgiving so we had our family Thanksgiving on Monday.  I managed to get a few photos for once.

Nick helping Bradlee model his new cap.

 Grandpa amusing the baby while supper is being prepared.

The girls chatting.

Full tummies make for sleepy boys.

It was a wonderful thing to have the kids around the table again with Bradlee adding his own sweet notes to the gathering.  We visited long after the meal was over and played a few board games before they had to leave for home.  

I love watching the kids knit the family ties together.  I love seeing memories being made.  I love the obvious affection between all of them.  May we be able to do this for many years to come.

Month of Thanksgiving

I'm thankful for the spouses my sons have chosen.  They are both loving, caring young ladies and meld well with our family.  I have long known that both of my sons have quirks to their natures and have spent time in prayer that they'd meet the girl who is unique for them.  Nick needs someone strong enough to help lovingly direct his fierce sense of loyalty and duty while Cameron's high level of intensity requires someone naturally calm and even-tempered.  Jenn and Serena are everything I could have hoped for my boys.

And then there's little Bradlee!  We get to see him often and delight in watching him grow.  Something he loves is for a person to get nose to nose and talk with him.  He gets so excited talking, cooing, laughing, blowing raspberries, grabbing your face and ears (and hair ouch!), and kicking his feet.  I was doing this with him yesterday with him on his back and the drool was dripping from his chin down the sides of his jaw from all the raspberries he was blowing.  At one point I told him, "I'm going to kiss your nose, (smack!) and your forehead, (smack!) and your cheek (smack!) and your other cheek, (smack!) but not your chin because it's awash with spit!"  He squealed, grabbed my ear, and blew more raspberries, sending another wave of spit over his chin.

Thankfulness in November

A local homeschooler challenged us to post on our group page once a week about something for which we are thankful.  She went on to say that she was going to post something on her blog once each day of November.  Well, I'm already two days behind so I thought I'd just post twice a week or so.  Maybe.

I can say the typical things about thankfulness for health, job, home, children, etc. but I don't usually do the typical thing.  Today, however, my topic is health.

Richelle and I were in town Monday evening and finished up at the grocery store.  Richelle pushed the cart from the store to the truck as another attack of paralysis came on.  This one was a little worse than the last one (10/23) both in intensity and in type.  There was maybe 20% loss of use but the disturbing thing was the tingling feeling she had as if her thighs had gone partly to sleep.  Up until now, the nerves affected have been the motor nerves - the ones that make your muscles move.  The tingling indicates something going on with the sensory nerves.  However, the herxheimer reaction typically occurs at two days and at four weeks after starting treatment and Monday was four and a half weeks.  Was it a coincidence or the cause?  I don't know.

We discussed this new development on the way home and Richelle expressed her thankfulness for the paralysis because who knew how long she'd have gone without treatment if she hadn't had that first attack back in September.

I echo her thankfulness.  There's a lot of speculation out there that Lyme is the true reason behind so many nebulous conditions such as fibromyalgia, and chronic fatigue syndrome.  So thankful we didn't have to travel into that fog of uncertainty.  The road we're traveling isn't all roses and singing birds but at least we know what we're dealing with instead of simply treating symptoms.

I will add my deep gratitude for a sister who thinks outside the box and has given us several hours of her precious time in advise, encouragement, and treatment and for an excellent chiropractor who also thinks outside the box and attended a conference on Lyme disease last July as part of his continuing education this year.

Art

Richelle attended a six-hour drawing workshop Monday through our homeschool group.  She loves to draw, sketch, and paint so I jumped at the chance to get her lessons from two accomplished artists from Portland.  The parents were required to attend the class as well so we could learn the techniques and help the students as part of our daily schooling.  I will spare you my pictures.

Richelle's "before" picture.  We were to draw a face and a hand.  You can see the original flat hand Richelle drew and sort of erased.  After a lesson on perspective, she drew the other one.

This is Richelle's "after" picture.   This is what she did in the 30 - 45 minutes they were given.  She'd originally sketched in "puppy ears" but used a 6B pencil (very soft lead) that doesn't erase all that well and you can see shadows of that.

I'll not scare you with either my "before" or "after" pictures.  I know what looks good and what needs to be done but I have a difficult time doing it.  Besides, I'd rather make someone laugh through my written word than from looking at my sad attempts at art!

Who needs a repairman?

My dishwasher kept making more and more noise a couple of weeks ago and last week it groaned so loudly that I had to see what was wrong.

Actually, I asked Himself to see if he could figure things out and he took a hands-off approach.  You see, he's gotten to know me quite well over the past 28 years.  He understands that if he promises to do the job he'll feel pressured to get it done even when he's dog tired from work.  (Me nag??  Never!)  He also knows that I'm mechanically minded enough to take something apart, see what doesn't work, fix it, and put it back together.  He's also aware that I hate leaving a job in pieces and will do whatever to finish it.  Plus, my appreciation of the convenience of a non-human dishwasher is often and emphatically made known to all and sundry.

So Himself knew it'd get fixed more quickly if he left it to me.  Himself was right.

A couple of hours more or less at the computer produced an exploded diagram of my model dishwasher, a site where I could order parts with pictures to identify them, and a forum of what others had found and done when their dishwashers started sounding like balky teenagers.  Six trips to Mike's toolbox finally produced the right size socket wrench and torx driver and I took it apart.  Sure enough, the upper pump was broken and one of the plastic pieces was being ground up so I ordered a new pump and two gaskets.  They came yesterday afternoon and I put everything back together today.  It works just fine.

$35 and a few hours of my time is a far better deal that calling a repairman.  Plus, he didn't see the two pistachio shells, two screws, one rivet, and what looked like two sewing pins in the bottom of the dishwasher.  (They'd been down there so long they were pretty rusted out and I only spent the two seconds from the washer to the garbage trying to identify them)  I know one screw must have come from the upper pump when it came apart and I can see how a couple of pistachio shell halves might have gotten past me but the other screw?  And the rivet??  And how did the sewing pins thingies get past me???

I'm kinda pleased with myself.

Richelle

I took Richelle to our fantastic chiropractor yesterday.  He's far more than a just a "bone-cracker" but also uses supplements, homeopathic remedies, and applied kinesiology.  He strongly urged me to have Richelle tested through IgeneX or Spirostate for a complete workup of all the bacteria, viruses, spirochetes, etc. (also known as co-infections) that might be in her system.  The run-of-the-mill tests done in your average Lyme illiterate labs don't test for those (and you have a better percentage of accuracy by flipping a coin if the lab uses the ELISA test).  But at about $650 for the battery of tests, I'm going to have to see if insurance will pay for it.

In the meanwhile, she is taking several supplements known to be beneficial with Lyme disease and will soon start another herbal preparation that my sister recommends.  If you really want to know what they are, drop me a line...I don't want to bore the rest of you!

We think the second bout of paralysis was a herxheimer ("die-off") reaction to the doxycyline she's taking.  With Lyme, it's typical to get a herx reaction two days and as well as four weeks after starting antibiotics and her second episode was at the two day mark.

Other than hating to give up sweets because of long-ish term antibiotics, annoyed at watching her gluten intake because of what Lyme typically does to the gut, and detesting the amount of water she has to drink to wash everything down, she's doing well.  She had a short bout of "why me" but when I pointed out that at least it's invisible to the public unlike her brother's Bell's palsy six years ago, she pulled herself out of it.

Lyme also causes increased fatigue and we came to an agreement:  As long as her bedroom light is off and she's going to sleep by 9:30pm, I'll let her sleep herself out instead of bouncing her out of bed at the usual 6:00am.  It means a change in our school schedule but we'll figure it out.

That pesky tick

Richelle's test results for Lyme's disease came back negative.

I wasn't satisfied because I know of two people who tested negative and by the time they finally did test positive after 20-30 years, their health had been permanently broken.  Both are ladies (is that a common factor?); one in the mid-west and confined to a wheelchair due to paralysis (yikes!) and the other here on the west coast with permanent damage to internal organs (don't know which ones).  One of my aunts (another woman...) has had ill health for about 25 years and I understand she was diagnosed with Lyme's but I'm not certain if she's actually tested positive or if they've just come to that conclusion.

So.

I asked the nurse who gave me the results if the doctor would be willing to write a full prescription even with a negative result and she promised to memo the request to him.  Then I talked with two of my sisters who are in the medical field and they both strongly encouraged me to go with my instincts.

I was all geared up for a (polite) fight for the antibiotics armed with information from my sisters...and the nurse called the next day to tell me the prescription had been called in to the pharmacy and I could pick it up at my convenience.

I'd been gearing myself up from the beginning;  Would he order a blood test or will I have to fight for it?  If it came back negative would he write the prescription or would I have to fight for it?  For whatever reason, the most I had to do was politely ask if the doctor would be amenable to treating Richelle as if the tests had come back positive.

Now she's taking 100mg of doxycycline twice a day for twenty-one days. One of my sisters (a nurse practitioner) is also getting me an herbal preparation that, in her estimation, gets what the antibiotic doesn't.

She feels normal but had some paralysis in her ankle Wednesday morning and her knee went numb during Bible study that evening.  SO glad she's on meds!  Damage done by that bacteria is irreversible.

Quite a saga.