Updates, Updates and More Updates

The rain is still pouring down...

Dad remained in the hospital until last Friday. His heart checked out just fine, but they did find
pneumonia. He will have a follow-up this week just to make sure everything is on track from being in the hospital.

Unfortunately, Mom was admitted last Thursday. We thought at the time that her potassium level was causing her a great deal of confusion, disorientation, etc. Her level was low so they admitted her to administer IV potassium and assess her to make sure they weren't missing anything else. Well...she continued to decline the first night she was inpatient. She could not communicate or function properly. The doctors checked for new stroke evidence due to her history with mini-strokes, but that came back fine. They continued to do testing and found that she is having seizure activity. They are trying to find meds to get them stopped and then they will move on to a maintenance dose. She is really struggling and needs prayer.

So...our appointment in Cincinnati was a little overshadowed by all of this. Thankfully, Neal took the day off and went with me. The docs are very pleased with Bryce's current status. He seems to be doing well with his new laxative program and we won't be making any changes at this point. Taylor is the tough one. We are going to be changing how we do her irrigations so we can find what volume of saline her body can handle - the hope is to move on to higher volume enema without the abdominal pain and vomiting we experienced before. If we can do enemas successfully for about 3 months and keep her clean we will then move on to laxatives again. She will go through another bowel management week at that point. This is probably confusing and who knows if I'm making any sense after the amount of sleep I've had in the past 2 weeks! Please feel free to ask any questions.

Basically, it is baby steps with Taylor's colon. Patience is the lesson here. Have I mentioned that I'm not very patient??!!

I am very thankful that most days she feels good and leads a fairly normal life. Well, it's our normal I guess. We continue to try to have fun and enjoy our summer. I'll try to post pics soon, but no promises.

Thank you all for your continued prayers and words of encouragement. We know the Lord will see us through and we continue to praise Him in the middle of this storm.

More later...