Wednesday

Tami had her surgery this morning.  We are thankful that the surgery went well.  She had a lot of pain this morning, but a few hours ago I heard that she is resting this afternoon and the pain is more controlled.  She is going to need so much help for the next several weeks!  She won't be able to lift her baby for 6 weeks, which is pretty tough since she is only 5 months old!  At this point if anyone would like to help, maybe drop Renae or me an and email or call us.  I think she is taken care of this week and then it will be a day by day thing for a while.

I have been up and down quite a bit this week, but overall just not very good.  That being said, I have been much worse in the past, so this is doable.  We really struggled with the best path to take, and finally determined that we would put the ball back in JH court.  The doctors discussed it and decided that because of the distance I could just do the spinal tap (lumbar puncture) here first and if the pressure is low we will know that I need the anti-siphoning device and that can be done by the local neurosurgeon.  If the pressure is "normal" or higher, I will probably need to fly out to JH.  I have the tap scheduled for next Tuesday afternoon.  After some persuasion and probably swayed because of the holiday, the doctor has agreed to do the blood patch right after the spinal tap.  This is a good thing!  I have been taking about a week or so to have my spinal cord "seal up" and leakage causes my head to hurt a lot.  The blood patch hopefully will take care of that.  Normally they won't do the blood patch for a couple days and then I always convince myself that just one more day will take care of it.  Hopefully it goes a little better this time!

So there is a lot going on in my family!  It hurts me to see my little sister suffer, but I am very thankful the surgery is completed.  We pray that the cancer was contained and should find out about that in a few days.  The Lord has been faithful and will carry her through.  He has continued to carry me and my family as well.  This hasn't been an easy time but I continue to move forward and pray for courage and strength.  The Lord chastens those He loves, and I think we are feeling well loved!

By the way, my dad seems to be doing better.  He still has periods of time that he fights the dizziness, but he isn't having the episodes where it is totally disabling, for which we are thankful.  Tanner's foot is healing.  Because he was having problems with the strength in his foot, we finally just had him start physical therapy.  They are working on it and gave him exercises which seem to be helping.  So we are thankful for that, too!