Vacation Roller-Coaster

I think I'll start at the beginning. This will be a pretty long post, because there is so much to cover.

Just before we left for Utah, we found out that Brandon's niece, in Jacksonville, had been having seizures for about a week. They admitted her into the hospital to run some tests. At first they thought she had a tumor in her brain, but it turned out to be that part of her frontal lobe is malformed. This is something that happened in utero and they don't know the cause. They released her from the hospital very quickly, which I don't think was a good idea, and gave her a prescription that was supposed to stop the seizures. It didn't work. In fact it made her whole personality change. She is normally the sweetest little 7-year old and is affectionate and loving. This medicine caused her to throw tantrums, kicking and screaming, for about 10 minutes at a time. It made her say hateful things to her father (she is a total daddy's girl, which makes this so unusual for her) and flip people off. She became a completely different person. My sister-in-law called the doctor's office and they added another prescription that actually made a difference. She is pretty much back to her normal self and the seizures have gotten less severe, but they are still coming frequently. She has now taken to hiding when she senses that she is about to seize, because she is actually embarrassed. It just breaks my heart hearing about it. They wound up having the bishopric come over to give her a blessing, which made them all feel better. A couple of days ago, my sister-in-law was online doing some research and came across the website for the Miami Children's Hospital. She clicked on the link to email them and proceeded to tell them about her little one's story. She got a call later that day from the lady who runs the Epilepsy center. She said that she didn't know how the email went straight to her, because it is designed to go to the general inbox and eventually makes its way to the correct department. Then, the email is processed and about a month passes before the potential patient is even contacted. She just couldn't figure out how the email went straight to her. (I have a pretty good idea.) Anyway, she was moved by the story and scheduled testing for THIS Monday!! Now, they have to figure out a way to get down to Miami and find a place to stay. Money is tight, because the prescriptions aren't covered by their insurance, so I suggested they call the bishop and have him contact the ward down there to see if anyone would let them stay with them. That's what they did and are now in contact with the Stake President down there and shouldn't have any trouble finding a place to stay. So, come Monday morning, she will be sedated and put through at least a two hour MRI so that they can pin-point the nerves that are misfiring. Please keep them in your prayers!

The day after we got to Utah, Brandon started having this stomach pain. It was getting pretty bad, so we took him to Urgent Care, where they determined it was either his gallbladder or an ulcer. They gambled on the ulcer and gave him a prescription for acid reflux. The next day the pain was back and worse than ever. It got so intense that we had to rush him to the E.R. Luckily, we took him to the same hospital where I went for my first miscarriage, so I knew they would be fast and take good care of him. They got him right in and did an ultrasound, which didn't show anything, and an MRI, which revealed the source of the problem. It turns out his gallbladder is inflamed. They don't know the cause of it, but there aren't any stones. With it being inflamed and not having any stones present, they decided he should wait to have it removed, because the inflammation would make doing the surgery laproscopically impossible. They gave him a prescription for an anti-inflammatory and a pain killer and told him to have it removed as soon as we get settled in Maryland. Luckily, he only had to take the medicine for about a day and a half and has not had any pain since then. They said that waiting until then and making sure the inflammation is down will make it possible to do the procedure laproscopically and will be out-patient with only about a day's recovery time.

We had a wonderful time with Brandon's family and were so sad to leave. I did take my camera and made good use of it. I'll add the pictures of the family in my next post.