My 2 year old daughter had just gotten outside when she fell and skinned her knee enough to draw blood. It didn't hurt her too bad because she wasn't even crying, but she was very concerned about the blood she was seeing. I asked her if she needed a bandaid and in her cute little 2 year old, slightly whiney voice she said.... "yeah... and I want the bandaid to go outside". LOL She and I would hate for a skinned knee to keep her from playing out back! As soon as that bandaid was on, she ran out to play....and within minutes came back in insisting it come back off because her "owie stop bleeding". So much for that bandaid getting to spend much time outside. Looks like the bandaid has a life of misery in the trash can!
After talking about my chore chart with several friends and a little prodding from my dear friend, I've decided to share a little about my chore chart with you all. I first heard about a similar concept at a homeschool conference and decided to come home and try it. To my surprise, it worked well as long as we stuck with them. I'm not a very orderly or scheduled person, so this is a wonderful tool in my toolbox!
Our chore chart was made out of poster board with 2 pockets per child labeled To Do and Complete. Each child has their own set of pockets with their chores written on index cards. They are color coded for morning, afternoon and evening. When they are done with that chore, they move the card down into the completed pocket. That way I can monitor their progress by checking out where the cards are placed and to see how much more work they need to do.
For example, my 10 year old ds has the following cards:
Get Dressed
Brush Teeth after breakfast
Tidy Bedroom
unload dishwasher
switch out laundry
Clear and wipe bathroom counter
Put away folded clothes
Clear and wipe table after dinner (all are responsible for dishes though)
Then I may put some school things in there, too that they can do on their own without me...so that they get a jump start on their day. We also have room patrol 3 times a day, where they run around the room and put away anything that doesn't belong in that room. There are more chores I'm not thinking of...but you get the general idea. When we use the cards, we're much happier. When we don't, our life turns chaotic very fast!
I recently revamped the kids' cards and decided to make myself a set of cards as well. Simple cards to give Reagan her medicine, start planning supper or to switch out the laundry and to read my Bible (although there's a lot more than that!). The days that we all use our cards flow sooo smoothly. There's days when it doesn't work to do all the things on our cards, but on those days, as long as we give it our best effort, we can easily pick up where we left off the next day!
Tonight, a couple friend and I went and presented information about homeschooling to a group of older ladies in our church. None of them have kids young enough to homeschool, but it was nice to have sincere interest in what we're doing. Most of them seemed very excited for us and applauded our efforts to provide a Christian education for our children tailored to their specific needs. When we got home, one of the ladies that was there had emailed my friend this thing about the public school teacher. I thought it was good....so I'm posting it here:
IF THIS DOESN'T MAKE YOU 'THINK'...
THEN YOU MUST BE 'DREAMING'
After being interviewed by the school
administration, the teaching prospect said, 'Let me
see if I've got this right:
'You want me to go into that room with all those
kids, correct their disruptive behavior, observe
them for signs of abuse, monitor their dress habits,
censor their T-shirt messages, and instill in them a
love for learning.
'You want me to check their backpacks for weapons,
wage war on drugs and sexually transmitted diseases,
and raise their sense of self esteem and personal
pride.
'You want me to teach them patriotism and good
citizenship, sportsmanship and fair play, and how to
register to vote, balance a checkbook, and apply for
a job.
'You want me to check their heads for lice,
recognize signs of antisocial behavior, and make
sure that they all pass the state exams.
'You want me to provide them with an equal
education regardless of their handicaps, and
communicate regularly with their parents.
'You want me to do all this with a piece of chalk,
a blackboard, a bulletin board, a few books, a big
smile, and a starting salary that qualifies me for
food stamps.
'You want me to do all this and then you tell
me...
We're seeing some wonderful results with Reagan and her seizures. Soon after upping the dose of Trileptal and having lots of people praying for her, the seizures went all the way down to zero! She's currently on 3 medicines, but the neurologist would like to wean her off of 2 of them over a period of time. There was a day last week when I forgot to give her the morning dose of meds and she had a couple of breakthrough seizures, so he upped her morning Trileptal dose in order to hopefully keep them away for longer if that were to happen again. Reagan is getting back to her old self and starting to enjoy life once again. We won't be returning to the neurologist for 2 months unless something changes (and we're counting on nothing changing!). Please continue to keep us in your prayers. We're looking forward to the day that we can say she's seizure free and off of all medications as well!
I spent the last few days in the city. I went to Wichita with my husband who had to be there all week for work. Although I enjoyed myself, I discovered I'm no longer cut out to be a City Mouse. After fighting crowds of people in stores and restaraunts and especially on the roads, I'm rather enjoying my life being a country mouse. I'm not officially in the country "yet" but, living in a small town is country compared to being in the city. Wednesday, I spent the morning on turnpikes and interstates on a drive from Wichita to Tulsa to take my daughter to her neurologist appointment. By the time I finally made it back to home sweet home here in my small town world, I was relieved to not have to wait too long to turn onto a road or to accelerate to hard to make it into the right lane, or have to avoid crowds of people in the store. The only thing I wish they'd speed up in my town is the checker lines at Walmart (at least for now).
Last I heard, there were still lots of medical expenses as well as now funeral expenses left to pay towards Emily's stay in the hospital. I wanted to let you all know that we are collecting money via Paypal to help them pay for them. If you feel led, the Paypal email address is medicalbills4emily@sbcglobal.net All of the funds collected will go to Emily's parents to pay the bills that are most needing paid. I doubt we'll be able to cover them all, but every little bit will help!
I'm so sad to have to post that my dear friend Amy's baby Emily has died today at 9:51 a.m. My heart aches for Amy and her husband. If only I could take the pain away! You can read about the struggles baby Emily has had on this blog. Please pray for this precious family as they grieve their beautiful baby girl. She was 7 months old on the 4th. Lord, please comfort them and draw them closer to you in this difficult time.
I guess my visits here are getting few and far between. I'm finally updating you on how Reagan's MRI went.
We went on the 14th of January, with plans to have her sedated to get the MRI. Luckily, they wanted to try it first with some movie goggles on, to where she could watch the movie that she picked out. Then, they put earphones on her to where she could listen to it and it would drown out the sound of the machine. To our great surprise, it worked! She didn't end up having to be sedated! At first she was wiggling, but they only had to place something over her forehead to keep it more still and she was able to get through the whole thing. She did have a seizure at the end, but luckily, they had gotten enough pictures at that time so they ended there!
Since she didn't have to be sedated, we were able to leave a lot quicker than we would have been, so we had time to go get some lunch and run to a couple of stores. We took her to Incredible Pizza where she enjoyed eating and playing some games! Before we got there, she got incredibly car sick and managed to throw up the ice cream that they had just given her at the hospital! She hadn't eaten all morning due to the requirements of the MRI so she was more prone to get car sick. We hadn't brought a change of clothes so we headed over to JC Penney's sale racks to find her something to cover her body!
After shopping and eating, we headed back over to the neurologist's office for our scheduled appointment. It was a bit scary walking in, thinking that we could walk back out with some really bad news. Even though I didn't really believe that to be the case, my mind wandered a bit, trying to prepare myself for the worst. Thankfully, the MRI came back clear, everything looking normal. So, we talked a bit about how the medication that she's been on has affected her (hadn't really helped her yet) and he prescribed an additional medication to put her on. We had also noticed some clumsiness with her and pointed that out to the doctor. So... now she's on 3 different anti seizure drugs and they've finally started to help a bit! Her seizures are now down to 2-3 during the day, which is a major improvement! She's still having them at night but they seem quite a bit shorter most of the night and they are mostly when she's passing between the sleep and wake state. So... she tends to have more of them when she's first falling asleep or when she's starting to wake up in the morning. Although I'd like to see her seizure free, it is a relief to have them mostly gone during waking hours. She's a much happier girl during the day that way!
We will be calling the neurologist this coming week to give him an update on how she's doing on the new medications and we will return in mid February to see him for our monthly appointment. Our doctor has encouraged us to continue researching and is OK with us considering dietary changes as well. We may start looking into trying the ketogenic diet or possibly just a low carb diet and see how that works for her. Things have definitely improved, but they're not exactly where they're supposed to be yet either.
Please continue to pray for little Reagan. It can be very upsetting to her and to those around her to watch her endure a seizure.
The short story: Reagan has a generalized epilepsy that she was given medication for. We will have an official diagnosis after the doctor reviews MRI reports and EEG reports.
The Long Story:
On Wednesday, January 2nd, we went to visit the pediatric neurologist for the EEG. Reagan had to be sleep deprived, with no more than 5-6 hours of sleep, no sugar and no caffeine. We went the day before and got a motel so that we didn't have to try and keep her awake while driving down. She tends to fall asleep easily in the car! The reason she was to be sleep deprived was so that they could hopefully catch a seizure while she was having her EEG. Apparently you're more prone to have a seizure when tired. Unfortunately, while they were hooking her up to the machine, she had a seizure and they were not able to catch it on the machine while we were in the office. The doctor and his medical assistant did see it and definitely believed it to be a seizure but we still needed to get one on EEG so that we could figure out what part of the brain the seizure is coming from. After the in office EEG, they decided to send us home with a Track It pack where they leave all the leads attached to her head but glue them down and then she wears the machine in a little back pack on her back. They had gauze taped around her head to hopefully hold all the leads in place. She was not in the least bit happy with this idea nor with how it looked on her. After we left the office, when she saw herself in the bathroom mirror, she said it did not maker her look cute AT ALL! When we got home, she marched straight to her room so that she could hide so nobody could see her. I finally convinced her to come out and decorate it all with stickers and she was much happier with that! Her grandparents and sisters and brother all commented on how cute it looked.
Before we left the doctor's office on Wednesday, we were able to talk in depth with the doctor. We didn't have an appointment to see him, but he worked us in over his lunch hour. What a relief to talk to someone who knows a little something about seizures! He dediced to try her on some medication to hopefully eliminate the convulsions and also requested that we try and get a seizure or two on video so that he can fully view exactly what is happening. That has proved to be challenging because they go so fast! He also wants her to get an MRI in the next couple of weeks before we see him again. When we go back, we'll bring the MRI results and we'll discuss what's going on with the medication and how it's working. At this point, he's calling the condition epilepsy, which just means that she's having or has had more than 2 seizures with no explanation as to what the cause is.
By the time we had woke up yesterday morning, she had had 6 seizures that we know of since leaving the office that the machine had tracked. We received a call from their office and they requested that we return by noon that day so that they can get the data off of the machine over their lunch hour to take a look at and hopefully take the machine off of her. Once we got there, they were able to get enough data, so off the machine came! After briefly looking at the data, the doctor confirmed that we were definitely dealing with seizures and he felt that they were generalized (which means coming from both sides of the brain) rather than partial (which would be just one side of the brain). We had originally thought that they were partial because during her seizure, she tends to draw up the right side of her body. We began her medication yesterday morning and after starting her medication, she only had one seizure all day! That's a definite improvement!! He had told us that it could take 3 days before the meds kicked in so we were pleased to see results this quickly! We don't believe that she had any last night while she was sleeping, but we could have missed one, so we're not 100% sure. It will be interesting to see how the medications continue to affect her! We were also given a prescription for a medication that we would administer ******ly if she had a prolonged seizure, lasting longer than 3 minutes. I can't even imagine that happening at this point....I pray I never have to deal with that, but I'll get the prescription filled, just in case!
My how life has changed for us the last couple months. Hopefully we'll start to see things get back to normal soon! I'm looking forward to the day when Reagan can do things without worrying that what she does may cause a seizure to happen.
