Sorry!

Hey ya'll. Just leaving a quick post to say sorry for being gone so long and to let you know I'll be gone a bit longer. We are out of town for the week because Lauren needed some tests done that can't be done at home. That's not really why I'm not posting though. I guess I'm just a little tired right now and I don't want to splash my blues across your own happy colorful lives.

Anyway, I miss you guys. I'll be back soon. If you get a chance when you are praying for Lauren and wisdom for her doctors would you throw out a prayer for me too? I'm just really discouraged and down about how hard of a time I am having getting Lauren help. I know she is sick. The doctors know she is sick. This shouldn't be so hard. I'm very frustrated and I think she is feeling like I am frustrated with her, but I'm not. I'm just weary of the continual tests and weary of seeing my child suffer.

One more prayer...Tre (my six year old nephew) is here with us and he broke his back today (he has the same bone disease my sister had). He is in a lot of pain and can't walk without screaming and crying. It's hard to see him like this and makes us all (especially him) miss his mom. Nobody takes the place of your mom when you are hurt or sick.

Okay, that's all for now. I did a terrible job of keeping my blue hue to myself didn't I? I promise to be sunshiny and full of cheer when I post again.

Love ya!

They don't call it being a chocoholic for nothing!

If somebody had told me you could get shot glasses full of chocolately goodness (instead of nasty tasting alcohol) I'd have started drinking years ago!



Brookie is enjoying a 'sweet shot' (I think that's what they are called) from Chili's. They have a variety of desserts in shot glasses for those times when your tummy is too full for an entire dessert, but you still want something sweet. Brookie chose chocolate. Duh. She is my daughter after all!

Celebrate good times (come on)

Wow. Has it really been three days since I posted? I'm terribly sorry inter-buddies. Terribly. I had to go out of town and then never really found a chance to write. We were some of that busy this weekend on account of the fact that Sunday was a double celebration for us.

The first occasion worth a bit of celebrating was Father's Day. We went to my parent's house this year because it was Dad's first Father's Day without Shanna and because my dad is the bestest Daddy that was ever made and don't try to argue with me cause I ain't listening. No I'm not. Should you even try to tell me otherwise I'll just stick my fingers in my ears and go la la la la la la in a most annoying manner because I know I'm right.

And because I'm mature like that.

The other happy occasion was our 17th anniversary. Yes, you read that right. Seventeenth. I'll just give you a moment to do the mental math and figure out how old I was when I got married.

If you came up with ten you are absolutely right. I was ten years old when I got married and now I am only 27 years old. Okay, not really. I was 18. It was two weeks after I graduated from high school.

No I was not pregnant!

Shame on you. Don't try to look innocent. You know you were thinking it. Actually one of the reasons I got married so young was the very reason I couldn't be pregnant. Dave is old fashioned (and I was too) and there was no hanky panky til we got married so we were in a hurry, IN A REALLY BIG HURRY PEOPLE, to get married. I'm sure you can figure out why. It's no wonder people date for so long these days...they are already having their cake and eating it too (wow that sounded dirty), but we weren't so we were sorta anxious to get the eating of the cake (I swear this isn't a dirty metaphor, get your mind out of the gutter).

Anywho, we've been married for 17 years (and I am 35, not 27...sniff, sniff). It doesn't seem possible that we've been married that long. The years have flown by and with each passing year I've grown to love Dave more and more. The older I get the more I appreciate all the wonderful, solid qualities that make him the man he is. I can honestly say that I love him more now than I did on the day we wed.

I used to think there weren't many couples who felt that way, but then I moved to this wonderful little town and joined this wonderful little church and I saw just how happy people can be in a marriage...even after 25 years...or even after 50 years! Our church family is full of couples who have stood the test of time and they are still full of joy and happiness. That inspires me. Not a Sunday goes by that I don't see one of the couples smiling in a certain way or looking at each other just so and I know that will be Dave and me some day. That makes me happy in my pants (I didn't mean it like that, there you go with your dirty mind again...geez).

I thank God for giving me a man like Dave to share my life with. I pray that my girls will find good, Godly men to share their lives with someday...

someday a long, long, LONG time from now.

I'm so proud!

You have got to see what Tammie and I spent the evening doing. It is so amazingly awesome!

We were tired and hot and didn't know what we were doing, but we persevered. We even went to Buds For You (the local flower shop) and they let us use their helium tank to fill 60 balloons. They didn't even let us pay them for the helium!

You totally rock Buds For You.

Speaking of people that rock, a sweet sister from our church stopped by to tell me she'd been thinking about me and reading my blog. I looked at her and I'm sure my mouth fell open as the last few posts I'd made ran through my mind. Those of you who don't know me very well must be appalled at some of the things I say. Just so you know I am a big kidder, but it's all in fun and love. Like yesterday when I talked about the farts...it was all in jest. And the getting high thing? TOTALLY a joke...I've never been high. I've never even been drunk. So please don't be offended at my silliness. Okay? Are you pickin' up what I'm throwin' down? Are we square?

Good. I feel better. Thanks for letting me get that off my keyboard.

Okay, back to the balloons. Tomorrow is the last day of VBS so we wanted to do something special and I think the children are going to love it! Every day they put a balloon inside this beaker if they did their daily challenge (things like pray for a friend, or go for a walk and thank God for the things you see around you) and it was almost all the way full after today. So we made this awesome balloon thingie (yes, thingie...that's a technical term for us professional balloon sculptors) to make it look like their beaker was 'bubbling over'.

I don't mean to brag, but YAY US!

Know what else is worth bragging about? Around 25 children asked Jesus into their hearts today at VBS! Oh yes they did! I'm not even playin'. The actual story of Christ dying on the cross and the prayer asking them to raise their hand if they wanted Jesus in their heart happened in MY station.

No pressure there. None at all.

Yeah right.

I was a nervous wreck! For some reason saying the salvation prayer with people has always intimidated me. I think I worked through that fear today and the reward was incredible. I cried about 18 and a half buckets of happy tears today. God is so good!!!

Next time I'll just buy them floaties

Holy cow with a bell on! What a day, what a day. Today in my Bible Blast station at VBS we walked on water. It was a wacky, crazy day for my station and it was also a very. big. mess. Oh my what a mess it was. It took like three and a half days (or maybe just an hour) to clean up all the 'walking on water' residue (a.k.a. big, goopy, mess) that we made. It was totally worth all the work and mess and cleaning up though because I think the children really loved today's adventure and had a chance to really experience a Bible story.

It just might have been a little easier to handle all the chaos if they'd have let me sniff color with the permanent markers for a little while. I couldn't find them today though. I think somebody hid them.

I really can't imagine why.

The fun didn't stop with the walking on water either. Oh no it did not because we are all about the fun here! Next they got to go upstairs and make flarp in the science lab. You know the stuff...it's that goo that makes a big, loud, obnoxious fart sound when you put your fingers in it. Each child made a container of it to take home from VBS.

'Cause you know, nothing really says Jesus loves you like a humongo fart.

I know that every time I hear someone pass gas I just smile and say, "Why thank you! Jesus loves you too." Or maybe I say, "Oh my gosh David! You smell like the hind-end of a sick skunk and if you do that one more time your butt in sleeping outside with the other skunks!"

Whatever. It's practically the same thing and it's all said with love.

Ahem.

Moving right along...I received an email from the neurosurgeon that we want to do Lauren's surgery (if we ever finally get to that point) and he said that he sees not one, but two areas that are hypo intense that could both be tumors. Or they may not be. Right. That's real clear. So where does that leave us? Relying on the endocrine testing to tell us we need surgery. That would be just fine if her symptoms weren't cyclic. But they are so now we have to catch things when they are 'high' and get enough 'high' results in a row to get the insurance company and even some of the doctors convinced that it's time for surgery. To me we've had plenty of 'highs', but I'm not a doctor and I do appreciate that they are being cautious. They can't go around ordering brain surgery all willy-nilly. I am just a tad anxious to get this over with and to get my baby better!

Please just continuing praying for wisdom (on both our part and that of her doctors) and also pray for patience while we wait. She sure doesn't feel very well a lot of the time and that makes patience just pretty darn hard to come by.

Tre is hollering for me to come play Club Penguin with him. Again. For the thousandth time. Can you tell I am excited?

I'll talk to you interpeeps later. Til then love and farts ya'll...love and farts (that means Jesus love you...in case you forgot).

If the Holy Land really was holey...

it would probably be made out of boxes and look a little something like this:





Only hopefully a little less crooked. What can I say? I'm no architect. Plus those permanent markers can put off some mighty strong fumes. Is getting high still wrong if you are getting high for Jesus?

Kidding! I wasn't high at all! Just ask the pink elephants with mohawks and hula skirts that flew in through the window while I was working, they'll totally tell you that I was NOT high.

I KID!

Okay, I'll stop now. I am really kidding and I don't want to get a call from my mom. I had the door open most of the time, and while it did stink (and I did get a headache), nobody got high.

It took me several hours to make that little village for VBS. I am in charge of 'Bible Blast' where the kiddos get to become part of the Bible stories. I am really excited about the start of VBS today. I know God is going to do great things!

Speaking of VBS...remember these 'atoms' I made for the science lab? Well yesterday I was trying to load them in Dave's truck (he had my suburban) and found that only two would fit inside the truck at one time. So I went back inside with one of them, grabbed a few more items to take to the church and came back out to the truck. Only when I got back to the truck there was only ONE atom there. These things are huge and I knew for a fact that I'd put in two. Like an idiot I looked under the seat, in the back seat, and in the glove box (not really), but it was nowhere to be found.

Someone stole my atom. They stole it...an ATOM. Can you believe that? I can't. I'm still trying to figure out some other explanation. I mean who steals an atom? Is there a big demand for atoms made of balloons out on the street that I'm not aware of?

I was pretty disgusted. Those things may look retarded, but I spent a LONG time making them. Then when I went back in to get another one to take the place of the missing atom, the wind caught it and it blew across the yard and a bunch of the balloons popped.

ARGH!

Things were not going well on the atom front. What in the world was going on? Maybe God was trying to save me some embarrassment by destroying my atoms.

If only He'd seen my cardboard village first, He wouldn't have bothered.

Science was never my thing

I spent a good part of the morning making atoms out of balloons (well, a blonde's version of an atom) for VBS and let me tell ya, it wasn't easy. Those suckers are complicated! I totally gotta give God some props for creating the real deal!

Go God!

You rock!

Way to make the universe!!

Here is a picture of some of my 'atoms'. Aren't they adorkable?

Yeah, I know. I think this pretty much proves that God isn't a blonde.

The post without a point

I'm bored.

How was that for an interesting start to a post? My girls are out of town and living it up at Nana's and I am home alone. I should be jumping for joy and living it up myself, but I pretty much just miss them. They ARE my joy. Without them I don't really feel like jumping.

So to pass the time I decided to write a post. Then I sat here thinking and realized that I don't have a thing to post about without my kids around. How sad is that? They are the Drama in Mama of a Whole Lotta Drama. Just about the only excitement around here was me trying a new kind of pizza...spinach and portabella mushroom pizza...only I am skeptical about the pizza part because it was square. Pizzas should be round, not square. There is something just wrong about a square pizza.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

I'm so bored that I miss school already. I miss the kids and the hundreds of times a day they make me smile. Like the other day when I was walking down the hall and this cute little fourth grader named Kellen walked by. He was dripping sweat and his little face was bright red. He looked like he was about to melt so I said, "Wow Kellen, you look hot." He looked right at me and without missing a beat said, "thank you." It took me a moment to realize that he thought I was calling him hot...as in HOT (I'm getting old and there is a language barrier developing between me and the kiddos). I laughed and told him that I meant he looked hot from the sun outside and he said, "Oh. Yeah, it is hot outside." How can I not love my job?


I just hope he didn't go home and tell his mama that I was hitting on him. I gave up hitting on fourth graders, oh...back when I was in the fourth grade. Or at least when I got married. That totally put a crimp in my fourth grade love affairs.

And in conclusion to this exciting post filled with fourth grade mix-ups and freaky square pizzas I will share with you the new wallpaper on my laptop. I love it.

Results

Well we finally have the results from Seattle, though I'm not sure how much good they are going to do us. Here they are:

They lost one of her 24 hour urine tests, but the one they didn't lose was high (by high I mean high enough to indicate Cushings).

She had four serum cortisols drawn between midnight and four a.m. that came back high enough to suggest Cushings.

She had two high ACTH serum results that indicate Cushings.

She had a high prolactin test that indicates a problem with her pituitary.

This is all good news. I always thought she had Cushings, but I needed to prove it to get her some help. Now we know that I was right and that she does have Cushings. I am sad that there is something wrong, but glad to know for sure what it is so we can attack it and get her better.

The bad news is that they are cautious about sending someone to brain surgery (I can't blame them for that) and since she is so young they are even more cautious than usual. That means they want to test a little longer and get some more highs before they recommend surgery. I am not as cautious as they are I guess. She is my baby and I want her better NOW.

So I am not sure what step is next for us. We are still praying and talking about it. We are continuing to test for sure, but we are thinking about asking for an IPSS. This is not a fun test. They go in a vein in both legs and go all the way up into her sinus area, inject her with the same CRH that made her so sick before and then take samples from what her pituitary is putting out. This could give us a lot of valuable information, but like I said it wouldn't be fun. So it's a big decision.

Her MRI has been sent to MD Anderson so the doctor that we want to do the surgery can look at it. He is very good at seeing tumors in the pituitary that other people can't see. The radiologist in Seattle couldn't see that her tumor was back. That doesn't mean it isn't. Her symptoms and tests show that it is. However in fifty percent of Cushing's patients they have to do surgery to find the tumor. A very small growth can cause Cushings.

Please pray for wisdom on our part and continued high test results to speed this process along. We want Lauren to feel good for a change. I don't think she even knows what that is. She has been sick for so long.

Oh no he didn't

Dr. Ludlam's office called with Lauren's results while I was out buying VBS supplies. Dave didn't answer the phone. Yes, you heard me right.

HE DIDN'T ANSWER THE PHONE.

He said he'd rather I talked to them. So now I have to wait until tomorrow to hear what they have to say. I guess that's okay since I won't have time to talk to them tonight anyway. I will be terribly busy building a dog house for my husband to sleep in. It's not going to be one of those hoity toity dog houses either. You know, the kind with the air conditioning and the fluffy little beds. Oh no, he's sleeping in a crappy dog house like my dogs had when I was growing up. Only I'm not putting in hay to make a soft bed like my dad did for our dogs. No, that's too good for him.

Oh I kid. I'm not that mean.

I will add the hay.

Kidding!!! Geez, what kind of monster do you think I am? I would never tell my husband to sleep in a dog house. I'm not that kind of wife. I am kind, loving and compasionate.

He can have the couch.


My VBS shopping went okay. I'm all finished now and have everything I need for next week. I felt kinda odd buying some of the stuff on my list though. Like the 24 boxes of corn starch. I think I've bought a total of one box of corn starch in 17 years of marriage. So it's no surprise that when I was checking out and stacking all 24 boxes on the conveyor belt that it raised some eyebrows. It's also no surprise that I was insulted when the woman in line behind me asked if I ate a lot of cream pies. I guess I shouldn't have told her that she wasn't going to blow away anytime soon either.

What? How was I supposed to know you used corn starch in cream pies??

I am totally kidding. I didn't say that to her, but I did momentarily wonder why she thought I looked fat. Granny would be ashamed. I should learn to make pies.

The girls and I went to see Made of Honor today before I did my shopping. Lauren wanted to see Made of Honor. Brookie wanted to see the new Narnia film. I just based my decision on which movie to see on what was showing the quickest after we got there. It turned out to be Made of Honor, which was fine by me, but not so fine by Brookie. About ten minutes into the movie she said, "This Narnia doesn't look anything like the first one."

She's in the Gifted and Talented program at school ya'll. I bet you can see why.

Okay. I better go. It's hard for Dave to know I'm giving him the silent treatment when I'm in the other room writing in my blog. I better go in the living room so I can ignore him properly.

If you are going to do something, you might as well do it right.