A lot to update

I am sitting at the office today, and my head is pounding. The last thing I want to be, at this moment, is awake. However, I can't change that. I have had a lot going on in my life recently, and while that should never be used as an excuse to ignore my blog, I have found that it has been too difficult to take the time to write. I have had the time, but for those of you who don't know me, I have to be "in the mood" to do anything. Writing is something I love, but I have to be in the right emotional state to be able to write. This is most true when it comes to my blog.

I have been adapting since the first time I wrote a blog. Initially, I didn't want to share too much. I wanted to let people know the basics of what was going on in my life, without putting too much personal information in it. The personal information takes more from me emotionally. As the years have gone on I have started to put more of my heart into my blog. I want to share parts of myself, at a very personal level, because of the special person that I hope reads this blog. Almost every time I blog, I mention that I am going to try to be better at writing only to find months pass before I sit down and write again. There is so much I want to share, and pictures that I want to post, that I hope I am able to actually spend more time over the next couple of months talking about my life.

A big hoarder of my time is work. The sad thing is that I feel like a lot of my time when I am at the office is wasted. There are many days where I don't know what I have done all day, but I know that I have been busy all day. I have started to get a little bored with my job, mostly because there are large sections of time where I am performing repetitive tasks, such as reading documents that are nearly identical. I really like the company that I work for, so I'm not ready to leave, but I am getting tired of doing the exact same thing month after month.

I believe that I mentioned that our parent company is selling the entire healthcare business, of which I work. We still don't know anything new and the deal was initially planned to be closed by the end of this year. It doesn't look like that is going to happen.

Another big time taker is school. I think that I mentioned previously that I passed my Comps this past summer and started on my dissertation. I am in the process of writing my Proposal and hope to have it read to defend by February. I am at 73 pages write now and think there is about 5 to 10 more pages of information that I need to add in. I am just having to solidify my data source, which has been a little more work than one might think. The dissertation process has several steps that have to be taken in order, and I am happy to say that I am still on track to finish next summer and hope to have all of my signatures in place to graduate in December 2012. I don't know what I will do once I finish and won't have any other school. I have already ruled out Law School, so I think I will finally be done.

Nathan has started to understand the different levels of school, how each progresses and what each means. We were talking last week about it, and I think it was good for him to know that I was still in school. It gave him an example to strive for. Ultimately, I don't expect him to get a doctorate just because I am. I just want him to do his best.

My last blog I mentioned that Sharon and I decided to leave the small congregation that I had preached at for the past year and couple of months. It was a difficult decision, but one we felt we had to make. After visiting around a couple of places, we placed our membership with a larger congregation in Nashville. It happens to be where Sharon grew up, but it provided the best opportunities for service, and our kids really love the classes and the people there. I mentioned that it was a larger congregation, the average attendance on Sunday morning is between 475 and 515. It has been a big adjustment for Reagan who has only known congregations of less than 80. Nathan was born while we attended a congregation of 225, so it wasn't as much of an adjustment. He has really loved getting to know the boys in his classes.

This is going to be a long blog, but I want to give updates on things going on with my family. I know that much of the focus of this blog historically has been me, but I want to spend more time sharing my family.

My wife Sharon was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes last month. Of all of the adjustments we have made in our lives the past few months, this has been the biggest. It required a complete change in our diet, which is still proving difficult now. Sharon and I have both lost weight because of the diet change, but we still have work to do. Sharon's blood sugar has come down, but she still has work to do so that she can stop taking the medicine.

On top of the diabetes, she has had high blood pressure. The doctor thinks that when her blood sugar is brought under better control, the blood pressure will come down. I hope so. I hate seeing her have to take four different medicines a day.

Our daughter Reagan has had an equally tough past couple of months. She is three, so any time she is sick it is hard. In November she was diagnosed with Impetigo, which is treated with antibiotics, but is very itchy. It took several days for that to start to go away and provide her with any relief. As the Impetigo was going away, we noticed that one of the spots on her bottom didn't look like it was fading. One Sunday morning when she got out of the bath, Sharon noticed that the spot had gotten bigger and was very red. Reagan told us it didn't hurt, but when Nathan asked her to play something with him, she said "I can't, my bottom hurts." So, that prompted a call to the doctor's office. Half way through the Sunday morning worship service, the doctor's office called back and told us to take her to the ER immediately because it sounded like a Staph infection. Nathan chose to stay with Sharon's parents so he could go to class.

At the ER, it was confirmed that she had a Staph infection, which is pretty scary. We have a friend who had MRSA, and lost a big chunk of his leg to the infection. The doctor in the ER, said it was too early to try to drain the infection and test it, so they gave us an antibiotic and told us to see Reagan's pediatrician in a couple of days. When we called the pediatrician's office they scheduled an appointment for Wednesday, to give the antibiotics some time to work. Well, they weren't working. Reagan spend two and a half days unable to sit down comfortably and the infection just continued to get worse, although at a slower pace than pre-ER visit.

Reagan's visit to the pediatrician was one that a parent never wants to experience. The doctor had to open the site and squeeze out as much of the infection as possible and take samples for testing. Despite the attempts to numb the site, Reagan appeared to feel everything that was being done and screamed the entire time. It was truly heartbreaking, but at the same time necessary. The results from the lab indicated that it was not MRSA, but it was a strain of Staph that was resistant to the antibiotic the ER doctor had prescribed. I am happy to say she has recovered now and is back to her old self.

Those instances alone would be enough for any family, but it just wasn't enough for ours. Our son Nathan turned six this month. His birthday party was on last Saturday, the 10th. Nathan is kind of shy, but when he is around his friends, the shy part of Nathan tends to disappear. On Saturday, Nathan was a little different than he normally would have been, but it was hard to point out any one thing that would tell us if he was feeling bad. Sunday morning during Bible class, his teacher said he sat there with his head on the table, which is not like him at all. We wrote both of these off to him being tired from the long weekend, since he wasn't running a fever, coughing or showing any other signs of being sick.

Monday morning, Nathan didn't want to get up for school. This is completely out of character for Nathan, because he would rather be at school than anywhere else most days. When he was getting up, he kept saying that his feet and legs hurt, but nothing looked different with them, so we again decided he was just tired. After he got good and awake, he was back to his normal self and ready for school. In our eyes, Sharon and I had correctly diagnosed him as being tired and having a case of the Mondays (this reference for me comes from the movie Office Space).

When Sharon picked Nathan up from school Monday afternoon, she noticed he was moving much slower than normal and that he wasn't putting much weight on his left leg. When he got in the car he told her that his left foot and leg hurt. When she got home and took of his shoe, his foot was swollen. By swollen, it was twice the normal size. It was bad. A call to the doctor's office meant an appointment on Tuesday morning for possible x-rays. You might ask why he wasn't sent to the ER, and it was because he hadn't fallen or suffered other trama to his foot or leg, so the doctor felt that it could just be a bad sprain. By the time I got home from work, he could not straighten his leg out completely without hurting, and it still hurt for him to walk.

Tuesday morning when Sharon woke Nathan for his doctor's appointment, he had spots that looked like bug bites all over his legs and bottom. On the positive side, the swelling in his foot had gone down a lot, and he could walk with little pain. At the doctor's office, we saw a parade of people come into his exam room. First was a nurse, who looked puzzled by the spots. Then a student Physician's Assistant, than the full time Physician's Assistant, and finally our least favorite doctor out of the office. They were all talking to each other, almost as if we weren't there, planning what tests to run and what the possible diagnosis could be. After everyone else had left the room, the doctor turned to Sharon and I and said, "We are going to be running several tests. We want to try to rule some things out. In some cases, Leukemia presents this way." At those words, both of our hearts sank. The doctor had just told us that there was a possibility that our son had cancer. This had never even been a thought in our minds before that time. That was a sentence we never expected to hear. Other things thrown around that they were testing for were meningitis, several other serious conditions I had never heard of and the best option of all, Henoch-Schonlein Purpura (HSP). After listing all of the things this could be, again cancer was the first thing he said it could be, he said that in most cases it was the last thing, HSP. There were too many things that were unknown at the time to determine for sure what it was. They drew two vials of blood, took a urine sample and scheduled us to come back on Wednesday for the results of the lab work.

The car ride from the doctor's office was very difficult. Two young children were in the back seat who didn't understand any of the conditions the doctor said it could be. My wife was stuck on the fear that it could be Leukemia and while I tried to present the aura of strength and reassurance, in the back of my mind I wanted to break down and cry.

Tuesday afternoon, we went over to Sharon's parents house to go to dinner with them. Sharon's sister had a baby earlier in the day and Sharon and the kids were going to the hospital to see the new baby. This was going to help take Sharon's mind off Nathan if even for a short time. Sharon wanted to show her mother the spots on Nathan's leg and the swelling in his foot. When she pulled up his pant legs, a knot the size of a golf ball had formed on the front of his leg. At that moment, Sharon lost it. She called the doctor on call and was told he would call back. It was over an hour later when the doctor called back and said this was actually a good thing. This knot on his leg ruled out many of the possibles, including Leukemia. He said he was sure it was HSP and warned us that Nathan's legs would see other places of swelling and bruising over night.

At 8:00 Tuesday night, Sharon called me from the hospital where they had gone to see her sister and the new baby. Nathan's knee had swollen up and he could not walk at all. It had gotten worse in a matter of hours and all we could do is give him something to try to ease the pain.

Wednesday morning, Nathan's pediatrician confirmed the diagnosis of HSP and proceeded to assure us that Nathan would be fine and make a full recovery. There is no treatment, it just has to pass on its own, but we could give him Tylenol for the pain. Nathan nearly started crying because he was told he would have to miss the rest of this week of school. He missed four days this week and has been very saddened by it. I am happy to say that Nathan is on a course of recovery with very little pain, and the spots and bruising are going away. He has another doctor's appointment today, but we don't expect anything but good news about his recovery.

On November 12, Nathan's peewee football team, which I was one of the coaches, won the championship. We were on the top of the world that day. Who could have guess that in four short weeks, we could go through all of the medical conditions mentioned above. I would never have guessed that less than four weeks after seeing my son run off the field as time expired in the championship game, I would see my son lying in pain, unable to walk.

The world is starting to right itself again. I just hope that the next time I add to this blog, I don't have a lot to update.