Busy days and a Follow Up

Life has been extremely busy lately. Illness, sports for Jack, surgery for Brett, and a trip to UCLA for Jenelle... not to mention increasing hours at work for me.

Last Tuesday, Brett had routine shoulder surgery for a rotator cuff tear. Originally, the doctor thought his recovery could be 6 months or longer. As it turns out, the tear was not as bad as he originally thought. Brett's recovery looks to be 4 to 6 weeks now instead of months. Finally, some good news health wise. Brett did well with the surgery, other than having an adverse affect to anesthesia. He's having some pain, but is doing well.

I had my follow up blood draw last Monday. It appears decreasing the Methotrexate did the job and my neutrophils are back up to a better level. I've been doing well and am trying to fit in more hours in my work day I'm not needing naps as much, but still get tired. Trying not to "over do" gets more difficult when life slowly gets back to normal. Taking care of the kids and working is pretty much a full time job.

On Sunday, the family participated in the Children's Hospital of Orange County Walk in the Park at Disneyland. We were able to get there on time (at the crack of dawn at 6:30 a.m.) and only walked half the walk so as not to tire me out. After the walk we ate at IHOP, then went home where I took a 4 hour nap. I must have needed it.

And today, I drove Jenelle to UCLA by myself for a follow up with Dr. Shields. Jenelle's appointment was at 1:00 and we had tickets to today's Angels game against the Yankees at 1:15. Last Friday, I called to try to reschedule, but was told that Dr. Shields was going into "semi-retirement" and we had the only appointment left on his last day. Not wanting to miss seeing Dr. Shields, I told Brett to take a friend to the game and we didn't reschedule. When I told Dr. Shields that he was better than tickets to the Angels ALCS game, he told me he would have cancelled his appointments and gone with me instead! In all these years that we've been seeing Dr. Shields, I never knew he was an Angels fan! No wonder we love him so much!

Jenelle had a great follow up. Dr. Shields agreed it was a good idea to try to get Jenelle onto liquid meds so we could eventually get rid of the g-tube. As it turns out, his "semi-retirement" means that he will be taking the rest of the year off, and returning next February to a part time schedule. He would like to stay with Jenelle as long as possible, and that is just fine with us. As always, he was very proud and impressed with all that Jenelle is doing.

Traffic up to UCLA was really light. We got there early, so Jenelle and I had a slice of pizza (her new favorite meal) in the hospital cafeteria. As we walked out, we ran into my oncologist. She was confused when she saw me because my next follow up isn't for another two weeks. Once I explained that Jenelle was seeing her doctor, she was very happy to meet Jenelle. What a wonderful place this has been for our family. We have so much to be thankful for at UCLA.

Thank you for the donations to the CHOC walk, and for the continued thoughts and prayers. I'll keep you posted.