Reflections

For various reasons, such as a busy life, and Blogger not always being user friendly as well as due to the recent changes that Google and Blogger have made, I have decided to streamline things a bit including my writings.  Using my Facebook page as my main focus of attention will do that for me.  I changed the name of my Facebook page to "Reflections" to reference the change and the essences of each of my two blogs, and the page will reflect my blogs, but opens the door to other ways of sharing.  It will make life simpler for me as well as for my followers.  I hope that you all will feel the same as well.

For future posts and more, please go to my Reflections page and hit like, and you will get automatic updates.  It is my hope to continue to encourage, and inspire others while reflecting the things I have learned and as well as currently experiencing.  God Bless!

https://www.facebook.com/LilLilBecBecPage?ref=hl

A Syringe Full Of Reminders

Over the course of several weeks, we have been in constant chaos around our house in regards to what I keep referring to as our "house disaster" due to damage and repairs from a leak in the wall/ceiling from a pipe.  I wish I could say that the house was the only thing that felt like was in chaos, but I had many things going on that left me stressed, and feeling low.  After being let down several times as a little girl, being forced to rely on others to get things accomplished is killer for me, and then when you couple that with impatience, which I have always struggled with through out my whole life, and dealing with other downer kind of things, I had problems rising above the difficulties.  It was just hard for me to find my happy place, and extra hard for me to find the positives for a bit as well.

As the house repairs and renovations came to a close, one area of stress decreased quite a bit.  I was excited to get our house back in shape again.  In the midst of sorting, cleaning, purging, and putting everything back in their spots, I came across something in the downstairs bathroom.  When work began in our house, and as damaged things and areas were removed, Scot and I had to quickly remove our personal belongings out of our coat closet and downstairs bathroom.  All of our wall hangings in over half the first floor had to come down too.  Things either got stacked in our master bedroom (how romantic btw), or placed in our attic.  As things got repaired and back into working order, we had to locate items and put them away in their proper places.

I was doing this with the items for the downstairs bathroom.  As I was sorting and putting things away into our new bathroom vanity, I came across some items that I had completely forgotten about, and that we had saved.  I found a sodium chloride flush syringe, and a PICC line sterile prep kit. Memories just flooded back in.  The syringe that I now held in my hand was full of reminders of what had been just about fours years ago (and inspiration for this blog).  I remembered being about 25 weeks pregnant with Little Man with 4-year-old Sky Baby's arm resting gentling on her bed.  While being excited to have her home from the hospital after several days, and knowing that she had even wound up in the ICU, I remembered feeling nervous to hold such a syringe after only having a half hour crash course in using it as Sky Baby was home still recovering from a bad case of pneumonia.  If I did it wrong, and flushed the PICC line incorrectly with it, as I had to administer meds, I could stroke out my own daughter.  This was frightening to me.  Above that fear too, I had to clean everything properly to prevent an unwanted infection.  Scot and I had to take our time and trust ourselves with caring for her, but above all else trust in God.

I had to trust God.  I had to rely on Him through that whole month she was sick.  And I had to be patient with God's timing, and God's healing.  I HAD to be patient--very patient--when administering meds and dealing with Sky Baby's PICC line.  I had to follow the steps... step by step...

Life is about the steps... Life is about trusting others sometimes... Life is about trusting God... on His timing and plans even if they are unknown to us sometimes... Find the positives whenever you can as I had learned everyday that Sky Baby was sick...    

I sat on my new bathroom floor with a syringe full of reminders in my hand... and again perfect timing for those reminders...

Iron Boy (Update)

Hello everyone!  I thought that I would write a very quick post about our Big Mac!  His blood work took a little bit more time than we thought it would.  He had been anemic for three months and went in for blood work to dig further into it all.  The first set of blood work didn't work.  The lab our insurance sends us to just doesn't seem as prepared, and equipped to deal with pediatrics.  Although, they were as sweet as anything, I knew when I left that their final attempt was not going to result in a good useable sample.

A few days later we got word from our pediatrician who confirmed what I had feared--we had to go for a second attempt.  However, we had to put the second attempt on hold due to the Thanksgiving Holiday.  Ours went well by the way, as I hope the same for you all as well!  Anyways, as the long holiday weekend came to an end, we started out with an already busy week, and Big Mac coming down with what was believed to be an allergic reaction to a bug bite (which has now been determined as a small hematoma on his thigh from a fall he took), as well as an ear infection.  However, we were able to squeeze in the second attempt, which actually took place at the hospital with techs that have more experiences with pediatrics.  And they got it on the very first, and very quick, attempt!

Our pediatrician called on Friday with the results.  Big Mac has a little bit higher amount of iron in his blood than that which their in office blood test shows; however, it is still on the low side, but everything else looked great and normal.  The plan now is another month of Big Mac on iron supplement (5ml 3 x a day).  The hope is that his iron levels will rise a little bit again, and then we can take a break! 

Speech and Some Iron (Update)

Several weeks ago, I wrote how Little Man was going to have speech therapy to address some problem areas.  After going to four separate schools for various reasons and assessments, Little Man started his speech therapy just last week. 

During the several week process of getting him assessed and such, his speech actually improved some.  However, he still has some things to be addressed.  Also, we have one area of concern too.  With in the last few weeks, it seems that Little Man has become aware, and perhaps, discouraged about his speech, and repeating himself frequently when asked as others are unsure as to what he is trying to say sometimes.  He has started to state when people ask him to repeat himself, "Um never mind."  Little Man sometimes will even cover his mouth up afterwards, which breaks our hearts.  He is starting to show some signs of his speech affecting him socially, so we are very grateful to get this underway! He will be meeting with the speech therapist 30 minutes every Friday.

As far as Big Mac goes, his blood work yesterday showed that he is still anemic, and therefore, our pediatrician has ordered a more thorough blood work up.  Tomorrow morning, I will be taking him at 9:30 AM for labs.  There are about three possibilities for which two of them have simple approaches and explanations, with a third possibility being a bit more extensive.  It will take about two days or so to get the results.  I will inform you all of what the results show, and our course of action if any.