While he was gone, I managed to hold down the fort just fine, and added the task of painting the entire inside of the house with CJ (our 24 year old).
In between painting and life with Stacey (www.highfivesforstacey.com) and being Robby’s chauffeur to school and work, I had a few peeks at my good friend Google.
Let me catch you up real quick on some of the things I’ve been through with the help of the internet over the last 18 or so years…
*Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum (Stacey, our 4th kiddo’s brain disorder)
*Status Epilepticus (also Stacey)
*Chromosome deletion on 3q (Also Stacey)
*Chronic lung disease (Also Stacey)
*Mitochondrial Dysfunction (Also Stacey)
*Dietary caused eczema (Also Stacey)
ok, Stacey’s list goes on so I’ll move on…
*Head trauma and CSF leak (Alexia, our oldest, at age 19)
*Chiari malformation (also Alexia, I’ll share her story here another time)
*Triple Jaw fracture (Michelle, our middle kiddo when she was 10) (which thanks to Stacey I knew how to read an xray and caught it even though the urgent care doctor didn’t and I knew to take her elsewhere to be treated for shock and concussion and the fractures resulting in two surgeries. Another story I’ll share here later)
*Lymphoma scare (CJ, our older son)
*Major Sinus Surgery (Carlos)
*Adrenal fatigue (me)
*Severe anemia (also me – needing three infusions, another story for another time)
*My mom’s heart attacks and strokes
That’s not even all the things!
I tell you that so when I say I have a good relationship with Google, I mean it. I love to muddle through medical journals. I avoid opinions. I seek facts. I avoid hype.
So while Carlos was having a fantastic time, I already knew. Usually when I’m wrong, I feel it. Sometimes I push it aside and make sure, like when they thought CJ had lymphoma but it was cat scratch disease. We went through some of the tests, but not all, I felt the need to hesitate, to wait, to let things pan out on their own. I didn’t feel that way this time. I tossed and turned in my sleep. I just knew.
About halfway through his trip during a facetime conversation, I noticed if he turned his head to the side, his voice stopped. I noticed certain sounds he had a hard time saying. He sounded like he had a bite of mashed potato stuck in his throat. I knew it wasn’t food. I knew it was a tumor and I knew it needed to come out.
He had left on February 11th and would return on March 2nd. On March 1st our new medical insurance kicked in. We had changed it back in late January, saying we could down grade our coverage a bit. Our insurance was costing more than our mortgage and was going up again so we switched it. We reduced it.
While he was gone I talked to several doctors to see who took our insurance and who could also help us identify this thing. I chose one from UCLA in a satellite office about 45 minutes from us and scheduled an appointment for March 7. I had a list of symptoms, questions, and tests I planned to ask about, in case she missed my sense of urgency.
Some pictures from his super relaxing trip!
Resting In His Hands 