The Titlers: November 2011

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Update on Madelyn

Sorry for the delay in providing an update! The doctor was able to go with the outpatient procedure and, to our amazement, he was done in 40 minutes. After we settled a disoriented Madelyn, coming off her general anesthesia, we headed home and she was back to herself the next day. Praise God! We are so grateful! We had a minor setback during that week where she had stomach pain due to minor swelling of her kidneys, but Dr. Perez assured us that was fine and expected. She goes back on Dec. 5 for a second cystogram to ensure that the urine flows one way and another ultrasound to ensure that the Deflux balloon inserted into her bladder wall has remained intact.

Life is back in full swings as we battle colds, push through Social Studies and Math tests and enjoyed the Taylor Swift concert last Wednesday. She is a class act and we LOVED the show! It was so fun to go with other little girls on the street and share in their excitement. Honestly, I think I was more excited about it than the girls were since I know how much they love her, how BIG she is, and how awesome a great concert can be!

Right when Taylor hit the stage (sadly, Madelyn had the worst day of her cold that night so she was a little lethargic during the show)

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Follow up on Madelyn: Procedure Nov. 5

We went to the pediatric urologist a few weeks ago and he performed an ultrasound to look at her kidneys. Somewhere between 14 months of age and now, she has experienced some kidney damage on the lower side of her left kidney (used the phrase "shriveled up"). As stated in a previous blog post, she has vesicoureteral reflux (good info on www.deflux.com). They measure severity on a 5 point scale, 5 being the worst; she has a 4 on the left side and 3 on the right side.

There are two procedures that are typically done; one is less invasive with an injection of a drug called Deflux into her ureters and the other is open surgery. The procedures are scheduled for this Saturday, Nov. 5 at 12:30pm. The urology will go in assuming he can do the less invasive procedure, but be prepared to perform surgery that day, if necessary. She is on long term antibiotics to prevent another infection until she is healed. He said the success rate of the less invasive procedure is about 80% with surgery being about 95%. The less invasive is an outpatient procedure; the surgery will require multiple days in the hospital with a 4-6 week recovery period.

We ask for your prayers on that day. Please pray for the doctors and nurses, for their wisdom, for our calm and for her complete healing with no complications. I am convinced that we will end up with surgery (not sure if I am preparing myself for the worst or being realistic based on my research), so I also ask that we all humbly and boldly ask the Lord to allow the outpatient procedure to be the appropriate course of action.

The Story of the Cat, the Dog and the Mermaid

We'll start with the fun stuff--Halloween as a blast for our trick-or-treaters (or "frick-o-freat" if you are Kai). We are overflowing with candy and all the neighborhood kids looked super cute. I love their excitement and energy on this all-about-the-kids day.

Stuff about Kai:

"sfring cheese" instead of "string cheese", "sfosed to" instead of "supposed to"
"belly belly sandwich" for "peanut butter and jelly sandwich"
"actually", "usually" (big words for little kid!)
"hunny" matured to "hungry" in mid-Oct.
I was telling Kai that his Aunt Susan was visiting and he said, "One who have tractors?" That's Aunt Kari with all her accumulated toy tractors for Gunner!
Starting to try to use his fingers to show how many of something. Loves to count items on the page of a book.
Getting obsessed with books. Each library book is read for every nap and bedtime until it thankfully goes back to the library the following week. One REALLY helped him learn his colors though--he's got them down now! Yea!
Getting more and more confident on his new bike. Says "I want to ride...my Cars 2 bike" or "...my bike I got for my birthday with the helmet".

Rylie:

Due to family budget cuts, Rylie took her last gymnastics class last week. I was so upset to take something that she loved away from her and was tearing up as I explained the situation to her, looking to Eric to take over the conversation, then she said, "Oh good! I can play more now!"
She was able to ring the bell (everyone in the gym watches you perform your skill) the week that mom and Susan visited when she accomplished her chin up, pull up on the uneven bars.
Today she shouts, "This is the worst day of my life!" because she missed an opportunity to eat candy, she forgot her Social Studies study guide at school and was grounded, and I didn't record Dancing With The Stars like she thought. I couldn't help but giggle and tell her I certainly hoped this was the worst day she'd ever have!
Huge praise--Ry moved her F-grade in Social Studies up to a C by report cards! She failed a Social Studies test in the first weeks of school so she had a lot of work to do to move her grade up. She looked at me with serious concern after she got her test score back and said, "Mommy, a 54 is bad, isn't it?" Grades are new in 3rd grade, so this was her first shocker. We had a long discussion about responsibility for her grades and the extra effort required to improve. She followed up with two As on subsequent tests. Great! Learning responsibility is a bi-product of 3rd grade apparently.

Madelyn:

She's made significant progress in learning the processes of Kindergarten. She tries to trick me each day that she got a yellow card when she really got a green card (green=good behavior).
Most popular word of the moment: "awkward" (Kai has copied)
Every week we have Taco Tuesday/Family Game Night. This girl is on her 128 consecutive win in Memory. (I made the number up, but I am not far off--she's a machine!)