I have a tradition of spending the last day of the summer with Katherine. I take the day off and we do lots of girl stuff together. This year we got mani's and pedi's, got a hair cut, had lunch, and went shopping. We ended the day with a photo shoot. I spent some time trying to get some good pictures of her. She's getting too old too fast, and she almost had a little too much fun posing for me. I'm her mom, but I've got to admit...she's a beauty.
Two weeks ago, Jon woke up about 4:30am not feeling well and ended up having an "episode" that he's had 2 times before. His blood pressure was 69/29 and he couldn't stay conscience. The last time this happened, he stopped breathing briefly twice, but, luckily, that didn't happen this time. I called 911 and we went to the ER in the ambulance. They got his blood pressure back up but, again, had no idea what caused it. He was admitted to the hospital and spend the weekend being tested and monitored. All tests were normal. We've been told by 3 doctors that we should take him to the Mayo clinic for evaluations. He's going to have some follow-up testing done here first.
On the same day Jon was in the hospital, Joey got a fever. It was still hanging around at night, so we were told to have him checked out at the ER. He was staying with his grandma & grandpa, so they brought him to the hospital and I met them in ER. For the second time in the same day, I had a family member in the ER - I had to laugh.
Joey had blood drawn from his line and from his arm, so he had to get poked and he wasn't happy about it. They have him "special cream" and he didn't feel a thing. Luckily his labs were high enough that he didn't have to be admitted to the hospital. However, we learned 2 days later that he has an infection in both his blood and his central line. There is no way to know where it was first. He had just been off his antibiotic for his sinus infection for about a week and a half, so I was sort of surprised. He is now getting a very large dose of antibiotic each day through his line.
It has to be injected very slowly, but it must not have been slow enough on the 3rd day. We were at the doctor's office and he almost passed out as we tried to leave. We let him rest a little while and then I carried him to the car. An hour later, he was fine.
Here he is giving himself his medicine.
For the first time, we took friends with us to the lake house. The kids had a lot of fun together and it was a nice get-away.
Jon as always wanted a Rhodesian Ridgeback puppy, but they've always been too expensive. About a month ago, one sort of fell into our lap and, even though we already had 2 dogs (and 2 cats), we couldn't turn it down. Because he's an African dog, Jon wanted him to have an African name and named him Asante, which means 'thank you'.
It's been interesting to have a puppy around again, but he's so cute and he's very sweet, even though he has some learning to do.
Joey got to spend a week at Camp Quality in July. It's an awesome camp that makes it possible for cancer kids to spend a full week away at camp. Each kid has his own companion that stays with them the entire week. Joey's companion was, Tobey. She took very good care of him. Joey had some of this friends there and he became really good friends with a boy named JC.
It was really hard for me to be away from him for so long (Sun - Fri), and I watched everyday for pictures on Facebook. It was strange to not be taking care of him, but he was very well taken care of there. I was SO happy for him to come home!
