2008 has been anything but boring for Deb, Elizabeth & me. First, the good news – Elizabeth is healthy and very happy. She giggles and laughs and can stand by herself for the couple seconds she doesn’t realize nobody’s holding her up. Deb is continuing to do well in her residency, and she did get selected for the child & adolescent psychiatry fellowship she was hoping to get. I have been trusted with a new position at work that has the potential to make a fairly significant impact.
All of this is in spite of the following series of unfortunate events, to borrow a phrase. Deb’s been having frequent headaches for quite a while. She saw a doc who helped some, but they didn’t go away. So she went back, they did an MRI, and found that her allergies had caused a bunch of gunk to get stuck in one of her back sinuses. It wasn’t life-threatening, but they wanted to get it cleaned out quickly because if it got infected, it could cause a whole host of problems. They did the surgery yesterday (March 3). Everything went smoothly and the surgeon said he’s pretty optimistic that this will help her headaches. Fingers crossed.
This morning, we were driving Elizabeth to her daycare before going to the hospital for Deb’s surgery. We were following a pickup truck up a hill. He stopped in the middle of the road, so we pulled up behind him and stopped. His reverse lights came on, and as he started backing up to get to the street he’d missed, I thought, “There’s no way this guy is going to back up into us.” He backed up into us. Fortunately, he had a tow bar on the back of his truck, so the front bumper of my car was completely wrecked. The good news is that he did have insurance, which is no guarantee out here. Unbelievable.
Speaking of daycare, the girl who has been watching Elizabeth (& doing a wonderful job) has to move out of her house because her lease is expiring. We’ve got less than a month now to find a replacement. This is no easy task in Hawaii.
Kaci – our lab who had a tumor removed from the middle of her back last year, now has several marble-sized bumps all over her head, neck, and shoulders. She has scratched one of them open and it hasn’t stopped bleeding for a week. Deb and I are hoping they’re just reactions to tick bites (it’s been a bad year for them this year), but we’re afraid it’s more serious than that.
When we moved out of the townhouse we bought in 2006 to move into military housing, Deb & I assumed we’d have no problem renting it out. Three months later, it’s still empty. Fortunately, we did receive 2 months of free ‘rent’ when we moved into our current place, so January was the first month we had to pay the extra money, but it’s now starting to pinch a bit. Add to that the fact that our daycare costs are probably going to triple (not only is our current girl doing a great job, she’s doing it pretty inexpensively), and it’s starting to get interesting. Hopefully the military folks turning over this summer will start looking for places out here soon and we’ll get somebody in there quickly.
My body finally cried uncle this weekend and I came down with a case of bird flu or something. Felt like I got hit by a bus. I could hardly walk up a flight of stairs without taking a break. No other symptoms of illness other than a bit of a scratchy throat, but I was just extremely achy. I slept a ton this weekend and seem to have been healed, but it had me pretty well laid up.
I did manage to get across the street and hang out at Elizabeth’s first birthday party. It was a lot of fun and was a great reminder that in the midst of all these challenges, we’ve been blessed to have a lot of pretty great friends. Pictures will be posted soon!
On that happy note, I will end.
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