Goodbye February!

I am NOT sad to see February go!

I normally am in love with all things February – as it is my favorite holiday time (Valentines), Kealey’s birthday, lots of good clearance deals at Target…

but this year it was just hit after hit it feels like. It started on the 1st with the blizzard, then freezing temps, then Kendall’s gut shutting down – and it just snowballed from there. It has come to a close with losing another beautiful mito angel on Friday night, whose mom I had the privilege of “meeting” through this blog. My heart aches for this family and all that they must be going through right now. Little Maggie was a fighter til the very end. Please pray for the Agnew family as they move forward through days and nights so painful I can’t even stand to think about it.

And on the way home last nite from St. Louis through what apparently turned into a tornado (horrifically blinding thunder/lightning/rainstorm), I was apparently channeling Denny Hamlin and got pulled over for going SLIGHTLY over the reckless driving speed limit. Perfect. At least I got to keep my license (because in our crazy state they like to keep your license as bond until you show up in court or pay your ticket fine. which is normally fine with me – its not like having a license in your pocket makes your car start. But it can be a pain when you need to go on a plane/get through security in an airport. Not that that’s ever happened to me. Because, you know, I never get tickets.) But we made it home, and I think Kealey had a great time for her birthday – just getting some good quality mommy time in. We had so much fun with Ben’s GPS – making the lady with the funny accent say “recalculating” by driving around the drive-thru and purposefully getting off on the wrong exits is apparently hysterical when you’re 9. whatever it takes, right?

And to top it all off today because it just wouldn’t be a day around here without SOME drama, Kendall’s PICC line is not giving us blood return. We needed to pull a bunch of blood today for labwork to gauge how she’s doing on the tpn as well as check a few other things that were still kind of “hanging” when they gave us the boot out of the big house, and our pharmacy nurse took one look at kendall’s very bruised up and still swollen little limbs and said there was “no way” she was going to even attempt to place a peripheral line to pull the labs from. I am making this all sound ever so much simpler than it was in actuality. It was about a four hour ordeal trying to deal with a very cranky and tired kendall (because said nurse was 2 hours late from the time we thought she would be there), who was just DONE being poked/prodded/touched/looked at, and then trying different things from this nurse (like hep-locking the lines for 30 minutes, different flushes, etc.), and calling three or four different doctors to try to get an opinion from SOMEONE on what we should do. We cannot get more TPN made from the pharmacy until we know what her labs look like, but we cannot run labs if we can’t get any blood from her! It was the kind of stress that just sat right between my shoulder blades. Add to this the fact that our main nurse who helps with everything related to Kendall’s port (now picc) is out of the country for the entire month, so the LPN we have on M/W/F cannot do a THING to help out with the crazy med/tpn schedule. Did I mention Ben is out of town until next Sunday? Ugh – I am overwhelmed by my own life – I don’t really know how some of you manage to hang in there with me through your own lives PLUS ours.

*and for those who are wondering – the plan right now is to “TPA the lumens” – meaning we put this super fun clot busting medicine in the line, leave it for an hour, and hope that it has completely obliterated any blood/tissue/debris of unknown origin that is blocking the opening of the catheter (IV/picc). Normally this requires going to the ER. But we have a nurse who likes to keep sick little girls away from ER’s. So we are praying that this works!

Some day I will be able to give back – in some way. Some day I will be able to properly thank those of you who have helped clean up this house, brought us meals, brought me coffee or coke or suppositories (well those were for Kendall. but i may be tempted by a caffeine suppository…), or just listened to me rant and rave and break down crying. If you have in any way given us anything, or supported us somehow – even with just your prayers – I hope that you know how very extremely grateful we are. I wish I could give all of you a huge hug, look you in the eyes and tell you “thank you” from the bottom of my heart. I am horrible at thank you notes (PS – thank you to everyone who gave us wedding gifts whose last name started with N-Z – I apparently forgot to mail the second half of thank you cards!) – and besides that major Tact Deficiency, I am just really overwhelmed at the moment. I don’t know who this person is pretending to be me – because the me I know is NEVER overwhelmed and can hold it together at all times through all circumstances. I hope she comes back soon. Maybe she’s just off finding caffeine suppositories.

I should not blog at midnite I am realizing. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

anyways – goodbye February. You will not be missed. And next year – we are preparing for you. in fact, i think we will skip you altogether. You had your good days definitely – but overall – you can take your snow and flu bugs and other sicknesses and freeze yourself!

March – be kind please!

Ok – I think I have officially lost it now. I am talking to the calendar…

SEND MORE SANITY/CAFFEINE/SLEEP!!!!

love and hugs –

me.