Update on the girls

We had our fun day up at Primary Children's today. It went a lot better than I anticipated which is nice. Samantha's appointment was first. I was wondering how they were planning on us keeping her head still but it worked well as Christina held a flashing musical toy that held her attention as I rubbed her checks/held her head. And, as we expected, Samantha is just fine and was a great trooper with the test.

Christina did much better this time around with the test than she did 4 1/2 years ago. It probably helped that they actually sent someone in to explain everything to her before and they were wonderful with distractions and great people to help her feel comfortable. After the test, we went up to see the urologist. She was great too!!!! I am so grateful to be so close to such a great hospital for kids!!!

The urologist helped talk to Christina. It seems that her problem of encopresis ( http://kidshealth.org/parent/general/sick/encopresis.html ) is still the issue. I was amazed to see on the VCUG pictures how much she has in her. Her bladder has overcompensated for this and holds way more than an 11 year old should. She was able to hold almost 500 cc!!!! So we're going to have fun this weekend as we go through a "cleaning out." We figured this would be a good weekend to do it since we'll be home for conference anyway. We've got other things that she'll be working on and she hopefully will be able to retrain herself in 6-12 months.

I think we all feel much better tonight that there is some hope for a change in the situation for her. It's been very frustrating and exhausting so it's nice to see that there is an end to this and finally get some real help.


On a side note, Clay has been working 3 jobs for a week now. I'm grateful for all he does to try to provide for us. It's been awfully exhausting for him. Here's a glimpse into our life--Last Thursday Samantha was teething and after a few hours of putting her to sleep, putting her down, and her waking up, I finally gave up at 12:30 a.m. and put her in bed between us. Clay got up at 1 a.m. to get ready for work, leaving at 1:30 a.m. I got up, got the kids ready, Clay came home long enough for a quick shower and breakfast, and out the door again to work job #2 by 8 a.m. He was there until he came home for a quick lunch/snack, and then out the door again to work job #3 until 6 p.m. I wish this were an unusually crazy day for us, but unfortunately it's life for now. He gave notice at FedEx (job #1) so we'll just have extremely early mornings for all of next week. Hopefully job #2 (Chiropractic office) & job #3 (tutoring/teaching afternoons & evenings) will be able to give us enough to squeak by for a little longer.