Quiet Week with Pneumonia

Daniel's recovery is going well. We're monitoring his activity, but he feels great, and it is wonderful not to have that aneurysm hanging over our heads any more.

Ruby, meanwhile, decided to develop pneumonia in her left lung, so her ear tube surgery has been postponed and she is on a hefty regime of medications. She doesn't act sick and is just as feisty and bouncy as usual, just with a rumbling cough.

We took a family walk to identify trees on Tuesday despite the recovery and the pneumonia. We had a relaxing time searching for the perfect picnic spot along Trout School Road. Pearl is collecting tree information for a book she's making following our unit on trees.

Later in the day Sapphire asked if we could make chocolate chip cookies "like we used to do." I'm not sure why she was feeling so nostalgic about them, but we made a batch and somehow I was left spooning them onto the cookie sheet.  They have such entertaining ideas that take a lot of prep from me, then they rush off to asking for something else while I am still cleaning up. No wonder I seem like a killjoy sometimes. I can only manage so many messes on my own.

If you have watched the girls you know that there exists a healthy sibling rivalry between Ruby and Sapphire. This has meant two kiddie picnic tables on our porch because the greater the space between them, the less arguing we hear. They also often have to go to separate floors of the house to give us a break from the fighting, though they are always drawn back together like two fractious magnets.  This morning I learned just how deep it goes. Sapphire had climbed into bed with us in the night and fell back to sleep. I awoke to hear her arguing with her sister in her sleep: "No, you can't Ruby!"

Daniel's trip to Israel is filling up, and he will be giving a talk about it this Friday at the Forks of the Brandywine in Glenmoore. See HolyLands2014.blogspot.com for the details of the trip.

Another Update

The doctor had Daniel discharged from the hospital on Thursday after he spent just the one night in the Neuro ICU. We waded home from Philly in the big rains, and he's been taking it easy here in Glenmoore ever since. He feels pretty good. The doctor was pleased that he has no headaches or anything, and his incision site, which is so tiny it is like when you have blood drawn, is healing up just fine.

Of course, he does have $10,000 worth of coils in his brain. Not that those tiny things would be worth anything to anyone else, but we are very pleased to have them. The tiny coils, made in Ireland, were each just 8 or 10 cm long, and they threaded eight or so up through his artery, his heart, and his neck into just the right artery feeding the brain. Now they have a home up there.

The large aneurysm had two tiny, mini-aneurysms growing off of its base, but the doctor said they will just watch those at the 3, 6, and 12 month check ups. She said that, hopefully, the tiny ones will disappear on their own now that the big one has been stabilized.

So, despite having brain surgery from the inside out, as the doctor called it, he feels pretty normal. He does have to force himself to rest up though! We're so thankful for the way God handled all this for us. We're also grateful for our community and the support we've felt throughout this ordeal.

Out of Surgery

All is well. Daniel came out of surgery at 5:30 after being in there for 3 hours. The actual surgery part must have taken about 2 and a half hours. The neurosurgeon said that she was very pleased with the outcome. They did not need to put in the stent, but just coiled that aneurysm full of titanium so that it will no long be a risk factor. He's in the Neuro Intensive Care right now, and they should move him to a regular floor tomorrow (Thursday). He's doing a countdown of the six hours he needs to stay very still flat on his back. Four to go! Even after that, he'll need to take it easy for several days because the procedure went in through an artery. We're very pleased. This is the best news we could get. He should be released tomorrow. He is making much more sense now that the medications are wearing off. I was ready to shut his mouth with medical tape for a while when he was bombarding the nurses with the same questions over and over. Thank you SO MUCH for all the prayers. He told the neurosurgeon that she shouldn't be surprised if the aneurysm was gone, since faithful friends have been lifting him up in prayer. Our prayers have been answered in a slightly different way, however. Phew!!

School Days

This week has given us a breather from some very busy days, but we've also had some unique experiences.

Over the weekend Ruby and I spent time at the church yard sale, but I can't say that we helped much. Ruby and I also popped in to celebrate the 100th birthday of a friend, Spin. He is pretty amazing, and probably more clear-minded than I am. Ruby's sisters had a chance to go see Sight and Sound's Noah with their Nana.

Pearl's school has given us daytime hours to spend on enrichment classes.  She's been taking piano lessons since the spring, and this last Sunday she played a much-practiced duet with her piano teacher for the worship service prelude. They gave a very pretty, harmonizing version of "Jesus Loves Me."

Pearl also began American Sign Language lessons this week.  She will happily spell the name of anyone who requests this service.

We spent a family afternoon in a local orchard. We picked nearly a bushel of apples very quickly, so this isn't the all-afternoon event it used to be when Pearl was a toddler.  Sapphire was demanding pie, so I might make that happen later this afternoon.  They all love the long peels my apple peeler makes.

 Next week we'll be traveling eastward on Tuesday to prepare for my husband's surgery early (8am) Wednesday morning. He should be in the hospital for one or two nights. We will remain out east until at least Saturday evening.



  

Children of the King

Our calendar for October is nearly empty, but September has more than made up for it. On Saturday the
girls had play practice at church, then I decided to take them apple picking, and while we were there we thought we'd use up the Maize Quest coupons they earned in their summer reading program.

I avoided the large corn maze, but we did enjoy the bamboo maze, the tipping board maze, the corn house and the three story slide.  We visited the pumpkin patch, which was fairly sincere.

That evening we headed out to the Mid Autumn Festival with the Families with Children from China group. This was our first time there with Ruby. She was not too interested in any of it except the fact that they had a table covered in scissors and paper. She went to town cutting confetti, her favorite new pass time.

For Children of the King Sunday, the kids put on the play 'That's so Daniel.' They've been working on it for months, ever since spring. Pearl was Servant 1, and Sapphire was a lion. Ruby had practiced with everyone, but when it came to being on the stage, she was much more interested in starting fights with her big sister than singing, so she was limited to one song.

The kids performed in the evening too, followed by a spaghetti dinner. I loved seeing the whole cast play together after the show. They've got such a strong community of kids here.

We had co-op this week too. My class made the soap Sapphire and I had tested earlier, and it went very well.  We talked about how oil is hard to get off without a detergent, and the kids loved stirring the pot of shaved soap and water. One mom told me her daughter lugged her new soap to soccer practice and the grocery store; so cute.  Sapphire has been allowed to join the kindergarten classes now, so she is feeling very proud. I help a little with Pearl's last class, which discusses the ecosystem of the Great Lakes. Her teacher uses a neat, engaging video that shows a guy catching creatures from the beach area and explaining their adaptations.

Today I took Pearl and a friend on a field trip. We met up with a bunch of other home schooling families to go for a trip on the Underground Railroad. Women dressed as Quakers met us at a historical home, a real stop on the Underground Railroad. We walked with them through the woods, pausing to hear about what the real journey might have been like. The atmosphere was too lighthearted to capture the fear the escaping slaves must have felt, but it did drive Pearl to gobble up a graphic novel about Harriet Tubman I had brought along for the long ride there.

I was able to fulfill an item I sold at the church auction this summer. I prepared and served local wines paired with international cheeses at a friend's house for a party of five. The pairings worked out nicely, and everyone seemed to find something they really liked. The wines came from Naylor, Allegro, Nissley, and Moondancer, all nearby wineries.

This week I also took Ruby to the ENT. They've suggested we have tubes put in her ears. She does not seem to have scarring, and I haven't noticed extra ear infections, but liquid behind her ear drum may be making sounds muffled (and they know they know the liquid is there), so they want to allow that to dry up and clarify sounds for her. They said it would be a five minute procedure, and that she'd hear better right away.  It might even be a little overwhelming as she suddenly hears how loud the world is.


My husband is still feeling tired this week; that's his main issue. He just finished the antibiotic to work against the lyme. 

Daniel's Consult

The ugly bump pointing down on this image is his aneurysm

After talking with the surgeon yesterday, we were relieved to learn that Daniel will have the less invasive surgery on Oct. 9th. This is the one where they put a catheter in via the femoral artery, then thread a titanium coil half the width of a hair up into the aneurysm until it is filled with the stuff.  The idea is that the coil will be so packed in there it will stop blood flow, and the blood vessel will, if it behaves well, create a new blood vessel wall and totally annex the aneurysm.

She said that this option and the through-the-skull clamping both have about 5% risk of some unpleasant result, either minor or major, but from what I've read this has nicer outcomes. Plus, the recovery time is much speedier this way. If things go well, he could be released the following day.  If they have to put in a stent, and they won't know that for sure til they get in, then it would be two days in the hospital. But with even with the stent, she felt that he could return to normal activity after three weeks, once the femoral artery had healed from the incision.

Just so I'm not the only one to remind him: he isn't supposed to lift more than 5lbs, and he has to limit himself to a brisk walk.

We felt very informed. The surgeon spent half an hour explaining things. We were a little late for our appointment in the Infectious Disease (ID) clinic, so we rushed over there and sat down. Then it slowly dawned on me that we were in the *Infectious* Disease waiting room, so I tried very hard not to touch anything.

Daniel's ID doctor was delighted to see us. He spent an hour and fifteen minutes going over Daniel's lyme with great enthusiasm. At one point we thought he even got a little giddy about it. We figured he was glad to see someone who did not have HIV and was really recovering; plus Daniel's lyme is so 'textbook' that they all seem thrilled about it.

I'm thrilled that the recovery is textbook too. The one course of antibiotics will have routed it, though he has some post-lyme symptoms of pain in his right forearm and wrist, plus the extreme exhaustion he faces in the early evening. The doctor seemed convinced this would dissipate, and he said that the surgery date would be fine. He'll check in with us when Daniel is back at Penn next month.

Thanks once again for the ongoing prayers!

Birthday Month

Our September has had unexpected events, but we also needed to fit some birthday fun into this month. the two little girls have birthdays two days apart. My husband's stay in the hospital forced us to cancel the first party on the calendar, but we have since made up for it.  During the Actual Birthday Weekend my parents cooked dinner and lit up a bonfire Friday night for both girls, and their aunt, great-aunt, and others joined us for that.

The next day my in-laws had dinner and birthday pie. This year Ruby knew just what to do with those candles. As for presents, my mom gave them all canvas bags, and Ruby has taken to carrying her large collection of special washcloths in it, as well as her baby pillow pet gift from Grammy and Poppop. She now requires it to sleep.

While I was in Germany I met a couple celebrating the husband's "birthday month," and I realized we do that too, just without the official title (They had flown from North Carolina to Munich just to see a Rod Stewart concert, so their 'birthday month' luxuries are a bit more extreme than ours).  Our birthday bliss included visiting the York Fair to dawdle at the 4-H petting zoo and see the large farm animals. Pearl did not want to give up this kitten.

Two days later I took the bigger girls to a tea party with Sapphire's good friend Miss Darlene. We tried out the nearby Red Brick Bakery for lunch and scones.  The girls loved picking out their own tea cups. Lunch was very good, and I thought the scones were perfect.  We did have to explain to Sapphire that princesses do not use straws to drink from tea cups.

We also enjoyed birthday fun with our friend Jett and his family, and Nana will be taking the big girls to see Noah at Sight and Sound at the end of the month. 

Pearl works on her piano theory and Sapphire looks on

A final event of the week, which was not billed as a birthday treat, was a visit to a nearby powwow.  We went several years ago, and I felt like it would be the perfect thing to do on a not-too-hot late summer day.  We grabbed a friend and headed across the river.

The drums are mesmerizing, but Sapphire was hooked on the dancers. They have all different outfits and gear. Some just throw a shawl over their shoulders and hop into the circle to step dance around the fire. Sapphire's favorite was a man who had the turkey feather tail, the feathered headdress (but not like the ones in the 1950s movies), and a twirling stick that left her very jealous. The kids stomped around the fire during the Candy Dance, and Sapphire tried her own moves outside the circle, entertaining all the retired folks in our section of the lawn. It was a warm, family-oriented experience.You aren't really supposed to take pictures, so I didn't.


For school, we've been focusing on types of rocks with Pearl, and this has led to several experiments cluttering up the counter, I mean adding to her education. She liked growing salt crystals best.

Sapphire likes to join in when she can, so this week we did an experiment just for her. She oversaw the creation of our own line of liquid hand soap.We made half a gallon of hand soap according to a very easy recipe. Sapphire was thrilled with all the stirring while we melted shaved bar soap in water.

This Thursday we'll be heading back to Philadelphia for consultations with the infectious disease doctor and the brain surgeon. I very much want to know what our October will look like as far as Daniel's recovery, and we'll know more Thursday evening. I'll try to post that when I can.