Blessed with great Doctors

CC has had a migraine since last night. We did all the normal stuff and it just would not ease up. I called her Neurologist and had to leave a message. He had already left for the day. A little more time went by and CC started getting worse. Kevin and I took her to the ER Clinic where her Pediatrician is. He saw her pretty quick and called in something to help get everything to calm down. We got her home and put to bed and Kenzie got home from school. She all of the sudden had a fever and sore throat. I thought wow ok now what, it is almost 6pm on Friday. Kevin and I went ahead and ran her back up to the same Doc and signed in. The lady said our Doc had already left. I was disappointed because I like to use only her Doctors so that they have all the info about the Type 1 Diabetes and everything. We went ahead and sat down to wait for the stranger to see my baby. I heard our Doc say “Kevin” in a little bit of a concerned voice. I turned around and in front of a packed waiting room of people who had been waiting for the stranger on duty to see them for at least an hour, our Doc tells the lady at the counter to take McKenzie off the list he will go ahead and see her before heading out for the night. I am so thankful because that kept us from being exposed to more germs in the waiting room. We also did not have to leave CC for too long. I have to tell you though I was a bit worried walking out back through that same waiting room with all the same people sitting waiting to be seen after we were all done. We got some ugly looks that is for sure. I felt bad that they were all still waiting but I needed to get home to check on my CC. I got a surprise call back from CC’s neurologist at about 6:30pm he asked how she was and what all we had done so far. I told him what was called in by her Pedi Doc. He said that was perfect and that he would check his voice mail throughout the weekend if we needed anything. I am truly thankful and we are so blessed to have sweet doctors who know what they are doing. Once everyone gets well we will be baking something yummy for each of them. I hope they both feel better tomorrow.

Eye's

I was born with Congenital Bilateral Optic Nerve Colobomas in both of my eyes (misshaped pupils). My vision is 20/200 and 20/300. CC was born with the same thing but only in her left eye. She was also born with Microphthalmia in her left eye. (Small Eye) She has no vision from her left eye but better than 20/20 from her right eye. She had her first prosthetic eye made when she was a week old. By starting this treatment so early in her life her face has grown perfectly. Without this treatment the eye socket would not have grown and the left side of her face would be sunk in. Dr. Randy has been such a blessing to us. He has been there from day one. He and CC are buddies.

What the girls are reading.

Mckenzie started a new book last night it is one of my all time favorites, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. She is so enthusiastic about it already. I love to see her face light up when she realizes one of the characters has made an incredibly dumb mistake or an inside joke with another character. She thinks that it is hilarious that the president of a country in this story is addicted to a soap opera. We have her read out loud to me and we talk about the story imagining what the characters see and feel. We do this with CC also. She started a new book tonight. It is a different kind of story but I think she is getting into it just as much. Her book is Smashed by Koren Zailckas. Kevin and I were able to go listen to her speak at Tech a couple of years ago. Her goal is to educate young people about the danger of peer pressure and this book is about her own alcohol addiction. CC read till she could no longer hold her eyes open. McKenzie read till she could no longer talk then she made Kevin read a few pages before she was snoring. Lol I think she will have to back up a page or two tomorrow. I am thankful that they are enjoying this time and that Kevin is such a wonderful dad and influence. We all three love to listen to him read exciting books because he gives each character their own voice and makes it so easy and fun to follow. When we first read Bel Canto, I kept Kevin up really late reading to me because I could not wait to find out what happened next.

Ten years ago today (9/11/2001) I was sitting in my living room in Jacksboro. I had taken CC to school and McKenzie, a year old and I were watching TV when all the channels started showing footage of the towers. My heart dropped and the fear set in for all of the people fighting for their lives, the brave men and women who risked their lives to save them and as the day went on I became more and more scared for my best friend Kevin, who was in Kuwait. I had talked to him on the phone the night before and he was going to call that afternoon. I did not hear from him for two weeks. They had locked the camp down and no phone calls or e mails were allowed. I stayed close to home in case he was able to call. CC knew something was wrong and wanted to know why we had not talked to Kevin on the video cam on the computer. I told her he was just real busy. She said yeah and then would ask again the next day. His time there was extended. I thank the Lord each and every day that he is home safe.  Never Forget.  God Bless America.

We have some work to do.

We just got back from McKenzie’s check up with Dr. Varma.  This was the highest A1C ,(8.4) we have gotten other than when Mckenzie was DKA when all this started in 2006. We had to have, a bit more of a grown up talk then what we usually do.  McKenzie's stance on it all was that she is going to pay closer attention to what she is doing. We will get it down together. We have the greatest team anyone could wish for backing us. We will be on the phone with Nurse Dreama over the next week adjusting the settings in the pump and helping us to tweak everything a bit. I am about to cry. I know things will be ok and we will get this under control but things just got a little more real, if that is possible.  

The love of a sweet dog.

I have not trusted dogs in a really long time. I saw my little brother be attacked by a pit that bit his head and ripped his ear off. That was nearly 25 years ago. My brother was a little guy like 4 or so. This has been a process but thanks to the help and love of a great friend Rebecca White. We have the sweetest most gentle and understanding dog I have ever met. He is so smart. I was real upset last night while talking to my mom on the phone about how my Granny was doing and Zeus was worried and basically held me and let me cry. Sometimes we need to just cry and know it is ok. I could not go back to sleep but needed to let Kevin sleep in case we decided to head to my Granny's this morning, but I was not alone. I finally realized I was taking an incredible child hood experience from my girls. Zeus is their first dog well other than all the dogs they have claimed over the years that live at each of their grandparents. Huey, Daisy, and Elsie, (At Paw Paw Ken and Grandma Gale’s) Sarah and Gizmo (lived at my Dad's) Then they have Delsey (lives with my Mom). Grizz had always been at Kevin’s Dad’s house. Candy Lives at my Granny’s house and of course the big dogs out at my other Dad's Jager and Meister have been “the girl’s dogs” since CC was a baby. It is wonderful to trust and love an animal again. I still flinch now and then when we are playing but Zeus sees me, he immediately stops playing and gives me a full body hug that feels a lot like when a cat rubs against your leg to love on you. At that point I am able to calm, sit down and enjoy his sweet love. We are blessed to have him :)

The PDF Fix.

The Kindle is amazing but a lot of research articles and different things that I need to be able to read, are only available in PDF Format. Kevin found the fix, The Adobe PDF converter. You simply upload your PDF and it converts it to Word or Excel then, you save it again. The Kindle will then read it perfectly. You lose any graphics but you can keep the PDF format to follow along with. This is extremely helpful for anyone with low vision. This would be very useful for a teacher who is working with a low vision or blind student. Many people are dealing with disabilities other than low vision that may run into this same software issue when using screen readers such as ZOOM, JAWS, or MAGIC. In the time it took me to write this (about 5 minutes), I have converted 3 PDF research articles that are about 30 pages each to Word format and saved them onto my Kindle. I am impressed with how fast the process is and that you don’t have the spelling and character recognition issues that come along with many of the OCR (Optical character recognition) programs we have paid much more for.

“Bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.” Abraham Lincoln


https://www.acrobat.com/exportpdf/en/convert-pdf-to-word.html