Long Overdue Update

I usually brag about Joshua on the blog but I’m going to take a few minutes to write about Tana first. At the beginning of Dec, she was inducted into the National Honor Society. Out of the 252 students that were invited to apply, she was one of 61 inductees.

In addition, barring any state budget cuts, we just learned that Tana has earned her first year of tuition covered at any in state University (ASU, UofA, or NAU in Flagstaff)! For those of you who are not in AZ, we have an exam (AIMS test) which students take throughout school, but must pass at a certain level in order to graduate high school. When this test was instituted, they also created a program in which students who achieve an exceeds rating in all areas of the test by their Junior year and maintain a GPA of 3.5 or higher earn their first year of tuition at any in-state University free. Tana’s current GPA is 3.87 (and her school does not weight the GPA differently for honors classes), so provided she doesn’t nose dive next year or the program’s not cut from the budget, she will have tuition covered her Freshman year. Each year after that, she needs to maintain a certain level of performance in order to continue receiving free tuition. Between Tana’s excellent grades, her extensive community service, and playing on the school’s tennis team all four years, I’m sure she’ll receive enough scholarship money to cover books and room and board if she chooses to stay in state. We were thrilled with this news and it’s a huge achievement for her!

Unfortunately, my “magic” pill that I started taking in September is no longer working its magic. I’m starting to become short of breath again easily. It’s still not nearly as bad as it was last summer, but it’s starting again.

The last couple of weeks have been really rough because I’m having more swallowing issues, trouble opening my mouth wide enough to eat certain foods (again for my Chase co-workers we’ll keep this PG), issues with mucus build up in my chest that I’m unable to cough up, and I have been very exhausted.

I’ve had issues taking my pills in the morning and ended up getting them stuck and scratching my throat multiple times to the point where I refused to take my pills for several days. We are now crushing my morning pills into powder and administering them through my feeding tube. One of the morning pills I take is what I refer to as my “upper”, a pill that is supposed to give me more energy. Not taking that for several days meant I slept much of the time the last holiday week and even though I’m back on my pills this week, I’m still struggling with my energy level. The simple acts of eating a meal or being showered exhaust me and most days the thought of leaving the house is just overwhelming. If my energy hasn’t returned by next week, I’ll be calling my doctor to see if we need to increase my “upper” dosage.

I am having to avoid bread and tortillas unless they are sufficiently mixed with another food texture, because I’ve started gagging on them. For about a month now, we’ve had to smoosh down sandwiches, cheeseburgers, etc. so that I’m able to bite into them. Subs are pretty much out of the question at this point and Bob recently had to use a fork and knife to cut and feed me my Costco hot dog.

We’ve had to spend several evenings, including ringing in our new year, on the cough assist machine. This lovely machine basically forces air into my diaphragm and then yanks it out to force a productive cough. The machine isn’t fun for any of us and is exhausting for me when we have to use it multiple times in an evening as we did New Years Eve.

I’m down to eating only 1 or 2 meals a day because I don’t have an appetite but so far they are not concerned with this; however, I am supposed to be taking a multi-vitamin but unless I am able to find one in liquid form, I refuse to add another pill to my line up.

The good news is that Bob, Tana, and Joshua were healthy through the whole month of December! However, Joshua developed croup and his first ear infection this week but is handling them like a champ. I have lots of Joshua updates but we’ll save them for another entry.