Christmas is in two sleeps and I think that I am ready! Presents are wrapped, food shopping is done and holiday meals have been planned.
The boys are amazingly excited for Christmas and I love seeing how festive they get. This year we focused on donating to the Salvation Army kettles and we selected a few children from the Christmas tree at Walmart. We donated our outgrown winter coats and also made a donation to the flooring fund at the church that runs Maxwell's preschool.
I want my children to love the feeling of GIVING more then the feeling of receiving.
I'm actually quite pleased that I am on top of the ball because the last week has been a bit crazy.
On Tuesday we received Nick's latest scan results and since he hasn't been in six months I will admit that I was nervous. Nick is still classified as being in remission and on December 20th he celebrated his 1st anniversary! The scans did show that the nodes in his abdomen are still large but they haven't grown. CT scans measure size and shape but they don't show active cells. Because of this in March when Nick has his next check up we will likely do another test that shows if there is anything brewing inside the nodes where the CT cant see. The oncologist is confident that things are good but just to be on the safe side its worth checking out. On Wednesday a little after 3pm I got a call from Maxwell's pre-school teacher, she let me know that he woke up from his nap complaining about "his heart hurting", they took his pulse and it was low so they gave me a call. I went to get him and he was saying that his breathing was "tricky" so I decided that a call to the doctor was in order. I wasn't surprised when they sent us to the ER.
The ER doctors pulled up Maxwells previous ECG and chest X-ray and decided to repeat the tests for comparison. The ECG showed "some changes" and the x-ray showed that while the heart was still the same size an area now looks "fuller" which likely means that there is some accumulated fluid. They decided that given the description of what happened and the changes to the tests they should do some blood work to check for heart damage. The test results came back normal so the doctor said that while we couldn't say for certain what was the cause of this "cardiac event" he was confident that there wasn't any lasting damage to Max's heart. He did say that the cause of the fluid pocket is likely that Max picked up a virus due to it being cold and flu season - especially since he goes to pre-school. We discussed Maxwell's attendance and he said that unless he has to be there because there is no other option he wouldn't recommend it. And just like that Maxwell's preschool days were over. He attended the exact same amount of time that he did last year before having to be withdrawn.
The doctor felt that Max wasn't in clinical heart failure at the moment and so this was no longer an ER issue Our instruction were to be seen in clinic by our regular cardiologist within a short amount of time and to return to the ER if there are any issues in the meantime. Maxwell will now go in the beginning of January for a repeat ECG and a check up.
For us life at times is like three steps forward and two steps back, living life like that can be frustrating at times but despite being no genius I still can calculate that with that equation we are still one step ahead - which is good enough for me!
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