Will you be my friend?

I am so blessed to have such wonderful friends in my life. I love that my friends inspire me to be a better wife and mother. I have a couple of friends from high school and several sorority sisters from college that I'm still very close with. There are a few friend from grad school that I think of often. Thanks to email, facebook, and blogs these people are all able to maintain an active presence in my life. I treasure their encouragement and insight.

Of course I still crave that good old face-to-face friend time. A downfall of being married to someone in the military is that you move often. Daily life is very routine, it's comforting in it's consistency but the people and places that are part of life change often. I've gathered a handful of friends from the various places we've been stationed. I have my friends from Colorado, and my friends from Washington, my friends from South Carolina and Oklahoma. I treasure them so much! The majority of them are fellow army wives but there are a few friends from work or neighborhoods where we've lived. Today I was blessed to talk to several of these friends today. We've recently learned that one of our friends who we were so excited to be reunited with here at Ft. Bragg will be moving away but at the same time other friends will soon be moving here.

At this point I'm a little apprehensive about making new friends here at Ft. Bragg. I feel like I have so much baggage! I met my next door neighbor recently. Right after the moving truck had delivered our stuff she came over to introduce herself and brought us a pumpkin pie. Of course I was still in Durham so I hadn't had a chance to meet her yet. She seemed absolutely charming and has 2 adorable boys the same age as Olivia and Peter. Things were going well until she suggested a playdate and then I froze. Where to begin....We've been through so much, how do I begin to explain...even now I am not sure where to start. I would love to make some friends and have a little time away from from the house for a bit but then I don't want to be dishonest and unauthentic by not discussing what has happened over the last year. I know that by the time we leave Ft. Bragg I will have gathered a few more friends to treasure but I so dislike this process of getting there. It's like dating. You meet so many people before you feel that spark that grabs your attention and inspires you to invest your time really getting to know someone. Our new neighborhood has a monthly Bunko group and I went this past weekend. I had a great time and really enjoyed meeting some of the other women. I also realized it was the first time I'd had a girl's night out since the end of June before Olivia's transplant! It turns out that many of our neighboors have kids exactly the same age as Olivia and Peter. I'll have to ask Dr. Paul about when Olivia is able to be around other people so that maybe she can start to make some friends here too!

TGIF

This week we had home visits from the occupational therapist, speech therapist, and physical therapist. We had a long drive to and from Durham for clinic that included a stressful car accident. We ran out of coffee on Tuesday. On Thursday Peter broke the handle off of the toilet in the kids bathroom. I spent 45 minutes trying to fix it and finally succeeded only to realize that I put it back together backwards so to flush you had to lift up. No matter because Peter broke it off again on Friday morning. Peter also managed to turn on the water in the tub in our bathroom and then plunge my hair straightner into the tub full of water. Thank God that it wasn't plugged in. He then took the same beloved hair straightner and beat a wall outlet with it until the wall outlet cracked and broke off. Peter finished off the day by pealing a raw onion then taking about three bites out of it like it was an apple. I'm not sure where he got this idea since I've never given him a whole apple. Then he proceeded to spread said raw onion all over the kitchen walls. TGIF!!!

Olivia's Hunger Strike Comes to an End

I am very happy to report that Olivia's hunger strike seems to have come to an end. Yesterday they stopped one of Olivia's antibiotics and I guess it really had been doing a number on her stomach because she ate well all day. Olivia had been on Zyvox to treat her persistent sinus issues. Common side effects of Zyvox include: Bad taste in mouth, constipation, diarrhea, dizziness, headache, nausea, tongue discoloration, trouble sleeping, and vomiting. They started her on a liquid suspension 3 times a day but it tasted so awful that she couldn't get it down. I tried it and it made me vomit. So they switched her to a pill. She was on an adult dose, 200 mg three times a day so we are very glad to be done with this nasty med! She had a wide variety of foods today and while she didn't eat any real meals she did snack consistently throughout the day. She ate Cinnamon toast crunch cereal, toast, chocolate covered pomegranate seeds, BBQ potato chips, Doritos, Spaghetti noodles with butter and Parmesan cheese, hot dog, popcorn, chicken nuggets, french fries, ravioli, apple, and to top all that off she had 3 Popsicles before bed. Just thinking about all of that gives me a stomach ache! She also drank almost an entire pediasure.

I think that Olivia is also in a much better mood now that she's off of the yucky zyvox. There were several times today while we were playing that she was laughing so hard that she started to cry. It was the cutest thing ever. It was hilarious and I know that my laughing was encouraging her. Peter even got in on the act when he realized that climbing into the laundry basket with the socks was making his sister laugh. We all laughed so hard we were in tears! So precious! It is really fun watching them play together.

"Are you Kidding Me!!!!"

Today Olivia had her weekly clinic appointment in Durham. It's really cold here so it took me forever to get the kids bundled up and the car warmed up. Fortunately it's dry so the roads were nice and clear, no ice or snow to have to deal with. We got to clinic and things went smoothly. Olivia's port worked beautifully, they drew her labs which look fantastic. We saw the doctor quickly and everyone was very impressed with how well Olivia is doing. The one area of concern is her weight and it's a big area of concern at this point. Olivia's weight is down to 14.6 KG, during her pre-transplant work up she was 17.2 KG and when she was discharged from 5200 she was steady at 16.8 KG. She hasn't seemed very interested in food this last week. She never seems to want to eat during meals and just seems to snack all day. At this point she's got to gain some weight. Dr. Paul had to give us an ultimatum today, if her weight isn't up to 15 KG by next week then they will have to insert an NG tube (a tube that is threaded up her nose and down her esophogus into her stomach and liquid food will be pumped directly into her stomach). Obviously this is not something we want to do so our #1 goal for the next week is to get Olivia to eat. I spoke with the dietician who was helpful about giving tips to increase Olivia's calorie intake. We finished up with clinic after about 3 hours and headed home.

I bundled up the kids and headed home. As we passed a McDonald's Olivia said she wanted chicken nuggets. Great! A happy meal for you! I had just ordered her happy meal in the drive through (requesting that they make the nuggets and fries fresh for Olivia) and pulled ahead to pay. It was lunch time so there was a line in the drive-thru. I was waiting to pay when I see a car across the parking lot start to back up. At first I thought nothing of it but then the car seemed to be getting a little close. I gave a friendly honk encouraging them to turn and to my alarm the car started gaining speed. The car was getting closer and closer and I kept honking. I couldn't pull forward, there was a car in front of me. I couldn't go backwards there was a car behind me. I was able to back up about a foot just in time for the car to crash into the passenger side bumper. I'm glad I backed up, I think that more damage would have been done if to the side of the car if I handn't been able to back up. The car was completely empty. It was a standard and it didn't look like it was in gear. I just sat there, waiting for the owner to return to her "run away" vehicle. It didn't look like there was too much damage. We exchanged info, I got the contact info for the man behind me in the drive-thru as well as the cashier at the window who saw everything and we were on our way. I had Mike look at the ar when he got home. He agreed that the damage is minimal but there did seem to be a leak under the car. We'll get it checked out this weekend and see where to go from here. Sheesh! What a day!