New Recruits, Kay, Sarah and Sue!

Sorry I haven’t written for a while.  But it has been a bit crazy, good crazy, but still crazy.

Wednesday was a good day!  I was in Tracy’s room when I got a call from Dr. Margarita Raygada from the National Institute of Health (NIH).  After I had finished talking to Dr. Raygada, I was so overwhelmed and I started crying and Trace looked at me and said, “What’s the matter honey?”  The tears flowed even more as I told her nothing was wrong, that my tears were tears of joy.  And she said, “oh, ok”.  This was first time since November 20^th that she actually initiated a conversation with me that made total sense.  So I felt that the first IVIG treatment was a success. 

Dr. Raygada just went over some of the paperwork with me that needed to be turned in to help expedite Trace’s application.  So I got a summary from Dr. Paretti that was 29 pages to send!  I spent about 2 hours trying to email it only to have Ed Roden tell me the file was too big and to change the dpi on the scanner.  The file went from 25MB to 1MB.  No problem sending it now, thanks Ed.

Thursday was a good day too.  We had treatment #3 and got another new doctor, Dr. Berg and we love him.  Dr. Paretti had some type of emergency that pulled him away from us.  We will miss him, but like I said, we love Dr. Berg.  I also had some more correspondence with NIH and more paperwork to be turned in. 

Trace’s treatment was over around 6:30PM and I headed out for the office.  Friday was payday and I needed to print the paychecks.  I rushed to get them done so that I could make the Novena at 9PM.  I got to St. Anastasia just in time and once again it was wonderful to pray with fellow believers and be with Drew and friends.  It was the 2^nd to the last evening of the Novenas.  Thank you to all who participated.  May God Bless you and your families.

I also found out the headlights in our truck had gone out and it was too late to get parts, so Drew followed me home with one headlamp, as we got it to work by slamming the hood.  Who knew that would work?

By the time I left Troy it was almost 11PM, as I needed to be back in Ann Arbor for an early morning Dr. appointment.

Friday was the arrival of Trace’s family, Kay (mother), Sarah and Susan (sisters).  It was great to see Tracy’s excitement as they showed up in her room.  Tracy lite up like a Christmas tree!  Then Drew got here, and she was happy to see him too.  It is great having so much family here. 

We all went to out to BD’s Mongolian BBQ for dinner, thanks Kay!  After dinner Drew and I dropped off the ladies and headed out to movie.  It was great to be able to get out just the two of us.  Drew told me that he was looking forward to all of us being at home together and seated at the dinner table, holding hands and praying again.  I had to agree with him.

Tracy’s 4^th treatment of IVIG was started while Drew and I were at the movie.  I texted to see how she was doing and Sue told me that they had stopped it because her blood pressure had dropped.  I was aware that this was common but still it worried me.  So I left the theater and called to talk to the nurse to make sure everything was good.  Even though Sue had texted me saying that they had told her it was ok. 

Drew and got back to the hospital around 10:30PM and said goodnight to Kay and Sue, as Sarah had already gone to bed.   Tracy’s treatment was being held when we got there and was restarted around 11PM.  Trace was wide-awake, so I told Drew to go ahead and go back to the room and I would be over shortly.  I stayed until just before midnight.   The treatment was going well but Tracy was still wide-awake, so I told her I would return to finish off the treatment with her.  I returned about 12:30 and stayed until 2AM when Tracy finally fell asleep.

I headed back to the room and got a fairly good sleep, thanks Zolpidiem (20 points for the first to respond with brand name).

I will leave you here for now.

God Bless and “Never Give Up… Never Ever Give Up!”

Rob