Wait and See Continued...

Today was the follow up visit to Michaela's last appointment in the saga of her lumpy lymph nodes and since it was a half day for Alyssa and Daddy wanted to go and see what the good doctor had to say we ALL

made the trek into Spokane and I think we are all feeling a bit more optimistic about those suspicious lumps on her neck even though Chris and I found two more the night I brought her home from her last doctors appointment. Miss Michaela has been on a twice a day dose of augmentin and while I HATE the idea of her on antibiotics they seem to be doing the trick and we will continue to watch and wait for another 10 days until she goes back again. These things are tricky because the last two lumps she had removed were classified as abscesses and those things can go from "hmm lets wait and see" to "HOLY cow! off to surgery we go!" very quickly. We are all praying that these lumps recede without the need for surgical intervention or harsher antibiotics and we are hopeful. At the very least the doctor reassured us that at the very least he is not concerned that it might be cancer because she doesn't fit the clinical picture of a kid

with cancer. For one she has a TON of energy, she eats TONS of food, and overall
looks perfectly healthy beyond the fact that she has these strange little bumps. On a brighter note Michaela began her gymnastics classes at the YMCA this week and my 38 lb, 4 year old had an absolute BALL! We will probably move her to Spokane Gymnastics when she is done with this months YMCA classes because we have a feeling our little gymnast  is going to quickly get bored with the limited options offered at the YMCA program.

Wait and See...

I'm not certain how to start this post because I'm feeling a little lost at the moment. When Michaela was 18 months old we discovered a lump on her face. We did the normal stuff took her to the doctor, gave her the medicine they told us to give her but regardless of what we did the lump wouldn't go away and got bigger and uglier not to mention we started discovering more lumps in her neck. As we progressed through this I got more and more ANGRY at the doctors because they didn't seem to be taking this THING seriously! We did a CBC and it came back normal and yet my perfectly healthy 18 month old had this horrible looking lump on her face that had at that point begun to change colors! Finally I told the doctors that we'd had enough that they needed to do something more than give me an antibiotic to give her. Within a week of seeing the ENT the first time she was at the childrens hospital having her lymph node removed from her face and left open to drain the INFECTED material from her body! Just after her 2nd birthday we were back at the hospital to have another surgery to remove the other lump that they had left to "see" if it would drain removed.
Fast forward to this morning and imagine the horror I went through hearing my now 4 year old tell me "mommy I have some bumps on my neck" as she lay in her bed while I was getting her big sister ready for school. It was like the world stopped, I tried to calmly walk into her room and have her show me the lumps when really all I wanted to do was cry. The kids and I all took Alyssa to school and when I got home I began calling the doctor she had seen in Vancouver for medical records to be transferred and the new doctor here in Spokane to get an appointment. All the while hoping it was nothing but knowing that I was just kidding myself. I was able to get her into the doctor early this morning and we've started on the road of antibiotics again to hold off any infection until we can figure this thing out. The doctor said it was VERY rare for any child her age to have this going on once let alone twice and that we would probably need a CT scan but he wasn't sure yet. I'm scared and worried; not only did the doctor find the bumps she had shown me but he found additional ones in her neck. As I sat waiting for our turn at the doctors office I remembered how the girl who couldn't hold still has begun falling asleep on short car rides and how I've had to adjust the elastic on her jeans again because they were getting too big. This fall we celebrated because Michaela weighed 43lbs at her checkup, today she weighed 39lbs. Right now we sit and wait while she takes her medicine and head back to the doctor on Friday to see if there's any change and we go from there.

Successful First Week

Well, Alyssa survived her first week at her new school and lived to tell about it! I'll be honest and say I was SO nervous to send her off midway through the year to a new school in a new area and I felt a ton of guilt too because this last move was conceived and executed so that "I" could continue my educational goals at EWU. We did a ton of research on the area and the public school system because while I wanted/needed to continue my education we wanted to make sure that Alyssa didn't suffer for my aspirations. We were lucky enough to find a rental in a rural area that is halfway between Cheney and Spokane that is thankfully in the Cheney SD and Alyssa gets to attend a brand new school that just opened this fall; she was so excited to check out brand new books from the library on Thursday! My girly made some new friends in her class and experienced her first week of school in an area that doesn't completely shut down when we get a bit of snow, although our "bit" this week was more like 3 feet of snow and that came with a 2 hr last start. It warmed my heart that first day when I picked her up from school and she had a HUGE smile on her face and shared with me how much FUN she had that first day and how AWESOME it was :-). Alyssa loves her new PE teacher and the fun games they play and she's even learning FRENCH! I make her come home and teach me some new words on days she has World Languages :-) Even as we move into this new chapter of our life I don't want to discount our time spent in Vancouver and am extremely glad that Alyssa has been able to Skype with her best friend Sophea  a few times the last few days.