The biopsy

Yesterday afternoon I had my second visit with my endocrinologist. This wasn't really supposed to be treated as a follow-up visit from my initial meeting with him in January, but it kinda ended up that way. He wanted me to come back yesterday so he could do his own ultrasound of my thyroid to get a good look at these nodules I have going on there. He also wanted to biopsy the largest nodule by doing a fine needle aspiration. When he described this procedure to me in January, I left with the impression that this needle was very small, and "fine". I was thinking like the size of my daughter's insulin syringe. Something like this:

But, no, in reality it was more like THIS:

Yes!!

That was precisely MY reaction too.

After he did the ultrasound, he decided he was going to bypass the biopsy because the nodule is so small. He showed me all the pictures and kept pointing out how small it was. But then, he seemed to give it a second thought and felt it for himself again. This time he noticed that it really moves around a lot. That seemed to bother him. I told him I was fine with whatever he decided to do and that I was not going to be disappointed if he didn't do the biopsy, but since I was there anyway it would be fine if he went ahead with it. Then if the results come back as nothing, that's great news. So he went ahead with it.

I have to be honest and say that it certainly wasn't pleasant, but it was pretty quick, and not that terribly painful. I'll spare you the nasty details, but the doctor said it really looked like a "colloid nodule" to him which in laymen's terms means benign. But we'll know for sure when the results come back.

After all that was over, we talked about another blood draw. I explained to him that since I started the levothyroxine in January my intolerance to cold has gotten worse.

MUCH worse.

To the point it is distracting and extremely noticeable.

It's the worst at night time, and tapers off by morning.

I shiver getting ready for bed and have to use extra blankets, much to the chagrin of my already overheated husband. He is very tolerant of all my high maintenance stuff, but the extra blankets make him hotter than he already is, so I hear about that.

When I was sick this last weekend, I had to use a heating pad plus 2 extra blankets on top of the comforter, WITH a FEVER, and I became consumed with how I couldn't get warm.

I told all this to my doctor who immediately said it was time to check my thyroid levels now instead of waiting until the end of March as he decided in January. I also asked if he could check for the antibody levels to see if I have Hashimoto's Disease going on. It is an auto-immune disease where your body basically attacks the thyroid and shuts it down completely, so you have to have a replacement hormone in the form of a pill (levothyroxine). It's treated the same way as simple hypothyroidism, but it's important to know that because you are prone to other auto-immune disorders and the doctors can watch for that. We're also checking to see why my first set of blood work showed that my blood platelets were low. There are auto-immune disorders associated with that too, so it's important to just check all this out.

So, I'm hoping and praying that all of this will be nothing more than a needed increase in the dosage of levothyroxine that I'm currently taking. I'm only on 50 mg. right now, and with the cold issue the doctor is thinking I need to go up on that. If that doesn't help, I'm moving to Hawaii where it's warmer!!!

Giving my son some more time.....

I called my son's doctor again this morning (Tuesday) in hopes of actually reaching someone today, and sure enough I reached his nurse on the second ring. I told her how we had been really enjoying how well my son was responding to his Intuniv for the past two weeks, and then I told her what a bad three days he had over the weekend. She thought that maybe there was a correlation between the fact that I had been sick in bed and that Daddy was in charge, and that change affected Grant.

Because this is the first time we've ever tried any medication of any kind to help manage his ADHD, he's always been wired. So to finally see him so calm and cooperative for two weeks, and then to see him behave like he wasn't taking anything, the contrast was stark and disconcerting.

But the consensus is that we are going to stay with the 3 mg. pill and see how he does now that we're back on track with our routine and schooling, and with Mom being back on her feet and part of the family again. Yesterday and today he has been so much better and schooling with him was SO nice. In fact, after we had taken about 30 minutes to sit and watch a math video, work with tiny blocks, and then do a worksheet, I told Grant he could take a 10 minute break or so before we worked on some English.

"No, Mom. I don't want to take a break. I want to get my English done so I can go outside."

WHAT a blessing!!!

Update on Ashlyn's diabetes!!!

This afternoon (Monday) was our 4th endocrinologist visit since our second daughter's diagnosis one year ago (Feb. 11, 2009).

We had a TERRIFIC visit and my mind was so put at ease!!!

We're supposed to have these check-up's quarterly but we're having a hard time getting an appointment with this doctor's office because apparently they are booked so solid that we usually can't get a spot that works for our schedule but once every 4 months. Anyway, this visit was with the nurse practictioner, and I talked with her at LENGTH about Ashlyn's thyroid diagnosis, and the troubles we've been having in keeping her blood sugar levels within the range suggested to us (80-150). She pointed out to me that since September she has grown just over and inch and gained just 7 pounds which is much less than I was fearing. She is just in the 50th percentile for her height and 50-75th percentile for her weight. So the increase we have been seeing in her insulin has been because she is growing and her body is getting bigger.

Bigger body=More insulin

Even better news was her A1C Level:

7.6%

Last July she was at 7.7% and at the end of September she was 7.5%. So I'm very happy that we are least staying within a pretty good range even though we've been seeing lots of high blood sugar readings lately.

Overall, since her medical team seems to be happy with our management of her diabetes and the numbers we've been getting, then I'm going to just keep doing what we've been doing, and put my worries on the back burner of my "stove of worries". Heaven knows I have plenty of other things to keep on top of!!!!

Update on Intuniv......week 5

I've noticed some interesting things about my precious son here recently that I thought I might share with you who are interested in trying Intuniv. We started the 3 mg. pill two weeks ago, and tomorrow will begin our third week on it. At first, he responded really well, and the only "side effects" we noticed were him involuntarily falling asleep around 4 pm for a few days. That seemed to go away after a couple days and he didn't seem to be as sleepy as the days went on. I commented to my husband, and he agreed, that our son was much less edgy, calmer, and hardly had ANY screaming fits. He was much more cooperative in doing his schoolwork, and could sit still and finish his work for longer periods of time. I'm talking, he could sit for nearly an HOUR!! Normally, he's done after 10 minutes!! I would have to say that I do believe it helped him with his focus, though all the packaging suggests that this medication isn't indicated to help with that. It may just be that it helped lessen that urgency to have to move so much, so he could sit still better, hence his focus was on what was in front of him.

Anyway, the other thing we noticed was that if he did get upset by something, his calm down time was cut in half or more. PLUS, by the evening time, he was so cooperative and SWEET. I took the above photo of him in a moment that I have NEVER experienced with him. He has never, ever volunteered to do dishes in his life. But when his sister offered him some kind of kick-back for doing this job for her, he EAGERLY agreed. Never, ever would've happened before the Intuniv. He just wouldn't have the time or the patience for such a task.

BUT......and here it is.....BUT.....this last weekend.....I don't know.....it was a trainwreck for him.

Friday morning I woke up and felt like I had been hit by a semi-truck in the night, and I had to call my husband home from work to care for our children because I couldn't stay out of the bed. For two days, I was laying there miserable, and just listening to what was happening with Daddy in charge. Some of it was beautiful, and some of it was just downright ugly. Most of the ugly was my son. It was like he wasn't taking any medication for his ADHD at all!! He spent Friday and Saturday, and a lot of Sunday side-ways..........irritable, screaming mad, crying, angry, upset at the littlest thing. It has been so different that I called our doctor about it this morning to discuss this with the nurse. Of course, I haven't heard anything from them all day, and of course, today has been so different for him. Today he was much more mellow, had a great time beating Daddy at a game of MONOPOLY (a nightmare for kids who can't stay in one place for long....he crushed Daddy by the way!!), and fell asleep again at his normal afternoon time for about 30 minutes. So strange. Anyway, maybe he just needed his mom to be back up and on her feet, maybe it's something weird about the medication. I'll keep you posted if the doctor's office ever decides to call me back!!!

Friday's Fabulous Family Recipe

Last week while the snow was generously falling, I pulled out a couple recipes and the hot chocolate started flowing freely.

I have to be honest.

I ended up using two different recipes.

I just didn't like the way the first batch turned out.

I had forgotten about the silt that forms on the bottom of the pan.

I had forgotten how the powdered milk formed this sort of nasty thick layer that rose to the top and was kind of yucky to sip through.

So I ditched the first recipe and tried another one. We all liked that one much better. I'm going to include the first recipe because I think that foundationally, it is good. I just can't figure out how to solve the "silt on the bottom of the pan" issue. Maybe you can. Let me know if you do.

(I even tried grinding the powdered milk and dry ingredients finer in the blender before adding the water.......still no good.)

Hot Chocolate #1

1 cup nonfat dry milk powder

5 tablespoons sugar

3 tablespoons baking cocoa

1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Dash of salt

3 cups boiling water

In a saucepan, combine the milk powder, sugar, cocoa, cinnamon, and salt.

Add boiling water, stir until milk powder is dissolved.

5 servings

(You can see in the above picture that I tried putting everything in the blender first, to make it finer, but I still had problems with it.)

Hot Chocolate #2

(My children's favorite)

2 Tablespoons sugar

2 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

3 cups skim milk

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

In a medium saucepan stir together sugar and cocoa powder. Gradually stir in milk till smooth. Heat over medium heat till warm.

Remove from heat; stir in vanilla.

Makes 4 (6 oz.) servings

And then with all the cold weather, my children just DEVOURED the new instant oatmeal recipe that I just found for breakfast. With the host of health issues my children have, I'm on the lookout for healthy new ways to feed them. I found this recipe on the Homemaking Homesteader's blog, and it's WONDERFUL!!! Click here to see the recipe and all her pictures because it's quite well done and easy to follow. It's delicious, healthy, and my children LOVE it!!

Snow ICE CREAM!!!

Growing up in Northwest Ohio, snow was a regular, frequent, and eventually monotonous part of every winter. I enjoyed lots of winter activities from sledding to fort building to ice skating to "snow days" from school. But it wasn't until I was living in New Hampshire as a newly graduated college student that I tried this recipe. I found it in a great cookbook that I will share at a later time.

Since we NEVER have enough snow to make this, I thought that last week's snow event would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me to introduce this to my children. They were very intrigued to say the least.

I have to be honest though, and confess that I was not completely enamored by the results this time around. I truly believe that the TYPE of snow we had last week was too heavy and wet and grainy for this recipe to turn out as good as I remember it. Maybe it's just New Hampshire snow, but I think it would have worked better if it had been the finer, more powdery kind of snow that doesn't make great snowmen. Anyway, we had such fun finding clean snow and then tasting something new!!! Yummy!!

Snow Ice Cream

Serves 8 children

Stir together lightly:

2 1/2 quarts clean snow

1/2 cup milk or cream

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup sugar

Eat right away!

Does not freeze and keep well.

I used a 5 quart ice cream pail to gather our snow.

Mix everything together until well blended.

Again, this wasn't the kind of "ice cream" as you think of in the soft serve machines.

Ours turned out more watery and slushy.

I tried several batches with less milk and more snow and vice versa, and came up with

the same result every time.

It was just the texture of the Texas snow!!

But it sure tasted sweet and delicious!!!

Whiter than snow

This last Thursday morning, my oldest daughter awoke before the sun was up. When she peeked out her window and saw all the snow, she immediately woke her 5-year old sister who was sharing the top bunk with her, so she too could see the excitement happening outside. Of course, they had to wake me up at that time too to let me know about this, so after I told them their daddy had already told me at 4:30 am when he was leaving for work, I sent them back to bed. I could hear them whispering on and off for a little while, then silence again.

Later that morning, once we were all up and eating some breakfast, my oldest daughter casually told me about her conversation with her little sister in the wee hours of the morning with the snow softly falling outside.

She said, "Mom, I told her that her sins could be made whiter than the snow. Abby got saved this morning."

Well, that perked my ears up right away. I asked her to tell me again about their conversation, and then knew I needed to follow up with her right away.

See, for several months now we've been talking with Abby about her need for salvation. She knew that she was a sinner as the Scripture tells us we all are in Romans 3:23. She knew that she could not have a home in Heaven because of the sin in her heart, and because that sin separates her from God as we read in Romans 3:23 and John 3:3, 6, 15, 16,17 and 18. She knew that Jesus Christ died in her place and paid the price for her sin by His shed blood as the Bible tells us in Romans 6:23, and I Corinthians 15:3 and4. She understood that she needed to ask Jesus to forgive her of her sins and to come into her heart as we explained to her from Romans 10:9, 10 and 13. But we just weren't convinced that she was completely understanding the entire concept together.

But that morning we were given a magical picture in nature to illustrate what God does with our sin when we ask for forgiveness and cleansing:

"Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord:

though your sins be as scarlet,

they shall be as white as snow....."

Isaiah 1:18

When I read that to her from the Bible and she saw what was blanketing our yard and trees, it became perfectly clear to her. So, in her mommy's bed, tucked under the covers, we prayed and she asked Jesus to forgive her of her sins and to come into her heart. It was a very precious moment, and made that amazing snowfall even more extraordinary to our family!!

"Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean:

wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."

Psalm 51:7

Whiter Than Snow

Words: James Nicholson, 1872. Music: William Fischer.

Lord Jesus, I long to be perfectly whole;
I want Thee forever to live in my soul.
Break down every idol, cast out every foe;
Now wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Refrain

Whiter than snow, yes, whiter than snow.
Now wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Lord Jesus, let nothing unholy remain,
Apply Thine own blood and extract ev’ry stain;
To get this blest cleansing, I all things forego—
Now wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Refrain