Home is Where My Heart Is...

Wow!  So happy to be home.  We were released on Sunday around 5:30 or so.  I believe I posted on the last FaceBook update from the hospital that MaKenzie, immediately on the word "release", began complaining about her head hurting again and spiked a slight fever.  Well, that all got worse as we were driving out of town.  She vomited twice and just laid over in the seat crying that her head hurt so badly. 

Not sure what to do, but absolutely positive that we didn't want to get all the way home and have to come rushing back, we called the Neurosurgery doc on-call. He said to be safe, we should probably re-scan her to be sure it wasn't her shunt.  So, we turned the little bus around and Harold and the rest of the crew dropped MaKenzie and me off at the ER door.  Chagrined that we had to be exposed once again to the nasty ER germs, I begged for mercy from every staffer we encountered, from the sign-in girl to the triage nurse all the way up the line to the neurosurgery dude.  They worked us through in about an hour and a half.  During that time we had a ('nother) CT scan which told us that, in fact, it was not her shunt causing the symptoms she was continuing to experience.  Well, praise the Lord for that--but what IS the problem, then?  They couldn't answer that one, but sent us on our way with some anti-nausea meds and Tylenol suppositories.  Yay.  So, I called Harold, who had taken the rest of the crew shopping at Meijer's to pass the time, and they met us at the door, and we were on our way home.

MaKenzie has continued to have bouts of headaches, but that doesn't totally bother me--after all she DID just have two surgeries ON HER HEAD!!!  I think a bit of head pain is in order, don't you?  But I don't like the fever that comes and goes, nor do I appreciate the bouts of nausea she experiences.  However, all in all, those are decreasing day by day. 

We have decided in light of everything going on with her and the recent flu "scare" that we aren't going to be taking her for the LocoMat therapies right now.  We asked them to put us on the list for the spring.  She is just so very susceptible to every little bug that goes around and she gets so much sicker than the average kiddo that we didn't feel it was wise to expose her twice a week to so much, since it's a voluntary treatment.

In other non-MaKenzie news (did you know there was non-MaKenzie news in this family????), there was an accident in front of our house in Van Lear, which caused a lot of damage to our front deck. 

The car was coming from the left side as you look at the picture above.  It somehow jumped up onto the hillside and took out the corner of the deck, clipping off several 4x4 support beams.  Then it rolled over and took out our mailbox.

Then it came to a stop in the middle of the road.  Another car came over the hill and smashed into the first car.  The driver of the first car wound up in the middle of the front yard of the house across the road from us.  I'm not sure what became of the other passenger or the driver of the second car, but I know, the last I heard, they didn't expect that first car's driver to make it. 

In surveying the damage, I found lots of car pieces and lots of items that I'm sure had been just sitting around on the floorboards or the seats.  A halloween wig, a gospel tract, and a couple energy drink cans.   Things that spoke of a life in the process of being lived.  Maybe he and his girlfriend were anticipating going together to a halloween party in a week or so?  I'm sure, just like you and me, he had plans, places to be, people to see...a life to live.  It's one of those times that make you aware that we are SO not in control of our lives.   We make our plans, but the Lord orders our days. 

I'm sure, now that we are home and getting back into the swing of things here, we will be finding out about how that young man (he is 22) is doing.  Then we will need to find out things like--did they have insurance???  You know, there is just something about trying to get that house SOLD!  Every time we decide, "This is it.  We're going to go ahead and sell it." Something (or someone) comes along to interfere with that plan.  Oh, I would SO love to get it sold.  Now it looks like it will be a while again.  Well, I'm sure it will happen in the Lord's timing.  So, we'll just wait.  (Like we have a choice, right?  :) )