Extremes

It seems that every day we are amazed at the extremes in our lives. Elizabeth has has been in incredible pain lately. The last two days she has not wanted to move. If you ever met her, you would know that this is not like her. Attempts to reduce her pain are not helping. I contacted some of her doctors and they suggested an EMG. I am really hoping that the pain will resolve itself before they push too hard for this test.

An EMG is a test that checks to see if the nerves are firing correctly. It involves sticking needles under the skin and running an electric charge down the nerve. Erica had one done last year and it was awful. She took medicine to calm her and keep her from remembering the test, but it did neither.

I think that the muscles in her neck are so tight that they are pushing on the nerves which is causing the pain. I think this is a similar pain to what I experienced before my last surgery. I wanted to gnaw my arms off! There is really no way to reduce the pain.

I took my family members to at least 8 doctor visits this week. One of those visits was for my son. He has been complaining about headaches. At first we thought the headaches were due to a change in his prescription for glasses. The headaches have increased to almost daily and now he is sensitive to light and sound. He also is seeing flashes of light and a ringing in his ears. I truly thought these headaches were due to stress. I was shocked that the doctor wanted and MRI.

I am not quite sure why it shocked me after all we have been through, but it did. He classified them as migraines and he seemed very concerned. Again, I thought he would send him back to counseling and very reassuring that it was probably nothing. The doctor did neither of these things. He came in smiling and left concerned and writing prescriptions and sending him for testing.

I still think that it will come down to stress. This kid deals with more stress than any one should have to endure. He called himself a "human elevator" when I asked him what it was like to be in our family. This shook me to the core. My husband and I intentionally do not ask a lot of him. He knows that he is one of two able bodied members of our family. He does many things without being told. He said that he feels very worried when my husband leaves out of town on business. It makes my heart ache when I think of the pressure on this kid.

Elizabeth watched a movie today called "Beyond Narnia." It was a about C.S.Lewis and the character played Lewis narrating the story of his life. It was a very well done production. It was the very end of the story where Lewis describes the agony of losing his wife to cancer. He doubts his belief in God. Desperately he looks to God and asks for an answer to why. He said that God said nothing. He only looked at him with a compassionate face. He said that it was like Aslan. In the story his mane was cut off brutally then he was murdered. But he came back to life and he was stronger than before. His mane was even more impressive. But if one was to look carefully, you could still see the scars.

I think my kids will be incredibly strong after all of this. They will be able to withstand anything that life throws their way. This will come at a price. Their roots will run deep and their foundation strong, but their is much they must endure.

As a mother, this horrifies me. I have some days that in consumes me. But "Perfect love casts out fear." And there are times that I can allow that love to consume me as well.

On the other extreme, we are seeing the hand of God at work in our lives. He has done some many things on our behalf that it amazes us every day.

The organizations that have agreed to help us with our home modifications are called Hearth and the Cincinnati Occupational Therapy Foundation (COTF). They have agreed to help us with the whole project. The total cost, if we were to attempt this on our own would be close to $100,000. But because there have been so many people willing to help us, the cost will be lower because of donated labor. This is so amazing, I cannot quite describe how humbling I feel. Just knowing that there are others willing to work with us and help us in any way they can is hope enough to keep going. But help that will be so needed and expensive and impossible for us to do on our own goes beyond what words can say.

Here is a link to the COTF http://www.cintiotinstitute.com/cotf/. They are the ones that will accept donations on our behalf. It is tax deductible. We are going to need as much help as we can gather to get this done, but I have confidence that God will not abandon us now. We have comes so far and have seen Him move mountains!