welcome to spiceland.

Tru has had two loose teeth for about 3 weeks now, and she finally lost the first of them yesterday. The tooth fairy brought her $1.65 last night. Mom thought $1 was fine, but Dad thought the tooth fairy needed to give Tru all the change in her purse. Here’s a video from yesterday.

We had a very scary day two Wednesdays ago. Tru, Heidi, and I were at a local flooring store picking out new carpet for our house, which we listed for sale last week. We were waiting on the salesman to help us. He apologized for being on the phone and told me he was trying to direct his son to a particular store. The son was in his car looking for the store, and the salesman didn’t know how to tell him where it was. I offered to look it up on my phone. Heidi walked off, and Tru followed her. I went off after them, and the salesman said, “Oh, they can’t hurt anything.” I motioned toward the unprotected basement stairs, and said “Well, either of them could fall down the stairs.” He said, “Don’t worry. I’ll look after them while you look that up.” Not 2 seconds later, we heard a crash. We were about 10 feet away from the kids, but in the hallway. We walked into the room where the kids had gone, and Heidi was lying on the floor underneath a solid wood exterior door that had been propped up against the wall. Apparently, the store had just moved into that location and hadn’t finished their renovations and had left this door unhinged, leaning up against the doorway. Tru thought it was a regular door and had tried to open it, knocking it right over onto Heidi, who became pinned to the floor underneath it.

We called 911 and got her out. She may have been complete knocked out for a second, but we’re not sure. The salesman pulled the door off of her, and she looked so tiny crumpled up on the floor. It really looked like she was very badly hurt. By the time we picked her up, her eyes were halfway open and she was flailing, quiet, and unresponsive. As she became more responsive, she began grimacing with only half her face, twitching one of her arms, and flexing her legs together very severely. She started crying about 2 minutes after the door came off. She and Tru and I rode in the ambulance to the hospital, which took forever and a day. When we got there, they did a CT scan and X-ray of her head, chest, back, and arms and didn’t see any injuries. I am just flabbergasted that she didn’t have any broken bones.

She acted lethargic for the rest of that day, and sore and tired the next day. She got happier though, so we were surprised when she spiked a 103.5 fever on the third day. We took her back to the hospital, and the doctor told us there was a small possibility that a tiny skull fracture could have been invisible on the X-ray but still been large enough to allow spinal meningitis to develop. We were to wait it out. Luckily, Heidi didn’t develop any more symptoms and eventually got over what was apparently just a virus. Unluckily, the rest of us caught it from her, and we are just now beginning to feel better. A real estate agent warned us this would happen! It’ll take you 2 weeks working your butts off to fix up the house to sell, she said, and as soon as you list your house you’ll all get sick!

I found this picture on my phone today. I had forgotten about it! This is Tru in her nitrous oxide mask. Her dentist called her “Rudolph.”

So sorry it’s been so long since we’ve written anything here! It’s been very busy this last month or two. We had a great Christmas. Papa and Nana Spiceland came to visit and celebrate Christmas and Tru’s birthday, then Papa, Missa, Ally, and Kerri came. We had a wonderful time with everybody. We were supposed to travel to Memphis to spend Christmas evening and the following days with Bama and Jessica, but all six of us were sick. We had an interesting but effective Christmas over Skype video conferencing.

Tru had to have two fillings last week and has to have three more in the coming weeks. Her dentist says that the location of the cavities tells him that better brushing could not have prevented these cavities. She’s just inherited Mike’s teeth and may have issues her whole life. I sure hope that Heidi inherited mine! I’ve never had a cavity in my life. Her experience was hilarious, though. We’d told her ahead of time that she’d have to smell some yummy-smelling air during the procedure. Somehow she’d gotten the idea that they were going to stick things in her nose to make that happen, so she was very relieved to find out that it only involved breathing from a small red nose covering. The dentist called her Rudolph the whole time! She got very relaxed and very happy on the nitrous. She kept saying funny things like “Mommy! I looooooooooooooove yoooooooouuuuuuuu!” and “I’m DIZZZZZZZYYYYYY!” After we went home, she bit her lip pretty badly, so it’s all swollen in the only snow pictures we managed to take this year.

We had half an inch of snow the day before her dentist appointment, and amazingly, some of it has stuck around. I believe today is day 6 with snow on the ground. Many lakes iced over, and the temperatures were in the teens and twenties many days. Tru had a blast playing in it. Check out the pictures section of our website for new pictures.

Mike and I are leaving in five minutes for the hospital for my laparoscopic cystectomy. Wish us luck and keep us in your prayers. It shouldn’t be a big deal. We’ll update everyone when we get back.

Update #1 5:00 PM: I’m home! I’m sore, but otherwise, I’m fine. I’m in pain when I’m not medicated, but I have lots of fun drugs to help me with that. Thanks for all the prayers and thoughts!

Update #2 Nov. 18th: Got confirmation last week that the tumor was benign. Yay.

Tru got her EKG today. It went well, but we don’t have any results yet.  Here are pictures of her at the doctor’s office yesterday and getting her EKG today.

Strange thing happened at the doctor’s office. Dr. Zbell, Tru’s regular doctor who could not see us today, said, upon hearing that we’d left the ER early last night, “I know Dr. Bryant really wanted you to stay last night.”  Funny, Dr. Bryant told me on the phone last night that it would be fine if I left and I could just come into the office in the morning.  She never told me that we should stay, even when I told her I was calling to make sure I wasn’t making a dumb decision by considering leaving early.  Apparently after that, she talked to the other doctors and lamented that we left.  Oh, well. So nice of her to give me bad advice and then condemn the choice I made based on her advice. </sarcasm> The doctors are going to run some tests assuming that it could have been either a fainting spell or a seizure. She’s going to have an EKG tomorrow to look for heart arrhythmias, and later this week she’ll have a CT scan and an EEG to measure brain activity. They took blood today to look for an infection and possible anemia, but all her blood tests came back normal. We’ll keep updating as we find things out.

We had a scary night last night. We’d almost finished dinner when Tru looked at Mike and very confusedly said, “Daddy?” She just shut down and started leaning over. She fell out of her chair, and Mike had to catch her. She was shaking or twitching or something, and when she came to, she was very confused and unresponsive. We didn’t know whether it was a seizure or she had just passed out. She was looking all over the place and shaking, and she wouldn’t answer our questions. It took about 5 minutes before she was back to normal. We called 911, and the paramedics checked her blood pressure and oxygen levels, which were fine, when they got here. They stuck around asking questions for about ten minutes while we calmed down. Tru had been fine the whole time, so we drove to the ER ourselves. We got there about 9 and by 10:15, we still hadn’t even been triaged. By that time, we’d talked to Mike’s stepbrother who is a doctor. He assured us that it probably wasn’t a seizure, and Tru’s pediatrician told us we could take her home and come in to the doctor’s office the next morning. She’s got an appointment for 2:15.

She spiked a fever of 102 F 2 days ago, and she got a pretty good bump on the head with the car door about a week ago. I’m going to ask if either one of those events could have sparked this episode. I’m fairly certain it wasn’t food-related, though, because she ate and drank normally all day yesterday. I’ll update after the appointment.

Tru has been a devil’s child lately. While she had RSV, she would not stop touching Heidi’s toys and handing them to her. As careful as we were, washing them every time we witnessed this happen, we couldn’t keep Heidi from getting sick. So Heidi’s battling Tru’s RSV now. She doesn’t have a fever, but she is developing a slight ear infection. Her doctor put her on amoxicillin with strict instructions to be on the lookout for erythema multiforme like Tru gets when she takes penicillin. So far, so good. No signs of reaction yet.

Yesterday, I moved a plant from the dining room into the toy room so that it could get some better sunlight. The plant is a peace lily that I brought back to Huntsville from my grandmother’s funeral. I stuck my head in the toy room after dinner yesterday to find that Tru had pulled off about 60% of the leaves, shredded them, and thrown them all over Heidi in her exersaucer like confetti on a partygoer. She was very apologetic when I started crying and told her how much the plant meant to me. When we were getting ready for bed, she told me that when it gets to be my birthday, she will buy me a new special plant.

This morning. she found the Elmer’s glue. She took things out of that same drawer and glued them to the front of our brand new refrigerator! At least Elmer’s is water based. I couldn’t punish her too badly, though, because she took responsibility for her actions and said she was sorry. She’s either becoming much more repentant lately or much more manipulative. I guess only time will tell.

I sure hope my poor peace lily pulls through.

Update @2:46 PM: Tru pulled another leaf off my plant.

Poor Tru has been sick for days. First it was a runny nose, then a light cough. A slight fever followed, and then her cough developed into a wet, phlemy hack-hack-hack that was interfering with her breathing. I took her to the doctor today, and it turns out she’s got RSV, a common respiratory tract viral infection that can be very serious or even fatal in newborns or the immunosuppressed. I mentioned to the doctor that Heidi had a runny nose for several weeks several weeks ago, and she suspects that Heidi got it first and passed it on to Tru. I have no idea why Heidi tolerated it so well that I hardly noticed she was sick when Tru looks like she’s run full-force into a brick wall. I wonder if it has to do with the fact that Heidi was breastfed for about 6 times longer than Tru was. If so, what an extreme effect! The doctor says Tru will get over it on her own, too.

Update at 4:51 PM CST: Tru just had a fever of 102.1. We’re treating it with Tylenol and Robitussin. Hopefully that will be enough!