Month: February 2012

I am working (one class at a time) on a nursing degree at the local community college. It’s a chance for me to get out of the house and interact with people and (hopefully) learn new things. My work-at-home job is very solitary, I do a lot of reading about science, but I push a lot of paper (electronically) around and I don’t need to talk to very many people – so it can get lonely.

Last semester, I took a wonderful intro to Sociology class which I loved, loved, loved, even though the professor was 7 years younger than me. This semester I’m taking microbiology which I realized after the first class that I could probably teach it. So it’s a little boring, but I’m trying not to complain too much. There is a lab component which is fun. These are my lab partners who coincidentally also know all the material. One is a fireman/EMT and the other is a pharmacist. I will let you guess which one is which. We make an awesome lab-partner team.

 

As Edda gets older, getting her out of the house and doing something “fun” gets more and more difficult. Gone are the days we can just tuck her under our arms and go into the moon bounce with her or sledding with her – two of us on a small one-person sled. Edda is a big girl and it’s just hard to maneuver her around this world. There are some weekends where come Sunday night, we realize that she hasn’t been out of the house in 48 hours. I don’t think she minds being inside all the time, I just wish I could get her outside and doing more stuff. Exactly what stuff is always hard to figure out. Edda is not very helpful in finding “fun” things to do outside the house. Edda often looks unhappy being outside, her chapped face buffeted by the (relatively) cold winter air.

This weekend we went to Barnes and Noble for the first time in a while. I told Edda it was this old-fashioned place where stories were actually printed on paper instead of lit on a screen.

We are so lucky we don’t go to Children’s Hospital very often.  Here are some more photos from our visit.

So the appointment with the hematologist seemed to go well. The main culprit to Edda’s depressed platelet levels seem most likely to be caused by the Trileptal she is on for seizures. They actually ran a CBC in the office and her platelets are even lower than they were in the beginning of the year. So we are running a bunch of blood tests including something to find out how well she is metabolizing the medication as well as coagulation/immune stuff and finally the malignancy testing which is (thankfully) very unlikely because all the other values in the CBC are perfect.

After spending almost two weeks with my family, it is departing time again for me to go back to China, working. This time, I deeply realize what a wonderful family Rena & I have together. In addition, with Jeremy, Doris and Donald, together with our grand kids, what else in the world would we ask for. Not much, I have to say. Right? Right!

Edda’s hair is now officially long enough to make a ponytail to donate to Locks of Love.  Ten inches of beautiful, thick brown-black hair – but every time I bring this up, I get resistance from all sides.  Especially our caregivers who braid masterpieces such as this:

Did I mention that Edda has low platelet counts? We were trying to figure out why she was losing teeth so early – she’s already lost a bunch of molars which were not slated to come in until she was 12 years old – so we did some blood work at the suggestion of the dentist. We were trying to figure out if her thyroid was out of whack. But, of course, the thyoid is fine, but her platelets are low. So tomorrow we are headed to the hematologist to figure out why she has low platelet counts. We are trying not to freak out too much – so I just sit here trying not to freak out.  Sometimes I think I’m just to tired to freak out anymore and we have also totally abandoned the search for the reason why her teeth fall out early.

Vince is obsessed with Skylander – a Wii video game – which involves collecting a million figurines one-at-a-time from Target.

Every year, Jeremy likes to do a little science experiment for Vince’s school. He coordinates with the teachers about what they are learning in science class and comes in and does a PowerPoint presentation and an experiment. This year Jeremy’s topic is “How Grass Helps the Chesapeake Bay”.  Basically, he talked about how plants prevent erosion and run off from getting into the streams and finally into the bay.  Here he is holding a piece of sod.  

Everyone raised their hands to be chosen as a volunteer.  I’ve never seen so many excited future scientists.

Jeremy did the presentation twice – a total of about 120 students. He answered many questions, including my favorite – “Are you famous?” All the kids wrote and illustrated thank you notes for Jeremy and he read each and every one of them. It’s not often you get to see yourself drawn by other kids besides your own, so seeing Vince’s classmates drawings (god, these possessives are killing me) of Jeremy was really enjoyable.  Notice the goatee and the cardigan! And he’s yellow like a Simpson.