Cautiously Optimistic

Almost 6 years ago when I sat in a dark hospital room for months, surfing the web, trying to find answers that the team of Neurologists and infectious disease experts couldn't give me about why my poor husband was suffering from such a chronic intense headache; I remembered Tanner's 5th grade teacher, Ms. Lisa Ledesma.

I was Ms. Ledesmas's room mom the year before.  As such I knew her a little better than most.  I remember her telling the kiddos one day that she ALWAYS had a headache and that she was going into the hospital for a brain surgery and would have to take 6 weeks off to recuperate. 

I called her that summer while Brent lay in the hospital bed and asked her about her condition.  It sounded exactly like Brent's.  I asked her what it was called: Pseudotumour Cerebri.  (Now they refer to it as Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension). 

Later that day, I asked the Neurologist, "Could Brent have "Pseudotumour Cerebri"?

I'll never forget his response.

He laughed at me. 

 "Mrs. Argyle, he is the wrong demographic for that.  Pseudomtumour Cerebri only occurs in women who are in their child bearing years who are overweight."

Guess what?  Six months later, we found the amazing Dr. Herzog and Brent was diagnosed with Pseudotumour Cerebri. 

(Tender Mercy?  I think absolutely!  I can't tell you how rare this disorder is.  The odds that we would KNOW someone has it are remarkeable.) 

90% of the time it DOES occur in women who are in their child bearing years who have problems with their weight.  Many of those cases are CURED when the women have weight loss surgery.  Their headache goes away.

But 10% are men and children.  Brent is one of those not-so-lucky 10%.

(Dr. Herzog later called that Neurologist mentioned above and gave him a tongue lashing for not being up to date on PTC and encouraged him to do some continuing education.  He said it was shameful that this man had suffered for six months with immense pain and possible permanent damage to his eyesight because he was misdiagnosed.) 

Fast forward to 3 months ago.  I had lost track of Ms. Ledesma.  We moved out of the school district and she moved to teach at another school and got married so her name changed.  I had often wondered about her and where she was and how she was doing with her headache but had no idea how to get in touch with her.

3 months ago I noticed a post by Lisa on the wall of a mutual friend on facebook. (Tender mercy #2)  She was lamenting on a facebook post the fact that she was going in for yet another shunt surgery in her brain because she still had her headache.  I immediately "friended" her, got her contact info, called her and told her that she should switch DRs.  I told her that she needed to get in with Brent's Drs because they knew MUCH more about PTC and that our doctors don't even do the brain shunts anymore because they were ineffective and REALLY dangerous.

She switched.

Meanwhile, Brent heard from Dr. Konen about a study in Phoenix AZ.  A doctor there had put together a study of PTC patients (men only) and found that they all had a common bone fragment that was augmenting the flow of blood and fluid in the brain.  Once the Dr. had gone in to the head and shaved the bone down (I know, sounds delightful, right?)  -their headaches were gone.  This Phonenix Dr. had only performed the surgery on five men but all five men were headache free post- surgery.

Brent tried to get into the study.  He was not accepted.  (Apparantly HIS bone fragment is not AS pronounced as thiers were in Phoenix and so he was not a good candidate.)

Then he started talking to a highly recommended surgeon at UTSW about doing it.  After a few months, that Dr. came to the same conclusion.  He agreed that the bone fragment is there.  It is prohibiting flow.  But he just didn't think it warranted the surgery.  He didn't think the results would be worth it.

All this time, Ms. Ledesma is being scanned by Brent's team and finding out she has the rogue bone fragment in her head too.  She is sent to a different surgeon out of Baylor.  He expresses the same concern to her.  Her bone fragment is there but it is smaller than those in the study.  He has never done this surgery on a PTC patient.  Her fragment isn't as big as those in the study. Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah....

BUT he consented to do it for her.  

Afterall, she has had the same headache for 11 years. 

Yep! you heard me right!  ELEVEN YEARS. 

Can you imagine?

She had the surgery on February 23rd. 

When she came out from under the anesthesia she had
NO HEADACHE.

I talked to her last Friday. 
No headache all week.

Guess who is meeting with Ms. Ledesma's surgeon this Thursday at 3?

(Tender Mercy #3)

I might be getting ahead of myself but if we can talk Dr. Baktik into putting us on the fasttrack and running all the tests quickly so that he could have the surgery in March, we have double insurance coverage.  (Brent's old job is still in effect and his new one has kicked in already.) Possible tender mercy #4.  :O)

Prayers Please.

You are beautiful, smart, kind, and wonderful

Sooo.  The other day I was giving this gal a little pep talk.  For the most part this is young lady that is pretty comfortable in her own skin and doesn't have one single SHALLOW bone in her body (despite her rather shallow mother).  But all teenage girls need a pep talk every so often when they have had a little disappointment in their life.

  They need to be reminded about what is REALLY important. They need to be told not to underestimate themselves.  They need to be carefully prodded to reach higher.  Sometimes they need to hear from the adults in their lives how important it is to not settle for "plan B" just because "plan A" didn't happen right away and it might require a little more work.

And in the process of having said conversation, I told her that she needed to remember DAILY that she is a beautiful, smart, kind, and wonderful person.  At the end of the day that is all that matters.  I told her I wished that she would look at herself in the mirror every day and say those words to remind herself of that!

Apparantly a little sister was listening.

Because the next day, Jensen came home from school and found these taped to her wardrobe in her room.  I knew immediately who the guilty - but wonderful- party was from the handwriting.

The most stressful stage of parenting, for me

Without a doubt this is it.

Atleast for me.

I have never been a nervous mother before.

But this makes me nervous.

In a month or so we will have not one but TWO teenage drivers on the road. (Tanner is being held hostage a little bit by Brent who insists that he accomplish a few things toward getting his Eagle Scout before he will take him to get his license.) . Oh my! It scares me to death every single time they are behind the wheel.

I worry that they are going to get lost.

or distracted

and run into something

or someone.

that they might get hurt

Or hurt someone else.

Uuugggghhhh.

The reality is you just have to teach them best you can and then loosen the apron strings. It doesn't mean I won't worry.

Valentine's Day 2012

 I woke up to this on Valentine's Morning.  My hubby is the romantic one of the two of us.  This is his LOVE LANGUAGE.

Made not one but two yummy heart shaped pot pies (Brady's LOVE LANGUAGE)

and a salad in a fun red heart salad bowl. 

 Had some leftover GIANT cupcakes from the 4th grade valentine party to share for dessert.  (All three of my girl's LOVE language: chocolate!) 

(Forgot to mention that I threw a party for 147 4th graders today.  Boy, am I glad that is over.)

These are my honey-do's that my honey has committed to getting done for me this week.  This is MY LOVE LANGUAGE.  :)

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Wisdom of an older brother

Back here I talked about what this is above.  Yesterday, while cleaning the girl's room, I came across this lunch box note to Reagan (aka: "Ray-Gun")  from Tanner.  Apparantly, she felt it was profound enough to be a "keeper".  

Sometimes an older brother's wisdom has more potency than a parent.

trying to do our part

Elisa, Jensen, the Elders, Tanner, and Brady

(some air hockey on "P day" before the discussion.)

We are trying to do our part over here at the Argyle house.  I have never really thought of myself as much of a missionary.  Most of my friends until the last few years have been members of the church - which makes it hard.  That changed when we moved to Prosper.  We are so much more involved with neighbors and within the community so we have alot more opportunity to be member missionaries and examples.

Almost a year ago, Tanner had a friend (Layton) from the swim team come up to him and express interest in the church.  He started taking the discussions.  Lo and behold his dad (Josh) was not all too keen on the idea so he decided that he was going to sit in on the discussions and see what the missionaries were filling his son's head with.

Well a few months later, Josh was baptized.  This coming saturday his wife, Jennifer is going to be baptized.  When their daughter turns 8 in a few months she is going to be baptized by Josh.  Pretty cool, huh?  (We are still crossing our fingers for Layton.)

Jensen has a friend (Elisa) that is living with a couple in our ward.  Elisa is a foreign exchange student from Germany and Jensen and her have really hit it off.  Jensen has offered to help the missionaries teach Elisa and now we have the blessing of having the discussions being taught in our home again.  

The missionaries were here for dinner last week and challenged us to find someone to be a missionary to.  I invited my friend Gayla to our RS activity tomorrow night.  I also agreed to give my friend, Donna a video.  

Brent has referred a lady from his last job to the missionaries.  She lives in another state but she is taking the discussions.

We are trying to do our part.  I don't know if we will ever see any of our friends baptized but we are trying to do our part, however small.

Dinner table fun

This is one of my favorite ways to get my kids to hang out in the kitchen with me while I'm making dinner. I also learn a lot about them because I change the question from week to week. I get craft paper from micheals or hobby lobby, throw some markers in the center, and write a question on the corner that gets the juices flowing. They usually like to throw an illustration or two in with their answer for fun.

Some questions I have asked before:

What would you wish for if you had three wishes?
Who are you grateful for?
What do you resolve to do this year?