Valentines

It is funny to watch these commercials on television for Valentines Day and the ideals of dating, romantic dinners, candles, intimacy, and ooy-gooy moments between men and women. Then there is reality. In our home, our Valentines consisted of combating Jacob’s 105.8 fever that resulted from the flu. We were cleaning up Macayla’s feeding tube site from cauterizing it the previous day with silver nitrate. We had bloody stomachs and yellow snot. Our romantic dinner (which was steak) was eaten quickly on a table half covered in paperwork and prescription medicines. Instead of candles, roses, and whispering sweet nothings, we had thermometers, Kleenex, and the honking of snot-filled nostrils. I have yet to see any marketing for Valentines that reflects this scenario. Companies like Kleenex, Therma Scan, and Motrin should explore marketing their products on higher concepts of love. Maybe it is in these scenarios that we begin to discover love more appropriately. It is easy to love in the ideal world of television fantasy where everyone is free of faults, flaws and trials. We live in a culture that claims true love is known only when it is a felt emotion. True love is known but not always a felt emotion. Emotions come and go, but knowledge remains. Maybe true love is discovered when we love in spite of its cost or benefit. Maybe true love is discovered in the faults, flaws and trials. I pray my knowledge of love grows this year because as I am typing there is a little nose that needs blowing, again. I honestly cannot claim that the emotion I have right now is ooy-gooy love. The only ooy-gooy I feel is in the tissue. So, I pray most of all that those around me know I love them with more than passing emotion.

Wheels!

Macayla has new wheels! She just got a new wheelchair made by Ormesa. It is company in Italy that seems to be making some good products. Her chair has been thought out for daily use. It actually has a sun visor and rain cover. These seem to be absent on other brands we have shopped. The rain cover is always on the chair if the visor is attached and it covers all of Macayla and the chair. There is also a thermal cover that zips up around Macayla to keep her warm. The chair looks similar to a big stroller and is much more comfortable than her other chair. We are still learning the best ways to use the chair, but overall it is a vast improvement over our last chair. 

Our other wheels (the van) is back from the car doctor. The ignition coil and coil wire was bad and had to be replaced. This is the part that is responsible for making all the spark plugs fire in the proper sequence. We came out of that procedure with a lot less damage than we anticipated. Still, I would like to see these presidential candidates promote a universal car care program! I'd love to only have to pay a copay when the cars are repaired.

Update

Macayla’s feeding tube has done better overall, but we are still experiencing granulation that never seems to stop. She still gets blood in her stomach from time to time but we have not seen the levels of blood that we did before December. She is still tolerating food well and even put on some needed weight. Our hope is that we will not end up where we were last summer. She just does not tolerate foreign objects in her tummy. Maybe that’s a good thing if she were ever to be a teenager. It might have prevented her from being big into body piercing! But I wish she could handle this one body piercing (her feeding tube) better.

Our van has decided to finally quit. It threatened to quit for several weeks now and it finally bit the dust this morning. We are waiting on the automotive MD’s assessment. It may require major surgery but hopefully it will be reasonable. I wish car insurance was like health insurance and all repairs and tune-ups could be covered just as our check-ups and surgeries are covered. I wonder if the presidential candidates would consider running on a platform of universal car-repair insurance coverage? Allstate and State Farm would probably hire a hit man to remove that candidate; lowest bid of course.

Jennifer is not quite as recovered, as we would like. She still feels discomfort and pressure that should be better by now. We are doing a couple of studies to see if all is as it should be and trying to discern how and when to go back to work. Soon time will be of the essence on these decisions.