The Artist

Paige brought home another piece of artwork today. She printed a picture of a guy and had to make something different with it. So she printed out the photo again smaller and cut and pasted the chin and neck onto the photo. Then she had to draw it...

I told her today, “Paige, I am amazed at how gifted you are with drawing! Do you like to create art? Do you like to draw?” Her reply, with the straightest of faces and a slight sneer in her eyes, was “No!” 

Haha! Well, joke’s on her because she has talent!

Homecoming 2017

This past weekend was Homecoming. Abby had some friends come over and get ready in the basement. She had a billion mirrors set up, some music, and she even hung some Christmas lights. Very good ambiance, Abby!

Here are some pictures of her all dolled up! 

(and one with some gray streaked haired/short woman!)

First Day of School 2017!

First day of school has somehow rolled around again! The morning went off smoothly even though the rain decided to come! Hannah drove to school with Abby and the rest of the Glynnlets took the bus.  They were all as ready as anyone can be!

Hannah is a junior

Abby is a sophomore

Paige is in 8th grade

Adam and Jenna are in 6th

And the dogs were happy to get back on the trail!

Hannah's Latest

It has been 19 weeks today since I posted about Hannah. (http://kikarules.blogspot.com/2017/02/an-update-on-hannah.html)  People have been asking for an update and I feel confident enough to do so. I'll cut straight to the chase and then tell the story...

Hannah's knee is almost fixed (we are still in progress which is good) and also... 
she is CURED of her stomach problems!!!!!

{insert my praise and thanksgiving dance}

I had great reservations about putting that last blog posting on Facebook. I don't know why I did, but I'm sure we could have a whole conversation about that issue alone. Yet, I felt the Lord smacking the backside of my head frustrated that I hadn't followed His urging and done it earlier. What happened as a result? People reached out with love. And hope. And suggestions. It astounded me how many people out there hurt. Not only hurt, but like Hannah, hurt and didn't know why.

I want to say thank you to every single one of you who took a moment to bless us with your kindness. So many people did their own research for us, kept an eye out for others' stories who were similar, and sent ideas/articles/links. 

There was one person who led us to a doctor who single handedly properly diagnosed Hannah... Dave Cathcart. 

Now, I probably could have counted on one hand the number of conversations Dave and I have had one on one. I think that number would include times that he held the gate open for me at a swim meet and I said "Thank you". Yet, he took time out of his day to notice us. He saw a link on my FB page and he clicked it. He read my rambling. He heard our frustration and he recognized our pain. He then took the time to reach out to me to share his story and gave us the name of his doctor... his chiropractor. 

"Thank you, Dave. I appreciate the referral." is what I said to him. In my head, I was thinking "a chiropractor? Seriously? This is stomach issues, Dave. You're crazy." 

So, I did what everyone would have done... I put that info at the bottom of my list to look at later. After all, we were in the middle of other doctor appointments. I can only do so many at the same time.

Feb 13 Hannah went her knee surgeon for regular follow up. He gave no reason her knee should be hurting still. Suggested seeing a rheumatologist. Made an appointment that day.

Feb 13 Hannah began her 6 week restricted corn free diet. 
For goodness sake, this was hard. HARD. I made everything from scratch. Even homemade baking soda. I learned more about corn than I ever cared about knowing. If you need some great links to info, let me know. Did I mention this was extremely painful to do? Why is it so hard? It's in everything. Ev-er-y-thiiiiiiiing.

Feb 16 Post Op from her laparoscopic surgery.
No endometriosis. (which I knew). The doctor put her on birth control pills saying if hormones were a factor in reducing pain, then this would help the pain. All it did was completely screw up her body and gave her a totally awful other condition to work with. (she is no longer on them and has returned to normal)

March 4 Corn free diet ended (Thank you, God!). There was no issue with corn.

April 6 Rheumatologist appointment
Doctor saw no issues. Wanted an x-ray because she suspected scoliosis. X-ray taken same day. Results: no scoliosis.

Now, I'm at a dead end. I look back at my email from Dave, shrug my shoulders, and make an appointment with Dr. Rick Dietz.

This is Hannah's turning point.

Dr. Rick Dietz is a natural chiropractor. He looks at the body as a whole. He spent an hour with us at the first visit. I'm sure I drove him crazy with all my long winded words. He listened patiently, asked questions, and let Hannah's story unfold. Dietz's first instinct was that her stomach was not producing enough acid to digest the food. He said this before I even mentioned that the GI doctor had given her antacids and when she took them, she would writhe on the floor in pain. 

So, apparently there are pressure points towards the bottom of your rib cage. The right side is for stomach enzymes and the left side of for stomach acid. (It could be the opposite. I struggle keeping it straight.) He wanted to check her levels. He laid her down and all he did was touch her skin in the general areas of those pressure points and she basically levitated off the table in pain. He never even got to the actual pressure point. He gave her Zypan. This is basically a natural enzyme and acid that helps the stomach kick start the ability to produce the proper amount of acid to break down food. She was to take 1-3 pills any time she ate... even if it was just one grape. 

Then he adjusted her knee. And he adjusted her feet. And he adjusted her back. Basically, she was all out of alignment.

We ended up seeing him twice a week for a couple of weeks, then once a week, then every 2 weeks. Now we are about once a month.

Hannah can't remember the last time her stomach hurt. She still takes the pills but already doesn't need them for the small meals. Dr. Dietz is amazed at how quickly her stomach began pumping correctly. Hannah is fortunate that the acid pump being "broken" did not cause a chain reaction of other GI issues that we would have to work through. 

Hannah is trying to train this summer. After some running, and our awesome trip to Universal Studios and cruise, her knee got a big work out. There is some pain but it is thought the cause is from weak muscles surrounding her knee. Dietz can easily see the muscles are much weaker than her good knee. She is to do some exercises to strengthen it and then can get back to running. But Hannah has hope for lacrosse. For the first time, she feels good enough to play. She had a stick in her hand last week while working at a camp and came home yearning for LAX. She has hurt all her life and while we are still struggling with it, the pain is SO much less. 

Thank you, God, for Dr. Rick Dietz! He is Your hands and feet in this world.
Thank you, Lord, for Dave Cathcart! I owe him tremendously.

We are so full of hope and excitement!

Oh. And just this week Dr. Dietz did the pressure points test on Hannah. He was pushing extremely hard and Hannah was just laying there. The score of 11 on a 1-10 pain scale which she began with that first visit is now a 2. 

Praise God!

An Update on Hannah

When something is chronically wrong with someone you love, it's hard to keep everyone updated. I get tired of talking about it and I inevitably forget to say things. So in an effort to update everyone, here is our story...

Background:

My Hannah has been in pain since 4th grade. In the beginning, the pain came about when she would eat things. But it was very inconsistent. It wasn't like a certain food hurt her every time she ate it. The pain continued through middle school although I was not very aware of it. Hannah would just "suck it up" and did not really tell me about it. When she did, I did not put much thought into it because it was so sporadic. Then in 9th grade, it got much worse. Rarely did the pain go away altogether. Now, in 10th grade, it has begun to affect her quality of life. She recently has had to come home from school early because she couldn't last the day. Multiple times we thought about going to the emergency room. She is not even able to play lacrosse this season because she is in too much pain. While this was happening, she was diagnosed with OCD on her knee and had surgery (August 2015). Beginning high school in a wheelchair is always exciting. This is where we began our adventure of trying to find the cause of what I consider to be a medical mystery.

Currently:

After so many procedures, surgeries, and tests, we are still at a loss about what is causing so much pain for her. Here’s the recap...

Children’s GI doctor - samples, tests, etc out the wazoo (literally for some!) resulted in a lot of no answers. We had 40 panels of testing run on her. Some of those panels were actually for multiple tests. One of said panels had 20 specific tests. Adding it all up, I believe more than 100 things were ruled out. Including some very big possibilities (Cancer, Chron's Disease, Celiac, etc). To top it off, one of those tests was a surgical procedure and another test took her 4 hours to do! Bleh! Result: The doctor said the next step should be gynecological workup. 

Went back to pediatrician. I gave her a 3-4 week diary of Hannah's life. What she ate, when she went to the bathroom, her pain level, etc.  The result: she agreed with GI doctor about seeing a gynecologist.

Gynecologist  - the first one we saw I did not care for at all. The second one we both liked a lot and she decided to put her on birth control patch. No bueno for her so we changed her to a pill. The doctor wanted to see if controlling her hormones could help curve the pain. That did not happen. In fact, perhaps by coincidence, the pain got worse. So at my urging, we scheduled a laparoscopy. This surgery was to rule out endometriosis, which it did. The inside of her tummy looks gorgeous. I even have pictures of her liver, ovaries, uterus, and appendix. It’s so cool and I’ll show anyone who wants to see. And even those who don’t! So, since she is cleared from a gynecological standpoint, my next step was…

Allergy specialist - The GI doctor did a basic food allergy testing via blood testing, but I wanted more in depth testing by an allergist. This consisted of poking the various possible allergens into her beautiful back. Then arms. 

She was tested for 71 specific things, food as well as breathed allergens. Not surprising, she allergic to different grasses/weeds/molds/etc. The doctor said she’s a candidate for allergy shots. I told Hannah she can stay stuffy and deal with those until she’s an adult and decides to do that for herself. We’ve got more pressing things to manage. 

Three food allergens popped: Brazil nut, Hazel nut, and peanut. The problem is she was tested for peanut with a blood test and the result: <.1 k/UL. which is Class 0 (that translates to no allergy). The brazil nut I couldn't care less about. The hazelnut was a blood test of <.1 k/UL (Class 0) as well. So, while the allergist says she has an allergy bc of the topical test, the blood disagrees. And the topical pop for those were not big ones. Especially compared to the mold/grass/tree testing which was a very large reaction. The allergist said he thought the peanut allergy was a long shot for being the source of her stomach pain. Usually that allergy results in mouth numbness/tingling and breathing issues. So, he said we could do an elimination diet for peanuts and see if that helps, but he doesn't hold out much hope for that.

The next appointment is with the orthopedic doctor on Monday. We are seeing him because Hannah also has back and pelvis pain. I believe that this is related to the stomach pain as a side issue, but since we have wonderful insurance, it's only time and a small copay to rule out other things. We happen to be seeing Dr. Pendleton who is the one that took care of Hannah's knee and her OCD surgery. Honestly, I don't expect anything crazy from this appointment. As with all the others, I feel it's a ruling out of sorts.

Hannah is also experiencing nerve pain. We have an appointment with a rheumatologist in April which we set in January. The scheduling nurse was surprised that we could get an appointment "so soon". Yikes!

So, what are we doing in the meantime...

When we went to the allergist, I was actually expecting a pop to the corn allergy because of research I had done. Well, that was negative. Afterwards, in more research, I found out that a true allergy to corn is very rare. What a large number of people in the world experience is an intolerance to corn. Obviously, corn is intolerable to all people as your body can't break it down, but what I'm talking about it a massive intolerance. 

There are several symptoms and Hannah has, or has had, most of them:

*hives/skin rash (she had a small amount eczema a few years back)

*nausea/stomach cramps/indigestion/vomiting/diarrhea (the primary stomach pain she has had for 7 years)

*stuffy/runny nose (she has always had a deep congestion that we looked into back in 4th/5th grade around the time the stomach pain began. Had a CT scan of her head and it did not show anything. Her sinus swelling is so great it surprised even the ENT we were seeing)

*sneezing (eh. She sneezes but I don't know if it's excessive or not)

*headaches (those are sporadic but present)

*asthma (she has this when she gets sick. Also has been hospitalized for pneumonia. Twice I believe)

*anaphylaxis (less common and she doesn't have that)

*aching muscles and joint pain (her back and pelvis have hurt for a long time. Her knee surgery: the MRI says it's healing but it still hurts very badly. Also, her precious feet are swollen much of the time)

So, what she and I decided to do is take her off of corn for about 3 weeks. That is the time frame that we should supposedly see results. Now, on first glance, one might think this would be fairly simple. No corn on the cob, corn tortilla, corn starch, and corn syrup. However, this is much, much, harder than that. See, corn and it's derivatives are in everything. EVERYTHING. And the manufacturers are not required by law to state on a package if their product has corn in the ingredients like the mandatory listing of wheat and dairy. For example, bagels may have a dusting of corn meal on the top but the packaging does not state that. So you may think, ok, read labels and look for dusting. But it goes much deeper than that. Corn is in...

*citric acid - there is not a jelly on the shelves that does not have this ingredient

*distilled white vinegar - the marinade I made (from scratch) for chicken last night had hot sauce in it which has distilled white vinegar. And dinner hurt her stomach.

*Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C)

*Caramel color - used as brown sugar for a sweetener in some products

*Dextrose - find something that is sweet that doesn't use that!

*honey - if the bees were fed food with corn in it (ex: HFCS), then the honey will have corn in it

*Maltodextrin - found everywhere but bet you didn't think it's in frozen yogurt

*can be in medicine

*can be in gum

There are so many more things. If you'd like a longer list, you can look at my Pinterest board (https://www.pinterest.com/kikarules/corn-only-good-for-cornhole/) for some links.

So, this is where we stand as of today. I will do my best to update more as this progresses. I am hopeful the next few weeks will give us some answers. But as always, I half expect the answer we will be given is 'not this'.

We'd appreciate any and all prayers for wisdom and perseverance. My girl deserves to turn 16 and not be in chronic pain! 

First Day of School 2016

The 2016-2017 school year is officially underway!

Drum Roll please!

badabadabadabadabadabadabadabada *ching*!

The 10th Grader

The 9th Grader

The 7th Grader

And finally the 5th Graders!

This is our last year of all 3 schools. Which means it's our last year of all 3 start times. 5:00 am comes early but for today...

It was a great day had by all!

Jenna's musings

Chris and I were at a neighbor's house tonight. We came home late and I went to kiss and tuck in the kids. Jenna was sound asleep and I kissed on her and pulled her blanket up. Then, she turned and mumbled to me, "The koalas are going to take over the earth."

Homecoming 2015

Hannah's first homecoming dance. 

She went with some lacrosse friends. After pictures, they went to dinner at an Italian restaurant followed by the dance at the school.  

My little girl looks so pretty!

Paige came with us for pictures

so you can see the back of her dress

Just a lazy and rainy Saturday afternoon

FORTY FORTY FORTY!!!!

2015 has been The Year Of Lisa.

Last year when I began thinking about turning, as they say, the big 4-0 I thought about what I wanted to do. I wanted to make some memories and have something accomplished. Little did I know how big the year would be!

In 2014, I had seen a neurologist about my back. I wanted some up to date answers and know for sure what I could and couldn't do. I found out that I could do anything I wanted but hold 30 pounds above my head. Shockingly, the 30 pound thing doesn't affect much of my life and I was released! For the first time in 13 years I felt FREE! 

But uh oh. Shoot. That means I didn't have an excuse. I had always said I wanted to run a long race but couldn't because of my back. Now I couldn't say that. Did I really want to run? Honestly, I have no idea if I did. But I thought to myself, "Self, if you want to say you've done something, you're turning 40 soon and it would be good timing."

So, thanks to my friend Kim who found a local race, off on a training schedule I went. 

On January 31 I ran a half marathon!

After that was over, I was not active for a while. It was cold and yucky for goodness sakes! Being lazy never felt so good!

At that same time, I also was ready for a hair cut. But in the spirit of 2015, I decided that I would wait until my birthday to cut it. So it grew. And grew. And grew.

Then I got the itch to do something I had never thought about before. A triathlon. Again, Kim comes in the picture with a list of local tris and volunteered to do it with me. Well, one night I may have had a couple of glasses of wine and was sitting on the couch with my computer. (Not always a good combo. Anyone with an 'amen'?) Anyway, before I realized what I was doing, I had signed myself up. So, again with a training schedule printed out, I planned out my calendar. As it turned out, I needed to begin training in July. 

So, what happens in The Year of Lisa before all that swimming, biking, and running? A European vacation! Chris and I found ourselves able to take a trip of a lifetime in June. We spent two weeks together traveling through Rome, London, and Paris. I never EVER thought I would be one to have done a vacation like this! 

(A post all on it's own will talk about that trip!)

So, now summer vacation is over and school has begun and my training wraps up. Off to Lake Lanier I trot for the triathlon. Know what? I had SO MUCH FUN! This particular tri is a 400 meter lake swim, 13 mile bike ride, and a 5K (or 3.1 miles).

that was one painful hill to run up after my swim!

transition 1

got some protein shoved in the mouth and gloves on

off I go

follow the cones the CORRECT direction for the run

made it back!

here I come

my personal cheering section

FINISH!!!!!!

And I was super excited that Mama and Daddy got to be there to watch. I guess a girl can't be too old to have her parents cheer her on!

A huge shout out to Abby for the fantastic pictures she took! She did a great job! 

Thank you, sweet pea!

Now, remember all that hair that has been growing for 2.5 years or so? It's time! 

Nineteen inches were cut off. 19!!!!! 

before

donated to Locks of Love

Honestly, I don't have a good photo of what the final cut looks like. I actually went back a 2nd time to have her cut more. The stylist was so afraid to cut it as short as I wanted. You'll have to use your imagination with this cropped shot.

Now it was time to have a little shin dig! Chris did so much for me to get this celebration happening and despite Joaquin trying to make an appearance when he wasn't invited, it turned out AMAZING. All that rain made us have to go to Plan B but it worked. Chris rented one of the last tents in Georgia :) and we had a dry dance floor!

Got a little surprise visit from some of my favorite people! 

Thank you Kristine and Ron for being the wild and crazy people you are and coming up here! I can't believe it!!!! (Still super sad I didn't any photos of the 4 of us!)

Chris told me that when Ron and Kristine left on Sunday morning, it was over. 

Apparently The Year Of Lisa has come to an end. 

*sigh*

I want to make sure Chris gets the kudos he deserves for all the fun he packed into this year for me. You went above and beyond, honey. I am grateful. I love you!