Finally, A Plan!

I just thought I would give a quick update: We have a date set for Jacob's Hemispherectomy. He will be having the surgery on March 10th, with a lot of pre-op stuff on the 9th. We will be in Seattle for probably at least 3 weeks, so we definitely have some planning to do. They have more appointments to set as of yet, but they will work them around the surgery stuff. I am just glad we have a direction to go and am sure we will have plenty of guidance as we go. It is all a bit scary to think about if I think for too long, but am happy to be moving forward.

A New Year Upon Us

Happy New Year! I thought for sure I would have posted more in December, but time got away from me, yet again.
Last I left off we had a snow day. We decided to make good use of all of that snow we shovelled out of our huge driveway and turned it into our very own sledding hill. It worked out pretty good for a few days, then the weather warmed up & it melted down to a small pile of snow. It was fun while it lasted, and no one got hurt.


Christmas was quite an event. Josh was very excited to see what Santa was going to bring him and could hardly go to sleep. At last we convinced him that Santa does not come when little boys are still awake and he finally made his way into bed. Jacob however, cared less. He got a bad stomach flu (that Josh had the week before) and all he wanted to do was sleep. He had trouble keeping much of his food down (in fact threw up-to the horror of mall shoppers- while we were in Williams Sanoma a day or two before that). He did not even wake up until 10:30 am on Christmas day, which made it hard for Josh to control his urge to just open presents. We were able to get very little reaction to gifts before he decided he just wanted to go back to bed. So we did not force him to open any more.

We enjoyed New Years eve letting Joshua stay up until after midnight to ring in the New Year with us (Jacob only stayed up until 11:30). We then had New Years day dinner with my family and "finished" Christmas.

On January 2nd, we of course celebrated Josh's birthday. He was very excited to finally say that he was actually 5 years old that day. I made him his own truck cake (my first ever creative baking challenge) and he also opened all of his presents (of the big ones, he got his very own Motorcycle-gas engine-which he found out in the shed under a tarp a week before Christmas). After the presents were opened and everyone left he then asked me why he did not get more presents?! I just looked at him and said "How many did you expect? and what about that Motorcycle you have out in the garage?" I guess it is time to start working on the knowing when you have enough and others in this world have a lot less than us lessons a little harder.

All in all the holidays were good for us.

But now that it is a New Year I vowed to get on the phone and to start bugging the doctors in Seattle to get some things going. So Monday morning I called and left a message saying I wanted to know what we needed to do to get something done for Jacob. Later that day, I got a call back, the nurse in charge of Jacob's case told me they were no longer pursuing the genetics testing because they had come to decide (with the help of the genetics lab) that the tests were unnecessary. They also told me that any additional test needed could probably be done there and she confirmed that we wanted to pursue surgery and told me she would see what the doctors said and would call me back. She called yesterday and told me that both the neurosurgeon and the epilepsy doctor had said they wanted to put him on the schedule for surgery. So there we have it, I guess a little bugging goes a long way sometimes. They are looking into getting him in for the left hemispherectomy in March. We should hear back in a couple of day on the exact date, but we now have a plan. I am both elated and scared to death. I don't know what exactly to expect, but am sure that there is a greater plan for Jacob and that all things happen for a reason. So here is to hoping and praying for the best of all outcomes.

This last picture I threw in just because I thought it was funny. Rick looks like a little boy in this huge chair at Cabelas. This is supposed to be a three person chair with 6 drink holders, but I don't think I know anyone that would want to sit in a chair like that with 2 other people.

I promise to update as soon as I have any news on any dates.