Wow, it’s been over 9 weeks since I last updated the
blog. Hard to believe, yet very easy to
believe as it seems like a life-time ago that we were in Edmonton. The girls (or more specifically, Marietta)
have been getting after me that I have to have the blog updated before I fly
back to Ontario … which just so happens to be in less the 48 hours. So here goes my attempt to bring you up to
speed on where we’re at.
Our last three weeks in Edmonton were busy, I can’t even
remember what it was all busy with, I just remember it being a steady
busy. We did a lot of driving each day,
back and forth to the clinic, which was about a 25 minute drive one way and we
would do the trip twice in a day so that Marietta and Matthew were not stuck
hanging around Edmonton all day, every day … for a total of pretty much 2 hours
in the vehicle each day. During those weeks we also made another trip down to
Coaldale/Taber area and we made one more move to our fifth house sitting
location, or technically that would be two more moves as we had to pack up from
St. Albert and move to Taber also. On
top of that lots was going on back in Dunnville, so there was a lot of time
spent communicating back and forth with Rob and making decisions on things on
that end. Plus I had to process that we
were moving to Taber with nothing more than our van of stuff, so I was busy
making online purchases that would arrive at our new house the same time we
would as I didn’t have room in the van to shop locally and take things with.
... and so he could go for a job interview in Coaldale and we
could have a look at our new home
And this time he didn’t get sick, so he was able to come to the clinic to see where we had been hanging out for the last weeks ... and try out one of the PEMF machines for his sore back.
During those last weeks the clinic also hosted a couple
events. For one event they had someone
come in to do our makeup, a take-care-of-yourself type of event and another
time they had the dietician come in and teach us some new (funky) foods/recipes
by having us all make a lunch together.
There were so many blessing we seen and experienced
during our weeks in St. Albert. It’s
hard to even begin to list them. Throughout the summer we experienced a warm
and welcoming church that checked in regularly to make sure we were fairing
okay. Just like that people opened their
doors so we had places to stay the whole nine weeks. At the last house we were not only richly
blessed with a roof over our heads, but also with a weekly cleaning service, so
timely as I was running out of steam by that time. Not
only did we receive the basic necessities but we also made friends during the summer,
making it sad to leave at the end of our time there. We could wake up each new day knowing and seeing that God was caring for us in so many different ways. We know that this is always the case, but felt it even more so during this time.
I debated before we left Ontario whether we should get
CAA or something of that assort since our dear mechanic and tow truck driver
(aka Rob) would not be around to help us out if trouble arose. We definitely would have saved money if we
had gone that route as one weekend Marietta locked both sets of keys in the van
and we had to call a locksmith out to rescue us … and then the van gave us some
grief, ironically this started a day after I took the van in for an oil change
and tire rotation at Canadian Tire, confirming once again why Rob hates having
other people work on his vehicles.
The above picture is just one example of the many
blessings we experienced, as within an hour of the van breaking down someone
had offered us a vehicle so we could get to church the next day and the clinic
the following day.
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But the purpose of the blog is to keep you updated on how
everyone is fairing health wise, so I should get to that point. Youngest to oldest this time:
Matthew
Matthew is sad report that he is doing very well. I asked him one day a few weeks after we
settled into Taber and their new school how he was doing. He usually says something if he’s not
feeling well, so I figured all was good, but just wanted to make sure. He told me he was feeling good and when I
told him that was good his response was “No it’s not!!”. A little perplexed I had to flush this out a
little bit more to realize this was not a good thing because that meant he
wouldn’t be able to move back to Ontario, but if he was still sick then there
was no point in staying in Alberta. I
don’t know if he still feels that strongly about going back to Ontario, I know
he would love to go back, but he did declare just two nights ago at the dinner
table: “I love this school”, so I think he’s settling in okay.
So yes, things are going well for Matthew. He still has little “episodes” of headaches
but so far they are not happening regular enough for us to spend too much time
evaluating if there is a common cause for the sudden flare ups. Usually when they come they also do not last
as long and he doesn’t complain about dizziness or a blacking-out feeling with
them, although they often seem to be when we’re out and about and result in
motion sickness when driving. Milder
episodes will go away within a couple hours and stronger ones take a good
nights rests and he’s ready to go again.
We definitely see a connection with going shopping or to stores, so
we’re still leaning towards scents being a strong part of the problem.
Because he is doing so well Matthew pretty much doesn’t
do any home therapy anymore except he takes a detox bath twice a week and is
still stuck on our very restrictive diet (altho I have loosen up the reigns a
bit for that as well).
Rebecca
Rebecca was done treatment four days before Marietta and Matthew
and she was very excited that she was able to sleep in for a few days in a
row. Unfortunately she picked up a bad
head cold which made her just feel yukky during those days. Fortunately the worse of the cold was gone by
time school started. I wish I had taken
the time to write a few weeks ago, so that I would have been able to give a
good positive review of how Rebecca was doing.
She left Edmonton tired and not feeling well, but once the cold went
away she slowly made some headway. We
were so happy to see her being able to go to school a full day, do her
therapies after school, keep up on her homework and stay up until 9pm most
nights. She still needed her rest and
made sure she got it, faithfully going to bed on time each night, but she was
doing well with that schedule and no looking drained … a huge improvement from
springtime. During the beginning of
September she struggled with some severe pain in her arm for a couple weeks,
but after that went away she had very little pain and manageable fatigue.
By time Thanksgiving rolled around she was feeling the
need for more sleep again and we could tell it was starting to drag her
down. Thankfully they had some extra
days off school at that time, so she was able to take some downtime, and we
were hoping it was just a mild flareup, but the extra rest didn’t seem to help
get her back on her feet. That last
couple weeks she’s been struggling to balance school and sleep, her rosy cheeks
are back (they appear when she’s not doing well and extremely tired) and her
brain is having a hard time focusing through the fog of fatigue. Thankfully she hasn’t had any random pains,
but we’ve had to take a look at things and see if we can determine if something
changed to set her back or whether it’s just part of rolling with the healing
process. About the time she started
going downhill we started her on a large dose of Omega 3 supplements and she
also stopped doing her bedtime brain entrainment (which I was not aware of
until a couple days ago). In the past
couple weeks she also hasn’t been going for her walks/exercise very faithfully
anymore because she just doesn’t have the energy for them. Setback are expected, we know it’s not going
to be straight uphill on improvement, but we also need to make sure it’s not
something we did that created the setback. So we will start with looking at these
changes and see what we can conclude.
Marietta
Marietta made amazing improvement over the summer. By the end of the summer she was able to
drive quite often. If a passenger she no
longer had to sit in the very front all the time and she could handle the radio
on most days. She was getting up at 7 am
and putting in a full day – this is compared having a hard time getting out at
9am in the spring and then taking a couple hours to slowly get herself going to
prep for school (which just involved breakfast, getting dressed and packing to
get out the door), doing a couple hours of school and then having to rest and
have down time for several hours before attempting to do homework, if her brain
was cooperating. This did not mean
things were all rosy, she still continued to have rough days, but she could put
in far more hours in a day and feel way closer to “normal”
This picture here is just simple example of her
improvements. Prior to the summer Marietta just didn’t have any extra energy to
help out around the house, getting to and from school and completing her school
work took 110% of her energy. But the
first thing I see is not that she’s helping out but that she is using a food
processor – a noisy machine. Before I
would have to warn her when I was going to use the blender, mixer, vacuum etc, so
that she could leave the area so the noise would not mess up her head. Now she is not only in the same room but she’s
the one who is actually operating the machine!
I had another picture, but I cannot find it
anywhere. It is of the girls playing
piano together. Another huge improvement
that Marietta could not only be in the same room as a playing piano, but that
she could actually play herself again (think of the challenge to the brain of getting it to read and process music notes, getting the fingers to do their thing and the noise not irritating the brain). Near
the end of the summer she also was able to stay in church a bit longer a few
times. Normally she joins the service
for the sermon and then leaves once it is done as the singing and organ/piano
playing sets her head off, but a few times she felt well enough to stay after
the sermon was done and complete the service with us. She also was able to stay in the foyer and
socialize after the service, something that previously didn’t happen because of
all the noise and stimulation in such areas.
We suspected that a return to school would still be a
challenge because it is a different way of using the brain, and we were
right. The first couple weeks of school
were quite the challenge as she made the adjustment of getting her brain to
process again. She especially struggled
with math, a course she has not done for two years and her brain had quite a
hard time with processing numbers again.
It would take her hours to do her homework, but when completed it was
done well. After a couple weeks her
brain seemed to get it, it is still slow and it still takes her a long time to
complete her work, but it was a bit less taxing on the head.
While school was a setback compared to the summer, we
could still see that she is going in a positive direction as far as
healing. In the spring she was taking
two and half hours of school each day.
She required someone to drive her to school (front seat, quiet ride, no
music) and after class to take her home again.
Taking a bus was out of the question for the noise and stimulation
factors as well as motion sickness.
After school she had to rest as she had used all her energy to get
through those school hours. School was
her life and her main focus and it took all her energy. She didn’t make it all the time to school
either, down periods could be missing one day or missing days in a row, but she
did well in school by listening to her brain and using it when it was willing
to be used.
Some of these factors are still the same, she still needs
to listen to her brain and work around its schedule because there are times it
works and times it simply refuses to do its job. But in comparison to last year, Marietta is
now getting up and out the door with the other kids, she is at school the full
day and she takes the bus home. For the
first weeks I drove the kids to school (a 25 minute drive one way) so Marietta
did not have to take the bus as we didn’t want the bus ride to throw her off
before she even started her school day. This past week she started taking the bus in
the mornings as well and this went well the days that she went. Currently she is doing about 2 ½ hours of
schooling. Classes work different here and
with more limited selection than Ontario, but basically she is taking what she
needs to graduate. She is required to do
an online course in order to graduate, but so far has not been able to fit this
in her schedule with the time and effort that it is taking to do her other
courses. She has a 40 minute spare mid-morning
(along with Rebecca as both of them are not taking Phys Ed) and finishes
classes for the day at 12:20. During the
afternoon she spends time working on her homework and then takes the bus home. So overall she is currently not in class any
longer than in Ontario, but she is at school the full day, functioning and
socializing throughout the day. If the weather is nice then often she will walk
home from the bus stop (about a 25-30 minute walk ...depending how windy it is) so that she gets her daily
exercise. Unfortunately homework still
takes a lot of time, so evenings are still spent doing homework, in between
talking/texting to Ontario and/or Alberta friends 😏😉
This is day two of school … way too much stimulation on
day one. Most weeks Marietta has one
down day where she wakes up with head nausea or just simply can tell the brain
is not going to function and it’s just going to go downhill from there. So while things have improved greatly, she
still regularly misses school. Like
Rebecca, I wish I had written earlier, as like Rebecca, she has been struggling
more since Thanksgiving. Just before Thanksgiving
she developed a bad head cold that drastically set off all her concussion
symptoms. This meant the extended time
off school was spent not feeling well, hibernating in dark quiet spots and
missing out on one of our Thanksgiving Dinners.
Since then the cold symptoms are gone but she continues to be struggling
more and has a lot of pressure in her sinus area. This is not a new issue, it is one she has
been struggling with for the past year and we have been working with in various
natural ways as we were not always sure whether it was concussion related, but
this week I took her in to get some antibiotics so we can at least try and see
if that will help with things.
So the overall summary:
God it Good! Everything isn’t all
better, but there has been definite improvement and through this whole process
God continues to uphold us and strengthen us and care for us. I still remember that lost feeling at the beginning
of this year as one thing after the next happened … sick kids, “sick”
house. There were many days of just
methodically putting one foot in front of the next and many days where I felt
like I was just going through the motions because the brain was so overloaded, but
yet I would catch myself singing in my head common Christian songs and
realizing that God was still carrying me along with gentle reminders that He
was still there. On the other hand there
were also many days that were not just about going through the motions, but
truly feeling the joy and blessing of the Lord surrounding us, caring for us, upholding
us and standing in awe of how He goes about doing this in so many different
ways.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD,
“plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a
future. Then you will call on me and
come and pray to me and I will listen to you.
You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29: 11-13