Archive for December, 2007

Merry Christmas!

December 26, 2007 | Updates

I don’t have much time to write, but wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas!  Hope you had a good one.  We did!  Here are a few pictures.  Happy Holidays!

Love,

The Jewkes

Mr. Mischievous!

December 17, 2007 | Updates

I’m writing this because I should be going to bed, but I don’t want to get up.  Somehow, I sprained my right ankle yesterday (I think).  It’s the strangest thing because I have no idea how I did it.  I just know that last night as I was making dinner, my ankle started to hurt.  I shrugged it off as a side effect from wearing my heals all day when I normally don’t ever do that.  But by bedtime, it was killing me and even with a bunch of advil, it bothered me through the night.  Today, I could walk on it, but it hurt enough that I was limping and when I sit for any length of time, it tightens up and hurts much worse.  And when I try to flex my feet, I can’t flex that one nearly as far as the other one - even if I ignore the pain and try my hardest.  REALLY STRANGE!  On top of that, I tried to wear earrings for a day (which I normally don’t do) and my right ear got really infected and swelled up twice as large as the other one.  NOT a pretty sight!  Good think I have long hair.  Then tonight, I’m not feeling very well, sort of aching all over and I’m REALLY light-headed.  I don’t know what’s going on.

Samuel has been sleeping a lot the past 2 days also.  He slept through nearly all of church on Sunday and then took a nap in the afternoon.  Today, he took a 3 hour nap and we had to finally wake him up so he would sleep tonight.  I’m afraid he might be coming down with something because he was pretty lethargic all day.  (Well, except for when he got tired of eating applesauce and knocked the bowl out of Kaylee’s hands and clear across the room.  Stinker!)  I hope he’s not getting something yucky.

I also got bad news yesterday.  Apparently, the WONDERFUL doctor who helped set-up the hyperbaric clinic we have gone to for the 130 treatments Samuel has done is not going to be there much longer.  I don’t know the logistics of it at all, but now the clinic is saying that they aren’t really interested in treating brain injured patients any longer and we may not be able to come back for additional treatments.  I can’t tell you what I went through to find a place that would even consider treating Samuel.  I don’t know what we’ll do if they stop.  And I am EXTREMELY saddened to see the doctor there go.  He has been nothing but incredible and he deserves so much of the credit for the extreme changes we have seen in Samuel through hyperbarics.  To say I am sad, concerned, irritated and frustrated by this would be an understatement.  I just hope they don’t go through with it.  There are so many children out there seeing positive changes due to hyperbarics.  It would be an absolute shame for this clinic to decide to refuse to treat them.  An absolute shame.

I’ll leave you on a good note.  Samuel did the cutest thing yesterday.  Nathan had been up in Samuel’s room watching TV with him, I thought.  But when I came upstairs, I discovered that Nathan had taken down all of Samuel’s DVD’s and emptied the DVD’s out of the cases.  We’re talking over 50 cases.  Needless to say, it was a mess and I was NOT happy.  So, I put Nathan in time out and then I went back in the room to clean up the mess.  I put Samuel on the floor next to me and started talking to him.  I said, “Samuel, did you see this mess?  Did you know Nathan was doing this?  I bet you were up here trying to call me and saying, “Mom! Mom!  Nathan is making a huge mess!”  Weren’t you?”  I kept cleaning up the DVD’s and then I said, “Wait a minute!  Maybe you made this mess!”  And I turned to Samuel and said, “Samuel, did YOU make this mess?”  And guess what he did?  He laughed out loud!  And everytime I would repeat it, he would laugh again.  It was SO CUTE!  It is not too often that I get a laugh out of Samuel and I think he just loved the idea of being mischeivous.  I like that idea, too.

Anyway, we hope you’re having a great holiday season.  Please continue to pray for our little guy.

Love,

The Jewkes

Too much beta caratene can what?

December 11, 2007 | Updates

Ah, just a quick update.  The holidays are upon us and in full swing.  MAN, it seems like they come so quickly every year.  I still remember waiting for New Year’s Eve 2000 and now 2008 is upon us.  Time sure flies!

Samuel is doing well.  I took him to have his g-tube checked and it all looked fine.  The nurse there thought I was crazy for driving all that way just to have the site looked at.  But I was already in Ogden, so it was just another 45 minutes away.  She told me I should have just had my local pediatrician look at it.  But that’s a 30 minute drive each way and I have no idea whether or not he’s even ever seen a g-tube - much less whether or not he knows what one should look like.  But, oh, well, I was glad I went so I didn’t have to worry anymore.

Nothing much new here.  Samuel has started rolling onto his stomach more often and the tube doesn’t seem to be hurting him near as much.  I can hardly wait to get it switched for a button the first part of January.  We made it to our appointment at NACD and discussed some new things we want to try with Samuel to get him to stop baulking at crawling so much.  So, as soon as he can tolerate the stomach work, we’ll be on our way.

The only other thing is I’m going to have his liver and thyroid and all those panels checked again in January.  We did all that about a year ago, but I have a few new concerns.  First, I’ve been reading Abby’s site (www.prayforabby.com) and her mom is awesome at researching and finding great new things to try for our kids.  Well, she found that Abby has some crazy things going on with her thyroid.  I wasn’t so much worried about Samuel though, except for one thing.  About a month ago, his hands suddenly turned orange.  Literally!  I thought it was just me for a few days and then I wondered if he’d been painting at school or something.  In the end, I realized it was due to having too much beta caratene in his diet. 

I had just switched his vitamin from Flinestones Complete to Usanimals about a month earlier because the Usanimals had less artificial flavors and colors.  Well, I didn’t notice that the Usanimals also had 15 TIMES as much beta caratene as the Flinestones.  Needless to say, it was too much for little Samuel to handle.  So, we’ve switched back, but it will take a few months for the orange hue to go away.  Crazy, huh?  It’s a little embarrasing because it’s pretty obvious and I’ve had A LOT of people comment on it.  But it was REALLY embarassing when the nurse in the nutrition clinic noticed it :)!  Some days… 

Anyway, the more I’ve thought about it, the more I think that there must be tons of kids out there taking the Usanimals everyday without a reaction to the beta caratene.  And I’ve been reading a book that Abby’s mom recommended entitled, “Hypothyroidism Type 2″.  It’s a really interesting book and I’ll be loaning it to some of you in the future that I feel it may apply to (hee! hee!).  But it also got me thinking that possibly Samuel’s liver is not very healthy and that’s why it couldn’t handle all the beta caratene.  Hopefully I’m completely wrong.  But I do want to get it checked just to make sure.

We’ve been really busy with holiday activities and we spent this last weekend in Orem getting family pictures and seeing my sister and her family who were visiting from Alaska.  It was really fun and we all had a good time.  She has a little boy who had a great time hanging out with my kids and then two cute little girls who made me wish I had one!  We got to see grandmas and grandpas and aunts and uncles and cousins.  It was really fun.  And  I do want to take some time in one of my next posts to tell you about a young man who came to our weekly family night lesson and spoke to us about his experiences in Iraq.  But right now, it’s midnight and I have to be up early to get all the kids off to school.

So, until then, keep Samuel in your prayers and we wish you all the funnest of holiday seasons.  May you always remember the real meaning of the season!

Love,

The Jewkes