My nephew--please pray

A few of you keep track of my daughter's blog and may have noticed her post a couple of days ago asking for prayer for her cousin Steven.

Steven is an honors student in his final year of high school: a bright, musical and fun fellow. Last Monday evening he had a bit of a fever. His mom (my husband's sister and my close friend) had him into emergency here in our small town three times over the course of the next couple days. When he didn't respond to the antibiotics and continued to get sicker, they airlifted him to Calgary Thursday evening. His mom and grandma (my mother-in-law from Been Farmin' Long left immediately by car for the six hour drive. A niece lives in Calgary right across the street from Foothills Hospital and was able to be there to meet Steven when he arrived. Steve's mom, K, arrived about 2 a.m. By 5 a.m. they had Steve in ICU and on a ventilator.

Meanwhile we were on our way to Calgary for Jim's Irlen appointment. In keeping in touch with K, we decided to go to Jim's appointment first and then to Foothills. (We were completely willing to ditch the appointment if she needed us; we could always re-make it for a month or two down the road.) Jim's appointment went well. A couple of things really surprised me about it. One was how much more clearly he can read aloud with the colored lenses in front of his eyes. I guess it is hard to inflect a sentence correctly if you need to focus on one word at a time! There was much more fluidity (is that a word?) to his reading which was very cool. Also, his verbal spelling was faster and more accurate. Don't ask me how that could be; it doesn't make a speck of sense to MY brain. But I guess when given a word to spell, he gets a picture of the object or action in his mind plus a picture of the word--then he spells it. With the lenses in front of his eyes, he skips the step of getting the picture of the object. That is so weird I can hardly stand it! It's not like he's reading--it's all in his head! We expect to get his new tinted glasses in a few weeks and are quite excited about it. Of course, this has been somewhat eclipsed by concern over our nephew's condition.

After Jim's appointment we headed for Foothills Hospital to see K. We spent a couple hours with her. Her husband and their other son (age 16) arrived shortly after we did. We were in and out of the ICU waiting room so much over the next two days that it began to feel like home. Things have been very touch-and-go for Steven. If he hadn't been airlifted to Calgary he is unlikely to have survived thus far. Friday was a very bad day. They ran a lot of tests (some of the results are still coming in) and he almost didn't make it through the day. Saturday and Sunday were days of minor (but real) improvement. We had to leave Saturday evening (back to Hanna's) and home Monday.

Saturday they provided a general diagnosis of a Gram Negative Bug--a super bug of some sort--with the complication of sepsis. Today it looks like they've narrowed down the specific bug to Fusobacterium necrophorum. CT scans show clouding in Steve's lungs which improved slightly on Saturday and worsened again Monday. Most of his vital signs have stablized and his oxygen mix has been reduced from 60% to 30% (about 20% is normal air).

However, there were significant setbacks on Monday. Steve has an adenovirus which normally wouldn't be much of a problem, but in his weakened condition, it is complicating things and he is in isolation. His fever has been up and down along with the rest of his symptoms.

He is in critical condition. While there is reason to hope, the situation could still go either way. You know...any of us could die at any time, but we don't feel vulnerable most of the time. To see my 18 year old nephew struggling for his life has really reminded me of what we all take for granted most every day.

If you are able, please remember Steven and his family in prayer. This is what is sustaining them during this dark hour. God is real and He is holding them up.

And an early renovation photo:

So here is a photo that shows a bit what the new cabinetry looks like and the new lino. Of course the toe-kicks aren't in place yet. It occurs to me that I never mentioned on the blog that we changed our mind about which cabinetry we were buying. The price of the Home Depot hickory cabinetry that we wanted came in at nearly double these alder cabinets. I decided I liked the alder ones pretty well after all! They're built to very nearly the same standards--and we're not a household with 8 kids who slam cupboard doors so I expect these will stand up just fine for as long as we care. The main thing we like about these is the rustic graining which was also a draw on the hickory ones. Of course the grain in alder is different than hickory, but that's okay. We just don't like the fancy select-and-better wood with boring grain. And we're totally NOT an oak household.

Today we're headed out of town for a few days: Jim has his appointment with an Irlen specialist in Calgary Friday morning. We also expect to do the rest of the shopping for the kitchen: the dishwasher, range hood, combo microwave/ toaster oven/ convection oven, drawer pulls, sink and faucet, lighting, etc. The countertop arborite should arrive here while we're gone.

So, in theory, when we get home Monday we should have everything we need to install the countertops, sink and faucets, and then run the new gas line to move the range. Have a good weekend!

Irlen Syndrome

Have you ever wondered if you were dyslexic?

Our doctor is the kind of guy that remembers his people and would gladly stop on the street corner to chat. So when I went in to see him about my sleep issues a couple weeks ago he asked how hubby was doing and how the out-of-town job was going. I said pretty well, that he'd been taking his Industrial First Aid course and in fact was taking his final exam at that exact moment. Doc was interested and assured me hubby would do fine. I said, well, he's a bit concerned because he's a bit dyslexic. Doc had just been leaving the examining room but turned on his heel.

"Have you ever heard of Irlen Syndrome?"

Um, no. I hadn't. He recommended looking it up and gave me the name of a woman in a nearby town who is a licensed screener for Irlen's. When hubby got home the next day (with high passing marks, thank you very much!) we looked Irlen Syndrome up on the web. Just glancing through the basic info caught hubby's attention, so we printed off the five page test. Hubby scored fairly high on this test (not as positive a thing as scoring high on the first aid test!) and spent the next couple hours testing his parents and then pacing the floor talking about the possibilities and what it might mean to him if the Irlen lenses really worked. It was obvious that we needed to pull this to the next level.

Yesterday he had a two-hour consultation with the screener. Then he continued on his drive to work while telling me all about it on the phone. He's EXTREMELY excited about this possibility so (you guessed it) we're moving on to the next level, in which a professional from Toronto comes to Calgary every couple of months to go through the testing in greater depth and figure out which color lenses will make the biggest difference. This will be sometime in April; we expect to get a call next week with an appointment date.

This doesn't seem to be covered by our health insurance (though hubby's gonna double-check). The screening cost us $150. His next appointment (including the glasses) will run about $800. It's a lot of money, but if it makes the words stand still on the page for hubby, if the numbers don't keep jiggling into different columns (or becoming different numbers altogether, such as 6s and 9s), if more than one word is visible at a time--isn't that worth it? We think so.

Is it a scam? No. Hubby was tested with around 50 colored lenses and as soon as the blues rolled around, he relaxed. Suddenly he saw things clearly for the first time EVER. At his next appointment they will finetune the color; he expects about 700 colored lenses that day.

He has terrific eyesight; this has nothing to do with that. This just allows those bothersome little words and numbers to hold still to be analyzed and read. He reads a lot of fiction, but I think he kinda skips across the surface of the words, if that makes sense. And he sees the action happening rather than the words marching. Non-fiction--technical--is much harder for him. At any rate, I'll let you know what develops.

If you've ever wished you could see the world through rose-colored glasses--check it out. It may not be a bad idea!