a piece of my heart...

Today I was blessed to spend the day with Laura in Golden and we had so much fun! It's wonderful to be with her when she isn't stressed out from schoolwork. This summer she's working as a summer conference assistant, and although she works a 40 hour week, she still manages to find time for fun, too. And most weekends she gets to see Ian, so that always gives her something to look forward to. Today it was just us, though, and I'm so thankful for days like this. We got to laugh and share stories and just enjoy being together. In a couple of years she'll be off on her own adventures, and for all we know she might be halfway around the world. So for now I'll treasure each moment I get to spend with her. She's a piece of my heart.

Thanks!

Less than 24 hours after my last post Amy finally showed signs of getting acclimated to the new dosage of medicine. We still need to wait a few weeks to see if she'll eventually notice any pain relief, but at least she's back to her old self again. So thanks for your prayer support. Baby steps!

Watch out, world!

For those of you who are following Amy's progress, please continue to keep her in your prayers. We should know in a few weeks whether or not this current medication will give her any pain relief. In the meantime, some of the side effects are less than pleasant. The pharmacist said they should only last 7-10 days and we're already at day 5. Our prayer is that soon she'll be back to her normal self and that she'll (sooner rather than later) finally feel diminished pain in her feet/ankles. If this doesn't work, we're only left with one more option which we're not sure is even going to be an option at all. It's way more invasive than we're comfortable with, and even her Dr said he'd hate to see us go that route on someone her age unless we're absolutely desperate. And honestly, now that Amy is 18 she's ready to be done with it all. She's been positive thru all we've asked of her for the past two years. But she'll be off to college soon and is ready to just "suck it up" and be done with experimenting with treatments. Enough is enough! If this pain is her new normal, she's ready to accept that, and I'm not sure I blame her. She's one brave, awesome girl! And even in pain she can run circles around most of us. Watch out, culinary world!

Laurel and Hardy learn to ride...

Tonight Brian got down our bikes and put air in the tires so Amy and I could ride. You have to realize that Amy never learned to ride a bike till she was 8, and I don't think she ever rode one with a lot of gears and brakes on the handlebars. And then she had painful feet and all the issues associated with them and couldn't ride for a long time, so it had been YEARS for her. I jumped on and took off, but she was a bit wobbly. We headed up the street intending to go around the block, but Amy was struggling as we went slowly uphill. "Switch gears!" I shouted back to her. Her reply was priceless..."What's that mean? What's a gear?" I stopped and waited until she caught up and we tried again. We rounded the corner and suddenly Amy was headed downhill like the wind...and out of control! "Use the brakes!" I yelled. She did, and almost went headfirst over the handlebars! Instead, though, she kept right on flying down the hill, past our turn, and into the next neighborhood. I stopped and waited, fully expecting her to turn around and come back. Instead, she kept on flying downhill with her legs straight out to the sides. The next thing I knew she was falling sideways into some nice, soft grass. Good thing, too. We hadn't worn helmets for our quick ride around the block. She'll have some bruises on her legs tomorrow and her wrist is a bit sore, but thankfully there are no broken bones or heads split open. We walked our bikes to level ground and slowly, very slowly made our way home. We're going to try it again tomorrow. But from now on if we even think of riding, we'll put on our helmets! (That was for you, Gail!) Oh, and did I mention it was one year ago today that she had the injection that caused her open wound issues? We've come a long, long way in 12 months. God is so very good!