He's in the details

In times where I am sure I am wound as tightly as I can be, I am amazed at the whisperings of peace I receive. One happened about a week ago when I had a consultation with Kayla's urologist. After he told me that she could have surgery and I teared up with relief, I was sent to get the appointment with the secretary. After a little work, she was able to procure the 7th of June. My initial reaction was to panic. We had plane tickets to meet Steve in Ohio for May 30th. What would I do? Then a quiet sense of peace filled me. I am able to recognize this as foreign to my nature right away and see it as what it is: someone who loves me and Kayla more than I can imagine. It was as if someone's warm hand was on my shoulder and an assurance that my plans would still work filled me. This would mean that someone scheduled for surgery would have to cancel his/her appointment. I went home with a sense of gratitude. The days went by. I began to doubt my initial feelings. My dad changed the flights at my request for June 15th. Two days ago, as I was picking Cole up from school, a nurse from Primary Children's called and asked me if I would like to take the spot that had just opened for Wednesday, the 26th. I said, "Yes!" and thanked her several times. My sweet dad was able to change our flights back to the 30th with no penalties.
I hope that I can have enough faith the next time to be patient when I feel a prompting. What a miracle! We miss Steve and the thought of two extra weeks without him had left me feeling overwhelmed and panicky.
I am so grateful that my Father has heard my prayers and granted me peace. Some people have the gift of a calm spirit from birth. I think Glen and my dad do. Steve and my boys do, too. When I feel calm, I know it isn't something I have achieved by myself; it is pretty obvious who it is from.

Ode to J. Crew

Ah, J. Crew. I love your pencil skirts and your lush cardigans in every beautiful shade of the rainbow. And the fact that I can browse through your clothes online while watching Kung Fu Panda with my sleeping son in the middle of a Saturday afternoon, priceless.

One line

There's a story about a young man taking a religious studies exam at Cambridge University nearly two centuries ago. He and his fellow classmates had been asked to write about the spiritual significance of the miracle of Jesus turning the water into wine. For two hours, all the other students busily filled page after page with their thoughts. The young man, however, just gazed out of the classroom window. Near the end of the period, the proctor came over to him and insisted that he start writing or fail the exam. The young man, who happened to be Lord Byron, took up his pen and wrote only one line: "The water met its master and blushed."

A change in plans...

Here's the life that happened while I was making other plans--
Mikayla is scheduled for surgery on June 7th and for a week of recovery. When the doctor said 'surgery' I actually teared up because I was so RELIEVED. I was afraid he'd say that this was just something that she would have to deal with her whole life and send me home with a 5 year prescription for antibiotics. He did say that she will have to learn how to relax her muscles so that her bladder can send signals to her brain again. Apparently, she has clenched her sphincter muscles for so many years that her brain and bladder can't send signals to each other any more. When she does go, she doesn't empty out all the way so bacteria have a party in there. First, the doctor is going to fix the reflux by reimplanting her ureter to another part of her bladder. This is a 90 minute surgery. After she recovers for a week, Kayla needs to learn how to read her body's signals again. She has to set her watch to go off every two hours so she can completely void. She has medicine to relax her bladder and muscles, too.
The life I had planned was to get the surgery done in the next couple days, let her recover for a couple more days, and whisk her away to Ohio on the 30th, where I would nurse her tenderly back to health with ice-cream and butterfly kisses.
It just wasn't in the cards.

Trying to class up my act

Now that my parents and my Relief Society president are reading my blog, I will try to class up my act and not use the word 'suck' or any of its derivatives. :)

I need a Xanax

The last couple days have been suckish for us. First, Cole slammed the door on Topher's pinky toe. Hard. The poor little guy screamed like he had lost a toe. It was dark purple, swollen, and didn't look as much like a toe as a little prune. We're pretty sure it's broken. I would like to say that I took Cole by the hand and sweetly assured him that I still loved him even though he squished my baby's toe, but I didn't do that. I'm not positive about what I said, but it was not sweet and I think by the time we got to my parents' house to consult someone more clear-headed than I was, everyone in the car was crying. Toph's a lot better now--he walks on his heel and has put some weight on it, but it looks like there was a lot of broken blood vessels and it feels hot.

Today I got to take Kayla to the new Primary's in Riverton (it's nice.) She has had urinary reflux since she was born which is, according to someone completely non-medical (me), a condition where her pee goes up her little tubes that connect to her kidneys because of a faulty valve and can do some damage in there. It also causes UTIs. A lot of them. The sad thing is that she's had so many that she's stopped telling me about them. Even when there's blood. She went to the SLC Primary Children's Hospital when she was 6 and was given tests and put on antibiotics when they confirmed what was wrong. After a year of antibiotics, the doctors assured us that the reflux was gone. Ha. Ha ha. It is not gone. It was taking a nap for a couple years and it is now wide awake and making her miserable and even crankier than usual. (Yikes.) Today she got an ultrasound and they told me that there's no scarring in her kidneys, but her urethra is swollen and her bladder lining is thick, resulting from multiple infections. Then Kayla was put through the mother of all tests for a little girl. She was put into a gown, laid out on a table, and told that a catheter would be put in. She was also told that a lot of water would fill her bladder through the catheter so that her bladder would be full almost to bursting. The machine hovering over her body was just going to take pictures. Kayla was fine with all of this in theory. When it actually happened, she panicked in a big way. She hyperventilated, she cried, she screamed for her dad, and she refused to pee on cue. After 10 minutes, the doctor told her she could go use the bathroom. Struck with a strong sense of deja vu, I remembered in detail a much younger Kayla with hair to her waist who refused to pee on cue then, too. Luckily, the doctor today was able to see what he needed regardless. Her reflux is back and it's worse. I go in Wednesday for a consultation. What does it mean that I am really hoping she can just get surgery and fix it? 'Cause that's where I am right now.

My heart took a picture

As I try not to count down the days I have left before I see my husband, (16) I have made an effort to have my heart take pictures of things (I suck at taking pictures with my camera.) One thing that made my heart happy was when I went to Challenger to eat lunch with my dear friend Jenny (she's blood really, being from Arizona) I got to see my kids. When I say my kids, I mean my students from third grade. A few of them rushed to me on the way to lunch and it took everything in me not to cry hysterically and kiss their heads and tell them I love them. Jamie ran out of the lunch room when she saw me and smiled her big smile. I opened my arms and she ran to me. I got to hug her! It meant so much. I thank God for those few moments and for giving me the time I had with them. To quote Les Mis, "to love another person is to see the face of God." The view takes my breath away.