Quick Updates

Wow! Where has the week gone?

My Dad is doing well, considering. I feel so bad for him because he has not been able to eat anything AT ALL since early in the day on Sunday! The only thing they will let him have is ice chips. Yum! Poor guy. Hopefully soon things will start to wake up and start moving for him so he can eat again. They removed about 14 inches from his colon, so I guess you can't go rushing things around.

The biopsy results came back and the tumor was malignant. But it was just entering stage two, it was in the wall of the colon just a little, and it had not invaded any lymph nodes. So all that is good. The hospital has a cancer committee composed of all the different specialties that get involved and they will review his case and present their recommendation/options. That will happen in about two weeks I think.

Murphy has been taking swimming lessons all week (and it will continue next week). I am so happy to say that he is LOVING it! When we went to the pool on July 3rd he did not want to get in the big pool. And when he did, he only hung out on the steps. But, he is a completely different child now! He even told his instructor today that he wanted to jump in the deep end of the pool! I am so proud of him! I'll have pictures from our fun day on Wednesday soon.

Harlie had speech therapy on Tuesday. She put on her PMV (speaking valve) and wore it for about 6-9 minutes or so. Her therapist ended up being the one to take it off because Harlie was breathing very hard while wearing it. The struggle to get her to tolerate the PMV is growing tiresome. Sometimes I can feel myself wearing down on some of the battles. I have to redirect our efforts and change things up a little. Right now we're focusing on potty training.

We had another follow up appointment from her heart surgery. This time it was with her local cardiologist here in Richmond. They did another Echo (ultrasound of her heart). For the most part, things looked good. The only glitch is that he saw some leakage/regurgitation that he has not seen before. Basically, as her heart pumps the blood out to her body, some of the blood comes back in. He said a little bit is okay. So, we will go back for another Echo in a month. Hopefully this will not become a problem. We didn't talk about what it means if it gets worse. He didn't seem overly worried, so I'm not - yet.

Well, that's it for tonight.
~Christy