Our Emotions is like Missouri Weather!

It has been a total week of thrills! So happy one second and then down right bawling our eyes out the next. Two of the toughest, most beautiful women in my life could both use some prayers.  Mom was in the hospital with blood clots in her leg and lung. She is home and hanging in there but her poor leg is big and sore. She is doing a great job walking and not sitting around, She is on Coumidan and trying to get her blood thinned out! We are so happy and thankful that she finally showed Steve her foot so he could fix it for her, thanks so much Bull for getting her to the ER so they could fix it. Thanks to Jill for getting Granny to all her appointments and helping me so much, you are a Saint.  I went for all my yearly cancer screening and blood work, thank you God for letting them all be good and now I have graduated to just doing yearly blood work and if Doc doesn't like the numbers I will have to go see him and if he does like them, I get to skip a yearly of driving to KC, so very thankful for that. With that being said...Trude was coming over to help me Monday and hit a slick spot and lost control of her truck and hit a bank and rolled her truck 3 times. She is very banged up and bruised but thank God she will heal with time. I'm pretty sure my Mother-in-law was with her and kept her safe for us but also THANK YOU Ron Wiederholt for stopping and helping her that morning, you were the HERO that saved her, it was Teresa's birthday Monday so thank you thank you for keeping Trude safe for us. It is very hard to see these two tough ladies so feeble but I know they are both strong and will be back to their ornery self before long. Love you Both more than you will ever know.
Mitch had a little fender bender last week also, he was heading to college and a girl ran a stop sign and hit him and spun her around and hit a house. Mitch was very calm and collective, alot better than his mom was! So thank God that he is ok and his car can be fixed or replaced!  Mitch also had an appointment with his Dr. today in Columbia. He is sending him to a sleep study Dr to get insurance to ok the sleep machine for him. he said insurance is just crazy anymore.  He really thinks the sleep machine will help him feel so much better and He also wants Mitch to come see him about the Neuro Pace device but on a VERY happy note, Mitch got an intership in Gretna Nebraska, he will be their from May to August at a 4-H camp and help with activities, so the Neuro Pace device is not going to happen until September! He is so very excited and can't wait to be away from me for the summer, I'm going to be fine.......I think!  Mitch will be all DONE with classes in April and then after his intern is done he will be a College GRADUATE!!!!!  I am so happy and excited for him, so thank God he wasn't hurt in his accident and he is about ready to Graduate!!!
Hope this all makes sense, hard to type with tears running down your face:) So just like the Missouri weather where it is sunny and warm one day and cold and slick the next that is how our week has been, tears of sadness one day and tears of joy the next. God Bless you all and Thank you all so much for all the encouraging words and prayers!!!!!  Love ya, Theresa

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Can't believe it is Christmas week! I'm still not all the way ready but hey it will happen!!  Mitch had his sleep study test last week and they finally called today and said that he does have sleep apnea but it isn't a very bad case and they want him to learn to sleep on his back and loss some weight! Easy right????  His Dr. is outta town for the holidays so I will get in touch with him when he is back.  He told us last week if Mitch had sleep apnea and he got a machine to help him at night he may feel 100% better and not need the device, so I want to make sure that this is his recommendation also!!!!  He also told us that he isn't sold on the Vagas Nerve Stimulator, he has been looking at something else called a neuropace, so anyway I guess we just need to be patient and wait for the Holidays to be over and then get a hold of him and see what his thoughts are on all of this. Mitch is just wanting to feel better......NOW!!!!!  Dave's uncle Ed Meyer passed away last week, please say an extra prayer as they try to get through the Holidays!  Many prayers and Big Hugs to Aunt Dolore, Karl, LeAnne and families, even though he is no longer suffering, we will all miss him so much!! Thanks so much for all the continued prayers, enjoy your families and we pray Santa finds you all!!! Love ya,  Theresa

Sleep study!!!

Thought I would put a quick update as it has been a while.  Mitch continues to do ok. He will enter back into the hospital at University of Missouri on December 13th and they will do a sleep study and then on the 14th we will meet with his Dr. and set up surgery for the Vagus Nerve Simulator! I am also hoping they will be able to tell us how the sleep study was!  We are ready to get this all done and hopefully when Christmas break is over he will be feeling so much better.  Dave is doing good and he did do the home sleep study and it came back that he doesn't have sleep apnea but I'm still not convinced of that!!!!  He will go back to the Dr. after the first of year and see what or if they can do anything else, who knows!!!  We hope you are all getting in the hustle and bustle of the quickly approaching Holiday!  Thanks so much for the continued prayers for us, we really couldn't get through this without all of you!!!   I will let you know how the hospital stay & appointment go in December.  Love you all,   Theresa

We are home!

Well, I forgot to bring my login information to the hospital so I couldn't update this til now, Sorry!  Mitch was admitted to the hospital on Monday Morning for EEG monitoring! He had a few episodes just like we all knew he would! Today when Dr. Bandy came in he said they had seen enough episodes and data that they felt he should go home. So here is what we have learnt, Mitch is still having seizures but not near as many as before. Dr. Bandy said that the day before Mitch had his surgery in June he was having between 30 and 50 seizures an hour, today when we left the hospital he had had only 9 seizures in the three days we were there, now he isn't sure that he isn't maybe having more than that but they are so deep in the brain and the EEG won't pick them up. They do not want to do another surgery because they can't go any deeper in the brain without causing him motor function damage.  Mitch's main complaint is that he doesn't feel like he is getting sleep at  night so they are going to set him up for a sleep study to see if he needs to wear a machine at night and then he is going to get a VNS, Vagus Nerve Stimulator, and that will zap seizures every 3 minutes and if he would have one in between he would run a magnet over it and it would stop them too! They are still very impressed with how well Mitch gets along having the seizure activity all the time and they are all so proud of him for being in school still! We are hoping to get this all done before the end of the year! We so appreciate all the visitors we had, Kyler Farnan, Erma Mattson, Shannon Luke, Michelle, Robynn Gard, Trevor Johnson, Debbie Smith, Marilyn Jermain, Shelly Deen never a dull moment and big thanks to Erma Mattson for letting me crash at your place, and bringing us pizza, Debbie Smith thanks so much for steak and shake, Marilyn Jermain  thanks so much for the Sports Grill food, we cannot thank you enough! I will let you know when all of this is set up and we head back that way! Most of you know that Dave had a spell a couple weeks ago! He spent a couple days in the hospital in St. Joe. He also did a sleep study and we should find out the results of that in a week. Insurance wouldn't approve a over night in the hospital but they approved one he did here at home and then if that shows something they will approve the hospital one, if I can get him to go do it! We will be the family of sleep machines! On the way home from Columbia today I was talking to Tiff on the phone and all of a sudden she started Screaming and yelling "are you ok?" Then her phone went dead and I was screaming at her and crying I knew something very bad had happened but I had no clue what. Well she had stopped to let a car in front of her turn and a pickup rear ended her, it hit her pretty hard and Quincy was with her. Thank God they are both ok but let me tell you this family of mine is making my poor pacemaker work overtime. Thank you all for the continued prayers, as you can tell this crazy lady needs them. Love you all so much and I continue to ask God to watch over all of our family  and friends, we adore you all! Love you bunches,  Theresa

Back to the Hospital!

I am so sorry it has been so long since I have posted, I just don't really know what to say:( Mitch continues to have different problems and he continues to get more frustrated everyday! Last week he started in with his famous arm seizures, it only happened a couple days and then they were gone! This week his right leg and arm, which is his good side, started in with some different kind of spasms! His Dr would like me to capture them and send to him but I can't seem to!  Mitch will enter the hospital in Columbia on the 31st of October and will do the video monitoring for a few days. We had it set up to do over Christmas break but with all these new issues his Dr really wants to know what is going on. Mitch continues to tell us that he just doesn't feel good, he says he doesn't feel bad or hurt he just doesn't feel right. We are trying to be optimistic that he just doesn't know what it feels like to be seizure free after 15 years, and we are still praying that he is healing and that this is all normal. So for now we will continue to stay positive and pray that he is still just healing. I will try real hard to update this more often! Thank you so much for all the kind words and prayers you continue to give, you will never know how much they really do help!  There is so many little ones and big ones dear to our heart that are battling the beast, please keep all cancer patients and their caregivers in your prayers too. God Bless you all and hope you are ready for the cold, Brrrrrrrr!! Love ya, Theresa

Waiting, Waiting, Waiting!!

I'm not sure why after almost 15 years of dealing with Drs. that I am so impatient!!!! Dave took Mitch back yesterday and got all the electrodes off his head and now we are just waiting for them to call us with the results. They said it could be up to 10 days before they know!  Mitch did pretty good, he did hit the button 18 times, which means he thinks he had some seizure activity. We are praying it is just his brain trying to heal!  Thanks so much for all the messages and kind words, this is getting very long and tiresome for us all but we thank God for all of you that help us get through the day.  Can't believe summer is about over and school will start soon. We hope and pray that Mitch will be ready to go and finish up his Senior year of College. I just can't believe he is about done!  Again, thanks so much and I will let you know when we hear anything. Enjoy what is left of summer and try to stay cool and safe.  Love you all, God Bless!!!  Theresa

Trying to hang tough!!!

Sometimes life throws some pretty mean curve balls but you must stand in there, hang tough and take them and then fight back!!!  So Mitch's appointment was kinda what I thought it would be. When we got to the Dr, office yesterday morning Dave said "Mitch, I still haven't seen your arm do that twitching thing you have been telling me about"! Well Mitch said "just watch it cause it is going to do it now". Yep he had a seizure right there in the parking lot! We got him in the building and got him in a wheelchair and wheeled him to Dr. Lanigar's office and they came and got us and Dr. Lanigar was with another patient but we think she went and got him but by the time he got in there he was coming out of it. We think it lasted about 30 minutes. Dr. Lanigar told Mitch and us that Mitch, is defiantly his most challenging and difficult patient, of course Mitch isn't the text book type! He wanted to know if we thought his seizures were different than before and I said yes because before he was having so many and we never even knew it but now he is able to tell us when they are going to happen. he agreed with us on that.  He wanted to put Mitch back in the hospital and do the long term EEG but couldn't get him in until the end of August, so he decided to do a ambulatory EEG, which we will take him to the hospital on Monday and they will hook him all up and then we can go home and he will wear it until Thursday! If this doesn't show much then the end of August he will have to enter back in the hospital and do the other one. Dave asked Dr. Lanigar if he would have been hooked up if he thought it would have showed up as a seizure and Dr. Lanigar just isn't sure yet if these are seizures or healing! He did start Mitch on another seizure medicine and also gave us a prescription to have if he has a seizure to give him to bring him out of it sooner, now I just hope I am organized enough to have it with us when we need!  We were all pretty bummed yesterday and Mitch still claims he will not do another surgery but I told him I feel we need to get a second opinion and try to keep going, we have came this far lets not give up now. I also told Mitch that he hit his beautiful head so darn hard the day of the accident and dang it he is paying for it now.  So we will head back to Columbia on Monday and get all hooked up and pray that Dr. Lanigar will see what he needs to and all of this is just part of the healing process.   Thanks so much for all the prayers, kind words and encouragement, we really do appreciate them all! Thanks also to Traci and Robert Archer for bringing a piece of the NWMSU Bearcat Turf, Mitch was pretty excited to get it!  God Bless you all,  Theresa