managing... well everything

Yesterday was, well, interesting.  Drove the hour plus to Omaha, the 'big city' nearest to us, to make it there by 9:15 am so we could check in.  First off, I definitely have one of the best husbands out there, as he took the day off work so I didn't have to try and get Cody in the car, get through traffic, and go to my Dr.'s appointment by myself - and I remember that on days like today when he is rushing off to work in such a hurry that he barely says goodbye.  Traffic was the usual down town morning craziness, but we made it by 9... only to find out that the directions they sent ended in the middle of the Medical Center, with no mention of which building we were going to.  Hmm, who would have thought that that pertinent information was located on the SECOND page of the letter telling us what to bring to the appointment and not of the driving directions.  We managed to make it there only 20 minutes late... which of course meant that we had to reschedule for later.

We got lucky, after being a smidge grumpy about the confusion over the directions and that my hubby had taken the day off work to run Cody and me to the med center.   They were able to work me into an afternoon appointment.  SO, what to do for four hours in Omaha with a baby?  Well, I was planning on meeting a new friend that I'd made on Face Book face to face after the appointment, but before and having lunch with her worked out just fine.  Had a nice lunch and good conversation, and got back to the hospital just in time to get signed in and feed the baby in the waiting room - how often do you do that?!  Interesting to say the least.

I'd gone hoping the neurologist would refer me to a vascular surgeon so I could get checked out for CCSVI.  No such luck, but had a really good discussion with her about everything ms, and the latest news.  Kind of disappointing b/c she down played my grandma's recovery as having probably happened if she hadn't changed her diet all around.  CCSVI is still not PROVEN, so you aren't going to get any doctor on the band wagon with you regarding that, but she did point out 2 universities doing studies, in Alabama and at Buffalo, NY, and said that if I was still feeling strongly, to get in a study, rather than go to someone w/out any background in the phenominon.

We also talked about Lyme disease.  She has treated patients with Lyme before, and said that even if I would turn out to have Lyme, I'd treat each separately, the ms and the Lyme.  The key thing was, regarding Lyme, that if I did get a false negative on my western blot test, I wouldn't be getting better taking the current ms drug I'm on (Tysabri).

She made me feel a lot better about being on the Tysabri, with it's PML risk, and said that I am doing the thing she'd have me do if I were a patient of her's with being on the study that's checking Tysabri patients once a year for JC Virus antibodies.  She also said I should be getting my vitamin D levels checked every year.  All in all, I'm confident in my ms specialist/ PhD/APRN and I'll continue seeing her.

On the way back, we got chicken feed from the elevator we moved away from... always liked their stuff better and our chickens always layed better with it.  THEN, panic, we remembered that we had to pick the old mare up from the surgery she'd had that morning!  Here's a current picture of the old girl - she's 23.

She's still skinny, but she's looking better and better all the time... here's what she looked like when she came down this winter:

The reason she's so skinny, is because she's missing a lot of her teeth - 5 have came out of her mouth since I met her 5 years ago... some while the vet floated her teeth!

She can't chew hat or grass, she just balls it up for the most part and it falls out of her mouth.  That's why she was so skinny, she'd been treated like my husband's parents had always treated her - round bale of hay and oats and corn if she needed them.  Now, she eats pelleted alfalfa and Netrena Safe Choice pellets because they dissolve in her mouth.  She was eating Senior feed, either Nutrena or Purina, but they have gotten unbelievably expensive!  Firecracker has been with my husband since she was about six weeks old, bought off her mother (who had sold and the buyer d/n want the foal) at an auction.  He's done all the training on her and has been about the only one to have ridden her, so she's kind of his baby.  She's been breaking out in an abscess about once every winter for the past we don't know how many years.  After Nate and I had gotten married, I'd taken her to my vet to find out why, and he said that she happened to have an abscessed tooth, and that that could possibly have been breaking out her jaw.  He removed that tooth, but that wasn't the cause of the jaw abscessing, b/c it came back about once a year after that.  Now that she's back with us, and being a little more closely watched, I got the vet down here working on why she'd been abscessing.  Bone sequestrum, a piece of dead bone that has become separated during the process of necrosis from normal/sound bone.  It is a complication (sequela) of osteomyelitis. At any rate, I'd taken her, with my Clue for his yearly dental float, the day before - by myself, with Cody.  Firecracker had been operated on sucessfully that morning, and we had to run down, nearly an hour in the opposite direction, to pick her up.

Whew, what a day, 7 month old in tow, MS appointment for me for a second opinion on my treatment, feed for chickens, and mare picked up from the veterinarian's after her surgery... and the funny thing is, it just seems like a normal day now, writing about it. lol