Is it just me or December just show up out of nowhere? It seems that the first few months of the year kind of dragged on, then it slowly started speeding up into the summer, and now the year is almost over. I don’t know where the last few months went. We weren’t all that busy, so that’s not it. Maybe it’s just the days getting shorter. I don’t know. Anyway, here we are. The first week of December 2017. Hopefully I won’t go to bed tonight and wake up in 2018.
Thanksgiving
While most people refer to this time of year as flu season, in our house it is known as pneumonia season. James’ first few Thanksgivings were rough. He seemed to always wind up in the hospital with pneumonia. The last few years, though, he’s made it through Thanksgiving without a bout of pneumonia. I don’t know if it’s his immune system getting stronger, or us getting better at keeping him healthy. Maybe it’s a little bit of both.
This year was another uneventful Thanksgiving. Went to Stacy’s folks’ house, had too much to eat, I took a nap, and we came home. Here’s a pic of James with his cousins:
Santa Claus
You know what comes after Thanksgiving? Christmas. And that means a trip to the mall to see Santa. Our mall has a special “Caring Santa” for the kids with disabilities. They usually schedule him on a Sunday morning before the mall opens when it’s not so busy and not so overwhelming for the kids. We took James to see Santa yesterday. He was wearing Christmas shirt specially made by his momma.
Medical Stuff
I’m sure you may have noticed that James’ mouth is always open. We decided to take James to a craniofacial doctor for a consultation to see if there is anything we can do with the mouth or jaw to get his mouth to close a little bit better. We need to remember not to schedule appointments so late in the day. The doctor was running extremely behind schedule. The appointment was scheduled for 4:50 pm. We didn’t get in to see the doctor until almost 6:00.
We briefly discussed options, but James needed to get a CT scan of his head to see what was going on under the surface so that the doctor could get a better idea of what course of action (if any) was the best route to take.
James just got the CT scan done this past Saturday and we have to wait for the doctor to review them and probably schedule a follow-up appointment to go over them with us.
In other medical news, James is still doing good with the seizure drug study. This medication has done wonders for reducing, and some days even eliminating, his seizures. I hope that the other kids in the study are seeing the same results that James is and that this drug gets approved for the younger kids so that they can get the same relief from seizures that James has.
While we were at one of our neuro check-up appointments for the drug study a couple of weeks ago, they had a stack of comic books that they were giving away, so I grabbed one. James has never read a comic book before and it seemed fitting that this be his first one:
Finally, it looks like James developed another ear infection a few weeks back. We took him to the pediatrician who prescribed ear drops and an antibiotic. We were told that ear tubes were supposed to help prevent ear infections. Judging by the number of times James has had an ear infection since getting tubes, I think we were lied to. Or maybe not. Maybe he would be getting more ear infections if he didn’t have the tubes.
Family Pictures
We had our annual family picture session back on November 12th and I have a few to share with you. It was cold and rainy so we decided to do indoor pictures this year.
