What a Weekend, good and bad!

A week ago, March 28, Craig had chemo.  We both thought because he took a week off, now has a feeding tube, and was feeling so good, that the chemo would not be too hard on him.  We were completely wrong.  It was a week of throwing up, losing weight, and lots of pain.  The bright light was that we were able to have Corinne home and a few of our kid’s friends over on the weekend and watch the LDS conference.  Even with throwing up and not feeling too well it ended up to be a pretty nice weekend with the family.  At the end of the day on Sunday Craig said, “We have pretty darn good kids, and they have great friends.  Did we really raise these kids, or did someone just bring them to us this way?”  We all sat in our family room together watching conference and all of them had their journals and were taking notes on the different speakers.  Pretty impressive kids.  We have to thank good friends, church leaders, and extended family, for all of their help in making our kids what they are today.   It does take the whole village to raise a good child.  Many times we have received phone calls about one of our children being looked out for by neighbors.  Whether it is that they were up to something bad and need some guidance or thanking them for helping them out.  We are glad that we live where we do.  Many years ago, I believe, at around the age of 2, Dallin was out playing in the neighborhood riding his Big Wheel.  I continued to check on him to make sure that he was staying out of the road, and out of danger, and then would hurry and clean a little more in the house.  There soon was a knock at the door, where it was a neighbor laughing and telling me that he had just been escorted by Dallin two blocks away, riding his big wheel, with a line of cars following him.  Dallin would not move out of the middle of the road so he drove behind him to make sure that he made it home ok.   I just about died when I found out what had happened, but glad that my neighbor was watching out for him. 

We have such great people that live around us.  We try to do the same for them as they would do for us.  Some neighbors that have since moved, the Cyrus family, have a special needs son named Garrett.  We told the family that if ever they needed us even in the middle of the night, not to hesitate to call and we would be right over.   He is the greatest boy in the world, and really took a special liking the Craig.  We took them to the cabin when us two years ago and Garrett rode on the 4-wheeler with Craig.  We had to tape the buttons down for the winch because Garrett found the button while riding and soon the winch was dragging behind Craig.  Craig took the lead to keep the dust out of Garrett’s eyes and very often we would see Craig’s 4-wheeler swerving back and forth.  I thought that Garrett was getting a hold of the handle bars.  He wasn’t.  Craig found that when Garrett would stop holding on and start playing with the switches and buttons, if he started to swerving, Garrett would hold on tight again for a few minutes.  We could hear Garrett squealing, which is about the only sound he makes when around Craig, even over the sound of the engine.  We took them to church with us while we were up there.  They are not members of our church but we invited them to go with us anyway.  They were very worried that Garrett would be loud and they would be embarrassed.  We had no worries either way.  Craig decided to stay out of Garrett’s view because of the excitement that he shows when looking at him.  It was very cool to see him there at church.  We sensed that Garrett may have had an understanding of where we were at.  He was very quiet and sat in his wheel chair next to his Dad and only got big smiles on his face when looking at Craig.  He is one of our Heavenly Father’s choices spirits, and his parents are very blessed to have him as a son.

Ok…that was a nice side track of talking about Craig’s yucky week.  Now back to it.

He had a very bad night Sunday night and through the night, throwing up and with lots of pain.  I called the doctor Monday morning because of how he was feeling and was able to get an appointment that afternoon.  The way that Craig was feeling and the kind of night we had had, I decided to call a couple of our neighbors who are worthy Priesthood holders, to give Craig a blessing, and also myself.  It was great to have them come and help us out.  I, myself, was feeling pretty beat up and quite depressed about how everything was going.  By the time they left we all were holding our chins up a little higher.

That afternoon my Mom drove us to the doctor’s office.  She was pretty much our shuttle bus for the afternoon.  After seeing that doctor, and checking his weight, which had dropped from 157 to 149, he sent us to get an x-ray to make sure that there was not an obstruction in his stomach and also to check to see if the feeding tube was still in the right place after all of the problems he had been having through the past week.  After the x-ray we then went back to the first doctor.  I ended running in each time and getting a wheelchair for Craig.  After the first walk into the office he was exhausted, so the rest of the day he was being wheeled, and I’m not the best driver.  Funny how many bumps there are when you bum hurts.  The doctor could see from the x-ray that there was not an obstruction but that the tube was not in the right place anymore, due to the violence of throwing up.  I need to teach Craig how to throw up gently, if that is possible.  We were then sent to the hospital to have the feeding tube replaced in the proper place, and get some fluids to hydrate him again.  It always makes him feel better.  I do need to say, which I have said before, Timpanogos Hospital is great.  We have had the best of nurses and help there.  Maybe they can see it in our eyes that we need love and tender care, but they all have been so good to us.  My Mom came and picked us up and took us home about 8:30 at night.  Craig was quite drowsy from the medicine that they give him for the nausea so Ashlyn was there to help me get him into the bedroom.  We hooked up his feeding tube for the night and he went to sleep.  I think we both sleep pretty good last night, maybe just me because I sleep good enough that I didn’t hear Craig up, if he was. 

In the past years, I try to do something to the kids and or Craig for April fool’s Day.  That day started and almost went completely by without me knowing it.  I had planned on having corn beef and cabbage for dinner that night.  I cooked the corn beef outside on the patio in a crock pot so that the smell would not overwhelm Craig all day.  Because of the cold weather, it took too long to cook and was not ready when it was time to eat.  It had been a rough day for Craig eating and keeping things down.  I told him what I had planned on doing for dinner and that it wasn’t through cooking and asked him about making taco’s instead.  I guess just thinking about smell of the meat cooking rolled his stomach, he asked if I would just take the kids and go out for dinner.  The kids heard that and were more than willing to do as he had requested.  So I ran down and quickly pick up pizza.  I told the kids to meet me in the garage to eat and whispered that I had pizza outside.  They went out the front door and peek around into the garage to see what was going on.  They thought I was pulling an April fool’s joke on them, but all they saw was me sitting there eating a piece of pizza.  I didn’t even want to take it in the house.  When Craig is in that kind of mood, every smell gets to him. The kids and I sat there and talked about all of the April fool’s jokes that had gone on at school that day.

I'm trying to find some pictures to go along with this post, hopefully I will add them soon.