Complete 2009 Udate

Ryan has been doing pretty well, he’s been very helpful and ultra supportive and patient with regards to my healing and nerve damage. Of course, there is nothing like having chronic pain yourself to help you see how debilitating it truly is. I’m in no way saying that I’m glad he’s in the same boat because I wouldn’t wish this on Hitler. You see, Ryan has been having severe pain in his upper back and neck for well over a year now. Nothing seems to give him relief for any mentionable length of time. He’s been to Dr. Ericksen many times and tried various treatment options he’s suggested. Dr. E’s diagnoses? Ryan has an abnormal curvature of his upper back. According to various sites on the net he has the lame man’s term for Hunchback Syndrome. I have my own personal Quasimodo; at least he’s a cute character. …Hehehe.
Money has been tight but not as tight as always, in-spite of that Ryan is still working overtime each weekend. I know he’s looking forward to the nearly two weeks off he gets for Christmas. Between you and me and the rest of the world though, the kids are gonna drive him certifiably mad in 3 days.
He’s also been staying busy at work. He was quite excited to be offered a position as a programmer. He’ll be going to Connecticut for a week to train he’s mentioned that he’s nervous, we’ve never even spent a whole 24 hours away from each other in the 7 years we’ve been together. He just has wait until the 3rd for his flight. I’m sure going to miss him.
As for me, this year has bas been chock full ups & downs. It was discovered that my L5/S1 disc had herniated almost straight back (which is rare). It showed that it was causing significant pressure on my S1 nerve root thus causing wretched pain down both sides of my legs. In May I underwent a microdiscectomy in hopes of relieving that nerve pressure. Surgery went without a hitch; however, Dr. Welling told Ryan that the nerves associated with the herniation were the most swollen he’d ever seen in all the surgeries he’d done. Matter of fact, he scared the crap out of Ryan by coming out of the operating room and stating, “That was bad.” He quickly realized the error of his statement and reassured Ryan the surgery went well. The surgery helped immensely but it’s believed there is permanent nerve damage, this is permanent. I also continue to experience slightly severe pain but some days are worse than others. Dr. Ericksen has been doing all he can to alleviate as much of it as possible. He has me on quite few regimens: I receive regular cortisone injects, Toradol shots about every 10 days, regular back adjustments, wearing a back brace (both for this issue and the slight case of Scoliosis I have), I also have a Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulator (aka a TENS unit). The tens unit is pretty interesting. It literally sends electricity charges into the pain sights to confuse the nerves. There’s a silver lining to grey clouds, I’ve been able to watch our children grow and mature daily due to orders of taking it easy and remaining stress free.
Kieran has finished sixth grade and moved on to bigger and better things-Junior High School. Summers are intended to be carefree and school free but for Kieran they seem to be his greatest time of loss. 3 years ago he lost his dad and this summer he lost his Gramps. I know all this loss has weighed heavily on him and it hasn’t made starting a new school, a new grade system and class load increase any better. One of the great things he’s discovered is his great musical abilities. For reasons his completely tone deaf mom can only credit our Lord he’s somehow able to pass off pieces he’s only practiced during class alone. During a parent, guardian (his Gram) and teacher meeting this teacher was impressed, she assumed he was bringing his kit home and practicing. An amazing proof of his talent, he’s able to convert the music he’s learned on an x-lyphone directly to a piano without having sheet music.
Steff has been learning by large leaps and bounds. She’s been making the change from using a toddler’s mind and verbal skills to a young child’s. This inevitably brings the word, “why” into the mainstream of each and everything she says or you say to her. Oh…the curious mind of a child. Sitting here and thinking about it has brought thoughts of hilarity to it but in the midst of explaining everything is simply enough to drive Job to the brink of hair loss. I know one day this will be a great and wonderfully fond and priceless memory of her younger years.
She’s a little artist also, I call her Michelangelo since she’s ever drawing on every little and big thing(!!!). Nothing is exempt from her desire to redecorate; Sadie and Rexxie included-they often fall victim to having her art taped to them and drawn on them. Sadie thinks it awesome to be colored and Rexxie is nothing shy of stupid and sits there and takes it…My walls are an ever tempting source for her creativity. Another way we’ve found to help her in expressing her right brain is the computer. She plays about 4 or 5 educational games that provide an adequate amount of entertainment for about 10-20 minutes. Ryan is thrilled that his little girl is beginning to use computers; he’s all about the kids learning technology.

Sadie, our little Peanut is quickly losing the infamous “baby look” she’s really looking like a little girl now and yet, we have not quite figured out which of us she resembles most. She’s developed and learned so many amazing things this last year. She started Early Intervention shortly after her 2nd birthday. She had a Speech and Language Pathologist and an Occupational Therapist who visited our home bi-weekly to work with her delays and give us ideas to help her learn more skills. Over the course of the last year she has learned to communicate in the form of sign language. She’s now starting to communicate verbally. Not great, but pretty clear, it’s an exciting start. I’ve always been curious of how her voice would sound since she squawks at pitches the dog just about covers his ears and whines due to it. She’s been known to be dubbed a teradactal. This last October, she began Preschool and has really shown a major improvement in her creativity and verbal skills. Her teachers have made many comments in regards to her intelligence. In spite of her communication delay, she clearly shows her complete understanding of things asked of her and problem solving. One example…she was looking a book of a hyena which her teacher was drawing a blank of the sign for it, so Sadie went and retrieved a book they had been looking at days before and found the page with a dog on it. Her teacher was amazed that she put together that they are a type of dog-parse and how she remembered a specific book and picture that depicted a dog. One of the sweetest things we’ve heard was stated at school was how the other kids told their teachers how they were going to help her learn to talk.
Pease feel free to check our blog at:
http://www.krazyfamily.blogspot.com/
Ryan & I both have emails… kdogg76@comcast.net & tkelstrom@comcast.net