After months of being unable to upload photos to my blog, I upgraded to WordPress 2.9 tonight and suddenly I’m able to add pics again.

It’s a Christmas miracle.

So Dorthy (Doug’s Mom) came to visit for the week.  We picked her up at the airport Tuesday morning.  Here’s a few pictures from her visit…

We went to Sea World Wednesday night to hear Doug sing.  My parents came too…

(Love Noah’s yawn.  It was getting late.)

I was rather neglectful with the camera on Christmas morning.  I was having too much fun watching the boys open their gifts and seeing Noah get in on the action.  I did get this one of Isaac…

We went to Epcot last night to watch Doug perform in the Candlelight Processional…

(ooooo…scary red eyes.)

We’ve had a fantastic week together, complete with lots of fun activity mixed with a good amount of relaxing.  It’s been a wonderful Christmas season.

I hope that yours has been wonderful too.

Anybody else up late tonight wrapping gifts?

Doug and I finished at around 11:00.

Now I’m all jacked up and can’t get to sleep so I figured I’d post a quick update.

We had a Christmas Eve service tonight at church.  Since a lot of our families are out of town this week, we figured that it would be a small and intimate gathering.  Turns out, the place was packed.  It was a blast.

I’ve been virtually pain free since last Friday.  Actually…a little bit has returned today, but NOTHING like what I have been dealing with for most of the month.  I know that I’ve got some of ya’ll praying for me so thank you for that.

Doug’s Mom, Dorthy, arrived Tuesday morning for a visit.  It’s been wonderful to have her here.  Since we got rid of our spare bed when we staged our house to sell it, we’ve got nowhere for Dorthy to sleep, so she’s staying at my parents’ house.   They are all great friends, so this works out perfectly.  (How many people get to say that about their parents and in-laws?  I know…I’m blessed.)

Doug is still crazy busy gigging.  Disney booked a last minute event for the group for Monday morning, so next week is shaping up to be pretty crazy.  In addition to the Disney gig, he’s got four days at Sea World and a booking to sing for the Champs Sports Bowl teams (I think it’s Miami and Wisconsin?).  Woo-hoo for extra work.

Well, I’m suddenly sleepy and I really need to get to bed.  Isaac is off the chain excited about Christmas so I imagine that we will be up e-a-r-l-y.

We will have breakfast here with my parents and Dorthy…lunch at my parents’ house…then it’s off to Epcot tomorrow afternoon to see Doug perform in Candlelight if the weather isn’t too groovy.

I hope that you all have a blessed, joyful and Merry Christmas in your home.

…I don’t think that the back seat of my Scion xb will be big enough for the boys’ bedroom.

yeesh.

I got a call this afternoon from the Endometriosis Specialist’s office in Atlanta.  My insurance denied the claim.

That they denied the claim stinks, but the story doesn’t end there.  Worse is that I learned that even if insurance had approved it, the deductibles on my policy are so high that my minimum charge for surgery would be around $13,000.  And then I would have to pay 20% of whatever is left on the hospital charges.

I’m not certain, but I think that they want my right arm and one of my children as well.

At this point, I don’t know what’s next.

Well…actually…I do know, but I’m dreading it.

I’m about to go insurance shopping.  Again.

And if that doesn’t work, I’m going to start a fundraiser and call it “Cure My Crotch Migraine”.  I could make a little ditty up…you could sing that to the tune of “Feed the World”, don’t cha know.

Okay…not really, but I have to go all twisted humor or I’ll go nuts.

I’ll update when I know more…

Sorry ya’ll…it’s another “girly” post…

So the endometriosis specialist in Atlanta called me Tuesday night.

I was shocked and pleased to hear from him so quickly.  When I told him that I was surprised to hear from him so soon (I mailed my records out Friday afternoon), he told me that he received my package Tuesday morning and that he “likes to stay on top of these things”.  I’m impressed.

He told me that after reviewing my narrative and medical records, he is quite certain that I have adenomyosis (in layman’s terms, a condition where the lining of the uterus changes and things get ugly)  and that a hysterectomy is my best and most definitive option for treatment.  (In fact, he told me that he didn’t even get past the first page of my narrative report before he said to himself “this girl has adenomyosis”.)  He also strongly suspects that I have a recurrence of endometriosis as well, but won’t know the extent of it until he can snoop around in there during surgery.

He was extremely kind and thorough.  He also has a sense of humor…he laughed at my “crotch migraine” descriptor.  (And told me that in ten years of doing this, he’s not heard that one before.)  He gave me his email address and told me to feel free to email him with questions anytime.

My file is now in the hands of the center’s surgical director.  She will contact my insurance agency and find out my coverage levels.  This is what has me hanging on the edge of my seat the most…I’m waiting to find out if we need to move into my car for us to be able to afford the surgery.  If all that works out, they can likely schedule me in about six weeks.

Six weeks.  The thought just makes me giddy.

So that’s the latest on the saga of my innards.

So this past week has been really rough for me physically.

Here goes some “TMI” stuff…

…and I ain’t holding back because I’m OVER it so pretty please skip on down in this post if you’re not into chick talk about girly stuff like um…”cycles” and such…

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…I’m not kidding…

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still here?

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okay.  So this whole endometriosis/adenomyosis or whatever alien garbage is living inside of my innards down yonder has taken a mean and ugly  turn for the worse and has made me absolutely miserable this week.  In addition to pain and cramping, I have all of the symptoms of a urinary tract infection.  Except I don’t have a urinary tract infection.  If I did, I could treat it, but I don’t so I can’t.  I just have to suck down ibuprofen and wait until it passes.  How nice for me.

Do I sound irritated?

Well…I am.  The good thing about all of this is that it motivated me to finally finish my paperwork for the endometriosis specialists in Atlanta.  I mailed out my prospective patient packet yesterday which contained my medical records and a narrative history of my endometriosis story.  The narrative took hours to write…they want to know every little detail of my case history and want a thorough description of what I’m experiencing in terms of symptoms.  I used the term “crotch migraine” at one point.  Do you think that’s descriptive enough?

I should hear back from them within the next few weeks.  They will also check over my insurance policy (which of course does not cover endometriosis) and try to give me a cost breakdown for surgery.  This should be interesting.

So that’s that.

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OKAY!!!!…YOU CAN COME BACK NOW.  No more girly talk….

So everything else is going really well around here.   Doug continues to do the Christmas gig thing…he’s pulling a double shift today, subbing with the Dapper Dans 9-4 and then going straight to Epcot to sing in Candlelight.

Noah brought home a wonderful progress report from school yesterday.  It was absolutely glowing and his teacher commented about how he’s answering questions from passages read to him.  Sounds just like what we’re doing at home with Soma-RPM.  I’m so proud.

Isaac keeps insisting that he wants to go get his picture taken with Santa.  hmmm.  Santa wigged him out last year…I gave him multiple opportunities to go meet him.  He was having none of that.  I’m planning to try to take him next week to the mall to see if he’s serious.  We’ll see how that goes.

Well, that’s all I’ve got to report for now.

Ya’ll enjoy your weekend…