The Ear is Connected to the Stomach

I had a consult with Dr. Russo this morning regarding Maison's c-diff relapse. His recommended course of treatment is ear surgery. Yes, you heard me right. Ear surgery to solve a G.I. issue.

Nasal drainage leads to ear infections.

Ear infections lead to antibiotics.

Antibiotics lead to c-diff.

So to ward off possible c-diff infections he is recommending ear tubes. Apparently, every part of the body IS connected!

Speechless...

I just got off the phone with Maison's doctor...the c-diff is back!

Maison had double ear infections at the beginning of November that were treated with a short course of antibiotics. As we walked out of Dr. Russo's office on Nov. 3 with a clean bill of health, he warned us not to give Maison antibiotics for any reason unless there were no other options. Unfortunately, he was right...

Just 2 days after finishing up the antibiotics, the 'c-diff' symptoms came back. Saturday we took Maison to the doctor because she was already pulling on her ear again and complaining that it hurt. Her ear had fluid but was not an infection, yet. We had the on-call doctor call in the stool studies and he just called to confirm the c-diff was positive.

I knew Thanksgiving night that it was back but didn't want to believe it. I told my mom my suspicions and she told me not to borrow trouble. Unfortunately, I was right. Our family's nightmare it back...I'm speechless...

Starting Black Friday with a POP

Neiman Marcus's Zodiac Room has nothing on me in the popover department....

Will there be anything to gobble?

My mom called around 9:30 this morning to say we may or may not be eating Thanksgiving dinner at 4:00 as planned and we may or may not have anything to eat because BOTH of the ovens in the kitchen had stopped working. What a great start to Thanksgiving day...

By the time the Macy's day parade was over, my mom had moved 'operation Thanksgiving' to the small kitchen in the guest house where Nannie lives and my dad had dropped off the dressing at our house for Adam to bake. Yes, my dad trusts Adam enough to bake his famed dressing.

Despite all the chaos, dinner was served only an hour after my mom had planned! This Thanksgiving, we were definitely thankful there was food on the table. HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Some how this is the ONLY picture from Thanksgiving???

Easy as pie

My mom usually starts baking for Thanksgiving early Wednesday so that she has plenty of oven space for the turkey, dressing, and mac and cheese that take up most of her oven cooking time. I thought I would help out this year by making a pie.

I love to bake and make lots of cupcakes, cakes, cookies, muffins, breads, etc but I have NEVER made a pie from scratch. How hard could it be? I know how to bake. Could a pie with homemade crust really be that hard? I researched Thanksgiving pie recipes on foodnetwork.com and came across the maple pumpkin pie with pecan streusel. It was described as the 'must serve' Thanksgiving pie as it combines pumpkin and pecans into one pie and it had an 'easy' difficulty rating...sounds like a winner to me.

I called my mom around 11:30am to tell her that Maison and I would be by for a short visit after her nap, as I was going to surprise her with my fab pie. Let's just say 'easy' has a whole new meaning...

Nothing is fast about homemade crust. I got the dough mixed together in minutes but didn't realize that it had to rest for at least 30 minutes before I could use it. Then I noticed the recipe called for toasting the pecans before making the streusel. Uh, how do you toast pecans? I seriously had to google it. Then I struggled to get the dough to go over the fluted edges of my Emile Henry pie pan. It seemed every time I covered one side the other side slipped down. Ok, so maybe I wouldn't be dropping off the pie shortly after Mais's nap.

This easy pie had a million steps and literally took me all day to make. I believe it was close to 7pm when I finally left to drop the pie off. It was already dark and Adam was already home from work so I made him drive me. I did not want anything happening to this pie on the way to Nooey's house. I sure hope it tastes as good as it looks and was worth a whole days work!

High speed photo shoot

I finally got around to looking at Maison's 2 year pics so that I could place our order and realized there is not one shot where she is still. She is either running, climbing, or dancing in every single picture.

I see now why all my pictures of her are a blur...

459th Reason Why...

The 459th reason why I live in Dallas...

It's Nov. 13 at 9:04am and it's a gorgeous 70 degrees. I just finished an 8 mile run that started at a perfect running temp of 64 degrees. Despite the 17 mph winds, I set a PR at this distance of 1:17. For those of you that are bad a math that's a 9:38 pace, well below my goal of 10 min miles at any distance over 5 miles.

After this run I decided to sign up for the White Rock Half in Dec. It's still 3 weeks away; plenty of time for me to blow an ankle, catch the flu, or other ailments that have sidelined me for these types of events over the last few months. Please pray that everyone is healthy enough for me to make this one.

I'm off to enjoy the rest of our gorgeous day that is forecasted to be in the low 80s. I may be hobblin' along but that won't be enough to ruin weather like this!

Doing what we can...

Alzheimer's is a horrible disease that has taken the lives of my great grandmother Ma-ma, my great-uncle Jun, and my great-aunts Grace and Dot; all of which were my Annie Boo's siblings and mother. Not only has it taken the lives of so many that we loved, it as stolen so many precious years we could have shared with my Annie Boo. In December, she will turn 90 years old and though she is physically still here, she mentally does not know where she is, who she is, and certainly not who any of us are.

She is a far cry from the woman that was always perfectly coiffed. Every detail exactly as it should be from the Chanel suit, the designer shoes and handbag, to the carefully selected accessories. Never seen with a hair out of place or without her signature red lips, even at midnight in the check out line at Kroger. Every now and then she has a lucid moment where we see a glimmer of the woman we so dearly love. Something as small as an exciting tone in her voice or a heartfelt laugh. It is these moments that pushes us to do what we can to prevent others from living the cruel reality that is Alzheimer's.

This morning, Shari, Adam, Maison, and I participated in the Walk to End Alzheimer's in honor of my grandmother. Our team, Team Boo, which was the 3 of us plus my brother, raised $2450 for Alzheimer's research. We really appreciate everyone that supported us with donations. Our team ranked 15th in dollars donated with just 4 people!

Maison warming up for the walk:

At the starting line:

Walking through the fair grounds at Fair Park:

Maison hugging the elephant bye:

It was a very emotional experience but one we all thoroughly enjoyed. We will definitely have a team next year and hopefully earn more money to help end this horrific disease.

Sometimes you know

I was summoned for jury duty today at 8:30. I needed to leave at 8:00 to make it in time. In my summons it said you should call at 7:30 to find out if there were any delays or cancellations. At 7:30 I was still in my pjs. I told myself that it would be cancelled because I really, really, really did not want to go. How sad is it that jury duty is worse than going to work? Well I do work at home so going to jury duty would require showering and getting dressed before I was good and ready.

I called promptly at 7:30, you know just as a formality, since I am psychic and of course knew it would be cancelled. But that nice lady on the recorded message said, "All jurors should report as scheduled." Urrrgghhh! I only have 30 min to shower and get all my stuff together for work...great!

I pulled up to the court house at about 8:28 in Adam's F150 and there is no parking left but parallel spots. Could this morning get any worse? I walk in right at 8:30 just in time for the bailiff to inform me, "All jurors have been selected. Sign here and you are free to go." Free to go? Free to go? See I knew it would be "cancelled". I just had my wires crossed about the time.

Tacky Tech

Shari and I drove down this morning for the Tech game. We got to our seats literally seconds before kick off and were greatly displeased to find two Tech fans sitting right behind us. Tech fans in general are annoying enough but the guy in this duo literally ran his mouth about how fab Tech was and how they were going to beat us the way they beat OU and on and on and on. This guy blabbed so much that one of the UT alumni that sits behind us got up and moved his seat. The Tech fan had the nerve to ask the UT guy why he was moving and the UT guy admitted it was because of the loud-mouthed Tech fan. It was only minutes into the game and Shari and I were already totally annoyed.

We some how made it to half time, keeping all our snide comments to ourselves...amazing I know. Then we returned to our seats after half time and the girl Tech fan had just gotten a snow cone. A snow cone that was quickly melting and unbeknownst to us dripping on Shari's Tod's bag. I heard a big plop of snow cone hit the concrete and I looked back to see the remnants slowly sliding down Shari's bag. When I told her she had snow cone on her bag she said in a very loud voice, "What are you 5? Why don't you try to keep your snow cone and your DSW riding boots off my $1500 purse?" And for good measure she added, "I know it cost a whole $5 so I'm sure you want to savor it." Given that she went to Tech, I think she was too stupid to know we were talking about her or maybe she was too drunk, regardless she was a Tacky Tech fan to say the least.

Released!

Maison was diagnosed with c-diff more than a year ago. It proved to be one of the most challenging years of our lives that not only took us through endless rounds of c-diff treatments, but also sugar intolerance, dairy intolerance, and soy intolerance. And today it is over. Maybe you didn't hear me...it's O-VA! Yes, Dr. Russo released Maison. Our child who thus far was deprived of cupcakes and ice cream can now eat anything she wants. Hearing Dr. Russo say, "Well, I'm going to go ahead and say my good byes." was one of the best sentences I have ever heard in my life.