The Road to San Anton

It takes us about three hours to drive from our house to Victor's house.  It's only about 170 miles, but we take a highway that goes through at least three towns with stop signs and lights, so it makes it take a while longer.  Once we leave our house, it takes us about half an hour to get to the 281.  Then we spend about two hours driving on a road that looks like this for most of the way:

Pretty boring, huh?  Usually Ben drives, I look out the window, talk to him, cater to Lauren, and play DJ, Natalie sleeps, and Lauren rides like this:

She's got her headphones on (or "heliphones" as she likes to call them (don't know why)) and she's watching one of her movies.  She's got a pretty good ride back there and does well.  Being potty trained makes the car rides a bit trickier.  She tells us when she needs to pee, but she doesn't always give us a whole lot of notice.  Thankfully we've made it to a bathroom every time so far.

I don't know if it's from holding it in, or just not knowing how to clean herself up real well yet, but I'm pretty sure she has a UTI or bladder infection.  We got down here Sunday night and she was fine.  Last night she kept going to use the potty.  She'd go every five minutes.  I thought she was just being annoying and playing some sort of game.  Then this morning she kept saying her skin hurt.  We put lotion on her thinking maybe she was dry and itchy.  Then she started acting like she didn't feel well and fell asleep on Ben's lap.  Then this afternoon I took her to go pee and she started crying.  I knew what it was then.  We came back to Victor's house and decided Ben should take her to the ER.  We're too far from home to get to her pediatrician's office and we don't want her to have to wait any longer.  I just hope they don't have too long of a wait there and she can get started on some antibiotics and get feeling better.

I took Natalie in for her CT scan this morning.  Once she got in there it took less than two minutes to do the scan.  It was really easy.  Tomorrow morning we go back so the neurosurgeon can go over the results of the scan and see how's she's doing since the surgery.  I also went and got my massage today.  I got a lavender aromatherapy bath and then an hour long massage.  It was really really relaxing and just great.

Now I'm sitting here at Victor's house with Natalie waiting to hear from Ben.  And trying not to turn into a big knotted stressed muscle again.

Forgot to tell you sooner...

Lauren is totally completely potty trained! She hasn't worn a diaper (even to bed) in about two and a half weeks. It's great. She's so awesome. The playroom turned out great for her, she loves it and spends a lot of time in there just playing by herself. I'll walk by and hear her playing- my goodness, she has such an imagination. I was watching a video the other day of her from last January and I can't believe how much she's changed. Her hair alone is a huge difference. She looks more like a kid now than a baby or a toddler. And she's not even 3!

Natalie has been doing pretty well. I can tell she's still a bit irritated by the shunt. I would imagine it takes some time to get used to that thing being under her skin on her head. She does pretty well just taking tylenol. She's having a horrible time with gas, though, and she gets so upset she'll puke from the crying. I'm trying to keep giving her mylicon because I can't figure out what I'm eating that's doing it. I thought maybe it was onions or chocolate, but I went without those and it didn't make a difference. So I just don't know.

I got Natalie's CT scan scheduled this morning. She's going to go in for her CT scan on the 23rd and then we meet with neurosurgery for her follow up on the 24th. So we'll head back down to San Antonio on Sunday and come home Tuesday afternoon. Driving back and forth is really starting to wear on me. All of this is starting to wear on me. I'm keeping my spirits up as much as I can, but yesterday I started to feel like I had a head cold, and somehow that just amplified every other down feeling I was having. I want to know we're done with this for at least a month so I can make plans for people to come out here, or so that we can go do something that isn't centered around medical care.