Hang on....

I have alot to talk about today, so hang on and try not to get lost. I can't get my blog to make paragraphs, so everything runs together, and I'm sure it gets confusing, sorry! First of all, I found out that yet another person was trying to leave a comment and couldn't. That makes several, so I went in and changed my "comment" section to allow the anonymous comments, I guess if you didn't register with blogger it wouldn't let you leave a comment. So, if you have tried and it wouldn't let you, just for kicks, try again. I'd like to know if that was the problem.

Thursday morning, I took Hunt to school, happened to glance at his right ear (didn't until he was in his class at his table, bad mommy), and he had dried yuckies on the inside of his ear and on his earlobe. I promptly forgot about it until I picked him up, and it was on his shirt by that time. We had to take Emily to the dentist, so I called the ENT, left a message and we went on to the dentist. Now remember that we had just been at the doctor's on Tuesday, and this is Thursday. SAME WEEK!!!!

Well, as I was sitting there in the dentist office, the doctor's office called back and said that it wasn't unusual for that to happen, it could have been the tube, put antibiotic eardrops in it. Thankfully I already had some from another time that he had a rupture. So, then it starts to rain. Then hail. And hail, and hail. It was coming down hard and fast and I was just sick. My car was out in the parking lot of course, and both of our other cars were sitting in our driveway at home, because our garage was packed with all of our garage sale junk. My car got pummeled. We were under a tornado warning, the wall cloud was just by the dentist office, probably about a mile away, we could see it out the front window. They quit seeing patients during the storm, so we sat and waited and waited. She finally got in and got seen, and the diagnosis: 7 cavities, and she needs a full set of braces. We now have dental insurance, thank goodness, last year we had to have 5 cavities filled and had to pay cash. That was about $800. This time it will be about $225. I can handle that. They will split it up, so I will pay about half each time. Without insurance it would have been over $1100. But....at this dentist, the braces are $4850, our insurance will only pay $1500, and they want the other $3300 up front. Whatever......that's not going to happen. I'm going to call the orthodonist that had previously done work on her and see if they still accept payments. We also have Janae coming up, and she's going to need orthodontic work as well, just not sure how much yet. So, after being at the dentist for 2 1/2 hours, I went out and saw my poor car. (I already called the insurance company, I'm going on Wednesday to have it checked out.) The good news is that both of our cars at home seem to be fine. We don't see any dents on them. The hail was just as bad at our house, we thought. So, onto Friday. Hunter's ear drained all night, was yucky in the morning, so I cleaned it out, cotton balled it, and sent him to school. It's not hurting, he's definately not contagious, so off he went. I got a call at 1 from the school nurse, who requested I come get him and take him to the doctor. It was draining so much that it was running through the cotton ball down his jaw. Sorry to be gross. His ear doctor doesn't work on Fridays, so we headed to the family doctor. Only waited about 10 minutes (yea!), and were diagnosed with a massive ear infection. It was draining through the hole that the tube, which had only fallen out a few days ago, had left. Thank goodness the hole hadn't closed up yet, otherwise, he would have ended up in massive pain with all that fluid pushing against his eardrum, and probably would have ruptured. (That's my diagnosis, the doc didn't say that.) So, now we are on oral and otic antibiotics, AGAIN, and wondering what in the world we are going to do with this poor boy. John is fed up with his ENT, thinks that he's not doing a good enough job, but I really don't know what else we can do. I feel that he's going to have to have another set of tubes, #3, probably very soon, but I don't want to put my son under anesthesia every 6 months to put tubes in his ears. I'm going to call the ENT tomorrow and see what he says, we may be going for a second opinion. We just don't know what to do anymore. We are afraid that he's going to end up with permanent hearing loss if we aren't extremely careful. This month was going to be a "trial period" without tubes and we are scheduled to go back in May, but we may not last that long. Please pray for wisdom for the doctor and for us. I like the doctor, but John never has, and I'm feeling very much like a go between, so to speak, trying to keep the peace when I get back from an appointment, but doing what's best for Hunter.

Ta-da!! The garage sale was a success, and our cars go back in the garage! We got rid of most everything that we were really wanting to, and made $400. We still have dresser that has been spoken for, just not paid for yet, and some exercise equipment and weights that we're going to put on Craigslist to try to get rid of. I would say that it went well, we had a great turnout, and I was impressed with everything that did get bought. The rest went straight to Goodwill, so except for those 3 things that we still have, I am officially finished with garage sale"ing" for a few years. Then I went and bought loads of flowers to fill up all our front flower beds with some of the profit. I'll start planting all of those tomorrow. I bought 6 flats, 24 flowers in each one. I'll be busy, and will post before and after pictures when I'm finished with that. I love to plant flowers every spring, one of my favorite times of the year. I'm sure that I have waaaay outdone what anyone wanted to read, but now you are all caught up on what's going on here....