Kacie Turns 10

Kacie turned 10. She had a great birthday. Rosie & Reid's families were here and it was fun to see all the kids playing and getting along so well.

On New Year's Eve we took Kacie, Mckinley and Hanna to Monkey Dooz in Boise. They had a great time getting updos, makeup and manicures. When they were all done they got to dress up and have some 7up. Kacie even got her ears pierced(with the permission of Dr. Jenkins of course). After we took them to Olive Garden. They sure got a lot of attention. One man thought Kacie was 15. That just about gave her Mom a heartattack. We then went to the Mall and can you believe Kacie got another Build a Bear with some of her birthday money. It was the High School Musical one. (really cute!!)

Weekly Update

This week we found out that Brandon has severe sleep apnea. He is having 40 events an hour which is causing his oxygen saturation to be low and he is not getting any REM sleep (the deep sleep). The doctors are convinced that this is the cause of all of his neurological problems and the reason why he doesn't want to sleep at night. We are somewhat doubtful that this will fix everything, but it would be such a blessing if we could have our old Brandon back. We have been trying to get Brandon used to the cpap machine, which has not been easy. He has slept a couple of nights with the mask on and on the 28th he goes back for another sleep study with the machine so they can adjust the pressure to the correct amount that he needs.

Kacie and Brady have been fighting colds. Neither one of them went to school all week. I felt bad that they missed all their Christmas parties and programs. It will be so nice once everyone is healthy and well again.

We hope each of you have a Very Merry Christmas!!! Oh and we would like to give a sincere thank you to the family or families that have been visiting our mailbox nightly for the twelve days of Christmas. It has been a lot of fun and it has meant a lot to us.

Visit With Dr. Jenkins

Yesterday we saw Dr. Jenkins. We didn't get the news we were hoping for. Kacie's creatinine was 9.2 and her BUN was 45. Her phosphorus and sodium looked good but her potassium and calcium were high. Dr. Jenkins said she only has about 2% kidney function. We had to change her dialysis to make it more effective by increasing her volume to 13,000 a night still over 11 hours. They are hoping that this might give Kacie some more energy by removing more of the waste from her body. She was able to stop one of her blood pressure meds (lisinopril) and she only has to take calcitrol once a week and her epogen shot is now only once a month.

It does look like for sure we are headed for the kidney transplant next spring or summer. I think we all knew it would happen but it was really hard to hear yesterday. We still had a glimmer of hope that she wouldn't need one. We are having a hard time getting Kacie to talk about her feelings about everything.

As far as Brandon goes. He went four nights without sleep again and we didn't think he was ever going to come back this time mentally. We did a sleep study Sunday night which we don't know the results yet. However, this morning he told me he wanted to start watching basketball games again which was nice to hear since he hasn't had any interest in it for a LONG time. Maybe Santa might have to bring him some tickets to a game:)