tapiocapuddin

Several days ago, Emily started showing definite signs of seizures again and this was confirmed by an EEG. She is basically seizing most of the time. It was decided yesterday to take her back to surgery. Wednesday, she will have a partial corpus callosotomy. The hope is to stop the cross over seizures. This will be followed by another MEG study to try and help pinpoint the seizure origin. She will be monitored for several days after surgery and will probably undergo at least one more surgery in the next week or so.

Thank you for your prayers and continued support.

Labels: Prayer Requests

My sister is adapting to college life pretty well. She's going to name her next discussion post "Three Hours of Headache." Sounds about right!

The trip to Az was stressful, but we're finally home! I'm getting to be an expert at packing and am not sure if that's a good thing or not. In order to not embarrass certain parties, I will not give examples of what goes on in our van when we're stuck in there for 15 hours. Trust me, it's scary! Oh, and 'Tuna came home with a green bandana around her neck and orange marker pen stripes on her head. I think they got carried away at M's cowboy b'day party!

Who said PHC was harder than regular colleges? I'm crying false advertising! Oh for the days of better grades... Check out Moody's grading scale:

A 95% or higher
A- 94-94.9%
B+ 93-93.9%
B 87-92.9%
B- 86-86.9%
C+ 85-85.9%
C 77-84.9%

and so on. This means if you get below 70%, you fail! I think my prof also grades harder 'cause he's really a graduate prof. ;-)

For basketball fans, the Monarchs won not only the western conference championship, but then also went on to win the world championship!!! My dad took us to watch them beat the Comets. Now I have my own pair of bam bams! Uh, no. I will not use them when watching games at home. :P

C, do you happen to have an extra freedomband? If not, that's ok. Just wondering.

Awana starts up this week. They're trying to get my sister to be the song lady. She already takes her guitar to Cubbies to lead songs for them. We'll see what it takes to convince her...

Fall is here! And all our firewood got wet last night in the thunder/lightening/rain storm. :-/

People who haven't posted on my guestmap, you make me sad! It's not very nice of you to do that!

Facebook me!

One more thing, the other day I was talking to a friend about debate and lamenting over the fact that I couldn't do it. He took pity on me and looked up debate clubs in my area. When I asked if there was an age limit, he said, "um, you have to still be in highschool. are you?" Yeah, I've only known him for two years!

Ok, B, here's a post for you!

There's no place like home!!

And no friend quite like C... ;-)

Emily had her surgery on Tuesday to remove the wires from her brain. They placed plates in her head to fuse the bone back together. These plates should dissolve in 2 years. Today she was finally removed from the breathing machine. We are so thankful that she is off the ventilator and out of surgery before this huge hurricane hits. [They live in Houston, Texas] This storm will cause a lot of damage. Thanks for your continued prayers.
Ken & Natalie

Labels: Prayer Requests

Here's the latest e-mail we've received:

Emily had surgery on Friday. Instead of the corpus callosotomy, they opted for a more conservative plan which was to place grids on both sides of her brain and then leads (for the EEG machine) which are directly attached to her brain. She did have a seizure on the operating table, but once she came back to the ICU room, she did not show any further signs of seizures. This is GOOD news. The doctors feel hopeful that her seizures are being controlled.

The plan has shifted to try and treat her movement disorder. (Her entire body moves almost constantly as if she's having seizures). It is the doctor's belief that this problem may be due to the previous seizures having irritated this portion of the brain and/or to some of the medication she is taking. There is no timetable on when or if this might clear up. Emily will hopefully be in surgery on Tuesday [9/20] to have the leads removed from her brain. (The grids will be permanent)

Besides the obvious trauma/pain with her head, her body is experiencing withdrawals as they wean her off several of the medications that she has been taking. She is very irritated with the breathing tube that has been in her throat for about 2 weeks. That should be removed once this surgery is complete.

We are overwhelmed by the number of people who have been praying for our Emily. It is very humbling to know that so many family, friends and even strangers have taken time to pray for our child.
We can't say thank you enough.
Ken & Natalie [Emily's parents]

PS. While Stacey [Natalie's sister] was so graciously caring for her niece in the ICU, someone stole her vehicle from the parking garage at the hospital Saturday night. It was found today, but completely stripped. We are so grateful to Michael & Stacey for their love and support and really hate that this has happened to them.

Labels: Prayer Requests

I just found out that Emily is going to be having surgery tomorrow (9/15). The doctors will be performing a Corpus Callostomy, which means they'll be severing the connection between the two halves of the brain. Since my last post, she's been in and out of a coma twice, and the medication still isn't working. This surgery is to only stop the cross over seizures, so more may be necessary later. :-( Thanx for praying!

Labels: Prayer Requests

Watching a couple of 9/11 programs tonight made me think of how different DC would have been if Flight 93 had been allowed to hit its target. God was so merciful to us that day. While many lost their lives, He truly did save many people. The example of the Pentagon stands out in my mind. What is the likelihood of only 184 people dying (this is including the people on the flight) out of the over 30,000 people that work at the Pentagon? Not very big. The spot the terrorists hit just so happened (?) to be a part that had just finished being remodeled. Because of that, not many of the people had moved back into their offices. Chance? I don't think so. God's hand was definitely there. Thank you God for Your grace and mercy!

LOL! I just finished reading my debate book today, so this post by David was too hilarious!! B, you gotta check this out!

"The deciding vote in the state Assembly, Democrat Simon Salinas of Monterey County, hesitated for several seconds before voting to pass AB 849 on Tuesday night. Because Salinas wants to run for a Central Valley state senate seat next year, he probably would have abstained if Modesto and Merced pastors, and therefore their congregations, had been up in arms about AB 849 and besieging him with opposition calls and faxes. But this didn't happen, so Salinas, a loyal liberal in a conservative area, did his dirty deed, providing the one vote that destroyed the definition of marriage." -CCF E-mail

As some of you Californians might know, AB 849 is the new bill being pushed to legalize gay marriage in our state. Last night this bill passed assembly by one vote and is being sent to the governor. If you live in Ca and value marriage, please contact the Governor Schwarzenegger and tell him to veto AB 849!

EDIT: YAY!!! Governor Schwarzenegger says he will veto the bill! According to his press secretary, Schwarzenegger believes "We cannot have a system where the people vote and the Legislature derails that vote." Wow, you don't see stuff like that coming from a politician every day! I don't like the fact that he thinks the people or the courts should decide if gay marriage is ok, but right now any victory is great!

Rachel and Emily


Would all of you please pray for my cousin Emily? At 5 years old, she's had seizures almost all her life. The latest medication she had been on seemed to be helping until last month when her seizures came back so bad they had to take her to the hospital. She's now on her 27th day there and nothing seems to be working. Her situation is so bad that they had to put her in a coma to hopefully give her brain time to rest while they try to figure something out. I'll post again when I get a new update. Thanx so much you guys!

I got Christy Shipe's "An Introduction to Argumentation and Debate" kit! I know, I can't really join any debate clubs, but I've always wanted to know how! A guy in my church kindly said I didn't need it. :P I'll spare you all the other attacks made on myself as you all would want to go beat him up. Don't worry, I hit him on the head as hard as I could...with a pillow.

Ok, B, I said I'd tell you about this in a letter I wrote that you haven't gotten yet 'cause it's still sitting here on my desk:

One person, while looking through the textbook came across the logical fallacies and thought ad hominem attacks were good 'cause they would throw the other person off balance. ;-)

I just love my new zoom! It's a 28-200 mm lens we bought right before our Pennsylvania trip and boy did we use it! It's amazing how just getting in a little closer makes all the difference! I wouldn't have most of pics if it weren't for how close it could get! Above is taken at the Washington Monument. That's how far away I was from the White House. Below is how close I could get with my zoom!

I'm home! My trip was awesome! I have so much to tell y'all and so many pics to share! [now posted on my photography site]




I was so excited to visit Pennsylvania again 'cause it had been six years since we had last been there. There were many new cousins by marriage and birth which resulted in a few family gatherings and weaner roasts. Much fun! My little cousins are absolutely adorable as you can see!




It was also neat to see a few of the churches my grandfather had pastored. I wish I had gotten to know him. He died just a few years before I was born. I want to sit down and talk to him about theology, farming, growing up in the early 1900s, and so much more. The church pictured was started over 100 years ago by my great great great grandfather! My grandfather later pastored it, and it is still going strong!




My relatives' farms are still there and probably look just like they did way back when. If you like rustic, you'd love their farms! My mom would tells us stories about growing up out there as we traveled around. Being back in the place where it all happened brings back memories that she thought she had forgotten.




The fields not filled with corn or some sort of grain were overflowing with flowers. My sisters and I went around picking every single type we could find and came out with a bouquet fit for a flower shop!




As I said before, we worked on remodeling the living room in my aunt's house. It almost killed us dead! The unwallpapering alone was enough to do it! But the priming and painting wasn't bad, and we were able to finish. That is we finished after ripping up the carpet and linoleum found underneath the carpet, rearranging a furniture, and adding finishing touches. It isn't the you-pick-a-name-of-some-fancy-shmancy-house kind of room, but it is a big improvement!




One of the highlights of my trip was visiting, I know some of you have already guessed it, Patrick Henry College IN PERSON!!!! The whole experience really felt like a dream. I got to drive by and take a few pics around dinner time, but didn't get a hold of Heather until pretty late. So I got the 10 pm, rainy, everyone's in bed or studying, tour! :-D I did get to see some people (Jefferson, Merry, Lauren, Jess, John, Brian, April, and Candace, as well as meeting quite a few new people!), though, and had a blast!




Another dream come true was seeing Washington DC again! When you live in California, going to DC once is cool, but actually going again is uber cool!! We drove around snapping pics left and right, ending up with over 200! If we had been allowed to take pics in the Pentagon, I know it would've been at least 100 more. ;-) The Washington Monument had given out all their free tickets for the day, but the WWII memorial made up for it.

I know there's more I'm forgetting, but it's late in Pa. ;-) Enjoy the pics and g'night!

J and H