Carolina on My Mind

We are in North Carolina...We got here fairly early Sunday morning and had a nice afternoon visiting with our friends and just hanging out. Ruthie has been having a hard time emotionally so late Saturday afternoon, I decided to call her teacher and see what she thought about me bringing her with me. Our Friends, Chris and Meagen have two daughters close to her age and they use to play together before they moved here. Her teacher thought it was a great idea so I got the ticket last minute and "just the girls" flew off into the sunrise...

On Monday morning I made the drive to Concord. It is about 2.5 hours from here but it is a beautiful ride...the wild flowers are blooming in a lot of different colors...Ellie pretty much slept the whole way so I used the time to enjoy listening to some music and taking in the scenery.

We got to the office early and checked in. The appointment itself was great. Dr. Douglass is a wonderful man and he again prayed with us at the start of the appointment. He covered everything that would be tested and gave Ellie a thorough exam. When he left, the nurses came in to do the blood draw. When I say it was awful, I mean horrendous! There were several tubes that needed to be filled! They started with the TB test which totally ticked her off and then they moved on to trying to draw the blood..did I mention it was horrible?

Ellie has the tiniest, most crooked veins! The poor lady has been drawing blood for 20 years and she looked as if she were about to cry before she left the room and sent someone else in. By this point, we were probably 30 minutes into the blood draw...both arms had been stuck and dug into. They decided to try to draw as much blood as possible by using a heel stick. This procedure was grueling! They stuck her heel and squeezed it over and over to get the blood to come out all the while scraping it off her foot with a little spoon-type vial. This took about an hour to fill 3 very small vials during which I am standing up holding her. Both heels stopped bleeding before they got all the blood they needed. So, this nurse decides to take a look at her arms again...they did ask me if I was ok with them trying again, and I was...I did not want her to have to go through it again at the next appointment.

The second nurse found a vein and managed to get one vial before it collapsed. By this point, Ellie has screamed for going on two hours...she is falling asleep between each prick...we are in NC so the nurses just kept saying, "oh bless her little heart." (insert accent here:0) They were really very sweet ladies. Anyway, she managed to find another good vein in the other arm and get the remaining blood they needed but her blood was flowing very slowly so this took a lot of time. We left over three hours after arriving with one tired little girl and seven new holes in her body.

We got back to Meagen's house right at dinner time...long day...we had some dinner and the kids played for bit before having baths and going to bed...the next day was free so we took all the kids shopping and had lunch at the mall...all day event:0) It was a good time.

Today, we went back to Dr. Douglass to have the Tb test read (negative) and hear the results of most of her blood work. So far, everything that has come in is looking really good. He will call us with the rest of the results but he is extremely confident that nothing is going to show up based on what he has already seen. He does recommend that Ellie see a cardiologist. Dr. Douglass does not hear anything of concern but because the Russian doctors made mention of the heart thing repeatedly, he would like us to have a sonogram done to put the doubts to rest. We will line that up when I get back.

On the way home today, I couldn't resist the urge to stop and get a picture of Ellie in the wild flowers. I will post pics from this trip when I get home. Ruthie is really enjoying the time here with Taylor and Kelly. Meagen always has such a gentle way of dealing with Ruthie that makes her feel special. The decision to bring her seems to be a good one.

Meagen and I are really enjoying catching up on some movies...She and I are sort of Connoisseurs of movies and have very much the same taste when comes to what we like watch and read...I will save the movie reviews for another time. Tomorrow is a free day just hanging out...not sure yet what's in store and then Friday we return home...and the weekend is already full!