Our Health

Our family's health has been complicated these past few months.  Frustrating would be the more correct word to use, actually.

Just before Ruger's adoption (that was in November, mind you...yeah, that is how long this has been going on!) little illnesses started.  It was going through everyone in our house.  We joked that something was "growing" in our house because it just kept cycling through us all over and over.  And a part of me kind of believed that.  I got so tired of us being sick that I ended up washing/sanitizing everything I thought of.  I even put our couch pillows in the washer!

Luckily, the sicknesses never turned into an asthma problem with Brigham.  I know I'm whining in this post here but I truly am grateful that all these sicknesses did not effect Brigham's lungs.  But lets get back to me complaining, shall we?

Eventually, the sicknesses left Ruger, Hryum, Brigham, and Daddy and just focussed in on Levi and I.  Since mine is a little easier to explain, I'll start with it.  A few months ago the last tooth on my upper left side broke.  A few days later, my cap fell off.  I knew I should go to the dentist but we had a new insurance that hadn't kicked in yet so I wanted to wait.  But then the adoption, sicknesses, and holidays came and it was forgotten about.  But a few Sunday's ago, one of my front teeth chipped.  It was cutting my tongue and there was no way I was messing with that.  I am very prone to mouth sores when my tongue gets cut.  That's why I don't suck on suckers.  Plus, I really like my front teeth so yeah...

So I went into the dentist.  The doctor wasn't as worried about my front tooth as I was because when he took an x-ray he saw that I had a serious infection in that back tooth area.  He asked me if I had been sick lately.  Sick lately?  Are you serious?!  I've had the frickin' plague!!!!!  By the time that I finally made it to the dentist I had been diagnosed by my doctors as having an upper respitory infection, walking pneumonia, and 2 cases of sinus infections.  And that was just what I went into the doctor for.  Who knows how many colds and such that I had.  Yeah, he wasn't surprised at all when I told him because he said the infection that he saw was going straight into my blood stream.  As irritated as I should have been, you know, I was actually relieved.  I really was.  I would have never have guessed that my sicknesses would have been due to a tooth but it was so nice to have a real answer.  Something that was fixable.  So here I am today blogging without a sickness in my body and it. feels. WONDERFUL!

Levi, on the other hand, is more difficult to explain.  A few years ago he got sick and it showed up under the mouth area between the jaw bones.  The doctor treated it with antibiotics and it went away.  But the doctor warned me that if it happened again that I should go to a specialist.  That it may be something more.  So when it happened again, just after the adoption, for the life of me I couldn't remember what that doctor had said.  I remember him saying that it could be a problem but what was it again?  His current doctor gave him some antibiotics and told us to watch it.  Again, it went away before the antibiotics were even gone. 

 But just a few days before Christmas, Levi came to David and I and told us that he had another bump under his chin.  This time it was different though.  The 2 other times it had happened, it had came with a sickness (the usual head cold stuff).  It was also different because from the top of his neck to the tip of his chin was completely swollen.  So much so that he talked funny.  This time it was a localized bump and he was not sick.  And when the doctor gave him an antibiotic again, it did absolutely nothing.

This doctor knew it was something more for sure at this point.  He sent us to an Ears, Nose, and Throat doctor on Thursday of last week.  The ENT doctor felt the lump, thought he felt more than one behind the actual lump that you can see and sent us for an ultrasound.  He thought it would be a cyst in the submandibular gland and that it would be as simple as removing it.  Unfortunately, when the ultrasound came back it didn't look like there was any fluid to it.  It was in a hard area to ultrasound but he is pretty sure it isn't a cyst.  So today Levi had an MRI done.  

We don't have a lot of answers right now but I can say with all sincerity that I feel so much better now than I did earlier.  I am so grateful we live in a day where technology is so great.  We have all these options as to finding out what this is.  Whatever it is, the doctors fear is it getting bigger and it may cut off his airway in time.  The ENT doctor said it could be many different things but didn't want to scare us because they weren't good.  And I appreciate that.  I had looked up enough things on the internet to scare myself.  I don't need to add to that list!

So we are waiting for results and praying for answers.