Mountain Clams

Stress

I've been a little stressed out lately, so don't mind me if I get a little serious. My daughter (middle child) has been having problems with her digestive tract lately. No surprise, being my kid, but this is pretty serious stuff. She was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis, and is being treated for it. Before the diagnosis was made, though, she lost a lot of blood and became pretty anemic. It was easy to tell by looking at her - she was really, really white.

She had to go in for an endoscope a couple weeks ago. While we were in there waiting for her to be brought back and put on the bed she would be anesthetized on, she looked over at me and told me how old I looked. "Maybe it's just the lighting, dad!" she said. Yeah, I'm sure that's what it was. The endoscopy went well. They pulled samples for biopsy while they were there, and confirmed her diagnosis. Now she has to take a small bundle of pills every day. The number will decline over time to a maintenance dose, but probably not for a few weeks.

The second source of stress, from three directions, is school. I don't have to worry too much about my oldest daughter and school. She is doing pretty well. The other two, though, failed at least one class each, and don't seem to understand that this is pretty important now. Grades from middle school aren't as critical - not many colleges care what you did then. But as a sophomore in high school, it's time to get your head in the game! Furthermore, I started school again myself last Monday. I'm taking a writing class and a class on religion and philosophy. So far it's going okay, but there's always a lot of reading, and I don't always keep up on it. It's not that I'm a slow reader. Well, not that slow, anyway.

Finally, finances are not what they should be. Might as well have some money stress on top of everything else, right? My wife and I finally worked out a budget and have been pretty good about sticking to it. Hopefully that will continue and we can get some of these extraneous payments behind us pretty quickly.

84 more days 'til Christmas...

Labels: kids, medical

posted by Brett @ 11:30 AM