This Friendly Life: Good News

Leading up to our trip to Children's Mercy last week, I was feeling overwhelmed and sad. I didn't want to go. These trips are always hard on us, especially Landon.

I am tired. Tired of watching him go through it. Tired of the drive. Tired of constantly worrying what the trip will do to his little body. Will it stress him out? Will it cause his body to begin to show symptoms again? What kind of emotional scars will it leave? That's just the beginning of what's in my head.

Having a child with special health concerns is daunting and often times hard on my relationship with Scott. I have a really great husband, who is an amazing Daddy. I do my best to be a really great wife. You know what? Sometimes I'm not. I lose my temper and unfortunately Scott gets the brunt of it. He loses his temper with me too. We lose it and take our stressors out on each other. At the end of the day, we are a team and we hold strong. We forgive. We move forward. We unite with love because we are meant walk along side one another in this journey.

No matter how tired I am, we still make the trips to Kansas City every 6 weeks. We push through, putting our own desires aside to care for our boy.

Last week during our visit with Landon's GI doctor, she said several things that surprised us. The first words out of her mouth when she saw Landon were, "Oh my gosh, he looks amazing!" We agreed! :-) She was astounded by his progress. As we talked more about the FMT we did with him, she shared with us that watching his progress and seeing what a positive impact it had on his healing has completely changed the thinking of their whole clinic. She said when we first came to her asking her opinion about it, she wasn't a believer at all and now she totally is. How cool is that?!

His labs all came back amazingly well and the process of inserting an IV line went smoothly. All in all, this trip was ok.

We needed some good news.

The day after his infusion, he did tell me he had a headache, which is one of the side effects of his medication. I always thought this may be happening but this is the first time he actually communicated it to me. I'm grateful he's able to tell me now. We had a lot of down time and snuggles that day. We watched Toy Story more than once and I enjoyed the extra lovins from him, as well as all the kisses I got to give him. I am constantly amazed by his resilience. I know it sounds cliche, but, he truly does give me an immense amount of strength.

I think you all can tell by my posts, I'm an optimist by nature. The glass IS half full! Even though I see the good in everything I encounter, I still have down days. I have times when I just want to say "screw it all"! I feel those emotions, meditate, pray, sometimes sleep on it. Then, I dust myself off, count my many blessings and give thanks for everything and everyone in my life.

Here are a few photos from our weekend. Enjoy!