And the culture says....ANTHRAX!!

When I made my New Year resolution last January 1, 2008, if I had only known what was in store for us I would have simply resolved to survive the year. This is what I didn't know we were in for and what we have faced since the first of January:

Five day video EEG mapping of Ammon's brain
Caden's overnight pamidronate IV treatment
Trip to China with agency families
Ammon's life threatening seizure and Life Flight to Primary Children's Hospital. Seizures continue
Revelation that surgery cannot help Ammon's seizure disorder
Notice that our agency was not on the Hague Accredited list
Lan's amputation
Seizures continue
Lan's recovery with a trip to Shriners that was interrupted and rescheduled due to lack of healing of stump
Caden's overnight pamidronate IV treatment
Seizures continue
Notice the agency was denied Hague accreditation and begin remediating the implications this has for our China families
Lan's new leg and rehab
IRS audit (the IRS needs me to prove all my children are actually mine)
Seizures continue
Aaron puts his finger in the rotating blender requiring more than 25 stitches
Caden's adoption (that was VERY GOOD news but still required paperwork and preparation)
Husband Stephen injures leg....has ANTHRAX

Yes, my husband has Anthrax. With all that was going on, our children didn't get the chance yet to take the waverunners to the lake all summer. Finally we have an opportunity to go. My husband put the boats in to the water and while anchoring them to shore slipped on a rock and gashed open his shin. The children just got into the water so we bandaged it up and stayed for a few hours. The leg was swelling so off to the emergency room we went but there had been a big accident on the freeway and the emergency room was packed so we decided to come back the next day.

Well, by morning the sore was oozing and could not be stitched up. Redness and swelling were moving up the leg. Stephen was put on an antibiotic. Days later my husband is still flat in bed and the leg was not getting better, just getting worse. Back to the doctor. Doctor takes a culture and we get a call from the doctor and the CDC! My husband becomes one of a handful of UT residents this year to test positive for ANTHRAX and is put on Cipro since that is the ONLY antibiotic that will be able to help.

The leg is now starting to heal but the Cipro is pretty strong and wearing my husband out. If not for the Cipro, where would we be? You think of those without access to Cipro and this could be devastating. At best the loss of a leg, at worst the loss of the life.

I could look back on the past 8 months and be very discouraged....but instead I'm encouraged. We are much stronger than we thought we were!! We aren't just surviving but doing well! My laundry is keeping caught up and we have dirty socks and underwear for EACH person in the family we started the year off with. We haven't had to go through dresser drawers and sob as we sort out clothes of a child or husband that left us.

Having looked at death in the face, my eyes view the world differently. We all know that any day could be our last but when death comes so very close, and we live with the knowledge that on any day there is the possibility Ammon could have THE BIG SEIZURE and die, well, my world is much different that what it was on January 1. I've had to consolidate my world to those things that really, truly matter. I've hung on to one word and it is my current motto, "Simplify".