Abby Update & Quick Blog Chat

Abby naps under a quilt that was a gift, and behind her on the wall is a
"poster quilt" sent by Koenig children and their classmates!
Isn't it sweet to see children caring about each other?


Abby gets a hug from her "Bubba".

Update on Abby (by Michelle)

I have the "stomach bug" tonight. I'm throwing my guts up. At home, Christian (17, teen son) is throwing too. Garrett had it last week, Brent the week before.

Abby had a appointment with an eye doctor. Her vision is great and shows no signs of nerve damage. He seems to think we are doing a good job relieving the intracranial pressure before it does any damage.

Abby has been cranky. Understandable with everything she is going through, but the longer I tried to placate her or distract her, the more miserable she got. Finally she crossed way over the line with one of her nurses and I put her in the corner for 5 minutes. Yes, even at the hospital, even in the middle of all this. She was ugly to a nurse who was helping her, and it was just time to let her know she will still be disciplined if needed.

After that, she was happy, smiling and very peaceful. It is so hard to discipline her when she is so sick, but she feels safer when the rules stay the same at the hospital as they are at home. The whole point of young child discipline is not only to "punish" but to restore peace and make the child feel secure.

Most adults are really moody when they are hurting. It is so hard to know when to hold her and rock her and when it is better for her for me to discipline her.

It was weird today. Abby talked and joked a lot about death. As soon as I had her stand in the corner, she stopped talking about it and was peaceful again. I really believe that when I am so empathetic towards her that I stop parenting her, she gets scared that she is REALLY, REALLY sick. But when we treat her normal, I think she understands "I'm not so sick I can't still get in trouble". She feels more "normal" and less "sick". Does that make sense?

I would really appreciate your prayers for wisdom as we parent Abby.

Abby's sore near her G-tube is worse. Her white blood cells are zero again today, with no signs her bone marrow recovering. So we will still need to be very careful with Abby. While I love visitors, for the next couple of days at least, it's too dangerous for Abby.

Abby's pain is very well managed today. The pain management doctors and nurse practioner are doing a job with pain management. Praise God.

Brent offered to trade places with me tonight, but he is working himself silly already, and I don't want to spread "the crud" to everyone at home. The last thing Brent needs is to get sick again. So I'll try to wait it out here, and hopefully it will be gone by tomorrow.

Quick Chat (by Brent)

Pray for Michelle, please. She is miserable. Everyone else in our family has already had the stomach bug that is getting everyone in this area. We just don't want to start passing it around again.

I improved the chat feature some and wanted to do a quick test tonight. Everyone else is welcome to chat as long as you want, but I'm going to jump off after 20 minutes because I'm working on the March issue of Serious.Life Magazine. So I'll be on no longer than 10:45pm CST.

Abby's update is in this post, so I won't need to answer the "how's Abby" question over and over.

Click here to join the blog chat...