Sophie Kate’s Journal

Hello, everyone.  Week 4  has gone pretty well, Sophie is doing well with the treatments this week.  Monday was our only bad day, every other day she has done really good.  Her ears are doing much better, her left ear has healed completely and her right ear is only a little pink, which is much improved over what it had been.  So all of that was good to hear.

As of today (Thursday June 26), we have completed 35 treatments, only 5 left!  We will be officially done Wednesday of next week.

Please say a special prayer for us on Monday.  We will be seeing Sophie Kate’s neurologist that morning before we head back to Atlanta to finish her treatments.  It is just a check up, we are not going for any specific reason.  It was set up long before our oxygen treatments began.  As always, please pray that he will see Sophie with God’s eyes and that nothing that needs attention will be overlooked.  These are always very stressful appointments, as many of you know.  However, we know that God has led us to him for a reason, pray that God will give him wisdom.

We cannot thank ya’ll enough for the prayers that are sent up for our family every day.  We are so blessed by all of you.

Wow, what an exhausting week this has been. I am developing a very bad Starbucks habit here. For the coffee addicts out there, this place is paradise. There is a Starbucks literally on every corner, no joke. I am up really late at night and I guess my 5:30pm Grande Carmel Macchiato is mostly to blame for that. Yes, I am stopping for HOT coffee at 5:30pm in 90+ degree heat. One of the times last week when I stopped by they asked me if I wanted that hot or cold. Ummm, duh, hot of course.

Sophie has had a pretty good week. We have had our ups and downs as usual, but on the whole she has done pretty well with the treatments this week. As of today (Thursday June 19), her ears are actually looking a little bit better. So we are doing something right, that was good news to hear. We have now completed 26 treatments, only 14 left!

We had a girl’s night out tonight. It was my sister-in-law Aimee, a friend of her’s, Sophie Kate and me, and we all went shopping in Atlanta. Lots of fun, of course, all we came home with was clothes for our kids, but it was so great to get out and do something other than therapy. SK is going to have to be broken in to the whole shopping thing a little bit slower. She had “had it” with all of us by the time we were finished, but she hung in there pretty good through most of it. I blame myself, she hasn’t been properly trained yet in the art of shopping. We’ve just spent too much time in the hospital and not enough time at the mall. Can I get an Amen girls?

Can’t wait to see my boys this weekend, I miss them sooo much that it actually hurts. It has been so hard to be away from them and that goes for all my boys.

Have good weekend, looking forward to seeing everyone.

Hey everyone, good news. Sophie actually had a good day today! Her treatments went well today. Her right ear is still red, but we took things very slow today and she tolerated everything just fine. Yes, this does mean that we are in the chamber longer, we are now up to 1 hour and 40 minutes inside the chamber. So, obviously my wish has also come true, b/c I am just lovin’ that(not really). Anyway, one more treatment to go tomorrow morning and then we get to come home for the weekend, YEAH!!

On a little bit different note, the chamber is making my hair go straight, it’s really weird. I have naturally curly hair anyway, but I also put stuff on it so that it doesn’t get frizzy. Well, I noticed on Monday and Tuesday of this week that even when I put the gel in my hair it wasn’t staying curly, so on Wednesday I didn’t do anything to it and it dried almost completely straight. It is freaking me out. I used to have straight hair, before I had kids. Then I started having babies and my hair freaked out and went curly, don’t ask there are a lot of things I could say here. So now it’s freaking out again and going back straight. It will be interesting to see if it goes back to curly after the treatments are over. Anyway, too much talk about my hair, sorry guys.

After tomorrow’s treatment, we will have completed 18 treatments, only 22 more to go. Thanks for all your prayers.

Week 2 of treatments are not going so well. Sophie Kate has been pretty upset both Monday and Tuesday. Today(Wed. June 11) was some better, but when they checked her ears after the afternoon treatment, they saw that her ears were red, which means that her ears are being irritated by the pressure of the oxygen treatments. So, they are going to recheck them in the morning before our first treatment and if they are still red then we are just going to take it real slow in the chamber tomorrow(as far as pressurizing it) to see how she reacts. So that could possibly mean MORE time in the chamber for us, I can’t tell ya’ll how much I am looking forward to that.  Hopefully, her ears will look fine in the morning and then I guess we would proceed as we normally do. In any case, she is crying more than normal this evening, so I am concerned that her ears are bothering her.

I have Cooper here with me this week, which has been great for me, I missed them sooo much last week.  The challenge has been having a not so good week with SK and still managing to make sure Cooper has a good time and to be all happy and upbeat for him.  Please pray for us tomorrow and the rest of this week.  We have had a difficult 1/2 of the week, hopefully it will end better than it has started.  I will let ya’ll know how it goes tomorrow.

Ok, we are here and we have had 4 days worth of treatments (8 treatments total) and I have to say that Sophie Kate is handling things pretty well. The first 2 days were rough she cried a lot during the treatments, but Wed. and Thurs. have been much better. I think she is getting more accustomed to how it feels in there, she’s doing better with everything concerning the treatments. We are trying different positions for SK, although there really isn’t any wiggle room no matter what position you are in. Ya’ll, no joke, it is super tight in there, there really isn’t any room, but I won’t go on talking about it b/c I could talk myself right into freaking out about it. Physically, everything is fine with Sophie’s ears, they are checking her ears after every treatment and the inside of her ears look fine. So I am just trying to get her to swallow more when the chamber is being pressurized, it’s like trying to clear your ears when you are taking off in an airplane. She is doing a great job at swallowing the formula that I am putting in her mouth too by the way.

This is the hyperbaric chamber that we are getting in twice a day for an hour and a half each time. For those of you out there that this matters to, it is only 27 inches in diameter, to everyone else out there who that means nothing to, including myself, that means tiny.

This is me and Sophie Kate before they shut the vault door on us.

Sophie Kate in one of her peaceful moments during treatment, see Sophie we’re happy when we’re breathing 100% oxygen, not mad.

Please pray that she gets better and better at this, that she can tolerate it better and be content and happy in there, or just quiet. She doesn’t have to even be happy, quiet will do just fine. We are certainly looking forward to coming home tomorrow (Friday June 6), one week down, three more to go. Thanks for all of your prayers.

Couldn’t let the day go by without a shout out to my favorite girl, Happy Birthday sweet baby, seven months old!