Summertime... and the living is easy... (no longer).

I have had such a slow summer... until August hit. Since then my life has been a whirlwind of activity.

Friday night we entertained Hockey Boy's new travel team here for a kick-off-the-season dinner. I didn't have to do any food, but we had a houseful of people for most of the evening. Saturday I played in a bridge tournament all day. Since we lost our afternoon match, I was able to go to dinner Saturday night with Robert's family to celebrate his sister's birthday. Sunday was actually a fairly quiet day until the evening. Vivian had seemingly adjusted to her new dose of medication, so I was surprised at around 10:00 to hear thumping coming from her room followed by a loud crash. I rushed in to discover Vivian was completely off balance and had been carrying a bowl that she had dropped and broken. I carried her into our room where Robert noticed that the back of her ankle was bleeding somewhat profusely. I sat her down in the sink in our bathroom, and Robert began to clean her wound, which was a gouge about the size of a dime. Vivian has a very high pain tolerance and didn't even seem aware that she was hurt. Robert determined that her ankle was not "stitchable" and bandaged it well. I took her back to her bed and lay down with her in an attempt to keep her from causing further injury to herself. My concern was heightened when I noticed that Vivian's speech was significantly slurred. After an hour or two, Vivian's balance and speech returned to normal. Her wound continued to bleed but seemed to be slowing.

I spoke to the pediatrician and the neurologist today. The pediatrician agreed that Vivian's wound in that location most likely could not have been stitched, and he was pleased with the steps Robert had taken to disinfect and bandage it last night. The neurologist instructed me to lower one of Vivian's medications (interestingly, not the one we had most recently raised) and then have her blood levels tested in a week or two. Hopefully this will put Vivian out of the drama business for a while.

I fly back to Atlanta tomorrow. I'm having lunch with an old friend that I haven't seen in 20 years, and then I'm picking up my very fun, hip, urban cousin Helen who is going to ride with me to North Carolina to pick up Dots at camp on Wednesday. Dots and I return home Wednesday night, and then our family is going to Jackson Hole to see my parents for a week on Thursday. We will hit the ground running when we get back from Wyoming to get ready for school to start on August 24.

I sense the lazy days of summer have ended.


More pictures of Dots at camp. Clearly she is not camera shy!