Money well spent

I just ordered my 12 year old a set of pastels that cost a whopping $70. After seeing the latest work from art class I'm thinking money well spent. Now if only her back would stop hurting while she did her drawing.

$1500 worth of bloodwork later...

And my daughter is as healthy as a horse-- a horse with chronic back and leg pain. How bad is it when you wish your kid was sick with something they can treat instead of something they can't. Now we're off to a neurologist at Children's to play the which specialist is next game.

Thank god we've met our insurance deductible for the year.....

Mr. Happy

If you finally got it to speed after a week you'd be thrilled, too!

Because a girl can dream

Someday one day. Meanwhile my dated white appliances will have to make do.

On another note, we still have no resolution to Catherine's back pain, though thankfully it seems to come and go.

Good enough to eat

Apparently you can use frosting dye to dye hair. Freaky hair day here we come! And you smell like cookies, too!

The creeper

Thanks to the prior owners of our home who painted a mural of Tuscany in the basement. They left tons of barely used quarts of green paint. This guy is The Creeper from the video game Minecraft. I don't know what a creeper is except he's boxy, green and not a robot. There you go.

Back aches and doctors and MRIs oh my!

We're off to the doctors again this afternoon, to see a specialist from Childrens Memorial regarding Catherine's back ache. I haven't been blogging in a while because of this. When stressed, I somehow find other things to do it seems, like pace and worry.

Catherine has moderate scoliosis (25 degree lumbar/thoracic curves) and increasing back pain. Her ortho told me that back ache isn't common with scoliosis at all, unless it's pretty severe, which her's thankfully is not. But her pain in the morning and night, as well as leg pain, concerned him enough that he sent her for 6 weeks of physical therapy (ostensibly to strengthen the back--didn't work--made it worse) and then for an MRI last week.

The MRI itself was nothing short of scary to me as Catherine has a pelvis full of 18 platinum coils from a surgery 6 years ago. Although all the doctors confirmed it was perfectly safe to do an MRI with platinum coils, half way through the procedure she started complaining of stomach pain. The tech adjusted something on the MRI and that made it better, but I was sufficiently freaked out from it. Nothing seemed to come from it afterwards and she was fine.

The MRI came back showing, well, nothing abnormal at all. That's great, except she's still in pain every morning, and her legs hurt sometimes so much she doesn't really want to get out of bed. Once she's up and about, things sort of fade away, unless she's playing the cello, or sitting in a chair without a back, and then it flares up again. Regardless, he tells me she should not have back pain at her age. So we're off to see a super duper Ortho doc for a second opinion.