Sometimes I feel like Luke and I are being tested to see just how much stress we can handle before needing to be locked up in a padded cell. Just being pregnant (especially with twins) is exhausting and stressful as it is, but the drama lately hasn’t stopped there.
I won’t get into all the details on here, but for the past year or so we’ve also been dealing with Luke’s health issues. His walking/mobility has been getting increasingly worse and no one seems to be able to give him a diagnosis. We’ve gone to 8 doctors and he’s had all kinds of tests run, only to hear “hmm that’s weird” over and over. We’ve heard lots of theories – MS, ALS, bulging disk, muscular dystrophy, etc. but each time we go down a path, tests come back negative. Although we’re glad none of those things seem to be it, it’s still awfully frustrating to not have answers. In early August we learned of this Dr. House-like diagnostic program at Methodist in the medical center. People come from all over the world to get a diagnosis and the doctor is supposed to be one of the best in the country. After several phone calls from us and Luke’s doctors, he was accepted into the program but had to wait about 6 weeks – it was scheduled for September 20-22. Our understanding was that it was an outpatient program where each day you meet with a team of doctors and have lots of tests run and then by the end of the week you have a diagnosis. We had been anxiously counting down to that week, but as it got closer we were getting pretty concerned about how I was going to manage being there with him and still follow my doctor’s bedrest orders.
As if that wasn’t enough, we also heard that Luke’s mom may have cancer and we were waiting to hear the results of a biopsy. She expected to get the results around September 16th. In the meantime, we got news that Luke’s grandmother, Grammie, had become increasingly more ill.
In the morning on Saturday, September 17th, I was dreaming that someone was telling me “I have good news, bad news, and really bad news…” and then I woke up to Luke’s cell phone ringing in the other room. It’s extremely rare that I remember my dreams and given all the stuff going on I was a bit panicked. My first thought was “oh no, Grammie died and Joyce has cancer…” I got up right away and hopped on Skype to talk to Luke’s parents (they live in India). Sure enough, Grammie had died that morning, but fortunately Joyce's biopsy confirmed that she does not have cancer.
Grammie had been sick for a long time, but was so excited about her twin great grandchildren on the way. She and Luke had talked regularly over the past several months. Despite being pretty sick, she didn’t really want to talk about herself, just wanted to make sure the babies and I were doing okay. Baby B’s middle name will be Audrey, named after Grammie. Luke told her our planned names for the girls when he spoke to her the last time. At first she didn't seem to catch on that we had intentionally chosen Audrey. Her response was "That's really become a popular name lately..." but Luke explained our reasoning. He had said all along that he’d fly out to California for Grammie’s funeral if/when it happened, but given that it was on September 24th and Luke had his diagnostic program that week, he wasn’t able to make it. I’ll add another post to detail the craziness of the week of the 19th, but it turned out to be a very good thing that Luke stayed in town.
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