A DAY FOR CHANGE!!!

Today has been a challenging day full of change and hopeful progress! Kya has not been doing well the last 2 days. Last night was awful she was in lots of pain and today she just couldn't hardly move around at all.

We went to have a treatment this morning and it took them 3 times to get an IV in that would flow. I felt really sorry for her, but she stayed tough. She kept telling them that she was all done and ready to go home! After her treatment we had a doctors appointment with the pediatric rheumatologists. She actually saw her doctor and Dr. Jarvis who works with her doctor. The doctor agreed with us and was not pleased with how she was doing either. She felt that with her getting sick last week and the tapering of her meds we have had a set back! So, we put our heads together for a new plan of action.

She felt that we needed to avoid having to fight for a vein every week (for the sake of her mental and physical health) and we agreed. She also thought she need to increase her oral steroids back up to help her with her strength. An increase was definitly needed in her methotrexate to control the immune system or the disease itself. She also believed a daily liquid vitamin would be beneficial. We also discussed a physical and occupational therapist. After discussion, her plan was to do these actions immediately! She also wanted to hit her hard with 3 days of IV Pulse steroids to see if we could get on top of this. We were excited to see her getting aggressive with her treatments!

So where did that put us? In OKC in the ice storm!!! Kya has surgery at 7:00 a.m. tomorrow to put a port in place so that they can access it easily for her treatments. As soon as she gets out of surgery they will send her to have another IV pulse steroid treatment. We will stay overnight again and they will do another IV pulse steroid on Wednesday. Please pray for her as she goes through this surgery in the morning and the daily treatments!

We will continue our weekly IV treatments and after she is healed from her surgery they are going to start some physical and occupational therapy (probably around February 9th)! With these new steps and the increase in meds we are hoping that we will see some much needed improvements.

We want to thank everyone for the many cards, stickers, books, jewelery, prayer blankets, phone calls, and prayers! (Also thank you to those who have helped us take care of our work and our animals!) This means so much to us and we feel very blessed to have such a great support system! Kya loves to get her mail! Please continue to pray that this plan works and that we do not get an infection during the surgery or in the port!

Thank you so very much for everything!!!

Lake, Kalee, Kaysa and Kya Carpenter