Some Tough Days

I haven't had the chance to blog much for the last few days. Sherrie's been going through a difficult and scary illness. On Sunday she noticed that her eye was bothering her. On Monday is started to swell and looked red. She went into the family doctor on Monday night and was diagnosed with pink eye. By Tuesday evening her eye was looking much worse. I called and spoke with the doctor and he thought it was an allergic reaction to the medication. He referred her to an ophthalmologist for Wednesday morning. She was diagnosed with an acute viral infection of the cornea. It is basically like have cold sores on her cornea. By Wednesday she was in such pain that we had to call the doctor and get a pain medication called in. She had to go in to the doctor again this morning. Her eye was worse. The doctor said that is was the worst viral infection that he had ever seen. The doctors said it was probably her first case of this particular virus and like an adult getting the chickenpox she is having a severe reaction to the virus. It has been really scary because if the infection isn't brought under control soon enough it can cause blindness (it moves into the retina). This morning the cornea was essentially covered with viral sores, but it hadn't moved into the interior of the eye. This night it looks like it is somewhat better. It has been a really grueling experience worrying about the infection and having to administer medicines just about every hour around the clock. Sherrie has held up remarkably well. I can't imagine how scary it would be worry about losing your vision in an eye and then having to deal with the extreme pain on top of it. Of course this had to happen in conjunction with school starting and Jordan heading to school. Fortunately, Sherrie doesn't have students for several more days. The doctor said if the additional antiviral medication he gave her today works she should be ready to go back to work by Monday. I will be glad just to get back onto a regular sleep schedule.

On a more uplifting note, Jordan is loving school (of course classes haven't started yet). He is adapting to college life really well. His Bishop gave him some squash from his garden, so Jordan cooked it up and served it with pasta to his roommates. They are going to enjoy having a gourmet cook in the apartment. (We miss having Jordan's gourmet capabilities at home). He is having a good time and meeting lots of other student's, although he says he's not very good at remembering names. He was asked to design the Homecoming t-shirt for one of the campus sororities. He's also been jamming with several musicians that he's met there. I had to order him a wireless router because the apartments have internet, but not wireless. He received it today, so he was happy that he finally had access to the internet (life without Youtube and Facebook for several days is extremely hard). The only thing he is wanting now is his bike. So we may have to make another trip down to Cedar City to take him the bike. It has been really quiet around without Jordan here.

Jonathan and Sarah started school. Jonathan actually started yesterday at the Junior High. He has been going there for a year for band so it wasn't a big shock for him. He is excited for school to start and came right home and finished his math homework before he went outside to play. He is in Algebra with mostly 8th graders. He really likes his classes and was really excited that they sell churros in the cafeteria for only 25 cents (a nice, healthy lunch item - deep fried, extruded dough coated in sugar). Sarah started school, but I didn't hear much about it. She brought home a foreign exchange student (from Japan) after school and then went to her friend's house (life with a 16 year old daughter).

Well, it is time to go to bed and start the hourly sleep cycle. It didn't work too bad last night, but I did notice that I didn't have much energy today.