The tree is up!

Yesterday we took Katie to have a final blood draw and meet a new pediatrician who, hopefully, we'll be a lot happier with.  We discussed her case with him, and he gave the "ok" to have the blood tests that the specialist recommended.  He seemed to know of the specialists that we'd seen, and mentioned that Dr. Baker - the pediatric cardiac specialist who had read Katie's heart echo was rated as one of the best in the country.  We're very fortunate to have such specialists within driving distance, but it's a shame that it ended up being a waste of time. 

Back in September we discovered that Katie's diagnosis of an "infection" in her knee was wrong.  Incorrect information was passed from the clinic to Children's Hospital and the specialist at Children's misdiagnosed her based on false symptoms.  Long story short - we should have never done 6 months of penicillin, and should have never done the heart echo.  Many, many hundreds of dollars later, here we are. 

So we wanted to do one final blood draw to make sure that the infection rates that WERE showing up in March are no longer at the levels they were.  She DID have a past strep infection, but seems to have nothing to do with her knees.  Come to find out, there may not be ANY problem with her knee swelling. 

So Katie had to have blood drawn....not fun.  She was ok with getting if over with, but we were requesting a lot of tests, so they needed a lot of blood.  They couldn't get it all from one arm...so they had to stick the other one too. Lots of screams and tears later - they still didn't have enough, and wanted us to come back in a few days to fill the last tube.  Ummm, nope.  No thanks.  Whatever the test was for that last tube, we said forget it.  If the results for the other stuff comes back weird, we'll deal with it then....but if everything comes back normal for the tests you CAN do - then we'll assume everything else is fine too.   It was NOT worth seeing Katie in pain.  And she does have bruising on both arms from it - it wasn't just put the needle in, get the blood out...they kept having to move the needle around to (I assume) avoid immediate clots.  So now we wait til next week for those results.

In the meantime, we wanted to cheer Katie up.  The nurse felt so bad that she gave Katie 5 sticks of gum. :)  I told her about a new Christmas dress I had just found for her, but the clincher was that John said we'd go pick out our Christmas tree right away.  We found a great tree at the Lion's Club tree lot...they loaded up the kids with candy canes, coloring books, and even took our picture with the tree and e-mailed it to us.  Which, turned out to be a sweet little picture that ended up making it onto our Christmas card. :)  (And that says a heck of a lot because John and I haven't ever put our own picture on the card!)

Katie and Will loved decorating the tree....as you can see....

 It's always pretty exciting to go through the ornaments, open them up like they are secret treasures.  We're getting quite a collection now and it's fun to remember where/when we got each of them.  Some were made just last year....some were bought when we got married or had kids...and some have been passed down from older generations.

Molly approves....