You are 10!!!

Ohh Jake- I can not believe you are the big 1-0!!! 10 is such a big age! I am so proud of you and the things you have done with these first 10 years. They sure have been a tough one but you are such a superstar dealing with everything that life brings to you. Your birthday this year was a little rough. We were in the hospital for most of the day. But a little begging made it so that we got to leave at dinner time and go have a good birthday dinner! Here are 10 things I love about you! 1. I love how much you love music. Its so much fun to play name that tune with you and hear you sing. You are such a good singer and you are so good at remembering lyrics. 2. You are so brave! You go through so much and you rarely complain. You make things look easy because you go through them like nothing! 3. You are sooo tall!! You are already 5 ft!! You are going to pass me up in the next year...I just know it! 4. I love when you give me hugs. Its not very often I get a hug from you, but when I do...they are the best! 5. You are so smart. Being your "teacher" I get to see just how smart you really are. I love being able to see your face light up when you figure out something new. 6. You are a dish washing maniac! I think you are the only child that LOVES to wash the dishes. You practically beg me to let you wash the dishes. 7. You are such a friendly kid. You are always saying hi and how are you to everyone we see. 8. You are always so happy. No matter what is going on, you have a smile on your face or you are laughing away. I love seeing your big smile!! 9. I love that you can out eat me! You have a big appetite on your small little body. You can eat just about anything that is put in front of you. You already have a teenage boy appetite. 10. And I love that you are MINE!! I couldn't ask for a better Jacob! You sure do bring my life joy, and I am so glad that I was chosen to be YOUR mom!! Love you, Mom!

More happenings on the medical front

Since the last time I wrote you have been in the hospital 2 times!!! This is crazy, little man! You need to stop these hospital visits. I know, I know, you cant...but it would be nice if we could go a whole YEAR without a hospital visit. Last time you were in the hospital it had only been 2 months since the time before! I will tell you about this last time. You had been kinda sick. You just kept saying you felt like you were going to throw up and you threw up quite a bit. You were just in a lot of tummy pain. So I called the GI doc and she said to get you an xray and then come see her that afternoon. So off to the hospital we went and got your xray done. When I was in the room, I looked at the xray and it looked great. There was no poop that I could see. But I saw a ton of gas. So I was hopeful that maybe your tummy problems were just some gas and that you would be fine. So we get to the doc visit a few hours later and she looks at your xray and says...yep, he is backed up again! AHHH!!! I almost started crying. Well you DID start to cry. You knew exactly what was going on. You knew that it meant a hospital visit. And I know how much you hate them. Trust me, I hate them too. She checked on some things and saw that we needed to get a room first. So she sent us home to pack up some stuff and said to wait for them to call saying there is a room for us. So we got home and not 5 min later, they called and said they were ready for us! So it was a pretty fast wait at home. But it was good enough that I was able to pack a few things. I figured this hospital visit would be fast but it took 4 days!! Almost 5, but I had to convince the nurse that we needed to leave! And she let us =) Right before that, you had a little surgery done. It was called a muscle biopsy. They had to test you for something called Mitochondrial disease. That is a new diagnosis that you have. It explains EVERYTHING! It has been so nice to finally get a little bit of relief from what is making you sick. Hopefully soon we will know the results of the biopsy. I am not expecting to find anything from that. Your muscle had to be frozen and from reading on things, that is bad. It basically kills anything in the muscle to test. So they dont get a good reading off of it. It could give us a false negative. I had asked your doc if that was possible and he said yes. So I have no faith that they will find anything! However, your doc is so confident that you have it, that he already went and diagnosed you with it. So we just need to figure out which type of mito you have. That is the hard part!! You started up with AZVA again. I know that this is the way you need to be taught. It is so hard for you to be in public school that I am happy to be back. You learn so good being homeschooled. Its so much easier being able to teach you. I can see what you know and what you dont know. We can also go through things slowly so that I know you understand them. Or I can see what you need LOTS of help on...or things you are a pro at! Its been so much fun being able to teach you things and see you grow. Love you buddy! Love, Mom