I'm back

Where to start.

The last time I blogged we were going on vacation for our 30th wedding anniversary. The day after we came home, Madison came down with a fever and ended up being admitted to the hospital for pneumonia. Before Hawaii she had been in the hospital for ten days due to pneumonia and the human metapneumovirus. The rest of the summer was spent in the ER or hospital or doctors' offices for repeated bouts of pneumonia and low oxygen. In August she had a swallow study done that showed she was aspirating on thin liquids. We began thickening her liquids, and by September her lung issues seemed to be resolving.

In the midst of all this, we faced a very intense time during which another family in another state was trying to apply to adopt our grandson, Baby L - Jason and Naomi brought him home from the hospital and had been parenting him for two years, but because the other family had adopted his half sibling they were attempting (though never having met him) to appeal through DHS to take him.

Because of my time being consumed with Madison's health, and because the whole situation with Baby L got very ugly (long long story for another time) I stopped blogging. I did not want to take time away from my family to blog, and I did not want a family in a different state looking up our family online for privacy reasons.

On top of all this, Photobucket- who has hosted most of the photos on my blog for over eight years - started a new policy whereby I would have to pay hundreds of dollars a year to restore those photos to my blog. The thought of going back through my files to try to replace all those posts with the correct photos was, as you can imagine, daunting. And not something I had time for.

Fast forward to last December. Another long story, but Madison has been in and out of the hospital, ER, doctors' offices, etc. for six (or maybe seven, I've lost count) episodes of pneumonia. It's hard to describe in one blog post what we have been through - physically, mentally, emotionally.

Yesterday - after spending yet another long night in ER- Madison had two CT scans done that showed   a large unidentifiable mass in her right lung. Previously this was thought to be pneumonia - yesterday it was determined to be something else.

What that "something else" could be is a number of things, ranging from something as simple as a cyst, to the very worst. Tomorrow we meet with a pediatric pulmonologist in Portland at Doernbecher Children's hospital to discuss what the next steps are.

Which is why I am back.

I'm sorry for the blank spots where lots of old photos used to be in my blog...sorry for my long unexplained absence (so many of you emailed privately asking if everything was ok - thank you for still caring.)

I honestly don't know what the future holds - maybe it's a simple fix for our Bunny and life will return to normal... as normal as things will ever be at The Rice Ranch.

And maybe there's a different road ahead that we haven't been down before, one that requires more faith and more patience and more trust in God than I've previously required.

Whatever the future,  I know God is in control and will walk through it with us.

And I'm just hoping you will too.

Friends and followers of this blog have seen us through some pretty trying times in the past. I'm grateful for whoever is out there who is still open to following along today and in the days ahead.

I don't know how often I'll be blogging, but I do want to keep friends updated on what is happening with Madison.

If you're still here, leave a  little note in the comment section ? I'd love to know we have lots of people praying for our Bunny.


Much, much love,

Patti xoxoxox