Good news, good news!

Here's the latest on the kids - just to keep you up to speed.

A couple of weeks ago, Kylie had blood work done to see how her numbers are holding up since she's been off the antibiotics.  Last Friday, both Ethan and Kylie had appointments with the surgeon (yay for having one doc for the two kids!) to see how things have been coming along.

Ethan went first and she checked out his knee to see how things had healed from his surgery on March 21st.  Remember that she removed quite a nice sized chunk of bone.  Ethan had the surgery on a Friday and had ditched his crutches by Sunday afternoon.  Don't tell the surgeon this, but I think he was riding his bike on the Tuesday.

Anyhow, after she did a bunch of range-of-motion exercises on his leg, she declared him "perfect."  He made sure that she repeated that a couple of times for all to hear and asked her to write that in his file.  He's officially perfect - at least medically, his knee is.  It's actually been a really big improvement for him since the surgery when it comes to pain and movement.  He couldn't  ever really kneel on that knee because the chunk of bone just dug right in.  His biggest concern before the operation was how he was ever going to propose.  (I reminded him that he did indeed have two knees and could still propose.) But having two working, pain-free knees is a great thing!!

Kylie was next.  She still has quite a bit of pain in her foot and from what I gather, that may or may not fade over time.  And she'll definitely (according to the docs) have arthritis in that joint when she's older from all the mucking around that went on in there.  Pain is one thing -- but numbers from blood work is another -- and was my bigger concern.  If her numbers were all wacky, we were in trouble.

Thankfully and we're so happy to inform you that her numbers were BETTER THAN EVER!!   Hallelujah!

Her CRP and SED rate were so low, perfectly low, fantastically low!!  Just to give you an idea, her one blood test in Togo scored a 123 and is now less than 0.6.  That's a big ole improvement.

So what now?   We keep going with blood work with Kylie.  Since her numbers were so great, we get to wait three months til she needs another round.  So at the end of August we'll do it again and see how things are.  The doc was pretty confident that we had eradicated the infection.  Isn't that a great word when it comes to infection??  Say it with me - er-ad-ic-ate!  It rolls off the tongue rather awkwardly but it still sounds good.

You might be wondering what the plan is -- oh, the plan.  You'd think we would have learned by now that if we make a plan, it's not gonna go that way.  So the plan is to wait. We wait until we have full medical clearance for Kylie, which according to the ID doc was November.  But according to this doc, may be sooner. And in the meantime, we're just praying - and praying that whatever and wherever God wants us, that He would make it abundantly clear.  And honestly, right now it's pretty darn clear that He wants us to be here.  And here we are.

Thanks for keeping up with the saga.  Thankfully it's a lot less drama-filled than it was this time last year.  And for that we are very grateful.