From Cathy

Sorry to keep you hanging for the last several days.  We had a great weekend, including meeting a college student who we have e-mailed with who lives in Denver and has EE,  hiking and rock climbing on Flagstaff mountain in Boulder, and a party for everyone we know in Denver hosted by our dear friends, Deb & Steve, who we have stayed with the last few trips out here.

Hope's upper GI series went fine on Monday.  She did not savor the flavor of the barium liquid (she had to drink two cups of it), but she managed to choke it down, and they got all the pictures they needed.

Josh's surgical consult also went fine.  The consensus was that he definitely has some granulation tissue, but that it's not enough to warrant doing anything overly painful or invasive at this point.  So we will keep using the steroid cream on it, and we will hope that it doesn't get any bigger.

We met with the feeding therapist yesterday with both Josh and Tim and got more of a game plan in place for both of them.  We are really going to back off on food with both of them for a while but will work on adjusting their schedules a bit with the formula in the hopes of addressing the food more down the road.  It was also suggested that, when Josh's body indicates more tolerance of food (think a ways down the road), he would be a good candidate for their intensive 2-3 week feeding therapy program.  Oh joy.  Fortunately, I don't see that being any time in the near future.

We had our final appointments today.  Nothing too earth shattering, but we do have a basic game plan for each child.  Hope's scope came back clean (meaning no eosinophils), which is good, but they really didn't find any obvious reason for why she has so much abdominal pain, which is kind of frustrating.  We will be changing some of her meds around and see if that makes any difference.  The nice thing is, we know that the doctors here are committed to helping us figure things out, even if it takes a while.  We really do feel like they get good care here.

 So that's pretty much it in a nutshell.  We drive back to Kansas City tomorrow and hope to hit the road early.  Please pray that we get a good night's sleep (Timothy has not had a single decent night since we've been here), and please pray for clear weather for our drive.  I find driving (and even riding) on the highway in the rain really stressful.  Prayers for safe travel in general would be great.

Thank you for all of your prayers for our family over this past week.  Our trip here really went very smoothly, and we could feel the power of your prayers at work.  We treasure each one of you and appreciate you lifting us up.