I write tonight with a heavy heart, as I am writing to ask for your prayers for a friend from high school, and her family.  I learned today that Jenny's little girl, is having surgery to remove a tumor in her kidney.  There is a possibility that the tumor is malignant.  Please pray that surgery is successful and for strength for both her and her family.  I know how difficult it is to sit by and watch your child struggle, and I also know how much peace we felt knowing the prayers that were being said for our boys.  I would really appreciate any that you are able to give to this family.  You can read their blog at:

http://dahnertnews.blogspot.com/

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We have an update on Elijah today.  As you all know, because of Elijah's lung issues early on, we were always concerned about possible aspiration of liquid into his lungs when he is drinking fluid (this is always a concern with kiddos who are breathing extra hard due to lung issues).  So to combat this, we have been thickening his liquids.  Every so often we do a swallow study (that is when they put barium in the liquids he is drinking while using xrays so they can be sure that the fluid is not entering his airway).  We have always been fairly certain this was not happening, but we kept him on the thickened liuquids as a precaution.

Well, Mr. smarty-pants (a.k.a Elijah) has got this whole system worked out and has decided that he prefers liquids that are NOT thickened, so whenever we are not looking, he will swipe Sam's sippy cup and down the un-thickened liquids as fast as possible.  We only learn that he is doing this when Sam screams "Baby! E! Milk!". So we decided to test him again to be sure. 

After so many MD visits in the past, he is wise to the whole game and knows where he is the second we are in the elevator.  Pretty impressive, as you all know how large the Mayo clinic is and we are always in a diffierent building, but somehow he knows where we are going.  When we finally met with the therapist, Eli was not having it! He stood by the door and yelled "open!" the entire visit.  Then onto the xrays......luckily, because we were not allowed to feed him before the visit, he downed the liquids to show the therapist that he is not aspirating.  She wanted to see what happens when he eats, but my intelligent child, refused to eat any of the food that had barium in it (that is what they can see on the xray).  He would eat the very same food when it did not have any barium, but the second that they added it, he knew, and would bat it away :) I am just relieved that we are done with one more thing!

Well I better get going.  Thanks for checking in and please keep my friend in your prayers.  I appreciate it more than you know!