Blessings

It has been a while since I have posted and for that I apologize. We have had a lot going on especially the past few days.
There are times in life where you just have to stop and give thanks to God for the life that you have, and sometimes those moments are brought upon us in the form of scares. Our scare happened and it really brought me to a place where I have to re-evaluate the way I take advantage of even the littlest things.
Todd has been having issues for about two years with his legs. It all started with some "twitches" he was having in his legs. We assumed it was restless leg because his mom has it and so we pursued that avenue for diagnosis. After months of trying all kinds of remedies, both natural and medicinal, he was not getting any relief. Soon after he began to have leg cramps at night....sometimes so bad he would almost be in tears. The leg cramps went from one or two a night to sometimes up to 6 or 7 a night. And as you can imagine, having these cramps at night did not allow him much sleep as he layed there waiting for the next cramp to hit. Still after seeing his doctor and more meds being prescibed, nothing was working. He most recently has had times where his legs cramp during the day and at times would even give out on him a little bit if he got up too quick. I finally told him he needed to go back to the doctor, but this time I was going with him because Todd has a tendency to blow things off as not a big deal and I was gonna make sure the doctor didn't just write it off again as an undiagnosed condition. At that appointment, I told our doctor that something was definitely wrong and we needed to get a specialist involved. He refered us to a neurologist here in town. We made a consult appointment with him at which he prescribed a battery of tests for Todd. Todd had bloodwork done, three MRI's, and an EMG(nerve test) done. All during this time, our life went from what I thought was pretty normal to all of a sudden a quest for a diagnosis. The scare came at our last appointment with the neurologist as he told us he wanted to send Todd to Augusta to see another neurologist who specialize in ALS diagnosises.....WHAT!!!! I felt as if the rug had just been pulled out from under us. We went from restless leg to ALS????? I cried the first night uncontrollably...mad at myself for showing my emotions to Todd because I was suppose to be the strong, supportive spouse when instead he was doing that for me and he was the one who was the patient. I was so scared. Trying to figure out in my head what the hell I was gonna do if this was the actual diagnosis....how would we handle it? what would we tell our children? what would our life turn out like? why God? why?
After the initial shock wore off, I went into warrior mode, as I call it. I was gonna have to be there for my husband no matter what. I went through the motions of our daily life with this weight on my shoulders, but I was not going to let it rob me of my life. We made the appointment with the specialist, knowing now our sites were set on that day....the day of diagnosis.
Here is where one of those God things happened in our life....
Two weeks ago, I am watching the Today show, and there is this little segment on statin drugs and the fact they have a side effect of muscle weakness.....think to myself, interesting....
Two days later, I get one of magazines in the mail and I am reading an "ask the doctor" article and once again there is an article in there stating that cholestreol medicine can be tied to weakness in muscles and to call your doctor if you have any of these symptoms.
Two days after that, I am sitting in the hospital because one of our dear friends is having open heart surgery. The surgeon comes out and speaks to my girlfriend and tells her that her husband will have to be put on a statin drug....
I am thinking....why does this statin drug thing keep getting put in front of me.....Todd has been on his Crestor for a while and hasn't had any issues with it.....hmmmm....wait a second.....
I call our primary care physician...."When did Todd start taking his Crestor?" "June of 07"....."thanks."... That is interesting because that is about when Todd started having issues with his legs......Go to the computer and do a google search...."statins and muscle pain"......WOW.....do another search....."Crestor and fasciculations"(that is the technical term for the twitches).....Holy Crap....I am reading my husband's diary....one of the articles that comes up is entitled "Crestor and ALS like symptoms". OK God....message received.....THANKS!
I talk to Todd and tell him what I have found and that I think he needs to stop his Crestor immediately.....He goes off it last Friday. The subsequent nights he has little to no leg cramps.....that doesn't happen very often. I call the local neurologist to tell him what I have found and what has happened. The same day the specialists' office in Augusta calls and says Todd's appointment has been moved to Thursday....another God thing as far as I am concerned.
The local neurologist thinks I am on to something and orders another blood test to check his enzyme levels so it is done before the appointment in Augusta on Thursday.
We leave for our appointment on Thursday and I am literally sick to my stomach.....dreading that my recent findings will be laughed at and that we are gonna get the ALS diagnosis. Todd is Mr. Positive through this whole ordeal, showing no emotion except for his humor cracking jokes about having to fulfill his "bucket list" and that it is gonna be expensive to do that etc.. While I am feeling like my world is falling in.....We meet Dr. Rivner in Augusta....kind of a strange fellow....but a New Yorker by birth, so we laugh at his gruffness. He performs a series of tests on us and tells us that he doesn't think it is ALS because Todd has no visible signs of muscle loss, and that his strength is fine. If it was ALS, he would be deteriorating. I share with him my "diagnosis". He grins at me and then turns to Todd to keep doing more tests....okay....I just felt like I got the "isn't she cute....now let's move on...." look. He then turns to me and says, "Mr. Cook, I think we need to see you back in 2 months to redo your nerve test. I think it is your Crestor as well. I have seen lots of cases where statins will cause issues like this. Crestor will give you false positive results on nerve tests, so let's see how you do then".....I then say, "so I was right?" He smiles at me and says, let's hope so.....but I think so!
THANK YOU JESUS!!!!!!! I have never been so happy to be told I was right then I was in that moment......now Todd will never live the "I was right" down....LOL
I take the past few weeks as the wake up call we needed to let us know not to take each other for granted.....we have had the biggest scare we possibly could, and thank goodness it turned out the way we wanted, but we need to remember how quickly something like that can happen to us. I thank God not just for the blessings of the "coincidences", as some people like to call them, that happened over the past few weeks, but also for the family and friends that we have that have been so supportive through all of this. I have truly been awakened to the blessings in my life.....I hope all of you will be as well.
As for now, we are gonna wait for all the Crestor poison to get out of my husband's system so he can begin a road to recovery.....he is still getting a few cramps, but it can take a long time for this to get out of his system.
So I ask you all to still keep us in your prayers. I am now on the mission to figure out why all the previous doctors missed this on his health history, and why they didn't know the side effects of this drug. I am angry that the FDA and the medical community solicite this drug and know how many people are suffering the side effects of this drug....which do include the possible diagnosis of statin induced ALS.....scary!!!! Please check into your own prescriptions and don't be afraid to question your doctors and to go for second and even third opinions....your life or your loved ones lives could depend on it.
Stay healthy and count your blessings!!!
Hugs to all!

Spring Break Fun

The girls started their spring break this past Thursday. Papa and Nana Walty are here visiting and the girls have had a good time with them. Thursday brought the arrival of a minature pony to our house. His name is Peanut. He is too cute and the girls are very excited to have him here at our house. Todd's friend, Chris, brought Peanut over from his mom's horse farm. Ms. Betsy runs a horse rescue from her farm. There may even be another full size horse coming to stay with Peanut. Bailey decided to "name" our farm since we have animals now.....the house is now named Sunset Farm. Friday we went to Jekyll Island for the day. The girls enjoyed playing in the ocean and laying in the sun for a while. Today we are going to have a cook out with Papa and Nana and then tonight we will have friends over for our annual nighttime egg hunt. The kids have been looking forward to it. Tomorrow we will celebrate Easter by going to church in the morning. Sarah will be playing in the orchestra. Then we will go to Longhorn for lunch and have a ham dinner to close out the day.

Dad and Sharon are heading out on Monday for their long trip back to NY. It has been a great visit with them. Dad made a great mantle for the master bedroom and it looks great. I am so glad his work is part of my home....it makes it more personal to me. Thanks Dad! Love you!

Sarah's Excellent Adventure

We woke up yesterday at 6:18 in the morning to Bailey telling us Sarah was stuck in the bathroom. After a long and hysterical exchange of Todd and I trying to tell Bailey she was crazy and that Sarah was just locking her out, we finally decided to go "check things out". Todd discovered she really was stuck in the bathroom.......so Todd had to remove the doorknob and then try and rig it to work because a piece in the doorknob was broken. After he threatened to leave her in there cuz he had to go to work and us teasing her to tell us all her sins, he finally got the door open. It was too funny. Enjoy the video....although know that this is just before the door was opened....she was in there for a good 20 minutes before he was able to get it open.