I’m headed to Las Vegas next week on business so I went to the mall to supplement my business casual wardrobe. I guess this doesn’t qualify as business casual, but I thought it was so cool…it’s made of strips of fabric pinned to the floor – not very practical unless you’re planning to be stationary for the evening, but a very eye-catching window display (at Anthropologie).
That’s a shitload of snow.
It’s no wonder the kids are a little nuttier than usual. This is the playground at preschool. Spring, please come soon.
This is a great blue heron that lives near our camp in Holland. We don’t see a lot of wildlife in Holland, although there has been an unconfirmed sighting of a “big cat” nearby. I saw a photo allegedly taken on the Holland/CT border at Holland Market, and I checked with the local blogger to get the scoop. He said that they weren’t sure what animal was in the photo or where it was taken, but that there had been a black bear in Holland a while back. Not surprising considering that surrounding the congestion of lake homes there’s a whole lot of nothing (see below). Here’s a link to the bear photos.
We were watching this wildlife on our porch at home until a visitor tore down the nest and killed the spider. The kids forced the visitor to oversee a burial.
In the continuing saga of Norah’s lump, her allergic reaction cleared up after a couple of days of Benadryl/Zantac, and we started the thyroid meds back up at a slightly lower dose (20% lower). Last weekend I was feeling pretty low because it seems like the medical community only offers 3 options – 1) medication, 2) radioactive iodine ablation, or 3) surgical removal of the thyroid. If Norah can’t tolerate the medication, a recommendation of option 2 or 3 is likely to be imminent. I’m not ready for that – especially since the problem is not with Norah’s thyroid. It’s an auto-immune problem, and her immune system is just telling her thyroid to go nuts. “Deactivating” her thyroid means that it wouldn’t be able to go nuts any more, but I’m just not comfortable with something so final if we haven’t exhausted all of the possibilities.
My friend Lisa had mentioned a while back that she took her children to a local acupuncturist at the Natural Wellness Clinic. I really didn’t know anything at all about acupuncture, but our conversation stuck with me and I sent one of the practitioners there an email over the weekend. He responded saying that he would be happy to check Norah out and see what he could do.
We went to see Robert Yauckoes this morning and it was a great experience. His office environment is very calming, and he had plenty of books and toys to occupy Norah while he reviewed the paperwork from her endocrinologist. His receptionist called me yesterday to tell me that I could download 2 forms from their website to save myself some time in the office, and she was very nice in person.
I have to say that I don’t understand how acupuncture works yet, and I’m sure there will always be some mystery and magic surrounding the process from my point of view. All I can say is that Robert explained everything he was doing in detail to Norah and to me, and answered all of my questions. He said that there are two ways that acupuncture might be able to help Norah. First, it could help keep her from having an allergic reaction to the medication. He mentioned that many patients on chemotherapy use acupuncture to help manage the effects of their treatment. The second possibility is that acupuncture could help treat the underlying problem – the autoimmune disorder.
Robert started with a thin rod a few inches long with a ball on the end, which he used to check Norah’s skin. He rubbed it on her scalp and then in various spots on her body, and he said it was partially for relaxation and partially diagnostic. I don’t know if he diagnosed anything from this part of the visit, but Norah was SO RELAXED. She laid down and barely moved for the entire treatment – about 20 minutes.
For the second part of the visit, he used something that resembled a thin, blunt nail a few inches long. He would locate a certain point on her body, touch it with the “nail” for a few seconds, and then check her pulse on the arm that was on the same side of her body as the pressure point. He did that in various spots, checking her pulse each time. He said that he could tell from the reaction of her pulse what affect the treatment was having.
The last thing he did was to stick on 5 tiny round stickers that looked like 1/4″ diameter band-aids with a little metal ball on the sticky side. Norah wasn’t really impressed because when he said there would be stickers she was thinking Dora, Elmo, Sponge Bob, etc. We’ll be going twice per week for a while and we’ll see what happens. His fees are really fair – $35 for the first visit in any given week and $25 for any additional visits. I think our insurance actually covers part of the cost.
Here’s Norah before treatment:
And during treatment:
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