Friday, February 1, 2008, 10:50 AM

This morning, Adelaine’s left ear started to drain again, no coughing or any other symptoms, just draining. I suppose her right ear would be draining as well if that tube hadn’t fallen out already. Her surgery is scheduled for Thursday to replace both ear tubes, which hopefully will get us through the next 8 months!

A few weeks ago, we had her tested for food allergies at the allergist. Dr. K. determined that she is allergic to shoes!!! Yes, that’s right shoes! When he told me this I almost fell out laughing. It’s quite comical because people think that I am such an anti-shoe person. We have this big note posed on our front door which reads something to the effect of, “Due to Our Daughter’s Weekend Immune System, Please Remove Your Shoes”! Anybody that knows me at all knows that I have always had this thing about wearing shoes in the house. It makes me squeamish to think about all the nasty gunk people step in throughout the day, and then we track it into our homes! The Asian culture really does have that one figured out!!!! Honestly before Adelaine was diagnosed we removed our shoes, but now we have a really good excuse.

I guess my issues with a clean floor started at a friend’s lake house when I was a little girl. Our families would go there quite often during the summer time. Her older sister suffered some major trauma, and as a result her tennis shoes became her source of comfort. It was very tragic what had happened to her, and I guess somehow she figured if she needed to run away she would be ready. If I thought we could run away from all this I’d certainly be willing to sleep in my tennis shoes too! Anyway, when I say her shoes became her source of comfort, I mean she literally never took them off. Only to swim in the lake and take a shower, after that, all bets were off. That meant that she would track sand in all over the house from being at the lake, and then there was the minor issue of her SLEEPING in her shoes. As all us girls piled into the bed, all I could feel was the scratchy sand all in the sheets, mostly from the shoes and partly from our own dirty feet because the tile floors were covered in sand from her tracking it! There was no escaping that dirty feet feeling! As a result I can not stand a sandy floor. Good thing we moved to Florida, right!

The fact that Adelaine is allergic to shoes really does crack me up. So, how exactly is a person allergic to shoes? Well, it’d the processing of the leather that does it, maybe even the leather itself. The chemicals, glues and dyes are the main culprit. Dr. K.said Adelaine should were flip flops and Crocs. We even got a prescription for the Crocs, and they were covered!!!! WE replaced her black Mary Jane’s with Mary Jane Crocs and they look really cute on her! She has significant eczema all over her face, feet, arms and legs. Her feet had eczema in the shape of Mary Janes, which I didn’t notice before Dr K. pointed it out. Once a month when she is taking the five days of steroids it clears up, so at least she does get some relief. After treatment, Dr. K says all this should go away, which was great news.

He also ordered some blood work to test her Immuni-globulins. This would tell us if her skin issues are caused by the chemo which are affecting her allergic nature and by how much. Her IGG was at 428, higher than 341 is considered normal. This was the most important of the three test and they came out great. Her IGA was at 35, normal is higher than 48, and her IGM was at 37, higher than 43 is normal. Dr. said that the IGA and IGM levels are quite good and not surprising in lou of her chemotherapy treatments. He also agreed that replacing her tubes would indeed be the proper thing to do, and that there was no question that her Immuni-globulins would return to normal once chemotherapy is stopped. Her only food allergy was to egg whites. FYI eggs and eczema usually go together.

Lastly, I got a phone call this morning from a gentleman with a British accent! It was the man whose Mercedes I plowed into the back of on Monday! He took his car in to see about the damage Pearl did to his bumper. By the way, on Tuesday, Adelaine came to this very bright conclusion and said, “Mommy you didn’t hit that car, Pearl did it”. I wanted to just say, “Your exactly right that Pearl was being naughty”, but it was a teachable moment so I knew I had to go for it. I explained that we could just blame Pearl but I was the one driving the car so really it was my fault. I went on to say, “It’s always better to just accept when you’re wrong, apologize and accept whatever punishment comes of it and learn your lesson. So, I had accepted it was my fault, I had apologized and now I was waiting for my punishment. I knew my punishment would cost me money which would really drive my lesson home…

DON”T LOOK DOWN WHEN DRIVING AND PAY ATTENTION! I think I got it!

I went to visit my neighbor yesterday. Her husband has cancer. I told her about what had happened and she admitted to running into the back of a car a few weeks ago. I guess we just have a lot on our minds. When I get close to the Children’s Cancer Center,I‘ll try to be extra careful! It’s a wonder that there isn’t a huge 20 to 30 car pile-up every Tuesday morning and every other Thursday night when we meet!

Guess what? The nice British gentleman has decided not to file a police report. The sheriff had left it up for us to decide. (Can you guess what my vote was?) He took his car in and got an estimate on the damages and has decided to not file with insurance. I had offered to pay for whatever work was needed out of our pocket, and was hoping he would agree to do that instead of involving our insurance companies. This morning he insisted that he would just cover the damages and for us to use that money for Adelaine! WOW! I can’t begin to tell you how blessed I feel right now. Please take a moment to pray for him and his family and that God would bless them for being so kind and merciful towards us. And pray for enhanced driving abilities for me too!

Oops! One more thing…
My great friend Kristen Bohlander sent me an email confirming that Adelaine did indeed have her adnoids out last year. She sent the link to the post where I discussed it. I looked for it myself but couldn’t find anything. I’m not sure how I could forget that one, but I feel good knowing that Thursday wont involve removing adnoids, just replacing tubes and giving a sinus culture.

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