Abby's 3rd annual biopsy and other Doman happenings

Our first couple weeks of summer vacation have definitely been eventful, never a dull moment at the Doman house!  Let's start by talking about Abby's annual biopsy she had last Thursday.

It was a long day, to say the least.  We checked in at 6:00 am and didn't finish until 4:30 that afternoon. Good thing we had Britt there to share in the fun!  The 1 1/2 to 2 hour wait while Abby is in the cath lab is so stressful.  I just sit there praying the pager doesn't go off early, but doesn't go off late either.

Luckily, it was exactly on time.  When the pager went off, we walked down and met the doctor in an office by the cath lab and they showed us and discussed the video of Abby's beautiful coronary arteries!  And they did look perfect, much better than my dad's which we were "lucky" enough to see only 2 days earlier (more on this later.)  We also talked about the pressures in heart, which also were perfect.  After that, I always seem to relax a little bit, but then the waiting begins.  It's up to recovery for a 6 hour, lying flat and not moving recovery.  For some reason Abby had a really hard time with the anesthesia this time.  When we first got into recovery, she was having a hard time breathing and she felt really crummy.  This lasted for 3 days.  3 days of aching, feeling exhausted, and overall feeling crappy. I don't know why it was so hard this time, but it wasn't a great day.  Abby was grouchy too, and she's never grouchy.  During her recovery, we met with the transplant team to go over her results as well.  They weren't exactly what we wanted, but they could be worse too.  It seems like everything with Abby is "borderline" right now.  First, her kidney's aren't doing the greatest.  This has been on and off all year, so it's finally gotten to the point where it's time to see a nephrologist.  We've scheduled an appointment, here in St. George, for this Thursday.  Abby had to have labs and an ultrasound today and then we'll see what they want to do from here.  Abby is also in mild rejection.  For those of you that know the scale, she's a  C 2.5.  This is a level that they sometimes treat, but not always.  They've chosen not to treat it for now.  They took 4 pieces of her heart, and only one of them showed any inflammation, so that's why they're not too worried.  We just need to watch for any other signs rejection.  Her blood counts were also all borderline being too low, especially her ANC, so this is just something we're going to watch.  The last thing is that at her last clinic visit, they decided to take her off of one of her medications because she was having some uncomfortable side effects.  This medication is used to lower her lipids and her cholesterol.  Since she hasn't been taking it, her lipid count was way too high.  Rather than putting her back on the medication, we're going to try to take of it by putting her on a strict diet first.  Hopefully that will do the trick.  Other than those things, everything looked great.  After our 6 hours was up, we headed down to get an echo and an EKG, which both looked fabulous as well.  Her heart and arteries did look good which is so important.  Overall, we feel like things could be much worse, but they could be better too.  We're hoping everything will take a turn for the better here very soon.

We've had lots of other things going on top of Abby's biopsy.  Last Monday, Memorial Day, my dad had another heart attack.  Thankfully, he called an ambulance. They took him into the cath lab the next day and he ended up getting a couple of stents put in.  He's home, on lots of new medications, and recovering now.  It doesn't seem very fair, he only had his bypass a year and a half ago.  He was supposed to be good for 5 years, but I guess that would be too boring.  It hasn't stopped him from kicking our butts at hearts on a regular basis.  I am a little mad though, when he called to tell us he had called an ambulance, we were in the middle of my greatest bowling game ever and we had to leave in the middle of the game.  I will probably never be able to top that amazing score either.  We're just thankful that he's okay.

We've also been busy with Brock's graduation and getting him ready for his mission.  It's different with Brock graduating.  Britt didn't really like high school, she was so ready to move on, but Brock loved high school and so it made it a little sad.  He's got such great friends that are all going in so many different directions.  It's hard to even imagine my house with Brock and his friends there.  It's going to be lonely.

Brock with my parents

Great group of boys that I'm going to miss so much!

And finally, we've been getting Brock ready to leave on his mission to Orlando.  This has all happened so fast. From the time Brock decided he wanted to go on a mission, until the day he's leaving is only about 8 weeks!  He got his call so fast, then we only had 6 weeks to prepare for him to leave!  Let's just say that there's a lot to get done in a very short period of time.  It's probably better that way so that I don't have too much time to think about it.  Brock goes to the temple on June 7th, his farewell is on Father's Day, June 15th at 9:00, and he leaves on June 18th.  So fast.  I'm so sad, but I'm so proud as well.  Here's some of our favorite missionary pictures that my dad took last week.

He's looking so good and ready!  It makes it easier on me to know that he's so excited to go.  To say that my last 6 weeks have been crazy, is probably the understatement of the year, but I'm hanging in there.  I think after Brock leaves on the 18th, I'll be ready for some extremely relaxing down time.  But, for now, we'll just keep plugging away.