Back Down The Rabbit Hole

So this winterish spring time has, so far, been hard for us all at Chez DuMoulin. It seems to have permanently frozen in that time between the two steps forward and one step back. Many of you know that we've been faced with a housing change, and though that doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad, but what it does mean is change (and I'm not a big fan..) Change that we aren't quite ready for. Since then we've jumped both feet into the housing/real estate wonder (not) land and gotten pretty disenchanted. We still have time to find a new lion den for our lion cub, so its not grim as all that. But the tenacious and frigid winter has not given up yet around here, so the doldrums continue. To really ice the cake, Leo has been pretty ill this past week; starting out with a few mini seizure episodes and turning into full blown infections in his ear, chest, and unfortunately, urinary tract. Oh yeah, fun times! Yesterday was spent in the ER with him, running the standard gamma of Leo tests. Shunt x-ray studies, MRI, urine analysis, because you know, unlike normal kids who when sick get tucked into bed with chicken soup and a movie, Leo gets the full monty. Every. Single. Time. Heck why am I complaining? I was the one who brought him there. Anyway after 6 hours trying to keep a sick, but still active (and pissed off) three year old contained in a tiny ER cell, the results were at best, ambiguous and frustrating. It seems like other then the usual respiratory infection stuff, Leo has fluid collecting in the pleural space of his lung, again. You know that moment when the doctors pronounce something that you weren't prepared to hear, ever again... Yeah it wasn't great.
The goodish news is that there isn't a lot of fluid, not enough to be dangerous to his lung function again, and that his shunt is working properly, since he doesn't seem to have malfunction symptoms. But the doctors are still worried, which in turn makes me even more so. They let us go last night but want to monitor him closely for the next week when we will come back for another x-ray. We are all hoping that the fluid will be gone or at least diminished. If there is more fluid, then more issues will need to be addressed. And I imagine it will mean more surgery.  So please friends, pray for Leo, and for us, that this rabbit hole will be a little one, that this mystery fluid will go away, and that spring will finally come to dispel this eternal winter with it's unmerited hardships.

Cheeky Lion rallying his grin upon leaving the ER.