Chris’s Blog

I’m going to let my wife provide this blog entry.  She did a fantastic job of getting all this down on “paper” and communicating what we do know (and what we still don’t).

Hello friends and family  ~  Thank you sooo much for praying for our family!!

We got to go to the Neurologist this morning to have them read the MRI results and explain what has been going on for us.  She took the MRI results and went through them line by line and explained everything.  Things mostly look good!  Praise the Lord!

She said that there are no tumors, clots, or signs of stroke in the brain.  There is a “slight simplification of the gyral pattern” in the brain.  Which means that the folds are not as complex as they could be, but the doctor said that could change.  The main core of nerves running from the brain are all fine!  There is a lack of myelination in the brain (fatty insulation around the nerves that help send the impulses), but that could develop later too.

We are going for blood work next week for genetic testing for Lissencephaly.  If Rebekah does have this disorder, we may be looking at seizures in our future.  They will also do some metabolic testing to look for enzyme deficiencies.  She may be deficient in some enzymes that help her break down her food to produce the energy that is needed to help her grow.  Certain enzymes can be supplemented.  She also ordered another CT Scan for the skull.  Her soft spot is already very small and she is concerned that the plates in her skull have already begun to fuse.  If they have fused, we will have to do surgery to open them so the brain will have room to grow.

Rebekah will go back for another MRI at the age of 1 year so they can compare the growth of the brain, the gyral patterns, and the myelination.  We will go for another check up with the Neurologists in 4 months.

The doctor said that Rebekah looked good in her physical development.  She said that she is fine with head stability and other developmental milestones.  She mentioned that she thought her trunk control was a little weak.  She gave us a prescription for the Georgia program called Babies Can’t Wait.  They are a program that will come and work with Rebekah and do some therapy with her to make sure she is reaching her milestones.  Chris mentioned that Rebekah fights sleep SO hard.  The doctor said that people with Lissencephaly do have sleep disorders - so that may be connected.

She also said that her crossed eyes are a totally separate issue, so we are keeping our appointment with the ophthalmologist on the 27th.

Praise the Lord for His work in Rebekah’s life.  We are so appreciative for you and for your prayers for our family.

So, we still have a long road and lots of unknowns, but we know God has his hand on little Rebekah (and all of us).

We still won’t know anything until her pediatrician gets the results and gives us a call (and we may not really know much until her neurologist appointment), but the MRI went very well. It’s always a bit hairy with babies since the only way they’ll be still for 30 minutes is to sedate them, but the doctors and nurses at Scottish Rite are awesome and Rebekah was a trooper through it all.

Thanks again to everyone who wished us well and prayed for us. We’re leaning on God’s promise to be there for us and the fact that Rebekah was “fearfully and wonderfully made.”

I haven’t blogged in a while, but I can’t sleep right now, so I get to ramble on here.  Things have been a little crazy.  Rebekah is 4 months old now and definitely nothing like big sister Kayla (which is fine).  Kayla would practically put herself to bed and was sleeping through the night at about 3 months.  It’s been an interesting few months.

When she was about two weeks old, she began what we would later figure out was reflux, but until we did and got it diagnosed by her pediatrician, she screamed and squirmed every night for about 3 hours until she wore herself out.  She is now on Zantac and the reflux is much better.  Since then, we’ve been through “the crud” causing puking and eventually a minor ear infection (nothing 10 days of Amoxicillin couldn’t clear up) and now she’s on Albuterol treatments a few times a day as needed.

Tomorrow is a big day for little Rebekah.  At her 4-month checkup her head was measuring at a very low percentile.  She has always had a small head and it was even something they were concerned about before she was born.  Valerie had multiple ultrasounds and even a fetal MRI, but the doctors all gave her a thumbs up.  Rebekah’s pediatrician decided to send us for a head CT at Children’s Healthcare at Scottish Rite.  Due to some irregularities that showed up on the CT, she goes for an MRI (again at Scottish Rite) tomorrow.  The hard part is that due to the need for the patient to be very still, they have to sedate her (which is a bit scary).

Her pediatrician is supposed to get the results the next day and will call us, but we don’t have an appointment with a neurologist until 2 weeks later, so the waiting might be a bit tough.  Amazingly, the neurologist office they referred us to has 7 pediatric neurologists in the office.  SEVEN!  We are truly blessed to have some of the best pediatric facilities in the country not even an hour away.

So, we’ll be praying for little Rebekah tomorrow (as we have been all along).  Despite a radical change in how much personal attention she receives now, Kayla has been awesome throughout it all.  I will try to update about Rebekah when possible.  These next few weeks will probably be just as crazy as the past few have been.  On top of all that, we have two insanely huge projects in the works at the same time at work, so it’s no rest for the weary there either. 

I just “Christmased Up” my iMac here at work and thought I’d share the links of the stuff I found (all free).

First, there’s the awesome OpenGL Snowfall screensaver.  It’s very customizable (different or no background colors, images, etc).

Next, X-masTree (direct download link).  This puts a nice (and also very customizable) Christmas Tree on your desktop.  It can even include a countdown badge for the days until Christmas.  It’s so customizable, it even works for people who celebrate Christmas on January 7!  Who the heck celebrates Christmas on January 7?!

Third is MacLampsX.  This one was too gaudy for my tastes, but fun to play around with for a couple minutes.  If it suits you, I won’t judge.

Lastly, I searched Google Images for a few wintry snowscape pictures.  This one was my favorite and I set it to my Desktop background (until I get bored with it and decide to change it).  We have a picture of that famous bridge from when we were there (but it was summer then).

There used to be a Windows PowerToy that gave you an option in your right-click menu in Windows Explorer to “Open Command Prompt Here.”  Basically, you navigate Explorer to a folder deep in your hierarchy somewhere and you could instantly open a command prompt to that folder.

In Vista, they’ve made it both easier and harder.  They put the option in there without the need to install a PowerToy.  The problem is, you only see it if you hold shift when you right-click the folder.  Not acceptable to me.  I dug around with Google for a couple minutes and found this article with a few different ways to attack the problem.  #5 (hack the registry) was the one I found to work very well and the way I wanted.  It even works in Vista64!

1. Navigate in your Registry to

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Classes/Folder/Shell

   and create a key called “Command Prompt” without the quotes.

2. Set the default string to whatever text you want to appear in the right-click menu.

3. Create a new key within your newly created command prompt named “command,” and set the default string to

   cmd.exe /k pushd %1

   You may need to add %SystemRoot%\system32\ before the cmd.exe if the executable can’t be found. (I didn’t need to and, in fact, it didn’t work when I put that in.)

4. The changes should take place immediately. Right click a folder and your new menu item should appear.

Of course, the usual warnings go along with this–you can really bork your machine when you’re screwing around in the registry.  Be careful and I’m not responsible if you mess your computer up!

It’s been a while since I gushed fanboy-style about something related to Macs and Apple.  This should make up for that.

I just finally sprung for the $20 upgrade to Delicious Library 2.  Delicious Library has always been one of my favorite apps for the Mac.  It was one of those apps that you pull out just to demo to your PC Friends so they can drool and wish they had Macs.  In a nutshell, it uses the built-in iSight camera to scan UPCs off your media items and catalog them.  It doesn’t stop there, though, it also pulls GOBS of data from online sources about your items (including synopses, ratings–i.e. the “star” kind–used value, and much more.  DL2 came out a few months ago, but I just hadn’t bothered to upgrade yet.  Today, I decided to scan a few items I’d acquired in the last couple months and said, what the heck, let’s upgrade.

Well, in version two, they added an awesome way to publish your whole library for the world.  You can publish via a variety of avenues (I’m using FTP) and it creates a whole “website” for your media catalog!  So, don’t laugh too much at my tastes and remember that a lot of this belongs to my wife and my 3 year-old.  Also, I didn’t spend any time cleaning up the iTunes stuff–it automatically pulled out a lot of “junk” that’s been hanging around in my iTunes Library for a long time.  I’ll get around to cleaning it up eventually.  I also need to spend some serious time scanning books since I have a LOT of those to get in my library!

http://www.forwheelers.net/media/

Totally awesome!

The fire is crackling, the Christmas movies are going, and except for having to go to work tomorrow, this might just be the perfect evening.

This is absolutely ridiculous.  Come on, people, the deals aren’t even that good this year.

Don’t believe me?  Check out this article.  ”Wait!” you say. “That sounds like good news.”

Here’s the part that proves my point:

The dollar was mostly lower against other major currencies, while gold prices rose.

That means your dollar now buys less than it did yesterday.  How is that different from the government just taking a portion of your dollar and calling it a tax?

So, is it nice that the DJIA rose almost 400 points?  On the surface.  The problem is as the government continues to stabilize banks and claim it’s not costing the American people anything, our dollar continues to fall.  That 3-5% raise you hope for at the end of the year–it probably won’t even cover inflation.  The government continues to lie to the American people and continues to inflate our dollar to pay for things they should not be doing.

I need to go–I hear black helicopters.

Stop whatever you’re doing and take 15 minutes to go listen to this.  It may very well be the most important 15 minutes you will spend all week.

I am quickly becoming a huge Peter Schiff fan.  I really need to read Crash Proof.