UNEXPECTED HEALTH ISSUES IN THE FAMILY

Okay, Jeremy's in timeout. He's been a little snippety lately. We're a little bit worried. So my dad's coming over today. He's having some health issues. It's even hard saying this. I haven't really ever said this. Good morning you guys. My mom is up playing with the girls. She is getting ready to leave today. It is always so nice for her to visit. Having family far away is really hard sometimes, you know. Like not being able to just see them whenever. I feel like if they lived closer, we'd get to just see each other for shorter amounts of time, but like more frequently, and it would be perfect. One day, I'm holding out for that. But for now, I'm going to spend a little time with them before they have to go. I guess we probably won't see her again until Christmas. Which isn't so bad. It's only a month away. It still feels like so long. I don't know. My mom is my bestie, so sometimes I hate being so far away. But I'm glad that she has the ability and flexibility to come down and visit us so often. Because it's hard to get up there. Especially with all the kids. Especially during the school year. Alright, I'm going to go spend some time with her. Before I have to say goodbye. Just giving hugs and kisses. And Tyler's gone. Tell me better words. She's good. Bye baby. I love you. I love you. I love you. You know that can't happen. I'll go with you. It's going to be okay. She'll come back very soon. In a few months. In a month or more. A few more days. Give me a hug. Oh, don't leave. Don't leave. Give me a hug. I love you. It's always hard for everyone saying goodbye. Kids have a hard time with it. Nana has a hard time with it. Danielle has a hard time with it. Chase has a hard time with it. Chase, don't go. Don't go, Nana. Don't go. I have to get Elena to say bye. She's going to be very upset with herself. We're good. Love you. Love you guys. Wave. Everybody wave. Chase, are you sad? It's going to be okay, buddy. I'm going to be inside. In my room. Oh, gosh. Oh, buddy. Come here. She's been having a rough morning. And that's why saying goodbye is really hard for her. She feels it very deeply. So my dad's coming over today in just a few minutes, actually. We just got an update from him recently last week that he's having some health issues. He's had a pain in his rib area for the last eight months and been trying to figure out what's going on with him. And the doctors were doing all these tests on his stomach and he was like, no, it's my ribs. It's just a sharp pain. We went to a new doctor after eight months of not being able to figure out what's going on. They did a CT scan and found that he has a tumor in his ribs. So they don't know if it's cancerous or not yet. But they're going to do another test to find that out. But the doctor who found the tumor said the size of it is a little indicative that it is. So that's kind of been like a blow to me. Just because, you know, he's 73 and you never know how long you have slept with somebody. Hopefully we're just praying that it's not. That it will come back and it won't be cancerous and they can remove it and it will all be fine. If you guys could pray with me on that, that would be huge. I thank you so much for that. But he's coming over, so we're kind of like Sundays have been his kind of day to come spend time with the family. We are now making that even more of an effort to be like, okay, Sundays days with Gramps because again, we don't know how long. It's even hard saying this because I haven't really ever said this. You know, we don't know how long he's got here and you know, so we just want to make the most of all these moments with him. So we're going to do that. If you want to add... I can invite anyone I want to bring with them. No, you can't. You have to add it. John's teaching his son how to make a group text message. Ev! What you doing? You went to the bathroom? Did you wash your hands? Good job. High five. Okay, Jeremy's in time out. He's been a little snippity lately. A lot of snippity. We're a little bit worried. He's kind of had some instances of aggression. We're working through it. We're hoping that it's just like overstimulation. But we're keeping an eye on it. He's still very, very young and a little bit unsure of where he is, but that's why he's in the crate for now. Anyway, happy day. The kids are all playing. Gramps came over to visit and everybody's playing so he's just hanging out here. I go Tuesday for my scans. The CT scan? I don't go till the 15th for consultation with the doctor. So it may be from the 5th to the 15th before I find out anything about what happened on the scans. They can't look at the scan and know what they're looking at? They don't if they're allowed to. What? They don't usually let the technicians tell patients what's going on. Oh, gotcha. Their doctors aren't even there? No. I have a case worker. I'm gonna call her and see if she can find out for me before I wait so long. I feel like that's a while to wait for that information when you've already been waiting so long. Yeah, I've been waiting since February. Oh. That's crazy. You feel this knot on my stomach that I should have dealt with that before now. Can you feel it? Come here and tell me. I don't know if I want to feel it. Did they feel that? They did an ultrasound all over me, checking my gallbladder and my liver and everything. They felt that. They tried to tell me. It's my stomach. What was it before you went to the new doctor and got the CT scan that found what it was? I went to the VA and they thought it was my stomach. They did an endoscopy. They came back and said I had acute gastritis. They were over two months behind with being able to have me come in and have a consultation with me. They're required by law now to farm me out. They sent me to Wake Med GI Clinic. When I go to Wake Med GI Clinic, I get this doctor that didn't know squat about much of nothing. She gave me these blue pills to take at bedtime. It wasn't helping my stomach. It wasn't helping anything. I took that for two months and couldn't ever get up with it. Finally, I called the secretary. I said, look, I'm in major pain. I'm not getting any help with what's happening. The doctor you were seeing is on vacation. I said, great, give me another one. When I first met with him, I said can we start off on the right foot? I don't want you to prescribe any pills to me. I want you to find out what's wrong with me. That's our goal I hope. I said, can you do that? He said, I definitely can. He said, let's do some elimination. He looked at the endoscopy and said, your stomach is not your problem. You've got nothing wrong with your stomach. If they've given you any pills, you quit taking them. Then he said, let's do a colonoscopy so we can make sure the colon goes in that area. I said, there's no colon either. It's over here. The colon's over here. He said, let's do that anyway. Let's just start eliminating stuff. I said, okay. Then he comes back and he said, colonoscopy is not your problem and your stomach is not your problem, so we've got to find out something else. He said, let's do a CT scan. He did the CT scan and then he called me up and said, hey, you're urgent. We've got a problem. You've got a tumor. They had me go get the CT scan from the weight med and I brought it to the VA. They put it in my file and they gave me a special caseworker to handle my case and she's been on top of it ever since. That's the update. Scan's tomorrow, so if you can, remember to just say a prayer. That'd be great. We really appreciate it and we're just going to hope and pray for the best. We'll let you know what's going on with Papa Murray over here as we find out. Do you want to go see Green FC? No. Samantha Riley said, until 12 to 14 weeks old, his brain is a sponge. Now's the only time you have to change the way his brain works. After 12 weeks, the sponge shuts off and you're only left trying to retrain his behaviors. You can't truly reset the brain after. She says she does this puppy culture training. They do quicker training. You can even do a digital download of it. You can farm with these videos, I guess. Let's get on that ASAP because we've got to get this dog right. He's such a smart dog. I think he'll learn. We just need to know what to teach him. He has moments where it's usually if he's overstimulated and tired or maybe a little bit afraid and unsure but he snaps. Full on snarling. He hasn't hurt anybody. He doesn't bite hard but very much like freaking out. If I stop and distract him, and we've been very gentle with him, he will stop and snap out of it. For me, he's going to be a big dog. That's not behavior that we can safely have with our kids. Kids will always come first. If there's a question of their safety, the kids come first. We're going to make sure things are good here. Anytime you get a dog, make sure it's a good fit with the members of your family. There's not just that you got it so now you have to keep it no matter what. If that dog is aggressive or if they don't get along with one of your children or they're scared of them or your kid's not nice to your pet, it's not going to work. It's better to recognize that and rehome the animal than it is to try to force it and have some sort of tragic, terrible incident. For us, that's where we got into this. Don't know how it's going to work. Don't know the dynamics. We're going to give it our best shot. This is where we're at right now. We might have an issue but what are all the things we can do to try to correct this behavior now and try to make sure it's not a problem while we carefully keep an eye on it. That's where we're looking into dog training and I'm asking some friends who have a lot of knowledge in this area and just trying to figure out what can we do to make sure this works. At the end of the day, I'm not going to put my kids in danger. I think that he'll be alright. He's so smart. He's so sweet and any other time he's sweet, it's just certain times and he is still really young. He was taken away from his mom a little too soon, I think, and so not by us. We got him from a rescue so I think he just is a little scared still. I think if we can make sure we're respecting him and his energy and giving him time to chill out and calm down. So we're kind of time blocking. You're in your crate, you're resting. Okay, you go play, go eat, go drink, you know, get some cuddle time and then once he's played for a little while, okay, go back in your crate so you can rest. Not like a punishment but more of a like downtime. Just like toddlers need naps, puppies need a lot of sleep. So I don't think he was getting quite enough because he's constantly playing with Chase. So we're trying to set more boundaries just to set him up for success. How's your arm feel? Is it numb? Is it numb? This camera's really heavy. So that's that. Alright, Gramps just said he wants to go see the new house. Wasn't planning to go see the new house today but we're always up for checking it out and seeing what they've done. They've done a lot since he's looked at it last so I'm excited to see what he thinks about everything that's going on there so let's go. You see they got the siding on, all the stuff? Alright, we're here. Check it out guys. I think you've seen the sidings on, all the shutters are on and I think they painted so we haven't seen that yet so let's go check it out and see what it looks like. Oh my gosh, what is that thing? Well that's great, they painted the house. Don't run, walk guys. Hey, guys listen, listen, hey listen real quick. Everybody gather up real quick. This is a job site still which means that there's nails and dangerous things all around so we gotta look where we're walking. We're not gonna run Ev, we're not gonna run. We're gonna keep our eyes on the ground make sure we're not stepping on nails or anything like that, okay? Or meat. Don't touch the walls. Okay? Oh my gosh, and then there's this kid who's just running around. Oh yeah, they put the new doors on. Yeah, they put the wrong doors on and they had to replace all the doors because they put the wrong ones on. What do you think, Dad? Let's go upstairs. Moving right along. Dad's checking the floors. You checking the floors? What do you think, Pops? Looks nice to me. Looks nice to me too. Are you out of here? Yeah, I'm out of here. I love you, Dad. We'll see you. Let me know. Keep us posted. Well, they put the right doors on because they put the wrong ones on. I don't know if I ever told you guys that, but they did. And they painted some in there. So, moving right along, I guess. Well, guys, my dad is gone. He left. He drove separate to the house. Like, it doesn't like quite feel super real. There's like now times where I'm like when I actually think about it, it does. But it's like, you know, he's just he's so great with our kids. Loves our kids. Loves our family. Comes over. Wants to come over all the time and just visit. And, you know, it's hard to think about that there will be a time when that's not gonna be the case anymore. And I think it's even more, like it's even harder to think that it might be sooner than later. Like, his mom lived until she was like 90 or 91. And so, I just kinda like saw my dad. He's so active and always doing stuff and always like, always working on something. And so, he's just, you know, I just kinda envisioned we'd have you know, 10 plus more years with him. And so, to think that that might not be the case is a little hard to swallow. Just my personality. I don't like dwell on those things. But whenever I do, it kinda hits. So, thank you for your prayers and just all your thoughts during this time. And we'll keep you guys updated and just see what happens. So, just gonna hope for the best and be praying for him ourselves. So, we love you guys. Thanks for watching. We'll talk to you soon. Bye.