IT'S BEEN AWHILE

So I woke up at 7:30 this morning. Not because I wanted to, but because that's what time Brianna got up. I thought that I would use this time to blog with ya'll for little bit to get you caught up on some things. You know I had mentioned in a previous post that we were looking for somewhere else to send Brianna for preschool. I looked at KidsWorld in Greer and in Lyman. That was a BIG NO!!!!! So I decided to call Memorial Methodist here in Greer. I had spoken to the director there months ago and at that time, she didn't have a spot for Brianna. I thought to myself, just call you never know. She got on the phone and went on and on about how much of a blessing this was for me to have called. She said that she just had a spot open up and that she had just told someone that she wished she had of gotten my number when I called months ago. She said that if it was meant to be, I would call again. So I did and it really was meant to be. I visited the school and really liked it. I took Brianna by there last Monday to see what she thought. She fell in love with the gym and was really excited to see the Science Center in her classroom. Plus we saw, Skylar, the little girl who lives across from our street there. She goes there after school. I do hope that it will work out. If it does, she can go there this summer. But we will just have to play that by ear.
So now we can get to my mother. We have been waiting for about 2 weeks to find out what is wrong with her. Her regular doctor thought that she might have Tuberculosis. As you all know, that is a contagious disease and not often heard about too much nowadays. Red flags immediately went up--- IS MY MOMMA GOING TO BE OK? DO I HAVE IT? AM I CONTAGIOUS? DOES BRIANNA HAVE IT? COULD OUR FAMILY IN NY HAVE IT? HAVE I INFECTED EVERYONE THAT I KNOW?. Things were really up in the air. She had to visit the health department for them to do some tests. They did a skin test that in 3 days didn't show up anything. They were still waiting on the results from the other test they were doing. In the meantime, we all were staying clear of my momma. That was a very hard thing to do. Here she is feeling so isolated and alone, when she needed someone the most. It really broke my heart. But I had to do what I thought was best for me and my family. Momma understood. After a week, the lady at the Health Department said that we needed to come in for a TB skin test as well. They just took a needle, pricked you just under the skin and squirted some TB under it. If you had a reaction to it, then that would mean that you have it. It was an easy test for us, but not so easy for Brianna, whom we had to hold down for them to administer the test. (I took her to Chucky Cheese to make up for it.) So anyway, we had to come back 3 days later to get the results. Our results are fine. At this time, TB is not showing up. My momma on the other hand is not so lucky. Though the doctor has gotten negative results from the 2 tests they have done, he believes that she does have TB based on her current health condition(low immune system, other problems that she is having that are consistent with TB patients), the xrays, and the catscan of her lungs. There are basically 2 types of TB. TB infection:You have only dormant TB germs in your body. This means the germs are sleeping, so they are not making you sick and cannot be passed to others. TB disease: You have active TB germs in your body that can make you and others around you very sick. At this time, it is unclear if my mom has the infection or the disease. It could take up to 12 weeks for them to know for sure, so they have put her on medicines to start clearing it up just in case. Either way, if we have come into CLOSE contact with her we have been exposed to the germ as well. We have to get another skin test done in 10 weeks, which means yet another visit to Chucky Cheese. Can't wait. In the meantime, we have been advised to continue living our lives. We don't have to isolate ourselves from momma. We can go to her house, she can come here. We are not contagious. So I don't have to worry about friends or co-workers, that sort of thing. Momma, she just can't come into contact with any new people in closed spaces and cough in their face basically. She is also going to have another catscan in February to see if the lesions on her lungs have improved. If not, she will be going to see a pulmonary specialist. So please continue to keep her in your thoughts and prayers.