Tyson Update

Here is the e-mail I got from Annie


We went in for some tests a week ago and it appears Tyson has some other major issues we need to deal with. As you know Tyson has a hole in his belly that bypasses the blockage in his urethra. This has made it so his bladder and urethra have not been used like normal, the size and muscle tone of both are significantly low.

The urologist is very concerned that if we don't get the bladder and urethra working properly that he may reject a new kidney because the bladder/urethra will not be able to process the urine and cause a backup...again.

So...the course of action is this...we go in for a day surgery on October 2nd to remove the blockage in the urethra and put in a catheter. Every two weeks we will put in a slightly larger catheter to get the urethra to grow. The hole he currently pees through will remain until the urethra is usable. The urologist will get on his transplant team so we can have the timing right for working on the bladder as well.

Please keep Tyson in your prayers...God has total control of this entire situation!
We love you all!
Love,
Pete, Annie & Tyson

Other news is that he has gained another couple pounds and is up to 20 pounds. Only 2 more to go! Great news on that!

Keep her family in your prayers.

Also I have a friend Jenna who is BFF Forever that went in for a biopsy. Pray for her that all is good and everything comes back clean. Also her husband is going to France for 6 weeks so pray for his wellbeing...and hers for when he is gone.

I go in for my thyroid test in the next 2 weeks. Just pray that it is gone. I just do not want to deal with medication. I cannot remember where I put my kids half the time much less having to take medication.

I will post Taylors first day of school later.

Peace

The Lord will give strength unto His people; the Lord will bless his people with peace. Psalm 29:11

Wow....give some of that. I need me some peace. So a lot of people are wondering why my blogs lately have been....off. I was looking for a devotional for military wives on the internet and could not find one. It drove me a little crazy because I found other things but not what I was looking for. So frustrated I closed the laptop. Little voice? Yes little voice. "Do it yourself." LOL!! No problem! I am so very spiritual and know exactly what I am talking about!! HAHAHAHA!! NOT!! Besides nobody will listen. "Why do you have to have people listen? Isn't this for you? If they do, great!...if not so what?" Cool...so that is why. More for me because I need a reason to sit up and put things together in my head. I am going to just pick a verse and figure out what it means to me in a military wife and mommy sort of way and blog it:) If you wanna read, awesome!! I hope you get something. If not...cool beans:) I will still throw in my blogs about life and family so no worries all my fans who stalk me:)

Okay so back to the verse. Oh man. Definitely do not feel that peace all the time do we? Or the strength for that matter BUT if you really look at what we as military wives are doing day by day then we kind of do. We have to send our husbands away for huge amounts of time, sometimes to places that they could not come home from, and go on with life like no big deal. That is a lot of strength and for me takes a lot of peace. If you really sit and think about it how do we not scream our way into insanity? So many woman have told me that they would die if they were away from their husbands for a week much less a year. I know my strength is through Him. Trying to love my husband without putting that wall up is probably one of the most difficult things to do. At the beginning of our marriage I would keep Doug at a distance so that if anything happened to him it would not hurt as bad. I do that with most people. As we have gone through this "military" journey together, the wall has slowly started coming down which is scaring me but at the same time giving me peace to trust that God will bless me with the strength to deal with what I have too.

On a different note this is helping with other things. I have been feeling pretty inadequate lately. Not with my husband or my children but with friends and other family. When you hear over and over again that you are just not good enough...not said in so many words by people but you get the jist....you start to believe it. I know just this morning I started putting up my mental wall with someone just because I was so tired of hearing how I did not compare. I started thinking...maybe it is time for me to back off and let this one ride out without me. Then I realized I was doing what so many had done to me. If they did not like what I was going through then they ditched out. These were more or less my "christian" friends too. I don't wanna do that. I know that I just need to pray for that strength for them and that peace for me. Army life is hard. We all have our trials and tribulations. The peace and strength He has given me is awesome though. I have more then I deserve and I honestly think that everyday. I do not under any circumstances deserve anything more then God sending me to hell. Cold hard truth people. Although for some reason He sent His son to die on the cross and gave me another chance. Then on top of that handed me some of the best blessings ever. My husband. My kids. A home and secure job. He loves me a lot more then I deserve. I still pray for these 2 things everyday. Especially being a military wife and mommy. The best part is He always delivers:)

B is for Bee

But as for me, I will look to the Lord... Micah 7:7

Hmmm....funny that this verse popped out at me today. It kind of ties in with yesterday. Love that:) Situation after situation I sit and think how on earth am I going to solve this problem. First mistake....thinking the first place to go is somewhere on earth...haha. The other day we got paid our first check with Doug being home and having 2 kids. Obviously it was a little different since you are paid a lot more when deployed and we never had to take care of both our kids on a non deployed check. Hmmm...how to pay all the bills and still have enough for other things like groceries and fun? My first thought was we just will not put any money back. We can go the next couple months without saving money since we saved a chunk when he was deployed. I felt pretty okay with that. Still wish we had a little more....maybe we will take the next couple of months and not tithe. As I thought this I felt the knot in my stomach tighten and avoided the feeling I got with the thought of not tithing. After a while I actually felt okay about this....we will pay it back...right? Man did that just make me feel like I was stealing from someone and justifying it by saying we would pay it back. So as I am putting clothes away later that night, again that voice in my head (people are going to start thinking I hear voices) again being the Holy Spirit saying "You do not trust me to take care of you? I have promised you over and over again that I would take care of you and how much I love you and your family and I have even proven time after time without flaw that I will take care of you." Aw man!! Why does He always sneak up on me like that!!

Why is it so hard to look to the Lord even though we have time after time had Him prove to us that that is the perfect answer? We have this resource that is perfect and we fail to use it as often as we should which is all the time! I am so very guilty of this. Each thing that I have placed in His hands has turned out way better then the things I have tried to do on my own. You would think I would learn...haha. Well that is the beauty of growing in Him is realizing how hard it was before we took His advice. He really does want to take us so much further then we could imagine and if we just keep our focus on Him it will work out for the best.

Footprints

"....why would you leave me in a time that I needed you the most? Jesus turned to me and said "When you only see one set of footprints in the sand, that is when I picked you up and carried you."

That is my all time favorite. As a military wife and mom you start out pretty excited to do what you do. You get to be the wife of a soildier (although when you start out you do not realize that being a wife to a PFC is not all the bells and whistles you had hoped it would be) even so, how many of us started off with the whole fantasy of having a man in uniform? I remember when I was little wishing I could find my prince and pretty much run away. A lot of you know that I was not in the best circumstances when I was young so running away was what I wanted to do. Go somewhere nobody knew me and start completely over. As it would have it God thought that was a pretty good idea:) Found my prince junior year of high school and never looked back. We moved half way across the country and here I am. The wife of a soilder! Life is just as glorious as I excpected. Wrong!

Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love my husband and my kids. I love the life that God has provided us. I truely believe we are ment to be a military family. There are days though that I want to throw my hands in the air and just give up. I want to throw myself on the floor and pound my fists and kick my feet and scream. I sometimes see kids do this and at times feel sad that the parents had let that happen but at the same time envy the kid. I wanna do that!

I believe God will not hand us anything we cannot deal with. I used to say that I knew I was strong enough to handle all of this. Then I had a long talk with a friend whom I always looked up too. She said something that stuck with me. That when we put willpower as our main focus of being able to overcome an addiction, it is just not going to work. It got me to thinking. She is right. Instead of sitting here thinking about how I can control myself on anything, why not run and put it on Jesus? There are so many things that I and many of my friends have tried to take control of and as soon as we give up and let Him have it we are at peace and whatever we were working for comes so much easier. Kind of like being a parent. There are things that my daughter does that I just sit and think, "If you would just listen to me you would not have hurt yourself! Don't you think I am looking out for your best interest?" Then that little voice (Holy Spirit) in the back of my head goes "Really? That is odd because I seem to remember us going through this EVERYDAY!!"

When my husband was deployed, and I know everybody can relate to this on some level, I had days that I just could not do it. I had days that I would curl up in my bed after putting the kids to sleep and just sob. I would beg Him to pick me up and carry me. I was too weak and too tired to do it anymore. I swear as soon as I let Him take control I could feel His arms around me. I could hear Him telling me that I was not alone and that He was not going to let me fall. Those were the nights I would fall asleep talking to Him. Makes me think....shouldn't we do this more often?

So for everybody that is going through something, seriously, just fall. Let Him catch you. Why not? You can't do it alone anyways. The more I roll this over in my mind the more I want to chase Him and let Him control my life. Just some thoughts to ponder:)

Back to normal...ish

So today is our first day back to normalish. Our family has no idea what normal is because our lives change so drastically every 6 months. Doug is back at work and we are back to whatever routine we can salvage. As of now Doug is leaving again in 5 months (which we are praying he gets out of) and so I figure no need in messing up our routine too much.

On a lighter note September starts tomorrow. September is my very favorite month. It starts getting cooler outside. The leaves start to turn. The smell of Fall:) I love fall. Another beautiful that will happen this year is Taylor starts preschool next week. Brecken will also go for Parents Day Out on mondays. So I have no kids on mondays from 9-12. YAY!! Taylor goes mondays, wednesdays and fridays.

We got back from our week in Myrtle Beach and it was awesome! This is the funnest time I had on a vacation. Doug and I got to take the king suite in the condo so that was really nice. I got a massive sinus infection so I was in a ton of pain but after a night in the ER and a shot in the butt (yeah I hate when they do that) I was on cloud 9. They sent me home with some percocet and sinus stuff so I was high pretty much the whole trip which kind of made it more fun:) I never had a sinus infection before and never realized how bad that hurts. Other than that the whole thing was just a ton of fun being in the pool and out on the beach for a week. Well here are a couple pics:)

Pray for Tyson Igel!!!

My best friend, Annie Igel (Forbes), in Colorado whom I love more than anything went through a very tough experience with her son. His urethra did not connect and they found cysts in his kidneys when she was about 12-14 weeks with him. This is a very rare thing and the survival rate is about 30%. They started out by having her go in every couple days a stuck a very large needle in her belly to drain his bladder. Then they decided to put a shunt in through his belly so it would just leak out. They had told her not to get her hopes up in the chances it would just fall out and they did not expect it to stay in for more then a couple weeks. She was 20 weeks when they did this. Only by the power of God it stayed in for 12 WEEKS!! She went in and found out it had fallen out at about 32 weeks which was great because she could have a c-section and he would have a better chance of making it. It went really well and he stayed in the hospital for I think about 4 weeks but was out before they thought he would be. They did a surgery on him and just put a little hole under his belly button for his urine to leak out of. They were going to fix it completely around his first birthday. The cysts were not growing which was awesome news. Worst case scenario they would start to fail and he would need a transplant. Well I will just put on here what Annie wrote all of her family.

Hello all you loved ones!

I'm extremely saddened to report that the worst case scenario is now a reality. Tyson's kidneys have begun failing and will require a kidney transplant. So far they are declining slowly and we praise God for that and ask that continues.

He has to be 22 pounds to be eligible and is only 18 right now. He will get an adult kidney and we are praying that either Pete or I are a match.

The way it works it that he has to be diagnosed with End Stage Renal Failure to begin the transplant testing process. For infants we have to establish a pattern of kidney failure which will allow the ESRF diagnosis before he gets to feeling too bad.

Best case scenario is that we get him up to the 22 pound mark at the same time we establish the pattern of failure so that we can get him a new kidney before he is feeling horrible.

Prayer Requests:
-Tyson would gain the weight rapidly
-The kidneys would continue SLOWLY
-We find a match quickly
-His body doesn't reject the new kidney

I will keep you all updated via email with what is happening. We love you all and are so grateful for your love and support.

Love Annie

This totally breaks my heart. Annie is also 10 weeks pregnant with their second which is not making this any easier. I am begging everybody to pray. My son is around her sons age and I just fall apart at just the thought.... She is the strongest woman I know and she is dealing with this as best as she can which is 10 times better then how I would. Please please pray for her little boy, her and her husband. Also for that new baby that is growing inside her. The chances of this happening to the new baby is next to none but they are still keeping an eye on this baby. She is my family and they are my children's God parents. I love her family so much and it would mean so much to all of us for your prayers!! Thank you!

This is Tyson with my kids. He is in the blue stripes:)

He is home!!!

...and he has been home for a week now but I have been too busy to write a blog about it. So it went great. Taylor asked if she could take him home when we went and picked him up and Brecken went right to him! That was awesome. He has the next 3 weeks off so that will be great for all of us!! Although I am just happy if he comes home at 5 every night. Now we are just hanging out and loving it. I will update more later.