When she was first airlifted to another hospital her potassium levels were 1.6 and as of last night she was around 2.8 after they shut off her supply via IV for a few hours. The doctors want her stable around 4 before she is out of danger. The good thing is that she was higher last night regardless of how she is getting the potassium! They did another test this morning and I am waiting to hear whether her potassium went up again or not. There is still NO understanding as to why this has happened.

Baby continues to do well in the womb! They have given the baby some sort of medication to help her lungs mature as much as possible in the case she comes early. Right now it looks like baby is going to stay put.

Quick word from my very groggy Mom (didn't start getting sleep until 4am!) that they are moving my sister from labor and delivery to Cardiac Care because her levels of potassium continues to drop. Baby is still in womb and doing fine. I guess for now they are not taking the baby thus the move from labor and delivery. The doctor's still have no understanding as to why my sister is in this condition. They remain concerned that she will have a heart attack thus the move to cardiac care.

The last I heard from my Mom was at 1am and the doctors still had no idea why my sister's levels of potassium was going so low. My sister was stable as of that time while they were giving her potassium and all the electrolyte good stuff. Baby was still in the womb and doing well. I hope to hear more soon! Thank you for keeping her and baby in your prayers.

Just talked with Mom on the phone... All I know right now is that she has been airlifted to a Boston hospital where she can receive better care for her situation. Currently my sister is in danger of a heart attack due to her potassium levels dropping dangerously low. (She is only 22 years old!!!) They have run all kinds of tests and my family is waiting word as to what might be going wrong. There is no understanding right now why her potassium levels have dropped so severely.

My sister is on her way to a hospital out of our state due to complications within her pregnancy. They may have to take the baby.... Alyssa is not due until December 14th. Please pray for Alyssa's safety as she is fainting and having complications. Also pray for baby Mariah that the Lord would protect her life if it be His will! No mother wants to experience this situation and you can imagine how my sister is feeling right now knowing they may have no choice but to take the baby. Pray for my Mom (out of all people she is the one traveling with my sister to the hospital!) that she will have perseverance and safety through this trial as she is still healing from the brain tumor surgery.

I'm so sorry my blog has been on such sad notes lately. Our family is really going through it...

Staples are out! Incision is healing just fine!

The episodes of numbness in her fingers are probably from the healing of when they had to go into an artery on her left hand. You should see the bruise down her arm! EEK! I can see how it's going to take some time for it to heal.

They are not sure what's up with the numbness around her left side of the mouth but they are speculating that it is part of the healing process in the area of where the tumor was and her body is telling her to rest and slow down. (Mom actually washed the kitchen floor on her first day alone!!!! Crazy girl!)

Pathology report: BENIGN!! ...as expected...

Thank you again for those who prayed for my Mom! She has shared several times with me how grateful she is to all those praying.

Mom has also been showered with lots of flowers. She has beautifully displayed them through out the house which certainly brings a ray of sunshine all around her.

As you can imagine we have been making sure Mom is comfortable and
getting everything she needs while she recovers from her surgery. She
seems to be doing much better emotionally. I really think she had a
reaction to coming of the highs of the meds and then seeing her
incision on half of her head was a bit scary at first. With that said,
she continues to need your prayers!

    1) Tuesday she is going in to have her staples removed. All 21 of
them! Yes, my crazy brother actually counted them. We still have not
heard anything from her pathology report. We are assuming this will be
Tuesday.

    2) Mom is now experiencing side effects of the surgery. PLEASE pray
that the Lord will protect her from any long term harm of the surgery. Currently
she is having moments of complete tingling numbness in three of her
fingers and her mouth on the left side. The concern is that she could
start having seizures as well.

    3) Mom is also suffering constant headaches. She has always had
migraines so now she suffers not only with them but now a constant,
pressure feeling since surgery.

The kids have all been visiting with their Memere twice now! They
brought her carnations (her favorite cut flower), cards they each made
and their movie CARS for her to watch while she recovers. It was so
cute that they wanted to bring her their favorite movie.

THANK YOU to everyone for all your wonderful comments on my last post! There were several questions so I thought I would answer them here so everyone could see my answers.

1) When are we leaving for our adoption?

Honestly, I don't know. Things have been held up for us due to the parliamentary elections held this Sunday in Ukraine and the director of the adoption center needing to be appointed again. The elections and appointment of the director go hand and hand. Our hope is that we are over and back before the New Year. Otherwise we must start redoing our paperwork. Be praying with us because this extra financial burden is NOT in our budget!! We are packing by faith that God knows our needs and will get us over there in the next couple of months.

2) How long will your adoption trip be?

Sorry, I don't know again! Ukraine adoption is very different than most. We could be over there as short as 15 days or as long as a full month. Pray with us ahead of time that when we get there we will find favor with those needed to waive many of the waiting days. There is a ten day waiting period after court before the child/ren can be released to you. Sometimes the judge will waive this! We have had it waived on our last two but the situations in Ukraine are very different now. There is also a long wait for passports to be given for the children with an average of 10 days. You cannot start the passport process until the court releases the paperwork that the children are yours. So worse case scenario is that we could be there for an extra 20 days just waiting in country. 

Life is very different over there with the heat only on at certain times as well as the hot water.  Remember that much of the way of Ukrainian life is still set up like it was under communism with living necessities still very much controlled by the government. I don't believe they even turn on the heat until October 15th the earliest. Even then certain times during the day or night you may not have heat or hot water at all. That is why I am preparing to make sure we have lots of warm layers to weather out the cold winter in Ukraine. On our last trip we ended up with no heat for an entire night in a hotel near our twins' orphanage. We literally slept all together in a tiny bed with hats on to stay warm. Good thing I really like children!

(For more info. on our trip please go here or see the link in my left hand module. You can subscribe to that blog as well. Just please try to not to use my name or other identifiable information in the comments. I will be deleting this link soon from here so go over soon if you want to keep up to speed with what is going on.)

3) Have you looked at goodwill or children's consignment shops for winter coats?

Yes! We went this weekend. My only problem is that the boys are not really in a size that is easy to find in those places but I'm still trying to hunt them down. I have one more place to look (Kimmy it's the one you suggested.) You can definitely find 0-4T at the consignment shops without a problem. I have noticed you can find bigger sizes more easily if you are looking for girls. Guess boys wear them out more?!

On this subject I have to share another blessing we received! Our cousins in MD sent us two boxes via mail on Friday! My girls have been showered with lots of jumpers!! The boys got a lot of shirts that fit them now and some pants they need to grow into as well. I went to our local consignment shop and found some great turtle necks to go under the girls' jumpers. Of course, for Ukraine I needed to get them some pants as well as long underwear and I found some at Target within our budget. We even found some warm footy pj's for a good price for all the kids this weekend! Perfect for cold nights in Ukraine with the layer of long underwear and socks underneath.

Our goal this week (other than helping my Mom out) was to get a lot of my packing list checked off for our adoption trip to Ukraine. Since I was unable to find most of the clothing items I needed for our family in town we decided to venture out to the city to the big mall an hour away. Big mistake! We just cannot afford prices at the mall to clothe our whole family. Do you know what kids winter jackets are going for at Sears or JCPenney's these days?! $80 for an almost five year old's jacket?! YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!!

After spending hours walking around, making the kids try on several coats for size and travel worthiness I  became really discouraged with the price tags. Finally, I told Eric that this was just not going to do as we couldn't afford it in our budget. Even if the kids did need the coats we were going to have to wait for something else to come along. Eric agreed and we started to walk out of the mall when several of us started to mention we were getting a bit hungry. Knowing the night was a bit discouraging we decided to go ahead and splurge on three pretzels for the six of us.

Here's the neat thing.... the pretzel guy over heard Eric and I quietly discussing that we needed to share three pretzels to save on finances and then he said to us, "How about this deal? I will give each of you a pretzel for free." Whaaaat? Did we hear him right? The guy counted how many were in our family,  bagged up six pretzels and gave them to us for free!!

You should have seen the kids' faces light up and heard the polite thank you's they shouted as the man handed each child a whole pretzel! Eric was amazed and even admitted it touched his heart. I was in shock but then shared with the kids and Eric, "How neat is it that God would bless us like this in the little things?! We were faithful to trust Him for our needs and didn't spend our money unwisely even though we really wanted those expensive coats. God knew just the encouragement our entire family needed tonight!" The kids immediately decided we should pray for many blessings from God for the man who graciously blessed us.

I know a soft pretzel blessing may seem petty to some reading this but to us, at that moment,  it was like receiving the whole world. God knows and cares about the smallest desires of your hearts even if it's only the size of a soft pretzel. It was a nice reminder that God is still in control of all things and you just never know who He is going to use to reveal Himself to you!

MOM IS HOME!!! She had no more of the "episodes" today and her blood pressure remained stabilized. So, they sent her home this evening. Mom is unable to push, pull or pick up anything over 8 lbs and cannot drive for about a month. Regardless, she is delighted to be finally home and now on the healing end. Mom is happily eating dinner snuggled on her very own couch tonight. I forgot to mention that she did get some sleep in the hospital last night. Thank you to those who prayed specifically for that!

Continue to pray for her emotions as the realization of all of this is suddenly hitting her hard. The entire outcome of all this was incredible and no doubt the Lord's hand was in it all!! I'm praying the current emotions are just a temporary thing after going through such a scary event. There is another hurdle of finding out the pathology report on Tuesday but the neurosurgeon was pretty confident that the tumor was benign. So, now we just need to keep Mom positive through her healing. This too shall pass...