Ok. So. I have an aunt who has an undiagnosed mysterious illness, which has been progressively getting worse. She even went to the Mayo clinic in Arizona to see if they could help. They thought she could have ALS, which is Lou Gehrig’s disease. Not at all a good diagnosis, but as we find out, it’s also sort of a “catch-all” diagnosis. Sometimes, when the doctors don’t know what’s wrong, they say, “Well, it could be ALS.” And, as of late, she is showing small signs of improvement, which someone with ALS never does. Anyway, the whole point of this is she keeps this blog for her journey back to health, along with my other aunt who is taking care of her. And when I go to read it and they haven’t updated it, I get disappointed because I like to hear what’s going on with them and the family in general. They don’t just post health issues; it’s also become the News Channel of our family. And I always wanted to comment “UPDATE!!!!” when it had been a little while but now that I’m keeping my own little blog, I think I’m more understanding about trying to find the time to “UPDATE!!!!”. I can’t do it at work, although I will post little short ones like the peanut butter thing since it takes about a nanosecond. And once I get home, there’s homework, dinner, showers, lunches, setting stuff out for the next day and finding quality time to be with the kids, then bedtime. Hello – where on this list does blog priority fall? It’s down there on the bottom with cleaning out the refrigerator. So, therefore, I am more sympathetic when it’s been a while since the Auntie’s fill in what’s going on.

And it’s Friday again! This week hasn’t been that bad so even though I always wish for Friday, it’s been a good week, with the exception of my little calamity at the grocery. I was down another 1.75 at weigh-in Wednesday, which makes a total of 31.85 pounds. My jeans are doing a major sag thing in the butt and these are the ones I had to squeeze into before! Ever notice when you lose weight your legs get shorter? Not really, but you pull your pants up over your belly (at least I do – can’t stand those hip hugger things) and when your belly is bigger, your pants go up higher on your ankle. Now that my belly is getting smaller, my jeans are getting longer. Kind of cool, but I thought my legs were really long until I realized it was just my belly was big. Dang.

Mom went to her doctor appointment on Wednesday. And this is what he said. There are three types of glands in the skin. Sweat, oil and wax glands. You sweat when you're hot, obviously, but the skin first secretes oil and wax to keep your skin from shriveling up (or frickling as Sam and Lizzie say) from being wet, as it would in the bathtub. In mom's case, one of the wax glands became clogged and over a period of time (he said a LONG period), the wax became trapped in there with nowhere to go. It eventually became unclogged but at that point the wax was too large to come out but bacteria could get in. And bacteria feeds off of the wax stuff so it became incredibly infected as the bacteria grew. That was the reason for the surgery and now they have to close it from the inside out to keep it from leaving another big hole on the inside susceptible to more infection. The actual term from the pathology report was: a soft tissue, abscess cavity, excision: "Squamous epithelium lined cyst consistent with epidermal inclusion cyst" and "Acute and chronic inflammation". Sections of the abscess cavity showed a cyst lined by squamous epithelium (the tissue that covers the external surface of the body and lines hollow structures) with keratinous debris (dead skin, hair cells). So - basically - she had a big infected abscess on her ass and they've fixed it. (I could've done a much better, simpler pathology report) She goes back next Wednesday and the doctor told her they’d talk about not having to do any more cleaning to it. They had told her previously she had to sit in a warm bath three times a day and then clean it with Hydrogen Peroxide. She has very sensitive skin and her dermatologist had advised against showering more than once every other day so she's developing a secondary problem with her skin since she's been in the tub so much. Now she doesn't have to do that anymore so let's hope we can get her skin back to normal, too. And he has given her the go ahead to be able to go camping as long as she keeps it clean and does the Hydrogen Peroxide thing daily. I told her that means she can't roll around naked in the dirt with Dad. The doctor also said this infection she had was a very serious thing and it could've been fatal! I'm glad she went in when she did.

I woke up this morning at about 4:30 to a strange noise that sounded like somebody sneezed but was trying to cover their mouth, and it came from the hallway. Robbie is already up at this time, so I thought it was him until I noticed he was on the front porch. I thought I was going crazy so I just about went back to bed when I thought I’d check on Lizzie. Lo and behold - she wasn’t in her bed and I couldn’t find her anywhere. She wasn’t downstairs with Sam, she wasn’t in the garage, she wasn’t on the front porch with Robbie and I, once again, started to panic. My first thought was of that little girl who’d been taken in the middle of the night from her bed and her parents never heard from her again. Once again – Robbie to the rescue. She had gotten up to get a drink of water and sneezed in the hallway and heard me get up, thought I would be mad at her and went downstairs in Sams room and hid in the closet. Then seeing how upset I was, she started bawling, I started bawling and everything turned out ok. She took off in the not too distant past while we were camping at the lot and by the time we found her, we had initiated our own sort of “CODE ADAM” at the valley. She decided to go for a walk and then got lost and ended up way on the other side of the valley by lake 2. I have never in my life been as scared as I was that day. Except maybe the night Sam had his major asthma/allergy attack and I couldn’t get him to breathe. Children do this to us. I know now why my mother is silver. I think I earned 40 silver strands, at least, this morning. I also know why animals eat their young.

Well, goodbye, blog. I will update as I can, but remember, my refrigerator is really messy, too, and I'm still working on that priority list.