I take another break from quilting to ask for prayers for my husband’s family as they deal with the loss of my husband’s aunt. May her soul burst with love as she enjoys her new heavenly home…and looks down upon all of us, an angel on our shoulders.
Category Archives: Family History
Charity Quilting: Quilts for Kids
More than two years ago, I requested quilt fabric for a quilt from QuiltForKids.org organization. Unfortunately, it arrived near the time I was diagnosed wtih MS, so the kit sat in my to-do pile for a couple of years. Of the quilts I was able to make while dealing with the MS and the symptoms, the charity quilt was not a top priority in my life.
Enter my foster mother in January this year, who demanded I keep her in stitches (literally) so she didn’t get bored while wintering with us. Unfortunately, the quilt she made with the fabric the QuiltForKids.org sent for us met a sad demise. My foster mother is new to domestic machine quilting and she didn’t pin her backing well enough to the front of the quilt and ended up with a huge “bubble” (fold) on the back of her quilt. Not to mention that our lab claimed it as her own even before it was quilted, regardless of whether is was made for her or not!
Therefore, I gave my FM one of my original precut quilt kits and that is what she made for us to send to QuiltForKids.org!
My foster mother with the quilt she made.
My foster mother, showing the back of the quilt.
The label that QuiltForKids.org sent to us for our quilt.
My foster mother wanted me to make sure to take, and show, a photo of the different patterns and thread colors she used.
She always has fun with the backs of her quilts!
The finished quilt – an original design by TK Harrison of BOMquilts.com and QuiltTherapy.com
QuiltForKids.org appears to be a very legitimate charity organization. No information comes up for them at BBB.org (Better Business Bureau), which usually means there are no complaints about the organization and they are not a member of the BBB.
Here is a couple of images from their website:
More Prayer & Comfort Shawls
Last year, a (then) virtual friend I’d met on Facebook (FB) lost a cousin unexpectedly. Another virtual friend and I said we’d make prayer shawls for the widow, her aunt and uncle and a quilt for the little boy he left behind.
Unfortunately, my MS has been difficult for me to deal with for the past year – hence, I’m a year late (blush) in getting these prayer shawls completed. I actually made them while I was in Iowa with my FM last summer but could NOT get the motivation to quilt them! I got to meet Kim and take the shawl tops to her but said I’d get them back to her once they were quilted and ready to go.
When my FM came in January, she warned me that she was not bringing any of her own projects down and that I had better have enough things for her to do to keep her busy. Of course, once I gave her my to-do list, my husband piped up that I was obviously setting up a sweat shop. 🙂
My FM hand-quilted the two shawls, then I put the binding on them and she whip-stitched the back of the binding – then I made the tags and she blind-stitched them to the backs of the shawls!
Because of the religious preference of the recipients, we called these comfort shawls instead of prayer shawls. They were designed using three Jacob’s Ladder quilt blocks and two Garden of Eden quilt blocks, though the blocks on my shawls are a larger size than the blocks from the website indicated.
It looks like I’d better get a few more of them ready so the next intended recipient doesn’t have to wait a year on me getting more made!
We Interrupt This Quilt Blog for a More Personal Look at Multiple Sclerosis
I try to keep this blog about quilting or my kids, but there are days (weeks?) when my multiple sclerosis (MS) issues need to be written down…for a reference for myself and as a legacy for my children.
Sometimes life just stinks and you have to make the best of it.
Two years ago, the neurologist I was referred to told me I was too old to be diagnosed with MS and she made me get another brain MRI before she believed it. Once she saw that report, she not only could see the three lesions I already had but a fourth one was demyelinating, too. At that point, she begrudgingly agreed that I had MS, though I did not have some of the common symptoms so she still wasn’t 100% satisfied. And part of that, admittedly, was that there is a vascular disease on my paternal side of the family that causes brain and heart aneurysms – it has already killed my dad and my brother, so although she was agreeing with the MS diagnosis, she still kept me mostly in the dark about MS because of this genetic disease.
She had home health come out and give me a high dose of steroid infusions over a three-day course. That helped the swelling in my brain enough that I wasn’t so off-balance and could talk better (where the third lesion was located was in the left area of my brain that controls everything on the right side) and could at least eat without choking.
And now we come to this year…the year that MS has reared its ugly head. And if that neurologist didn’t think I had MS before, she definitely believes it now. I have had horrid burning in the nerves in my legs and feet. It feels like I’m walking on a bed of coals – except my foot is not hot, it’s the nerves inside that are burning up. And the muscle spasms in my feet and legs are nearly constant. They had slowed down for a while when I started the new injection medication, but they are back with full force now. I obviously notice them happening more when I am on my feet a lot during the day. And the dizziness I spoke of before is happening a number of times during the day. I could just be laying in bed and the little roller coaster in my head starts up and all I can do is try to focus on something (like reading my Nook) and it will eventually go away.
But this past Monday was a day I never want to have again. I never want my kids to see me like that again. I never want my husband to have to care for me like that again. Monday is gone, I pray I never have another Monday like that. EVER.
I was fine in the morning on Monday, as fine as I usually am, with some hip pain. I had an MRI appointment in San Antonio (80 miles one way) and my husband and I went to that and came home. Hence, I was later that usual in taking my afternoon meds…but, that’s not been a problem in the past. When I got up from nap is when the nightmare started. I sat up and not only was the roller coaster in my head spinning, but the entire ROOM was spinning! I went to the bathroom, thinking it was just a minor issue and that it would go away like the usual dizziness I live with. I then went outside to visit with my foster mother. When I got up to come back into the house, I realized I couldn’t walk – the spinning of the room was such that my brain was unable to tell my feet to move. I saw our youngest daughter and asked her to help me across the room to our bedroom. She did fine but once I got to the bedroom door, I was once again paralyzed and these darned feet wouldn’t go forward anymore. My husband came and took over for our daughter and was able to keep me upright and aimed at the bed. Unfortunately, that youngest daughter was not the best choice to help her mommy – she was terribly traumatized by the whole event and it took another hour before she quit crying and asking if I would be okay or if I was dieing. <gulp>
I couldn’t open my eyes. I couldn’t sit down because my hip hurt so bad. My husband got me into a prone position and then went and talked to the kids about what they had just witnessed.
After the kids ate dinner, hubby came into our room and it was shot night so he got the shot ready and gave it to me, then brought me my nighttime medicine to take. He then had to take my clothes off of me and put my pajamas on – that was how paralized I was from the MS. He got me laying down and covered me up and I was done for the night.
Well, not quite done – I had to get up in the night to use the bathroom, but instead of taking the usual right turn after going past our bed, for some idiotic reason I turned left…and ran smack dab into the chair that we put between our bedroom and the living room so the dog won’t go into the living room and sleep on the sofa! Once I hit that chair, I knew I was going down, I just didn’t know which part of me would hit first. I guess my head was the best choice (I really had no choice because the room was still spinning) and I landed on my forehead. Good thing as this head of mine is pretty hard and I didn’t even get a rug burn! Once I righted the chair and woke my husband up with my gymnastics, I remembered the way to the bathroom and went there. When I came out, hubby turned on his bedside lamp so I could see to get to my side of the bed.
When I woke up Tuesday morning, the world seemed right. No lasting effects of the dizziness I had endured the day before, though now both of my hips hurt. We think it’s because we need to get a couple more tubes for our soft-sided waterbed….accompanied by the fact that when I take my medication at night, I do not move from the position I lay down in.
That’s an awful day in MS-land. We continue to pray for days that are way better than last Monday!
Schedules Schmedules
We are having a whopping good time here – come and join us! 🙂 (NOT)
Next week is spring break for our kiddos. You’d think that should be a week for a little rest and relaxation and spending time with the kids? NOT gonna happen with four teenagers in the house!!! One day, I have to go get an MRI. Next day, DD#3 has to get a sports physical; that night, we’ll be celebrating her birthday along with my foster mother’s birthday. Next day all four kids go to the dentist for check-ups. Next day I have to take my foster mother to town for a chiropractic appointment. Then, the kids and Grandma have ganged up on my husband to take them on a long weekend to the coast (thankfully, I’ll spend the time they’re gone taking care of the pets and fowl at home alone). In between all of that, I need to make not one but three special birthday dinners (one on their actual birthdays and one for the day they’ve chosen to celebrate their birthdays), try to remain calm so I can function and still take time to enjoy the kids on their break.
We also have a special project that’s been started and hubster has to do the lion’s share of the work on getting that set up. Unfortunately for him, he’s also our driver, so he has to do double time instead of me sharing the loads with him.
And then comes scheduling for DD#1’s high school graduation, the award’s ceremonies she has to attend, the campus tours, the continuous scholarship forms and the never-ending out-of-pocket expenses necessary for her graduation. Her graduation isn’t until May but it’s already been a LONG semester with something every week for us to deal with for her impending graduation – and her parents trying to keep her grounded enough to keep her grades up.
One-Act Play (OAP) is also taking up time for DD#1 and DD#2. They have attended three festivals now and that’s the end of those, but competition is the third week of March (and they won’t have practices over spring break) so their director has added yet another evening to their normal practice schedule. And DD#2 is in tennis, so she practices up to four nights a week and usually ends up staying at school for OAP practices, without a break in-between times.
And then summer schedules have been discussed for a couple of months. Who wants to go to camp? What camps do they want to go to? Who is working this summer? Who is volunteering this summer? On and on and on. I think the only thing that’s been “for sure” determined is Boy Scout summer camp for my husband and son. Everything else is still being discussed, with dates penciled in on the calendar.
Our kids get as much of us as we can give them. I would hope that most parents do the same for their kids, so you may already be in the same situation that we’re in. Many mention the fact that once they leave home, we will miss all this fun. At this point, that fun is no fun for my husband and I am unable to help much because of my MS.
We take each day as it comes and keep adding or subtracting from our yearly calendar. Is anyone else dealing with so many schedules, conflicts and time lost trying to schedule their days and weeks on the telephone?