Moving and MRIs

Cee’s rheumatologist advised that she get an MRI every six months in order to monitor the activity in her hips.

(In case you missed her last MRI results from this spring, here’s the gist.)

l can’t remember if that makes Wednesday her fifth or sixth MRI.  David called from the hospital at about the time I figured they would be wrapping up.  He sounded tired, and said that she had just gone in.  Cee was disappointed that there wasn’t an option to watch a movie, as there had been in the past, just music, and the wait was longer than expected.  David said the only children’s option for music was Disney songs.  In Spanish.  While Cee loves her some Disney songs, I could imagine her irritation at the forced Spanish lesson.  (Afterwards Cee confirmed that there were actually songs in English, so it wasn’t quite as annoying for her as we initially thought.)

This morning the nurse called with the results.  She read right from the radiologist’s notes.

 

Let’s step back a minute before the results.  I’m not sure what I was expecting.  Cee has been moving and playing.  She hardly complains of pain.  For her birthday she got a recumbent bike, and she’s spent a lot of time outside zooming around the driveway.  She’s showed us how she can jump.  JUMP.  Like a person.  She’s proud of being able to move in ways that were impossible last year.

I guess I do know what I was expecting.  Multiple expert people have sworn up and down to me that cartilage doesn’t regrow.  Regardless of how much collagen we sneak into food, regardless of how much homemade bone broth we force her to eat.  Cartilage doesn’t regrow.  But Cee’s symptoms have quieted down so much.  The tiniest part of me thought maybe we had our miracle.  That the MRI would show that the hip replacement wasn’t going to be necessary.

On Sunday another family from our homeschool co-op offered us a motorized scooter, a nice one, that they had acquired through some turn of events.  And I refused it.  I told them that I appreciated that they thought of us, but right now things are going well, and someone else might get good use out of it today.  In the back of my mind, I held onto a shred of hope that we wouldn’t ever be in need of something like a motorized scooter again.

So that’s where I was when the nurse called with the results.

The poor nurse tried to sound perky while she read from the report.  She said that there hadn’t been any change in the left hip, which wasn’t too surprising, since the cartilage was already pretty much gone from there.  Then she said that the right hip showed progressive degeneration from the last MRI images.

Not only did things *not* get magically better, they’re actually getting worse.

Thank God Cee’s pain is not reflective of what’s happening inside.  Maybe that’s our miracle.  It’s a miracle that she’s not completely wheelchair bound.  That is a miracle.  It’s a miracle that bone-on-bone hasn’t translated into her becoming immobile.

 

As I hung up the phone, it finally dawned on me why I’m spinning my wheels with packing (aside from the fact that four needy kids and pregnancy naps eat up lots of my packing time).   Instead of packing, I’m spending time looking at artwork I’ll never buy, trying to figure out if it will work in the new house.

Would this work in the living room?

Or is this one a better fit?

 

 

 

(In case you didn’t notice:  They’re basically the same d-a-m-n picture.)

This is the longest David has lived in a house.  Back when we moved in, I argued that we would live here for-eva.  I couldn’t imagine leaving.  He pragmatically said we’d probably outgrow it (hard to image that with the one baby we moved in with!).  He predicted we’d be here for ten years before needing to move.

It’s funny then, that I was the driving force behind house-hunting for something handicap accessible.  It’s funny that he’s having a hard time letting go of the house.  I jokingly reminded him about how our attitudes flipped since moving in, but he was serious in his response.  “We’re not moving on our terms.”

And that’s true.  We’re moving because we *have* to.  Because there aren’t a lot of other options.  Because the reality is that it’s more likely than not that we will need something like a motorized scooter and wide doorways.

We trust it will work out for the best.  The house is beautiful and across the street from a playground.  A playground.  So we cross our fingers and hope we’ll be able to afford it. That we’ll be able to feel at home there, even with the emotional baggage of why we’re moving.

I want so much for the move to go smoothly.  I want for us to be happy in the new place.  I want walking in the door not to be a constant reminder of why we’re moving.  So I’ve wasted a bunch of time looking at ways to make us happy there.  Decoration happy.  Because that’s something I can control.

I can’t control what the MRI report says.  I can’t control the disease quietly eating away at Cee while everything seems fine.  I can control my new mantle so it looks like Joanna Gaines is my BFF.

Picture this as a mantle instead of a table.  Swoon.

 

 

So excited to have a mantle.  And a kitchen with an island.  And a covered porch so Cee can read outside in the rain.  There are a million reasons why the new house will be a great fit for us.  Hopefully that’s enough to move the spotlight off of why we’re moving in the first place.

Soon the new house will be home.  It will be the home we bring our new baby to in April.  It will be the place where Bea learns to ride a bike and Moe learns to read.  It will probably be the place where Cee recovers after her hip replacement surgery several years down the road, but in the mean time we’ll work on storing up lots of happy and funny memories and maybe an impressionist floral painting, too.