Barons Sep 21st

Ruby’s Feet

Ruby’s feet are hurting just as much or more than ever so we’ve been trying to figure out what is really going on with her. We’ve been to several doctors over the last few months and we are narrowing down the problem.

One doctor officially diagnosed her with ankle hypermobility but he isn’t the right doctor to diagnose her beyond that. It’s possible to go to a rheumatologist and see if she qualifies for the diagnosis somewhere on the spectrum of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome but we’ve been told there isn’t much point because there is basically nothing that diagnosis can do since there is no cure.

On a basic level, it just means she has really flexible joints, which most people call double-jointed. Many people who have some hypermobile joints don’t have any other complications but some people can have anywhere from mild to severe symptoms. It is a genetic thing that causes problems with her collagen.

Ruby’s ankles can move from side to sideway way more than is normal and it makes her twist her ankles frequently and bend her feet in ways normal people can’t do. She also has hypermobile knees and fingers, but she’s not flexible in ways other people with double joints are, like put her palms flat on the floor while standing or do cool tricks.

Some other complications she has that may be attributed to this problem are sensitive skin, can’t sleep well, always tired, vertigo, dairy and soy food sensitivity and other digestive issues, and vomiting if she eats food her body doesn’t like or too much food at once.

There isn’t a cure and she will have it the rest of her life but there a few things you can do to help with the symptoms and they said it’s possible her feet will get better as she gets older since your ligaments naturally get more stiff with age.

For now, some things we are working on is waiting for two months to get into a specialized physical therapist to see if that helps. If it does, that’s great. If not, we went to a doctor who said he can do a new procedure that has a really high chance of helping her ankles long-term but it costs like $2,000 and isn’t covered by insurance so we’re going to try the PT and new foot braces that are supposed to help keep her ankles from moving.

Megan’s Mission Call

Megan got her mission call since my last update. She’s going to the Atlanta, Georgia north mission and starts home MTC on Nov. 20th, goes to the “real” MTC about 1.5 weeks later and leaves for Georgia on Dec. 14th. It looks like most of the mission is north of Atlanta and will be quite rural. It is supposed to be quite hot and humid with lots of bugs.

We’ve had fun buying a lot of new clothes and working on other things like insurance and a lot of paperwork. There are still quite a few non-clothes items we need to buy (like suitcases) and a lot of things to figure out but we’re excited for her!

Random

I’ve been really busy with my plant business and officially changed the name of it to Hoya Treasures and I’m going to focus on just hoyas, which are also known as wax plants. I like hoyas because their care matches well with how I take care of plants, the market is a lot more stable than other types of houseplants, they are much smaller than most other houseplants so I can fit a lot more plants in the same amount of space, there are like 3,000 types of them so even though I’m specializing there are still plenty to choose from, and probably the most important reason is that’s what I seem to sell the most of, especially on Etsy.

Last month I just about doubled my sales record for the month, partly because I clearanced out a lot of non-hoyas. This month seems to be more normal. Usually the spring and fall are the best times of the year to ship plants so a lot of people buy them, but it also means I have more competition so it kind of evens out.

The beginning of school was a little different this year because Megan and Tyler don’t have school and Kayla and Ruby both started at new schools. This is Kayla’s first year in high school and Ruby’s first year in jr. high.

It took us a while to work out their schedules but Kayla is doing 9th grade math and struggles with it, but with help from friends and teachers she is at least understanding part of it and doing the homework. This past year of doing Kumon really helped with some of the basics that really got in the way last year when she was trying to do 9th grade math.

She’s still doing Kumon and goes through it relatively fast so she’s hoping to catch up sooner than later. She is also taking what is basically a homework class, which has been really helpful for her because it’s a whole class period she can go in that’s quiet and she can focus on getting all or most of her homework done and get help from the teacher.

It’s been nice for her to not have much homework and have one less class to get homework in. Her favorite class is probably choir and she is still taking voice lessons and singing every chance she can get.

Ruby is really bored in math and always gets her work done really quickly but she didn’t qualify for the advanced math class (she said she did bad on the test because she was really tired that day). She also has a lot of electives so she is doing intermediate orchestra, choir, and drama and enjoying them.

We were able to get her out of having to take PE because of her feet, so that’s a big relief for her. She doesn’t have very much homework either.

We got her a new full-size violin and it sounds really good and she has a new-found love of playing it. She often plays it at orchestra, during flex (basically recess), and then practices again at home until her fingers are too sore to play anymore.

She really likes her orchestra teacher and the freedom to practice whatever she wants and not the boring songs her teacher would have her practice. She’s happy with just playing for fun and doesn’t feel like she needs to be super great at it so we’re not doing private lessons for her for now.