Trips to AZ!

Wow, it's been over a month since I last posted, and I'm just sitting here not even knowing where to begin! Let's see... I'm going to have to go get my planner, because I DO write everything down in it.... Because I am using this blog somewhat as our family journal, I may get a little long-winded, so don't feel like you have to read it all, you can just skip down to the pictures if you want!

Kaybri has been the focus of much attention this past month. She ended the month of July having 13 seizures, and she has had a total of 10 seizures this month. A year ago, she was only having maybe one or two a month, so of course we are wondering what is going on with her and why haven't the doctors figured something out yet. We have tried different medicines, done various tests, and still...nothing. So, we decided to take Kaybri to a different kind of doctor in Tucson, AZ. Justin's family and my grandparents have gone to this man (Dr. Deal) for years, and they all think he is amazing, so we decided to give it a shot. Justin flew down with Kaybri the beginning of August. They were able to see all of my family and also a couple of his siblings while in AZ. They all had so much fun together, and Justin came back to Utah even more homesick for Arizona!! The appointment with Dr. Deal went pretty well from what Justin told me. He did a lot of tests on Kaybri, and he started her on some herbal supplements that should help her seizures over time.

The Sunday after they came home (Aug. 11th), we decided to have a big family/friend fast for Kaybri. Thank you to everyone who participated with us. We are so grateful for all of your love and support. It was an incredible experience for our family and an answer to so many of our prayers. I am also much more at peace with how things are working out for us. We feel that a lot of Kaybri's seizures are being caused by an arachoid cyst located between her brain and skull. It was first discovered Jan. 2006, and her most recent MRI (in June 2007) showed that it has grown quite a bit. At that point, doctors still didn't want to do anything for another 6-12 months. However, because Kaybri has been having more seizures, the neurosurgeon moved the MRI date up to Sept. 13th. We are so excited and hope that we can get it taken care of.

We had another opportunity to go down to Arizona on the 17th with Justin's parents, so the kids and I drove down with them. Lamar, Justin's brother, was blessing their new little baby that weekend, so we got to see the entire Echols' family for a little while. My entire family also drove to Mesa to see us. It was such a quick weekend, but we had an awesome time visiting everyone. We miss everyone so much and wish we lived a lot closer!!! One of the main reasons we went down to AZ was to take Kaybri to Dr. Deal for a follow-up visit. The appointment went incredibily well. To sum it all up, he also believes the cyst is causing her seizures and recommended having the surgery done to remove it. We were pretty surprised he would recommend this because he is more of the holistic mindset. But this is what we thought needed to be done as well, so now we just have to wait and see what the doctors here at Primary Children's say.