OH man - at the risk of driving everyone away from this blog - I will continue to be honest about our plight.  Don took both boys last night so I could get some sleep.  Yesterday got rather scary - I couldn't remember if I'd given Cody his meds - I misplaced everything - I couldn't remember who I was talking to on the phone (in mid-sentence.)  I had a migraine that wouldn't go away.  So from 11pm (when Cody finally went to sleep) till 5am (when Don got up for work) I did get sound sleep.  But I awoke to take both boys at 5 to discover they both have raging colds.  So since 5, I've been wiping snotty noses.  Poor things.  Cody did sleep thru the night (well, from 11p-5a without getting "up."  So that's at least 6 hours of (restless) sleep he got.  Better than nothing! 

Now we contend with his cold - which usually sends him to the E.R.  I was worried he'd catch something after this latest "metabolic crisis" that seemed to drain all his energy.  Situations like that often leave these mito kids vulnerable to catching anything that comes in their path.  Then when they catch a cold, their energy reserves are already low - which can lead to another spiral down.

So (new prayer request - are you tired of them yet?) please pray that Cody get thru this cold and that he can rebound.  The lack of sleep doesn't help.  His colds almost always turn into ear infections which are pretty rough with him.  And of course stuffy noses and coughing don't help the sleep situation. 

So we battle on.  And just when I'm about to lose hope, I get an email like this from a friend who lives a few hours away:

"I would love you to find stuff for me to do that would make a difference in your life!  Maybe a Thursday, Friday sometime, so you have me when you don't have Don, seems like that would work best.  Again, only if it would help, sometimes having an extra person sounds good but turns out to be more of a hassle then it's worth...think about it and then let me know.  This isn't something that I have to do in the next week, this is a lifetime offer Shawna, I'm not kidding, whenever it might work for you guys."

It continues to stun me - the way people step into our lives and serve us.  I SO wish we didn't need it!  Her words, "this is a lifetime offer, shawna" are so genuine and so poignant.  It makes me tear up as I write this.  And this offer is coming from a former single mom - who works full time - and has a completely full plate of her own.  But her son had leukemia years ago - and she knows too well what this road is like. 

So thank you, Tina.  And Kim, Mili, Kerry, Jan, and all the other people in our lives who are stepping in and standing shoulder to shoulder through this with us.  You are making it impossible to be mad, to give up hope, to give up, period.  thank you.

Shawna