Hi...

29 January 2011

Well here goes....
 a long overdue blog post.
Be kind...
 I'm very out of practice...
 Ive been on holidays....
my brain has turned to mush...
or perhaps its always mush and Ive just been blissfully unaware.

So... 
We are just home from here.....

( More on that a little later.....)
New Zealand is THE most beautiful place....and we had such a wonderful holiday with dearest Qld mates...of course a holiday of this magnitude deserves an entire blog post all of its own.

However.....we all felt a little guilty at times... because while we were away enjoying ourselves on holidays...
Other families were having the toughest time of their lives....with the floods.
We were glued to every snippet of Aussie news....
and felt so sad watching the updates.
To arrive home and hear that some of my dear friends have been affected so badly makes it even harder to blog about my holiday.

So in other notable Winen news.....

Mitch had a birthday this week....
He turned 20 on the day after we arrived home....
We celebrated with the usual family dinner...
and the usual Chocolate pudding with candles.

In other Mitch news..... finally....after months and months of tests.... trials of tablets.... stress and worry....he was diagnosed ...early in January with Crohns disease.
We had mixed feelings about the diagnosis.... obviously we were sad to hear that...and well aware of the long road ahead.... but on the other hand...we were so damn relieved to finally have an answer....and to have someone taking it seriously.
It had been a very traumatic 6 months in the lead up to the diagnosis....watching him ....so unwell.... losing so much weight (20+ kilos in 5 months)...and all the time feeling fobbed off .
Because he was a fit 19 year old who tends to underplay the seriousness of the symptoms....
 it was easy for the Drs to dismiss it initially.

Thankfully we are now in the treatment stage.....
He had seen some improvement with the steroids ('roids' as he calls them) which was a relief...
but as he has reduced his dosage he had deteriorated again....
We are back to the Dr next week.... eager to hear what to do next.


While we were away we missed out little girls like crazy.... 
and I were so relieved that they hadn't forgotten us...
Bella is talking amazingly well...
and
Brooke is crawling ....proper crawling...with a little commando style thrown in....
and has started talking.....her little voice.. "Dad...dad...dad...dad.."

The garden has grown..... well at least the weeds have....
We need some serious gardening time penciled in.

The locusts are back..... yesterday our yard was crawling with them.... little suckers.... munching everything in sight.....pity they wouldn't just eat the weeds.

Mitch had a lovely time in Melbourne with Meg after Christmas..... then went back to work.
Brent, Alex, Briony, Jarrad and the girls all holidayed back in Bordertown for a week after Christmas... then Brent went back to work......and Briony headed off on holidays with us.

Well thats it for now....
Holiday post to follow soon.....
(Donna.... I hope you enjoyed reading this with your coffee this morning...lol)

5 comments

  1. Mardi I always love reading your blog with my morning coffee....so sad to hear about friends involved with the flood waters - it is so devastating - good to hear on the return to home news - talk soon...xxxx

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  2. Mardi your holiday sounds wonderful... one place I would love to visit too...
    Watching what has been happening with the floods has been heart wrenching... so sorry to hear some of your friends were affected...
    And happy that Mitch has a diagnosis... my son had a similar experience and it was so hard to see him so unwell and not know why... glad that the treatment is helping :)))

    Jenny x

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  3. YAY Welcome home Mardi, I missed you while you were away. I am SO glad you had a good time away. I look forward to hearing all about it. I hope that Mitch can continue on a road to recovery now that he finally has some answers. What a journey to get here though!!!
    Welcome home
    xx Janelle

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  4. So lovely to see you back, I have missed your lovely posts. We really need to make a date to catch up again!

    I am glad that Mitch now has a diagnosis, although it is not nice to deal with, at least he knows what is wrong and can manager it. My niece was dx at Mitch's age and she is so well now it is amazing. She is very strict with her diet and decided to see how she went without the strong meds. She hasn't really had a bad flare up since but watches everything she eats and drinks. It was hard at first but she manages really well. I hope that Mitch will be the same.

    Can't wait to hear all about your holiday :-)

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  5. Anonymous4:31 pm

    Oh so sorry to read about Mitch ...
    and affected friends - we have some too.
    Missing you Miss M!

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