Check the batteries in your smoke detectors!

My mom called me yesterday while I was on my way home from work. She had a CT scan on Tuesday and got the results yesterday. Her current round of chemotherapy was shrinking her cancer but causing her lymph nodes to swell & press on her bronchial tubes. That is why she was having such a hard time breathing and was so short of breath all the time. She was supposed to get another round of chemo yesterday, but in light of the scan results they decided to skip it. She will take a break for a few weeks and she is scheduled to start radiation therapy in September. Hopefully that will work well for her. It will be three weeks of treatment, five days a week.

Eric has been switched over to his new seizure medication, Lamotrigine (a generic form of Lamictal), for a while now & seems to be doing okay with it. There are some side effects, but it is just something we will have to learn to deal with. #1 I think the meds are effecting his concentration. He jokingly calls it CRS syndrome (Can't Remember Sh*t). And #2 I think it is effecting his mood. He doesn't seem to realize it, but he has very little patience anymore & is so quick to lose his temper. He isn't a violent sort of guy, thank goodness, but he gets really frustrated with Tony when he is whiny. And of course Eric's reaction only exacerbates the problem rather than making it better.

June 1st Eric started working later hours. He works from 1:00 - 9:30 P.M. This allows us to save on babysitting costs. But we sacrifice time together. Eric has the kids to himself in the morning from 7:30-12:30, the sitter has them from 12:30-5:30, and I have them to myself from 5:30-10:00. Usually I try to get the kids in bed around 8:00 or 8:30. Well, last night I put Adrienne to bed & left Tony watching cartoons in my bedroom while I locked the doors & stuff downstairs. I wasn't down there for more than 5 minutes & when I opened the door to go back upstairs the entire upstairs was filled with smoke. In that short amount of time, Tony had unplugged my air conditioner, plugged in the space heater, turned it on and tipped it over onto the carpet. The carpet and padding was melted all the way through to the bare floor and the smoke detectors never went off. Thank The Lord I wasn't downstairs any longer than I was or the floor probably would have caught fire. And my babies were both up there! I rushed upstairs to determine the source of the smoke and saw the heater on the floor. I immediately unplugged it and sat it upright. I didn't see flames, but I knew I had to get the kids out of the smoke so I yelled at Tony to get downstairs (which of course made him freeze in his tracks and start to bawl) and I scooped up Adrienne out of her crib. I rushed all of us outside and onto the lawn and called Eric at work. I made him stay on the phone with me while I went back inside to assess the damage. The carpeting and the heater are ruined, but thankfully that is all. The carpet & floor never actually caught fire and the smoke cleared out in a couple of hours by opening windows and turning on fans. But the whole experience was absolutely terrifying! I'm always so careful about that space heater. I never use it when we are asleep. I never leave it running when we leave the house. I'm always right in the room to keep an eye on it if we are using it. Likewise, I always keep our outlets that are not in use covered with those plastic protector things. I just never dreamed that Tony would unplug something else and plug in that space heater! And I definitely urge everyone to check their smoke detectors regularly. That is one mistake I won't make again. I don't know if the batteries are dead or if I don't have it positioned in a good place or what, but I cannot believe it didn't go off with the amount of smoke that had accumulated. I think I'm going to get all new ones & get the ones that are connected together so that if one goes off, they all go off. It really was beyond terrifying. It was right up there with having to call 911 for Eric when he had his first seizure.