wow, what a great update! i am so glad he is able to see that God can work thru doctors to cure him, as well as helping him do as well (or even better!) as he can in the meantime. hoping wednesday goes really well! blessings, ann

we all really enjoyed it. what is significant is how it has stuck with us, and become part of our daily replies to one another. that is the mark of a great story..... ann

i try really hard to be grateful for who people are rather than who i wish they were. i have the most trouble applying that to my parents, and with dh's parents.. my folks are in toronto and niagara region. my dad visits with his wife once every two years, for three days. he takes them to the bookstore and they can choose two books each. we go out to dinner at a nice restaurant. they come to the house once for a meal. (they prefer to stay in a hotel). when we go there, we eat meals together, and once a visit we all go to the park together. my mom visited twice last year, and we visited her twice, too. she is the dream grandma. thank goodness. she bakes, reads, plays, appreciates, encourages, gently corrects, and delights in all of us. oh, and she does laundry and dishes. she is 85, almost 86 which brings us to dh's parents. dh's dad died the year after we were married. it was tragic on many levels. dh's mom is... complex. i'd be ecstatic if she just put them in front of a television set instead of telling them how wonderful all their cousins are and belittling all they do themselves. when we visited two weekends ago, to help her move into a seniors home, she kept asking us and the dc to choose things we'd like to have and then saying, "no, that's mine." or "no, that's too special". it has been like this since dfil died, and it makes me sad. she has so much to offer, and just has trouble offering it to us. :(. she doesn't come here any more. flip side is that she has given the dc money for their university accounts every single year and that will make a huge difference in their ability to attend a good university. so if its possible to just let it go, that's likely healthier for you and everyone else, too. i'm not so good at that, but i'm trying. ann

fwiw, i think the brokers' tour is important. it lets other brokers see the house. your realtor may do open houses, too, depending on the market. good luck; its a journey! ann

i am hoping someone has some ideas of things she can try to do to calm herself during the exam so that she actually tests well. the thing is that she knows the material really well. ann

Thanks Barbara. She is just a bundle of nerves, and quite convinced she will fail. she really isn't going to imagine she won't until she hasn't. i will tell her what you said about the multiple choice. hearing it from someone who isn't your mom will help a lot.

you would think this was our first time, but no, this is dd #3. she just did her first practice AP Bio exam. her brain went on "dial a bedouin" mode (bill bryson reference) so this delightful, bright, extremely hard working child, who is getting perfect or close to it on the online chapter tests, etc, sobbed for hours after discovering she got 10 wrong on the multiple choice questions. some of her essay answers were letter perfect; others were barely coherent. there are multiple pieces to this problem, but the one i need help with is techniques to help her not simply lose it. for me, practice tests are just that: practice. you see where your holes are, you study more in those areas, you re-take to see if you've improved. but i really have no idea how to help someone who when we are reviewing the test, knows all but two of the answers she got wrong, and simply has no idea why she chose the other thing. or a child who looks at a diagram, and doesn't understand it. its like she looks at it, and immediately panics, and so can't reason it thru. however, if she has to explain it to her sister, she can do it beautifully. help. ann

oh my. i am so sorry. it is so very hard when it is sudden like that.... and so young. hugs. and peace. ann

so very thankful you took him in! steroids can be almost miraculous things! hope this is a turning point for him. did the infectious diseases doctor have any new insight? hopefully, ann

aaaarrrrrrggggghhhhhh!!!!!! i don't want this for you or anyone. i'm sorry!!!! one thing we did during the ovarian cancer scare was to make sure a friend who was a nurse went to each appt. with us. its such an emotional thing, its good to have another pair of ears there. i gave her a list of questions before each appt., and she made sure to ask them if i forgot. she wrote down answers to things, too. someone who isn't a nurse could do this for you, too. its just helpful to have someone who isn't quite as emotionally involved there. hope it goes really well! ann

hope you are not there to read this. go now. throat swelling + temp requires more help than you can give. ann

roflol.... a few years ago, we stopped going to the library because of fees. just this year, we came up with a linkage... i go the library during dds violin lesson. that is every week. so it works. if she misses violin, we pay the library money apparently. so yes, me too. ann

:grouphug: we have launched two of ours so far. the first one had her crisis between 2nd and 3rd year university. rather than moving home, she moved to scotland for a year and went to school there. it cost money. dh took a second job to afford it. it was worth it for her and for us. dd #2 had a rolling crisis from 18-26. when she moved back home at age 20, the rule was she needed to be back in school or to get a job within two months. she ended up back in school, but we supported her doing essentially nothing from ages 23-25. i felt very caught. but she wasn't living at home, we were just supplying money. (it was clear to me that i couldn't live with her, and that she would not develop skills if i bailed her out.) by age 25 we could see that she had developed the maturity to make working possible so we gave her a deadline beyond which no money would be appearing ever. she waited until the last possible second to get a job. i was angry, and scared. how i was going to manage if she chose living on the street i did not know. i just knew that the time had come when she had to choose. having us unable to afford necessities because of her choices was not an option. two years later, she is doing well. she is the working poor, but she is working and managing money and has friends. part of me wishes i had been able to bring myself to cut her off earlier. the other part of me realizes the outcome would likely have been radically different. so you know your own child. is it reasonable for him to do more? is it possible? if both are yes, then the question is how to get there. i think the bottom line is that as an adult, he needs a plan A and a plan B. while he works towards plan A, he needs to be doing things to put plan B in place. so if for any reason the military option doesn't pan out, what will he do? he should/could be working towards that now. and i would want to see a concrete plan for how he is going to get ready for plan A. eg. if plan B is becoming a fire fighter, he should/could get his cpr now, and work towards raising money to take an emt course. i would have him set deadlines with you. either he is ready to apply for the military by July, or plan B becomes plan A. i would want him to look at where he hopes to be in five years, and then work towards making that happen. he also might work on learning budgeting skills. he could start with the family budget. have him do the food budget and everything else and the shopping and the bill paying and then the figuring out how to make it work. but it sure isn't fun. i'm sorry. ann ps. we did insist that she be volunteering somewhere to gain skills even if she wasn't working. then she got a low paying part time job, and did that in addition to volunteering. sitting at home is habit-forming....

i was so surprised at what a good job he did! it was captivating!!

thank you for the update! have a great time away! ann

i replaced mine. i should have fixed it. that is all. ann

hoping today goes really well! (or as well as it can) ann

in desperation, we played it in different languages. you could only move if you knew the colour in sign language, or another day in french, or another day in italian, or another day in spanish. they still loved it! fwiw, ann

have you tried calling your son's doctor to see if he might have some helpful resources? fwiw, ann

my 14 year old just posted this:

are we going for green or for irish? if its green, how about making spinach artichoke hummus? if irish, how about your favourite potato dish? baked potatoes? potato soup? we are mostly vegetarian rather than vegan, so potato skins with veggies and cheese are on our menu. worst possible case, green candles and green napkins, and food dye in the water..... have fun! ann

i am so sorry he is going thru this, and you, too! he has made more than one statement about thoughts he has had more than one time using more than one method. clinically, this is important, and it is important that he see someone. follow what the suicide line people tell you. ask them for specific help. (with some people, it may work if you make an appointment, and then get someone else to help you get him there. (eg. his mom, his best friend, the children). some interventions work better with some people than with others. meanwhile, there are things you can do even without his help. what we think about suicide can stop us from doing the things we can do. an old wives' tale is that it is always highly planned. the truth is that it is wildly impulsive. almost 1/4 of all suicide attempts happen approx. 5 MINUTES after the person decided to try it. 70 % have thought about the plan for less than an hour. so one way of dealing with it is to make the most likely plans take longer. (here's a link that isn't overwhelming http://www.wbur.org/npr/92319314). the rate of successful suicide is much lower in homes without guns, so If you have a gun in the house, please make sure it is locked away without ammo. (or that it visits a relative for a while.) clean out the medicine cabinet. make sure there aren't old narcotic prescriptions. replace large bottles of pain killers with small bottles. if you don't have alcohol in the house, don't bring some in. if you do, reduce the amounts as much as you can. plan meals that are as even on blood sugar as you can. ie. include protein, and don't do heavy starch meals. if you can, take walks after dinner or in the mornings. outside is better than inside. and for you and the children and him, at dinner each night if you write three good things about the day in a book. you can write and they can tell you what to write. in the short term, this may help, but in the long run it will provide the children with a resilience that can only help. (and you two, too!) if it is possible, work on the frame you put around things. avoid "always, never" etc. something doesn't work not because you/he/they are awful/cursed/incompetent, but because of very specific things that can be dealt with. these are all little things to approach a big thing, but it will help while you work at getting him in to see someone. (just having a plan of action can help!) many, many hugs. ann

I'm glad you said something. i'm glad he listened. those are good things. but this thread is a little haunting; there are so many women whose husbands aren't willing to do what they need. a long, long time ago, in a marriage far away, i decided i would rather have nothing than have to plead for something or get it myself. and there were many occasions when 'nothing' is what happened. i started being super intentional about how i celebrated dds birthdays, with lots of little things that cost nothing. (things like saying "good night ten year old" the night before, and then "good morning eleven year old".) sure enough, a few years later, some of these started to drift into my birthdays. but i do think this all seems to have to do with how some adults react to feeling as if they "have" to do something. maybe. ann

:grouphug: :grouphug: it could well be kidney stone pain. i'm sorry :(. (and of course, once your muscles do that, it just hurts more. no one promised fair, but a little less unfair would be okay!!!) ann

whenever i work with teens one on one, i walk with them outside. if that completely isn't possible, i do it in a room with an open door. its as much for my protection as theirs. fwiw, ann