Thursday Update on Tyler

Well, we are all pretty exhausted right now. Tyler had his MRI today and the results were all normal, as expected. So severe Tourette’s is still the diagnosis. Tyler was able to sleep about 4-5 hours last night. For that I’m grateful, but it’s a far cry from what’s needed considering that gives him a total of 5-6 of the last 58 hours, and the other 52 hours were spent in constant tics. His tics are still just as bad, but the tic is slowly changing. The burping has turned to something more like a dry-heave sound and his voice shouts out with the tic. The tics are one on top of the other, making it extremely hard to talk to us at times. All that convulsing causes pain in his stomach, head, neck, and throat. He threw up last night because of it. The meds also make him really agitated, fidgety, frustrated, and he cries because he gets so upset. Usually that agitation side effect wears off after a while, and then he just asks when he can go home over and over.

The realization that we are dealing with a life-changing situation is slowly sinking in. Yesterday, I was thinking to myself, “We’ll stay in the hospital a couple days, get this kid some meds, and get back to normal life.” Now, I see that there will have to be a new normal—though we still contend and pray for total healing for Tyler. We went through learning about how to deal with new normals after we found out we were expecting the triplets. We can do it again the same way we did it before—with lots of prayer, lots of help, and dependence upon the grace and sufficiency of God.

So many of you have contacted us, extending your thoughts and prayers, and offering help. We truly appreciate it. We haven’t been able to respond to many of you because we are a little overwhelmed right now. Please know that we have gotten your emails, voicemails, texts, and facebook messages. They really mean a lot to us, whether we are able to take the time to personally respond to them or not. For those who have offered help, we probably will take you up on it. My parents came in town today to help with immediate needs. However, we will need other help in the coming weeks. For now, I don’t know what to ask for, so I’ll throw out a message on facebook or something once we know what we need help with.

We've made some videos of Tyler, some of them so we could show the doctors his reaction to the meds. If you want to see what he is and we all are dealing with, follow this link. They are disturbing though, so use discretion for showing to kids. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3QYcmH7QiTDT6_poK5jyBg

Thank you all for your continued prayers.