Josh at Hermann Hospital, Houston

It is the Monday before Christmas and Josh and I are in Houston at the hospital.

We drove to Houston from San Antonio Sunday evening. It took just a bit over 3 hours to arrive at the motel. Sunday had turned cold and the wind was blowing hard all the way from San Antonio to Houston. Luckily, the motel room was still warm and had a nice, working heater (and a hot shower - even though the water pressure was pretty low).

We got up before 6AM and packed up everything, loaded the van, went to eat the free continental breakfast at the Howard Johnson (where Medicaid Transportation puts us up here), checked out and headed for the hospital.

We arrived, got parked, unloaded and made the treck to the admission area - arriving there just a minute or two before our deadline of 7:30AM. We had a few minutes to have to wait for someone to be free to do our paperwork. Here is Joshua in the admission waiting area (where his afternoon nurse sent us a text message this morning wishing us good luck - Thanks Jenny!!)

Then, we went upstairs to the pulmonary lab where Joshua had PFT's (pulmonary function tests) which is alot of blowing into a little device hooked up to computers to test his lungs and how well they are working. He did great!

Afterwards, we were walked up to the 3rd floor to the epilepsy unit, where Joshua is now hooked up to electrodes and being videotaped. The doctors are looking to see if he is having any kind of seizures which may be causing his disorder. Joshua is watching Cars (the movie) and waiting for lunch right now. We are both very hungry and can't wait for some food to be served.

We will stay here for this EEG the rest of today and tonight. Joshua is supposed to also get hooked up for a short heart holter monitor session while we are in here today. And we are supposed to be meeting the surgeon who would do Joshua's diaphragmatic pacemaker surgery (if they don't find any seizures). He has told our nurse he will be by later today. His name is Dr. Cox.

Then, tomorrow, after Josh is freed from his electrodes, etc., we will go down to MRI. Joshua is scheduled for general anesthesia, so he will not be allowed any food or drink after midnight. If all goes as planned, we will be released awhile after the MRI's are finished and doctors are satisfied there are no problems with the anesthesia. We hope to be home sometime late Tuesday night, so we can be there with the family for Christmas.