"Do everything you can at home"

So Friday Minnesota got our first case of COVID-19 confirmed, and then Saturday, Mira took one of her down-turns. Our typical approach when she tanks like this is to take her to the ER at Regions and then they transfer her up to Gillette. We called ahead this time, like we always do, and their recommendation (which was one of our main thoughts as we called) was to, "do everything [we] can at home."

So we are! Thankfully, she's got a running prescription for a decently punchy antibiotic that targets the pseudomonas that she has permanently dwelling in her lungs. We are supposed to use it when she hits her "red zone" for her respiratory cares. In her "green zone" we are doing 3 times daily vest treatments, and an inhaler twice a day. In the "yellow zone" which she honestly never really hits for more than a few hours, we add albuterol a few times a day and another vesting. In the red zone, we do all of the above and add her tobramycin inhalations to go directly into her lungs. I think the concept is that we knock down a bunch of the bacteria so she can go back to normal again.

She's still running a low-grade fever, and we're still suctioning nasty greenish-yellow stuff, but she's pretty stable at that point overall, so not progressing to where she needs hospitalization over the risk of exposure to other exciting things.

Check out the neat vibrating cat a friend gave Mira! She really enjoys it.

We know part of what she's dealing with is the same nasty viral whatever that about half of us in the house are also fighting. At this rate, I doubt Reuben will be well enough to start his stay at Gillette to ramp up his diet to the full 3:1 or 4:1 keto ratio that they would like to see him at. He's supposed to be admitted Tuesday morning, but he's got a lot of getting better to do before he's ready for that!

In the meantime, even though we're still seeing pretty steady, constant seizures in him even with the 1:1 diet, they are definitely less severe and debilitating than the seizures were before the g-tube and the low-grade keto diet. Because of that, Reuben was able to be fully involved with his favorite yearly activity again this year, including the entire day yesterday, an absolutely gorgeous day.

Boiling away - we need to take off 39 gallons of water for every gallon of syrup we end up with.

Reuben is tireless when it comes to stoking the fire with fresh wood. Whenever I comment to him about how hot it is, he points to himself and says, "Reuben," with a little knowing look on his face like he's saying, "I'm the one that made that fire so big and hot!"

Leah's taken over most of the sap runs this year, going through our yard and two neighbors' yards for a total of 18 taps.

The foam that we skim off the top while it's boiling is a hot commodity!

Bobbi didn't stay long, but did pop over to see it between getting home from an errand with mom and heading down for her first walk of the year on the paved trail in front of our house!