There are people installing carpet in our basement as I write this!
We are so excited. 
[Posted by Bob]
We have carpeting!
Now I can't bring myself to put anything on it. It's so perfect and
anything I can do will only hurt it.
AND the outside of the house is getting power washed as I type. Because we have lots of trees shading the house, it gets mildew pretty badly most years. Next time we have the house painted we'll add some anti-mildew stuff to it.
We had Laurel's neurologist appt today but there's not much to report.
We never even saw the neurologist except briefly in the hallway! We talked with his nurse, who asked for an update on how Laurel was doing with the head jerks and repeated a lot of the questions she had asked a few weeks back when I spoke with her on the phone. Mostly the conclusion is, we'll do the EEG and then we'll see. It was emphasized that Laurel will not be released from the hospital until they've seen a head jerk, which is mostly a good thing but she has been doing well lately so it may take a while! We didn't see any at all for almost a week. She has been having a few this week but not every day and nowhere near as many (2-3 a day at most). Laurel's teacher is a sweetie though and has offered to give us some respite while she's in the hospital so we can go out to dinner instead of living on the hideous cafeteria food.
We have also asked them to look at the periods she sometimes has where she just stares off into space. We don't *think* those are seizures (and she has done them forever, so there were probably some on her last 24-hour EEG), but we know that there is such a thing as an "absence seizure" and we want to rule out any chance that she may be having those. Also, they will look at the general pattern of her EEG, so if she is *not* having seizures they can at least take an educated guess as to whether she will fare OK off the seizure meds.
We finished off the visit with an awful, awful blood draw. That was
one reason we didn't talk with the neuro more because we were trying to
get over for the blood draw before 5. (Not that I honestly think we
missed anything, and mind you the appt time was 3:30!) They didn't have
enough blood on the one where they checked the med levels to check the
standard blood stuff (cell counts, etc) that they like to keep tabs on
with this med. They started off digging around in her arm and ended up
milking her finger, and something about the finger prick just sent her
into hysterics. Worst we've seen in a long time, with big gulping
breaths afterwards. 
Poor kiddo!
Anyway, guess that's about all on that front for a few weeks...
Good news for Laurel, and a bit of excitement for me...
We got the news that Laurel's latest blood test for ACTH again came
back normal! So she got her last dose of hydrocortisone this morning.
(Would have been yesterday morning, but we forgot to get our mail until
today. 
) WOO-HOO!
This morning, though, I was feeling pretty funky. I've been having
some trouble with heart palpitations since a few weeks ago, when I had
asthma for two days after going to the gym when I was almost but not
quite over a cold. I went to the doctor and was put on Advair and
Mucinex, and told if I didn't get better in a few days to start taking
an antibiotic. A week later (and after I'd been on the antibiotic for
several days), my heart started doing the cha-cha-cha. I didn't take the
Advair and Mucinex that evening, and just took the Mucinex the next
morning (when I started having breathing problems again). But I had the
palpitations badly again the next afternoon, so I swore off that, too. I
kept right on having the palpitations (not as bad, though), and told my
allergist about them when I had my check-up with him a couple of weeks
ago. He didn't seem very concerned, so I wasn't either. But this morning
I was not only having palpitations, I was sweating buckets, having chest
pain and feeling lightheaded. So I called my doctor's answering service,
they paged the doctor on call and he told me to come in. He hooked me up
to an EKG and naturally, I didn't have any more palpitations after that!
He said the EKG looked really good so he didn't suspect anything major
to be wrong with my heart. He thought there was some chance there was
something in one of the herbs my acupuncturist gave me (which he asked
me to bring in) that was causing the problem, so he told me to go off
those for a week and see how I do. And I've been fine the rest of the
day (although kind of worn out this afternoon - I wound up taking a
nap). But that was my excitement for the day! 
Laurel had kind of a neat note from school today...it said she
"used 4-cell [I think this means 4-button] voice output device to
talk with friends on playground. (Independently. )"
I thought that was pretty cool, just wanted to share.