Children's Inn at NIH

This weekend we went to the National Institutes of Health in DC to get more blood tests done and meet with the tropical disease specialists. It turns out that we all have strongeloides, which is a worm that comes from soil. It's easily treatable with a one time dose of medicine. Nandry and Nathan are the only ones of the five of us who have filaria (more specifically: loa loa), a slightly more serious parasite that lives in your blood. A month from now we need to draw more blood, then Nathan and Nandry can be treated. Fortunately, neither of them are experiencing symptoms yet and we are happy that the doctors caught it so quickly and we can clear it up. All of this, since we are part of their study on filaria, is done free of charge for us, so it's been a huge blessing!

This time, in DC, we stayed at the Children's Inn, which is a part of NIH. It was awesome! From the moment we got there, they pampered the kids. Stuffed animals as a welcome gift, dinner donated and served by a local charity organization, a huge 'don't-pick-up-after-yourself-we-have-someone-who-does-that-every-evening' playroom, more toys and crafts with local high school kids, a Santa's Secret Workshop available for each of our kids to pick and wrap presents for 4 members of their family, a stocked food pantry for breakfast and snacks and more little gifts waiting for them in our personal mailbox in the morning! Almost made them forget the whole clinic visit and needles, almost!
Here's a picture of the kids with their loot...I'm a bit excited to see what they picked out as presents for Nathan, me and each other (I heard something about "Daddy's really going to LOVE that pirate guy from that movie"....hmmm?).