Songs for the Sick

Someone we know and love was sick. 

So on Sunday, we made up these songs to try and bring a little levity and joy to the situation.

Texas visitors and HashBrown's HSP

 My best friend came to visit from Texas and we spent the day together. Boy, do I love spending time with her. It's like no time or miles have passed. Really though, it's been about 30 years and several countries and states. It was fun sitting on the porch explaining to a neighbor how we broke up and got back together again and broke up and got back together again. Until next year, Sara!

While Sara was here, I noticed a couple of bug bites on Hash's legs. By the evening he had started to limp and developed a rash. I gave it the weekend and it didn't get any better. Then his left ankle and right knee started to swell to the point that he didn't want to walk. So we took him in to he doctor, who referred us to Primary Children's Hospital for further testing. 

Needless to say, it was a long day! Hash was a trooper. He couldn't even walk. The doctors were great and were quite confident that he had something called HSP. Just some wacky auto-immune thing that can last 3-4 weeks. Yay for us!

I have to admit, it was nice to spend the day with Hash. He's pretty funny. We had lots of good talks and laughs together. Thanks, Syd, for holding down the fort. I'm so grateful to have someone I can count on, on a moment's notice. Syd, you are extraordinary. I wish I could say this HSP stuff has provided extra snuggle time with my boy but nothing holds him down. He'd rather limp than sit still.

All the better to see you with...

When Rachel was a little past 2 years old, a ward member asked me if I’ve ever had Rachel’s eyes checked. One of her eyes seemed to “wander.” Another friend had just started to patch her 4 year old’s eye and mentioned she noticed Rachel may have the same problem. After these two mother’s had mentioned the same thing within a month of each other, I promptly made an appointment for Rachel to see a specialist. She had Strabismus, commonly known as lazy eye. Both eyes were affected.

We started patching her eyes, 2 hours a daily, alternating eyes each day. Everyone was excited to begin with. They reminded me every morning and Rachel had fun picking out her decorative patches. After more than a year, no progress had been made. One of the dangers of lazy eye is that the depth perception is lost. Rachel was ok but was certainly headed that direction with no progress being made with the patch. I had also noticed that she would close or squint one eye when pointing to something far away. So we decided to have surgery done on her eyes.


The same-day surgery was performed at the Primary Children’s out-patient facility just 20 minutes from our home. I talked with Rachel for several days to prepare her for what would happen and I think she was ready.



Bright and early, on my birthday, we headed for the hospital. They treated her like a queen. Our first stop was talking with a nurse and changing into cute P.J.s .

The next big decision was what to ride in. A car, a bed or a wagon. Rachel chose a wagon. I wheeled her over to a waiting area where they set us up watching “Tangled.” We could have watched a number of different movies or played video games. I’ll tell ya, Primary Children’s totally knows how to make kids feel at ease and like the queen of the castle. Rachel was loving every minute of it. We were also visited by another nurse who would be in the surgery helping the doctor and the anesthesiologist.

Dr. Chen, the anesthesiologist was the one who took her through the doors to the surgery room. Rachel was a champ and went without complaint. Of course she really had little idea about what was going to happen. Then we talked with the doctor who told us the surgery would take about 45 minutes and then we were excused back to the waiting room where do-nuts, bagels and juice were waiting for us.


I don’t remember the name of the surgery. The doctor cut the outside muscle of the eye, slid it back and reattached it. He did it on both eyes. Very intricate. While we waited we did a lot of reading and talking about how to parent our children more effectively.


After almost an hour we were called back to talk to the doctor again and he told us everything went great and she should be waking up in about 20 minutes. Before we even sat down again, they said she was already waking up. Only one of us could go back so I went to be with her.


It wasn’t a pretty sight. She was scared and confused and in pain and crying, A LOT. Poor thing. I didn’t even know if she knew I was there. She wouldn’t keep her hands away from her eyes and had to be restrained in the beginning. Boy is that a hard thing to see. After a few minutes of gut-wrenching wailing, I asked her if she wanted me to hold her. She nodded yes, which was her first indication she heard me and knew I was there.

I picked her up and tried to keep her hands away from her eyes. The nurse gave her a cold, wet washcloth and I.V. meds. The meds must have been pretty strong because within a couple of minutes she was sleeping again. They moved us to the recovery room, where Sterling met us. She was still pretty uncomfortable and was beginning to cry more and more. But she would communicate with us so I felt good about that. They offered a slushie and she ate the whole thing. Then she really started up the crying again. So we decided to just take her home instead of more hospital meds.

The drive home was intense. She didn’t cry too much but I was so worried about her. And I hadn’t filled her prescriptions yet so I had to do that on the way. She sat patiently, whimpering, in her carseat, trying to hold the washcloth to her eyes. I walked into the house with Rachel in my arms and was greeted with balloons everywhere. Tied on strings, hanging from the ceiling, scattered around the floor. After all, it was my birthday. Lunch had been delivered by a wonderful wonderful lady. (Have I said thank you yet? THANK YOU!) Rachel also had her own set of Get Well balloons and other cards and gifts. Especially one very soft stuffed kitty from Grandma. But she wouldn’t open her eyes to see it. She sure kept her arms around it though.

She was happy to be home but wouldn’t take the washcloth off of her eyes. I changed it every so often but she refused to open her eyes. I kept her on a schedule with her meds, which helped and she ate a good lunch, which helped as well. It was like feeding a baby bird. She would sit or lay, with her mouth wide open, waiting for me to drop something in it. I loved every minute of it, actually. The surgery definitely did not affect her appetite. She also slept a lot during the rest of the day, getting the anesthesia out of her system. She still refused to open her eyes or be without a washcloth at all.

She slept well that night. Not a peep. In the morning she had a post-surgery appointment with the doctor. So I gave her a do-nut for breakfast and told her it had pretty sprinkles on it and let her eat it on her own. She opened her eyes just a little to see the sprinkles. She opened them a little more to eat her cold cereal. By the time we left for her appointment (8:45 am), she would open her eyes, gingerly, behind some star-shaped sunglasses she received at the hospital.


At the appointment, the doctor said everything looked ok and Rachel was doing fine. Just what I wanted/needed to hear. We went home and by the end of the day, she was very nearly her usual self. And now, 4 days later, you would never know she had been in surgery unless you looked closely at her eyes and saw the red after-math of the incisions.

Phew!

Primary Children’s is an amazing facility. I hope I never have to be there again and thank heaven it was such a small procedure. I can’t say thank you enough to everyone who helped. Thank you for the cards and balloons. Thank you for the lunch and dinner. Thank you for being with the children, Mom. I love you!!!

Its not slime, its ......

fill in the blank.
"Its not slime, its ________________."

Here's a hint. (check :25)

Its MUCUS!!! And we have enough of it to go around. Sick sick sick. Luckily the youngest two are the ones who have escaped it. And my robust little man, Parker.

Millie missed 4 days of school plus the weekend. Now Millie and I have Tummy-aches because our tummies are full of phlegm we've coughed up and swallowed back down. GROSS. Someone needs to teach us how to expectorate.

And just when I thought I was getting better, I was hit with my lack-of-sleep migraine. I had nightmares of replaying my illness a couple of summers ago. Not Good. Earlier I had the knife through the skull and the electrical shot through the ear kind of headache, but yesterday I had the head smack with a 2x4 and then someone put an allen wrench around my head and started twisting. ouch.

Sydney is now starting on it and also has pink eye. I know. Its been like a month and a half since we've truly been pink eye free. We WERE for a week but last night it reared its ugly head. This time we spent the big bucks and got some special drops. And I'm dousing my entire house in clorox, with a hose. :)

Now I have to be better because poor Dad is sick in bed. He is missing a day of the legislative session which is HUGE. I mean HUGE! What ever shall we do?

Remember / Forget

Forget:
-the unrelenting knife in my head
-being 'mom' via walkie-talkie when it was just the kids and me
-throwing up

REMEMBER:
-Ster helping me eat a graham cracker at 3:00am, just before I threw it up.
-Priesthood blessings
-My Mom!

Forget:
-rusing to the E.R. - 3 times
-throwing up cranberry juice and bananas, although not as bad as you might think.
-overwhelming, mind-numbing craze to crawl out of my body to escape the pain and nausea

REMEMBER:
-being out cold for the spinal tap
-25 % discount at the E.R. for same-day payment
-my visiting teacher waiting for me on my front porch at 3:00 am and helping me back into my house after my first ER visit
-warm dinners delivered to our table, sometimes 2 dinners a night

Forget:
-waking up in a cold, sterile, empty hospital room on the 3rd floor and wondering where Sterling was and why I was alone
-being scared
-crackly lung noises when I sleep

REMEMBER:
-the image of Diahan and Becca poking around my house, looking for a way in to see if I was ok
-frozen dinners
-thoughtful phone calls and loving family emails
-Ster's snide remarks during the last 1/2 hour of the "Bachelorette"

Forget:
-the Timpanogos ER experience
-Ster raging against corporate medicine
-drug induced dreams of sharks and African medicine men

REMEMBER:
-Sal's grilled tri-tip
-tender kisses and words of comfort

-Breathing in shallow gulps of fresh, warm, July air while Camille paints my fingernails.