Utah, Katie's Infection and Medical Appointments
Utah - Katie’s Infection
Next the kids and I flew to Utah to stay with Chris' family. This is where Katie's big story comes in. Because of a high fever we took her to Primary Children's Hospital to get checked out. She had a urinary tract infection and ended up being admitted to the hospital for three days. She was hooked up to an IV with antibiotics. She was given an ultrasound, which showed that one of her kidneys is partially blocked. She will need to have an operation in the near future. Despite all this, Katie was a very happy little girl, smiling at everyone. She didn't act sick at all. Now she is on oral antibiotics until we go to the doctors and do further tests. Chris had already made plans to fly to Utah over Labor Day Weekend so the timing was perfect since that's when she was in the hospital. Other than that we had a great time in Utah.
Washington and Canada
Next we flew back to Seattle and I went up to Canada again for a week and then flew home on the 11th.
Finally Home in Maryland
Wow... what a long trip. It is so good to be in my own house again.
Chris gets back on Friday night. He is so excited to get home. The poor guy has been without a family for a while. I think he's going to temporarily ban me from going anywhere without him.
Ryan
Ryan enjoyed being spoiled by his Grandpa's and Grandma's and Aunts and Uncles. He is remembering all their names too! He is a fun boy right now. He is talking a lot and likes to copy everything you say. He loves little Katie and gives her LOTS of hugs and kisses all the time. He is having a ball with all his little friends. On Tuesday Ryan starts a home preschool class. 3 of my friends and I are rotating days and teaching a little preschool for 4 two year olds. I'm very excited... to teach and to have three free mornings to do errands like grocery shopping.
Katie
Katie is such a cutie. She is smiling SO much right now. It's a fun stage. She has been sleeping really well at night. 6 or 8 hours between feedings at night. Very nice for mom... I feel like I have a ton more energy. We go to the doctors tomorrow for Katie's 2 month check up and to be referred to a Pediatric Urologist.
Katie’s Doctor Appointment
We had quite the busy day. We went to go get Katie signed up for insurance, which took a stop at three different offices to get completed. Then we had Katie's appointment. Dr. Miller figured it was just Katie's well-baby check-up so casually asked "How's everyone doing today?" I think my long winded explanation of everything that has happened in the last two and a half weeks shocked him. He stared at me, amazed, trying to take it all in. I sure gave him lots of 'homework'. He has to fax a request to Children's Hospital for info, write a prescription for more antibiotics, write in a referral to a Pediatric Urologist, write up a bunch of stuff in her chart, and check on her Screen test and a new vaccine. Katie also had her well-baby check up. She's 13 pounds 1 ounce. 95 percent of the babies her age are smaller! Wow... big girl. She is still her happy smiley self... even after the three shots that they gave her today. She cried for just a couple seconds and then she was fine. Ryan slept but I could hear Katie slurping on her fingers the whole way home.
Crafts
It is so nice to be back at home. Ryan has enjoyed getting together with his little friends and I have as well. I painted for a craft sale I'm doing in November while at home with my home and brought the ornaments to 'girls night' last night to 'show-n-tell' and my friend Lisa bought three - one of each. She just kept ranting and raving and said she knew she was going to be my biggest customer. Yeah! $18 all ready. I'm really excited to paint more. Hopefully now that Geneva has a band saw we'll be able to do more crafts... even if they are just for me.
We're taking a break on FHE packets for a while... which is good. I have over 100 now and I need to get caught up! Plus I have a ton of scrapbooking to do. Even though it all sounds overwhelming I'm enjoying being so busy and having so many projects on the go. I just organized my pictures today as well.
Ryan
Ryan has loved playing with all his toys this week. I think he has too many - they are consuming my house. He is being his normal 2 year old self... Yikes! He doesn't get away with as much as he does on vacation. He is back to no drink in bed and he’s actually adjusted quite well.
Katie
Katie is smiling so much now. Pretty much anytime I get up close and talk to her she smiles back at me. She has enjoyed her swing the last few days. It usually puts her to sleep. She also likes her toys that hang down over her. She stares and smiles at Big Bird and Elmo. She gets so excited that she moves her arms and legs and makes the toys swing by accident which makes her more excited. Katie, like Ryan when he was a baby, LOVES noise. She calms down and falls asleep to the bathtub running, the blow dryer and the vacuum. Funny kids.
Chris
I'm going to get Chris tonight. He gets in at 12:52am. I'm just meeting him at baggage because I'll have two sleeping kids in the car. I'm excited for him to be home. Back to semi-normal life. His next rotation is Internal Medicine - inpatient, so he'll be Q3, which means he'll be on call and sleeping at the hospital every third night. Yuck. It'll be a hard six weeks.
Katie’s Medical Appointments
It poured rain all day long. I raced around and got everyone ready and out the door this morning and hit bad traffic on the way to Katie's doctor's appointment and then couldn't find a single parking space. Ah! Dr. Miller had a hard time getting a urine specimen. Katie peed all over the place right at the wrong times. It was really quite funny. After a quick lunch we had Katie's radiology appointment. She got a VCUG. They stuck a urine catheter in her and filled her bladder with a fluid that could be detected by a x-ray machine and took pictures of her bladder and kidneys. The top of her left kidney is blocked (we already knew that) but they found out that she has 'reflux' into her right ureter... that's where urine goes back up from the bladder into the 'tube' that leads to the kidney. So, something will have to be fixed on both sides. Kind of disappointing. After filling her bladder we had to wait for her to pee so they could take pictures. Katie didn't want to go pee though so we waited for 25 minutes and had fun talking about Radiology until they finally decided to go on with what they had. We will meet with Dr. Kaloo, our pediatric Urologist, on October 16th to discuss what will be done. I wish it wasn't that far away... we will continue giving her antibiotics twice a day until then. We also became aware that Ryan will have to have to have an ultra sound and probably a VCUG. Apparently Katie's kidney problems usually 'run in the family.' So, I will plan on many many more trips to the hospital in the next few months.
Grocery Shopping
After our hospital appointments we went grocery shopping. I had Katie in the front pack so Ryan enjoyed being 'face-to-face' with her and loved holding her hands. It is definitely harder grocery shopping with two but Ryan was good. He's a big helper. I give the stuff to him and he puts it in the back of the cart.
Chris on Internal Medicine
Chris has had two days of Internal Medicine - Inpatient and the hours are horrible. He has to be there by 6:00 am and has gotten home after 8:00 pm both nights. Hopefully it'll get better. He's on call every fourth night and has to go in on Saturdays and Sundays for a half day as well. His days off are quite random. This week he gets Saturday off but has to work all day Sunday. Yuck.
Young Womens
I took the kids with me to my Young Women's Activity. I am now the counselor over Beehives instead of MiaMaids. I'm excited for the change. I have a new Advisor so it should be lots of fun. We had a great activity and got to know each other a little better.
Preschool and Group Therapy
I'm keeping busy with a endless list of things... First I've just started a preschool with a couple of my friends and their kids. We had our first class today and I taught it. We 'studied' parts of the body and the colors RED and YELLOW and the shape CIRCLE. It was fun. Ryan had a blast. He's 27 months now. Next I'm busy getting caught up with all my FHE packets. My friends and I get together every Thursday night to pastel and laminate all our stuff. It's so much fun. Our husbands call it GROUP THERAPY. Yep, it is. I've also been tole painting a little bit. I've made about 40 ornaments so far for a craft fair that I'm going to be in in November. I also just painted a bird house and 'Families Are Forever' sign. Another never ending project is my scrapbooks. I'm way behind now that Katie's here. I'm getting another page published in Creating Keepsakes in December.
Katie’s New Infection
We found out today that Katie's original infection is completely gone but a new one has started that her old medication will not work for. So.... new medication and a bigger dose. Now she needs another test... a Renal Scan. She'll need an IV and a urine catheter for it. Yuck. Sounds like an operation in itself. It's scheduled for the 17th of October but my doctor is trying to get it rescheduled ASAP. Anyway... She is such a good baby. She is sleeping 7 - 8 hours straight at night. It is wonderful. And SHE'S A SWING BABY. Yahoo!!!
Chris is Busy
Anyway... time for bed. Chris is finally home. I haven't seen him for two days straight. This rotation is SO bad. We haven't eaten dinner together all week.
Katie is Hospitalized
Well we just spent a couple days at Walter Reed Medical Center. We took Katie to the Emergency Room on Saturday night because of a high fever. They did a bunch of tests on her and after three hours decided to admit her. They don’t have a Peds section at Navy so they transported us over to Walter Reed… in an Ambulance!!! We spent the next couple days waiting to see if anything would grow on her urine sample. We were finally able to take her home today, Tuesday, but we have to go tomorrow for her operation. Hopefully it will take care of all the problems.
Katie’s Surgery
We dropped Ryan off at the Curran’s house at 7:00 and headed down to Bethesda Naval Hospital for Katie's Renal Scan. The Nuclear Medicine Department sent us up to Pediatrics to have Katie get an IV and a urine catheter. She was fine with the catheter but hated the IV. It was wonderful to have Chris with me. He can handle that kind of stuff a lot better than I can... although I am getting more used to it. Back down at the Nuclear Medicine Department we gave Katie her medicine and I fed her before strapping her to a bed in a little baby 'papoose'. Luckily she was asleep. Then a huge machine... like a 'cat scan' machine... moved up around her. The nurse injected a radioactive fluid into her IV. Within seconds we could see on the computer screen an outline of her body based on where the radioactive particles were. Almost immediately we could see three bright spots... her kidneys and her bladder. We noticed her right kidney emptied much faster than her left kidney. Soon we saw a new bright spot... the cup outside her body which was filling up with urine coming from the catheter. The test took about 35 minutes. Near the end we met Dr. Kaloo, our Pediatric Urologist, for the first time. She looked at the renal scan test results on the screen in 'fast forward' and began to explain what she would do during the operation. We followed her up to the Urology Clinic for Katie's partial physical and to fill out paper work. Then we went to the 'holding room', also known as the Pre-operative Room, where surgery patients receive their anesthesia. Katie fell asleep in Daddy's arms as we met the Anesthesiologists and nurses. We also talked to several of Chris' friends who are doing their 3rd year rotations in Surgery, Urology or Anesthesiology. One of them would be going into the surgery with Katie. We waited until 12:00 (so it would be three hours after she had eaten) and then handed our sleeping Katie over to one of the nurses. Apparently they put a sedative in her IV to help put her to sleep and then gave her a shot in her back somewhat like an epidural, that numbed her bottom half. They went in through the urethra with a tiny scope (camera) and made an incision in the ureterocele so that hopefully it will deflate and not block anything off. Meanwhile, Chris engrossed himself in a newspaper so he wouldn't think about the surgery. I managed to doze in and out while lying on Chris' lap. At about 1:20 they called us in the waiting room to come see her. They had just removed the tube that was down her throat. They were spraying her with humidified air. She was crying but it wasn't her normal cry, it was softer and raspy. Poor girl. My emotions caught me by surprise. I was dying to pick her up and hold her. I fed her and then they put me in a wheelchair with Katie and wheeled us up to a room on the fourth floor for a quick recovery. A couple hours later we spoke with Dr. Kaloo again, waited for another wet diaper and by 7:00 were on our way home. A long day.
We had such great friends during our time in Maryland. Here we are with the Currans, Chuggs and Breinholts.
Service from Friends
Chris went back to work today but first we slept in, ate breakfast together, gave haircuts, had showers, got ready... He left about 1:00 and is on call tonight so won't be coming home till tomorrow night. He called and said he's SO busy. He was not looking forward to going back. I went and got a bunch of errands done. Both of my kids slept in the double stroller as I wandered through Walmart finding everything I needed. Tonight Terri brought me dinner. Chicken Enchiladas, salad, vegetables, fresh rolls and a whole apple pie. I ate like a queen and felt guilty. I called her this morning and told her to cancel the meal but she wouldn't hear of it. Tomorrow my VT's are bringing me dinner. Everyone has been so nice.