38 days

My mom is home! I can’t believe it. I called her house a few minutes ago and she answered. That was just…wow. Unbelievable. So since I was multi-tasking on a spreadsheet when I called her, I did a quick calculation. She was “only” in there 38 days; 5 1/2 weeks. Honestly? It seemed longer.

In 38 days:

• Mom had an emergency appendectomy
• Followed by lung surgery when the infection spread
• Surgery to remove a tumor on her bladder which turned out to be cancer
• My oldest nephew had a big flare-up of his Crohn’s disease
• My third oldest nephew has been back and forth to a specialist because his esophagus keeps closing up to where he can’t breathe
• My twin sister lost power from a snow storm
• Then the power line, which was live, landed across their driveway and stranded them for a week while they lived in a hotel
• Then she had a flare-up of her multiple sclerosis and landed in the hospital for 5 or 6 days (it’s true; I lost count by that point)
• They had another snow storm and lost power – again
• I had that plantar fasciitis
• Our son broke his leg and is in a spica cast for 8 weeks
• My husband had a death on his side of the family (that was just this week)
• And our daughter made straight A’s on her report card!
• And my mom’s home!
• And my sister’s home!

That seemed more like 5 months than 5 weeks to me. What is so funny is I’ve had more people than I can count, remind me how things happen in 3’s. That’s more than 3.

I just wanna know…can I sigh a breath of relief yet, or is it too soon to call?

(as a side note…that wasn’t the end of it; not even close…we had 2 deaths in the family, my sister was in a car wreck with her son and all sorts of other things happened while he was in the cast…just pointing out that sometimes life doesn’t happen the way we want it to when we want it to; it all worked out in the end….)

where was i?

One thing that’s entertaining about consecutive days on not enough sleep is just how loopy I get. It’s 5pm now and I’ve had Firefox pulled up since first thing this morning with the intent to post. There are all these little short circuits that aren’t making the connection in my brain.

For instance, my brain just told me to tell you all good luck tomorrow at the relay. But guess what? Today is Wednesday, not Friday! Just in case you didn’t know…that means you still have…(let me count this out…Thursday is one, Friday is two…), okay you still have 2 1/2 days to go.

Speaking of doing really dumb things; I accidentally reformatted my computer that I use for personal use at home. While not a total and complete worst thing ever kind of thing to do because I prefer using an external drive to house all the really important stuff, it still meant I lost all my email.

I can’t find the CD (I’m sure I threw it away) for MS Office so right now I’m stuck using Works until my replacement CD comes in. And I had emails I hadn’t answered yet so that’s not really working for me since I lost almost all the email addresses.

A friend of mine that I’m used to seeing 3-4 times a week when I don’t have kiac syndrome (kid in a cast) called last night to see if I wanted to hang out. That sounded like so much fun! I gave it my best effort to get that boy not only in bed but comfortable and asleep.

Instead what happened was what happens every other night. By 8:30, I was feeling rode hard and put down wet so I climbed in bed with him where we held hands until he eventually fell asleep.

I called around to various occupational and physical therapy places and found some more moleskin today (we ended up not having enough). They also suggested any place that sells orthotics might have it also. But they were really nice and sold me a yard of it and said if I need more, just give them a couple of days’ notice and they would be happy to order it for me.

Best news of all, we had a little breakthrough today. He happily went for a walk in his wagon! He’s been associating rides in the wagon with going to the doctor which means his cast comes off which means his foot isn’t broken. So when we’ve tried taking him for walks, he wails instead when he finds out none of that is happening and instead he’s staying in the cast.

But he decided today that a ride around the neighborhood sounded like a good plan. I was home working while they went, but he had a good time from all accounts! Woo hoo!

harness

Before I forget, I am actually awake and alert right now so this is a good time to say how much I really appreciate everyone’s emails and comments, etc. It means so much to me. Generally I try to comment back in the next post but short of whining about my lack of sleep lately, it really is the truth as to why I’m not on the ball lately with saying thanks.

So here’s my great big “thank you” to everyone!

Here’s a picture of the seatbelt harness that I took this morning. This is the extent of what protects him in the car, other than running the regular seat belt through the back of the harness – in the space between the material it’s made of and his skin – to keep him in place. Since I’m used to having him protected in a car seat, it’s a big mental adjustment for me that he doesn’t have any of the extra protection around him that I’m used to.

Before you ask…those are my 3D glasses from the Hannah Montana movie yesterday. And the adult diaper over his blue cast. And no…I haven’t taken the 2 seconds necessary to cut off his hospital i.d. tag yet! I had them put it on his ankle in ER so that he couldn’t pull it off.

And he does not like people to sign his cast, but too bad because obviously several people have!

1st follow-up

I thought I’d blog about our first follow-up appointment today just in case it’s of any value to someone down the road. First of all, the surgeon was clear to tell us post-op to come in today; even though later the resident and the nurse and everyone else said 2 weeks, we listened to what the surgeon said and I was glad we did.

The short answer is everything is progressing as it should so as far as I’m concerned, that means one week down and 7 to go! My concern was he would either say it wasn’t healing correctly, or that something on the cast needed adjusting in his office. I was so glad neither of those happened.

Our appointment was at 11am and a typical commute time there midday is 45 minutes. So anyone who knows me realizes that meant we started loading him up at 9:15 (which turned out to be a good decision). First thing we did was to think of what all we needed to take with us -

• his seatbelt harness,
• pillows for the back seat,
• his wagon and all the stuff in there (pillow for his back,
• pillow for his casted leg,
• blankets underneath him for padding and one for over the top of him),
• a coloring book and crayons,
• cell phone,
• insurance
• something for him to drink (he’s almost completely lost his appetite because the cast presses down on his stomach and makes him feel full)
• diapers and wipes, in fact we changed him right before for good measure
• the husband aka the chauffeur
• and the boy!

That took 15 minutes to get almost all of that together. Next on the list was getting him into the car. BTW, we did this all wrong – this was our second time. We got the pillows in the back to cushion him, but the casted leg needs to be the one against the back of the seat (he lays lengthwise across the back seat). I put the wrong leg against the back seat.

That was a problem because he has anxiety issues with being lifted for any reason, any time, by any person. Let the shrieking begin. We have a pretty sizeable garage and my car has plenty of width on either side to get him in or out
and my husband’s does on the left side…but not the right side. And of course that meant he needed to get in via the right side.

I got him back out of the car and held him while my husband backed the car out. Then I put him in the wrong way with the car in the driveway. Oops. Third time’s charm – we got him in there and he was hysterical by then. We got the wagon in and the bag full of stuff and finally we were on our way.

Next up was the joy of finding a parking spot in the medical center. I’ll skip the drama that happened but the long story short that finally at 10:40 I suggested dropping me off at the place clearly marked “do not park” so we could park and drop me off. We got the wagon out of the back, got him in and the boy and I headed up to the 8th floor while the husband parked the car.

We checked in and headed into orthopedics (very fast, 2 thumbs up for their speediness) and it wasn’t long before they called us in for more x-rays. I figured we probably would have x-rays taken every time but I wasn’t sure. That’s good to know to expect that in the future.

But while we were sitting in the waiting room, no surprise that 2 other parents were in there because their kids were in spica casts. And thank heavens one of the moms heard me talking to one of the dads about not being able to find moleskin (it protects the skin against chafing, an issue right now).

We have called a gazillion medical supply stores around town, asked several of them to order some for us, etc. to no avail. Apparently if you call anyone who does physical or occupational therapy though, they generally will carry it also. Good to know.

They took 3 more x-rays (ouch…oh it’s painful just thinking how much he did not appreciate that) and we no sooner got into a room when the doctor came in right behind us. The upside was he was really fast but that did mean we didn’t get a chance to calm the boy down before he got there so it was hard to hear what the doctor was saying.

We all saw the x-rays again on the screen and he said everything is healing as it should. We talked about the problem with nightmares all night long, every night as well as just anxiety every time we have to pick him up to change his diaper, etc. He said our pediatrician would be the best resource to see if he needs some sort of mild medication to calm him, or a pediatric psychiatrist (he keeps reliving it in his dreams), etc.

I wish I hadn’t waited a week to ask what to do about the ongoing nightmares since I could’ve taken him to the pediatrician last week. He did say it was possible or even likely that the perceived pain was as much out of his expectation that it hurt, as much as the real pain since by now he should be off codeine and on to tylenol (we have been continuing the codeine as needed).

The cool part after that though was they are all set up with a room of never-ending moleskin! Yay!!! And there’s a guy there who it seemed to me that was his whole job – putting moleskin on casts. I’m probably wrong, but at any rate I was as happy to see him as I was the surgeon (since they both did good things for my boy). He also sent us home with some extra.

Now the funny part to me (guys may not want to read this) was he suggested an alternative to using a regular diaper on the inside (we tuck it inside between his skin and the cast) with an adult diaper on the outside – some parents have better luck with putting a sanitary pad inside the diaper (yes…that kind of sanitary pad…!) followed by the diaper and skipping the adult one on the outside.

The boy was just hysterical from beginning to end of the entire trip inside TCH so by the time we were gone I asked my husband to take him down to 3rd floor where all the good stuff is – food court, gift shop, etc. – while I wrapped up things with his next doctor’s visit.

He said to bring him back in 3 weeks so that’s next up. I called the pediatrician’s office about the anxiety issue as well but haven’t made an appointment with him yet.

I could write a whole other post on finding parking in the medical center but that would be as exhausting as finding the spot in the first place. The upside to a midday appointment is less traffic. But that means you’re probably not going to find a parking spot very easily. We walked clear on the other side of MD Anderson to get back to the car. Past TCH, St. Luke’s,etc. …almost to Ben Taub. I seriously asked if he had parked at the zoo and by that time, I wasn’t kidding.

It went well though (well, good to me because he didn’t extend the 8-week time frame and didn’t have to cut the cast for any adjustments).

moleskin

I’ll probably switch over to blogging about living with a spica cast for a while. It probably won’t be very interesting to my running friends, but what I’ve found from searching online is it’s hard to find too many people blogging about it.

Actually, I did trade emails with a couple of people; one is a friend of a friend here in the area. She sent me an email with the following:

The surgeon who applied the cast should have given you some moleskin. It helped tremendously. They gave me a sheet of it to apply on the cast edges. I am sure if you call their office they could get you some.

- it won’t be long until he starts moving. I was amazed at my son’s activity and how he just worked around things. We used a wagon to pull him around in at first, but he was crawling and walking and by the end of the six weeks walking without help, and even running! Just try to keep your sense of humor!

- one of the hardest parts for us was the constipation he got from the pain meds they had him on. Make sure you are giving him some kind of laxative if he is still on other medication. That is not a fun problem to have with a kid in a body cast.

- the itching seemed to come and go, but we used a blow dryer on cool that always seemed to help.

- if he has a couple of friends that you could set up ‘play dates’ with at your house. Visitors and walks really seemed to lift his spirit.

- we bought a cheap little bookcase to put next to his bed so that he could reach all of his toys. We also borrowed a toddler bed and bought a foam mattress pad and sleeping wedge from Bed Bath and Beyond that helped his comfort level enormously. I know spica casts are different, but our son was casted in a reclining position around the waist and only down his one leg. I had a six month old at the time, so we moved the toddler bed into our room for the first few weeks until he could get around more. The cast was so heavy and he wanted to be where we were.

- for sponge baths we bought a nap mat- Walmart- that was plastic. It made him comfortable enough that he could lay on the the counter while we got water. He hated baths at first, but enjoyed it at the end.

- I found some helpful tips online too.

I can’t think of anything else, but if you have specific questions please don’t hesitate to ask. Hang in there! Looking back it was actually a blessing that made me slow down and realize how amazing my kids really are! It does get better!

I also emailed a really nice guy from Jonesboro, Arkansas (not too far from home of the “throwed rolls” – one of my favorite places to eat when we drive back from Indiana) whose son just got out of his a few weeks ago. He had some really good advice too:

I’m glad that someone might benefit from my blogging about our son! The spica cast will definitely go down as one of the most memorable parental moments in our lives. When I wrote on my blog, I had hoped I would be blessed to help another family one day. When the spica was explained to us in the hospital, we were scared to death! I’m sure you guys were, too.

I hate to hear about your son’s nightmares. That is something that we did not have to deal with, however… the pain and cramping for the first couple of weeks kept him crying at night.

Let me begin by saying that these weeks will go by faster than you think. I’m sure you are already getting a little more comfortable and it will get easier with each day. Your son, you, and your family are in my prayers until he gets to walking again! I’m not just saying that either… My family will genuinely pause and pray for you guys. God really helped us through with our son and he’ll help you guys to too!!!

To your questions, there is no cheap answer to the car seat problem! As you found out, those seat are pricey! We went without a car seat. We just used the seat belt harness and a pillow under his legs… seat reclined all the way back in the minivan.

Hair washing… We have a garden tub in our bathroom with a little “ledge-like” thing around it. We would put a plastic covered pillow (that we got from Hospital) on the ledge. Then we would lay him on his stomach and he hung his head in. He was a little nervous about it at first, but then he started having fun with it… playing superman! We also tucked a towel around him and his cast.

Your son’s fracture sounds just like our son’s. It was almost the length of the bone! We have been out of the cast for a few weeks now and he is doing great. He had a little limp for awhile, but that is about gone, too. As you know, the wagon was our friend for several weeks. Since it was winter here, we had him covered up with a blanket in the wagon.

He’ll be back on his feet in no time! In fact, our son started walking one day BEFORE the cast came off. Within weeks, he was crawling on his stomach… then one day… he walked. He also had a blast doing the “Spica Spin” too… We documented some of it on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YBhHTliX6o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxUvUgAAbh4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KE7EKXm0y4

Oh! I almost forgot why I titled this post “Hannah”. A close friend of mine who has just been a lifesaver this past week (well, she seems to always be in the right place at the right time), suggested we could take our girls to go see the Hannah Montana movie.

 

That’s right – I got out of the house! Other than 5 minutes here and there to pick the daughter up from school a couple of times, it was the longest I had been away since the accident. Don’t ask me if the movie was any good because my mind was back home. But the end result was getting out of the house for a little while was just what I needed.

 

It seemed to help him too; he had fallen asleep while we were gone. And just as important, I think the girls both loved the movie as well as each other’s company. Trying to keep the 4th grader’s schedule as close to normal as possible is high on my list.

 

She and her dad went to church this morning while we stayed home to blow bubbles.

nightmares

I’ll start with my running (not happening) update, then on to the little guy.

The 2 biggest issues are the pain, which is a fact of life that it’s gonna hurt a lot since the thigh bone is split vertically into 2 pieces, and also the nightmares.

He keeps reliving the whole thing, over and over and over again in his subconscious. My husband is a pretty sound sleeper so through no fault of his own, he wakes up oblivious to the previous night’s events. But this afternoon the boy fell asleep on a pallet on the floor (thank goodness because he desperately needs his sleep), so his dad was able to see first-hand what I’ve been describing.

He falls into that part of your sleep when you dream, and his whole body starts to shake. Then he starts screaming in his sleep either something like “my leg is broken!”, or he calls out for one of our names (which just is so hard to hear, knowing he was probably calling out for me when it happened). At night, he’s sleeping in our bed so I’ve taken to holding his hand so that I get an early start on the nightmare because I can feel his body shake before he starts crying.

Sometimes I can calm him down, sometimes I can’t. During a 1-2 hour nap today, it happened 4 times.

Needless to say, that is # 1 on my list of things to talk to the doctor about on Monday. I don’t know how to get him not to dream about it. He’s hysterical whenever we have to change his diaper because he’s afraid we’re going to drop him.

My idyllic picture of walks through the neighborhood, pulling him in his wagon, isn’t working because he associates the wagon with the doctor so he wants to go in the wagon to go see the doctor so he can get his cast off.

Running. Me. Not.

But I did get a pair of insoles for my shoes for better arch support. Right before all this happened, I was having issues with plantar fasciitis and it hasn’t gotten any better but it’ll just have to be what it is for now. I hope these supports help though – I ordered them online. I figure they probably can’t hurt anything.

i need an inventor

I’m trying to come up with an exercise (or exercises) that I can do while multi-tasking at home. The little guy most likely will be in our bed until the cast comes off since for obvious reasons, if he gets an itch he usually can’t reach it (and there’s lot of good itching to be had which we expected).Getting out of bed at 4:30 in the morning is disruptive to him which starts an endless loop since that in turn wakes my husband up, and then the dog wants to get up early to go for a walk, etc.

We have someone staying here for the morning, then a break at lunch, and then someone for the afternoon (mostly because that’s what I was able to work out on short notice).

So I take care of him through the lunch hour which definitely doesn’t work since I’m making a sandwich, etc. ready for him

By the time the husband gets home from work and we get through dinner, karate, etc. I’m ready to crash. It was 8:30 last night and I was fast asleep on the couch. That works for me after I piece all the hours together so that I’m awake during the day for my job.

I keep thinking I’m missing the obvious angle about when and where to fit in exercise with this on a daily basis.

Maybe I should have a goal to be a weekend warrior for a while? I don’t know.

not sleeping – at all

If you read this tonight, and are so inclined, please pray for a restful night’s sleep for the little guy. Thanks!

boppy pillow

I found out a boppy pillow helped him sleep better last night since it’s easier for him to recline on than regular pillows which tend to slide around too easily.

2/15/08 – the story begins

I said the next time I disappeared for a few days it would be because I was in Indiana. I didn’t lie, I just didn’t plan on what happened on Friday. I won’t be going back to Indiana for a long time.

Unfortunately I also had to resign from our TIR team (and suspend trumpet playing for the time being). Okay, so actually a lot is going to change but the good news is in a handful of weeks this should all be behind us.

Here’s the email I sent to a couple of friends; figured I might as well just copy and paste. Sorry for the extra pictures but thought I’d throw some narration in.

Where to start…

Well, he was climbing a rope ladder at pre-school. He wasn’t far off the ground. A friend called out to him, he turned out to see who it was and lost his balance. His foot got caught in the rope and it torqued his leg. The sheer force of the foot being caught up in the air in the netting combined with his head headed toward the ground from the force of gravity…it literally split his femur (thigh bone) from where it attaches at the knee all the way to the hip – one long vertical break.

That was 9:15 in the morning Friday. They called me in a panic; we got him to the ER at the hospital just down the road, who knew it was broken before they even did an x-ray. Once they confirmed it, it was obvious he needed to go to Texas Children’s so he and I headed down there via ambulance and my husband picked our daughter up early from school since we didn’t know when we might be where at that point. Here we are in the ambulance on the ride to the med center. That’s right…I had my wits about me enough to remember to use my camera phone! Sorry these are a little grainy, but that’s why.

He sat in the ER at TCH getting tested, morpine via IV, etc. until 7pm when we were lucky to get a regular room on the orthopedic floor that night (Friday). They had 25 surgeries ahead of him so I had the choice of emergency surgery at 4am or scheduled surgery at 8am on Saturday. My logical brain kicked in for those 30 seconds and said this is gonna be huge bucks but I bet I can save five grand if I sign up for regular surgery with that 4 hour delay.

He was so drugged up that honestly I don’t think it made any difference at that point since they had at least put a splint on him at the first ER. (This next one is one I took at TCH though; I know that because I remember cutting off his underwear in ER there and getting a pull-up on him).

My husband went back home with our daughter that night and I slept in bed with him. Sort of – how about if I say we were both horizontal in the bed. There wasn’t any sleeping going on; what should’ve made him drowsy instead had him wired.

So at 8am they got him to the operating room which really we only needed so they could re-set his leg under anesthesia; it was not surgery so no pins, etc. (thank goodness!!!). By 10am we were with him in recovery and by noon we were back to his room. He surely will crash and burn tonight; it was well after midnight again Saturday night when I think he fell asleep (who knows; I passed out from exhaustion next to him) and once they took vitals at 4:15am this morning he was up and ready to go for the day, and he’s been awake ever since. This next one I call his morphine look; that’s why he was smiling!

 

Crazy. So it will be on him 8 weeks. We’ve already been told it will be another couple of weeks after that before he’s confident to really walk again so my estimated guess is more like 10-12 weeks down the road. It’s all temporary however long it ends up being so it’s all good. He’s not happy about being back in a diaper (you do the math on how they manage bodily functions in the equation) but it is what it is.

You should see how we got him home; he put on this seat belt harness thing and then laid down flat, lengthwise in the back of the car. There’s not enough room for 4 of us in either car now so that should be the really interesting part for all of this as there is no way for all of us to be together at any given time if we’re going somewhere.

Crazy. Did I say that? Here’s our mode of transportation for a while. I am eternally grateful to my SIL who dropped everything to pick up our daughter on Saturday, and then another friend who let her spend the night (at 10:30 after they found out the hard way the toll road was closed due to high water) last night. Another good friend must have a lot of experience with emergencies because she was over this afternoon in no time with homemade sloppy joes with everything you could imagine to go with it. And her own kids came with her to decorate his room. I was so tired I probably didn’t make any sense to her but once we sat down to dinner, I realized that was probably the best meal I’ve ever had in my entire life!