More doctors!!!

I have seen more than my share of doctors lately!

I have been to the doctor's office a couple times in the last month or so. I have been having more anxiety lately, so the dr put me on a medication. After 3 weeks on it, I developed a bad reaction to it. After going off it I started having crippling anxiety and major panic attacks that would last for hours! I was shaking like a crack addict in need of a fix and was itching EVERYWHERE. Went back to the dr. and she switched my meds around and I am having some relief from the anxiety. It is not completely gone yet, and I still have some mild panic attacks, but it is way better than it was. I go back to the dr in a couple of weeks and I will she how she tweaks my meds.

THEN... I had to take Julia to the dr this morning. She has been having several potty accidents and holding herself a lot. She was not complaining of pain, but I suspected a bladder infection. My mommy instincts were right and she has an UTI. So meds for her too!

I am soooo sick of doctors and hope the hospitals take payments, because I have about $1000.00 in medical bills right now. That is WITH insurance!! Here is to hoping for a better year in 2012!

Finally healthy

Julia is all better and Jude's allergies are starting to be controlled. I am so tired of doctors and hospitals. I have not even seen the hospital bills yet and I know it will not be pretty.

Now, if we can just stay this way all winter!!

Two more ER visits!

Only this time it was Julia who was in the ER! Let me just say that my kids have the weirdest medical issues and always seem to confuse doctors, especially Julia.

Last Monday, Julia started complaining that her leg hurt at about 5pm. She also started to refuse to walk on it. I did not think too much of it, she is always bouncing and jumping around, I just figured she bumped it. After an hour or two she was starting to whine and cry about it hurting, especially when her hip was moved. By this time we figured out her pain was coming from her hip area. We thought that she must have pulled a muscle. After a couple more hours she is screaming in pain and refuses to move her leg at all. At this point, I don't think it is a pulled muscle and start to worry that something serious is wrong. We pack Julia up and take her to the ER. I thought about taking her to Children's right away, but it is 30-45 minutes away, and the local hospital is only 5 minutes away.

The local hospital is busy. We sit in the waiting room for over an hour waiting to even get an exam room. All the while, Julia is whining with occasional bouts of screaming and sleeping.

Once we finally see a doctor, he is convinced she has a condition that normally happens to pre-teens in where the ball of the femur breaks off at the growth plate. He orders x-rays to confirm this. Of course Julia screamed through the x-rays because we had to move her leg around. I am pretty sure people in the next county heard her! Oddly enough the x-rays show no evidence of a break at the growth plate. The dr. decides to send the x-rays off for a second opinion. During this time, they do give Julia some Motrin for the pain. It does not help, but she finally cries herself to sleep. The second opinion of the x-rays also come back clear. So now the dr. is stumped and he decides to call Children's Hospital for help. The doctors at Children's tell him the possibilities of what it could be and the test that need to be run. The local doc explains this to us, but says that don't have the equipment to run these tests on a child, so it is probably best just to take her to Children's, especially since they would have to treat her there anyway.

So after 5 hours at the local ER, we pack Julia up and I drive her to the Children's ER. Luckily, they are not too busy and were expecting her. We quickly see a doctor who explains what they think it is. They need bloodwork and another set of x-rays. They decide that they need to get Julia's pain under control before they even attempted x-rays again. They start an IV to get blood and to give Julia some Morphine and Motrin. They Morphine makes her a little spacey and slow, but it dulls the pain.

The bloodwork shows no infection and the x-rays are clear so they want an ultrasound of her hip to see if she has a pocket of fluid surrounding it. Julia does well for the ultrasound and even I can see that there is definitely a big pocket of fluid around her hip joint.

The Orthopedist was working on another case, so we had to wait awhile before he could talk to us. The good news was that nothing was broken and there is no infection. It was something called Transit Synovitis. Doctors don't know what causes it, but it happens in kids Julia's age, usually about a week after an Upper Respiratory Infection (a cold), and it will go away on it's own within a couple of days. They bad news it that it is very painful until then. He gave us some prescriptions for pain meds and sent us home.

Of all the possibilities that could have been wrong, I think we lucked out. They others would have involved a hospital stay and surgery.

By Wednesday morning she was already up and running around on it. Unfortunately by Wednesday evening she was complaining that her OTHER hip now hurt and by that night she was screaming in pain again. It had the same symptoms as the other hip, so we know what it was. I just felt awful because there was nothing I could do to take the pain away. The pain meds were not helping.

Everything I was told and everything I read only talked about ONE hip/joint being affected. I was not prepared for her other hip to get it to. I called the ortho dr. on Thursday morning to ask about it. He was surprised that her other hip was now affected. He did say it was very unusual, but not completely unheard of. Just keep an eye on her and bring her in if she starts running a temperature or any other joint becomes affected.

Luckily, by Friday she was better other than mild pain. She limped slightly most of the weekend and complained of just mild pain. No other joints became affected.

Geesh! My kids come up with the strangest aliments!

Julia' Hat

Got Julia's hat finished about a week ago. I was going to make it all purple, but Julia said I needed to add pink to the bottom. I think it needs a crocheted flower at the gather, so I will do that soon.

Julia likes to make silly faces for the camera.....

Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning!!!!

I have been cleaning almost non-stop for days now! The entire house smells like bleach and my washing machine has not stopped running in four days.

Basically I am doing Spring cleaning in the fall. In an effort to get Jude's allergies under control everything in the house is is getting washed, scrubbed, dusted, bleached, etc.. I even had Jerry bring over his Dyson vacuum. Even after just vacuuming with my vacuum, the Dyson still swept up THREE canisters full for dust/dirt!! I really think a Dyson vacuum needs to move up the list from a "someday luxury" to a "necessity", especially with Jude's allergies.

After today the entire upstairs will have been scrubbed completely! That includes windows washed, curtains washed, everything dusted-including baseboards, furniture moved and swept under, beds completely stripped and washed, etc. The curtains in Jude's room will not go back up.

I still need to rent a carpet shampooer and shampoo all the carpets. We will also be removing the carpet in Jude's room and replacing it with hardwood flooring.

Another ER visit

Spent a couple hours in the ER last night/this morning with Jude. He was perfectly fine last night when he went to bed. At about 11:30pm he started that Croupy cough. After a few minutes I see that he is really struggling to breathe. He is having severe strider and retraction and cannot catch his breath. In the MANY times he has had Croup (I think this makes #7), I have never seen him this bad, especially that quickly. I was actually pretty frightened, and if you know me, I don't get worked up over medical stuff very easily.

After about 15-20 minutes of watching Jude struggling to breathe without any improvement and him crying because he is freaked that he cannot breathe, I decided to pack Jude up and take him to the ER. Luckily, we now live about 2 miles from a hospital.

Once at the hospital, I became even more frightened by the reaction of the hospital staff. I noticed several other people in the ER waiting room as I walked to the registration desk. As the tech at the registration desk is taking our information, the triage nurse hears Jude and pokes her head out. She takes one look at Jude and disappears into the ER. About 20 seconds later she comes out and says to skip the registration and there is already a room ready for Jude. Once in the room, about 5 doctors and nurses descend on Jude within less than a minute. Those two things are what really freaked me out. Since when can you skip registration and go straight to the head of the line? AND I have never received that fast of care at an ER!

Jude quickly got a nebulizer treatment with three separate meds in it. He also got an oral steroid, which he promptly vomited back up, so then he got a steroid shot. About halfway through the nebulizer treatments, he could finally breathe again and he calmed down. After about 10 minutes he was back to smiling and flirting with his nurse. The nurse commented on how the change in him was night and day.

After about 2 hours in the ER (most of which was making sure his chest x-ray was clear and that his oxygen levels stayed stable), we finally went home. I had Jude sleep in our bed, so I could keep a close eye on him.

Today he is still Croupy and his breathing is still raspy, but at least he can breathe. Hoping tonight is not as bad!

Jude's new hat

I decided to crochet Jude a fun winter hat. I combined three different patterns, plus made a few of my own design changes and this is what I came up with! A Dino hat! Jude loves it. I braided several strings of yarn at the bottom of the ear flaps, so I can tie the hat on him.

We saw the "Cho-Choo"!

About a week ago, we all, including Mimi and Bapa, went to see and ride on Thomas the Tank Engine! Jude absolutely loves "cho-choo's". He thought this was GREAT!

Jude's first day of preschool

Even though Julia is sick with the flu, Jude was healthy and went to his first day of preschool for this school year. He is in the same class as last year, the toddler class.

He was not wanting me to leave him there, but I slipped out while he was distracted. The instructor said he had a great time. He played music and had another little boy following him around all day. The funny thing about this class is that there is only 9 or 10 toddlers in this class, but there are THREE Abigails!

In front of the house getting ready to leave.


His Thomas the train backpack.



At the center.

Playing in the mud

I know a lot of parents throw a fit if their kids played in the mud. I am not one of those mothers. I remember making a LOT of mud pies growing up. Mud washes off and it keeps the kids occupied.

One night a couple weeks ago, I was trying to make supper. The kids were having a blast playing in the mud. They took the hose and made a waterfall/stream at the corner of one of my flower beds.

Preschool!

Tuesday we had preschool orientation for both kids. Today was Julia actual first day of preschool. It is the same preschool she went to last year, she is just in the next class up. Now in the 4 and 5 year old class.

She was super excited and could not wait until preschool started. She has been taking about it for a long time!

She has to "pose" for pictures now!


Her purple sparkly backpack.

In front of the school.

Writing her name to sign in.

Jude thinking he should sign in too! (He goes on Tuesday mornings)

No tubes needed!!

Jude will not need tubes after all!! YEAH!

About three weeks ago, Jude started to get Croup again, so I took him to see our new family doctor. Because of his terrible hayfever and allergies, she suggested keeping him on Claritin all summer until the first hard frost. My previous pedi did not want to put him on it. I decided to give it a shot. Within just days the constant runny nose and congestion went away. I also noticed he was talking more.

We had the hearing test last week and they said all was fine.

Saw the ENT today and he said his ears looked clear and good. We discussed the fact that Jude has had Croup many times, and he said that Jude is just one of those kids who get Croup a lot. Nothing physically wrong, he will just get Croup most every time he gets sick. The Dr. did say that can tell Jude had allergies, but the Claritin seemed to really be helping him. He said I could considering taking Jude to a Pediatric allergist if I wanted. No need for tubes or anything else.

I have also noticed that since putting Jude on Claritin, his language/vocabulary has just EXPLODED!! I think the Claritin finally cleared the constant congestion in his ears and he can finally hear clearly.

I hate having him on a medicine all the time, but if his development is going to suffer without it, I can deal with the medicine.

He can hear

We had Jude's second hearing test last week. According to the audiologist, there is no issue with his hearing. We see the ENT tomorrow to go over the results and talk about his other issues, allergies and croup.

Julia and the waves...

Julia talked about going to the ocean for MONTHS! How she was going to swim in the ocean and play in the waves. That all went out the window once we got to the beach.


First day there, this is about as close as she would get to the waves.


Daddy decided to take her out a little.
She clung on to him with all her strength. (see her foot stick out of the water, she was really trying to stay out)

So by the end of day one, this is the farthest she would get to the waves. She really wanted water in her bucket for sandcastles, but did not want the wave to actually touch her! (Someone ended up having to get the water for her.)

By day two, she got braver, and would actually get her feet wet getting the water.

By day three, so was really getting brave.



It would have been nice to finish out our vacation, just to see how brave Julia would actually get. But alas, the hurricane had other plans.

The ocean

The last time we went to the ocean, Jude was only 5-6 weeks old. So this was a new experience for him. It was so neat to see him take it in. He loves water, so he thought it was great until he discovered the power of waves and undertow!


"This is great mom, the water runs over my feet."


"What is happening? The water is trying to pull me in!"

"ACK! It is attacking me!"


Jude finally realized that if he held someone's hand, he would not get swept away and could enjoy the waves.

Looking back at Bapa, giving him an ornery grin!