It's been eight weeks since Jack scared the living daylights out of us. Thankfully, he's been home longer than he was in the hospital. He gets around pretty well without any assistance, and almost never takes the cane with him when he goes out. He doesn't get winded easily anymore.
He has been driving for two weeks, and has replaced the white Camry with a white crewcab Tundra. And I love that truck. So does Carter. It has more passenger space (leg room and hip room, including the second row) than my Pilot.
This week was big: Jack came off pain meds completely. Two weeks ago, he switched from his Fentanyl patch to Lortab. Then last week, he stepped down to Tylenol for a day, and then off the Tylenol. He's still on Coumadin for a tiny clot in his calf, but no other meds.
The orthopaedist found another small break in his wrist, but it was actually already in a splint for his thumb break. He also said the knee probably will be a problem for life. But we'll see.
He's still slowly losing weight (down 25+ pounds since the accident), so is beginning to succomb to the doctor's suggestion to drink whey protein shakes.
Next week he has his follow-up with the hospital rehab doctor, and his fingers are crossed for back-to-work orders. He's ready to get back into a more normal routine again.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Three Months
All of a sudden, Miss Ellyson is three months old! Updates, updates . . . where to begin?
- Sleep: She sleeps all night, almost every night. 8:30-ish until 7:30-ish. She still sleeps in her Boppy. I know: it's against the rules. The Boppy cover has a little seat so she doesn't slide down, and we have a video monitor . . . I'm hoping to get her sleeping without it in the next month, since she should be starting to roll over around that time. For now, we do what we've got to do, to get everyone sleeping.
- Eating: She nurses about every two hours, ever since she started sleeping through the night. Starting to work back toward three-hour feedings.
- Weight: Since we don't have a well-baby checkup this month, I used the unscientific method of weighing myself with and without her. She appears to weigh about 13.4 pounds, which would be the 62nd percentile.
- Clothes/diapers: Starting to move out of the 0-3M clothes and into the 3-6M; and starting to move out of the size 1-2 diapers, and into size 2. So I'd say she's average . . .
- Teeth: Yes, I said it. She's teething. Screaming, hands clawing at her lower gum, drooling, and has two little lines visible through the gum.
- Nicknames: E, Miss Ellyson, Zizard (Carter's pronunciation of lizard), Chatterbox . . .
- Talking: She is our little chatterbox. Loves to coo all day long. Smiles from ear to ear. Wakes up happy, smiling and talking to Carter, who typically hovers over her crib before I can get to her.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Serenity Prayer for Runners
God, grant me
the serenity to accept when I cannot run;
the courage to run when I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.
I'm up to 3.25 miles with the kids. I think I'm in good shape to run the Peachtree (6.2) without them, on July 4! Beyond that, I'm setting my sights on the Silver Comet Half Marathon, which Jack and my sister ran last year. Three months after Carter was born, I wasn't running at all. Between nursing and recovering, my body wasn't having it. Post-Ellyson has been a complete one-eighty.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Maternity leave
Hi ho, hi ho, it's back to work I go . . .
But my sweet husband picked up coffee, breakfast and flowers for my first day back. And my boss is super flexible (umm, that's an understatement considering he lets me do 98% of my work at home) and understanding about circumstances at home, so he isn't requiring me to log full-time hours yet. We'll gradually get back into the swing of things, as our home routine settles more and more into a long-term "normal". And we're almost there.
But my sweet husband picked up coffee, breakfast and flowers for my first day back. And my boss is super flexible (umm, that's an understatement considering he lets me do 98% of my work at home) and understanding about circumstances at home, so he isn't requiring me to log full-time hours yet. We'll gradually get back into the swing of things, as our home routine settles more and more into a long-term "normal". And we're almost there.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Big Fish
Carter spent most of the weekend at Jack's parents' lake house. And here's a picture of the fish he caught. Well, the biggest one he caught. There were other, smaller ones. But no lie: Carter hooked this one. I think he had help reeling it in, though he did reel in a smaller one on his own. Not bad for a two-year-old, eh?
Monday, May 16, 2011
Sleep
Sleep . . . someday soon, we hope to get some again. But we're making progress.
Carter had been taking . . . wait for it . . . two to three hours to go to sleep at night. No kidding. It was ridiculous. And it left me exhausted, tearful and ready to scream. (There's a book releasing next month called "Go the bleep to sleep" - we've pre-ordered it because it sounds like our life!) We think we're past that hurdle. Now I'm only devoting about 45 minutes a night, which is a huge improvement. He still crawls in bed with me in the middle of the night, and sometimes wakes me with kicking, or asking to go potty. But it's better. We think the nighttime dose of (generic) Children's Zyrtec played a role in aggitating him. I read those reviews a year ago, and I believe it. So the Zyrtec is gone.
Miss E, on the other hand, is sleeping anywhere from 7-11 hours in a stretch. So I either wake to feed her once during the night, or not at all!
Jack is still sleeping downstairs for mobility reasons, but he has been able to help a little (from downstairs) at bedtime. I have another week before I resume working, Hopefully it won't be too much longer before he can take over bedtime again.
Carter had been taking . . . wait for it . . . two to three hours to go to sleep at night. No kidding. It was ridiculous. And it left me exhausted, tearful and ready to scream. (There's a book releasing next month called "Go the bleep to sleep" - we've pre-ordered it because it sounds like our life!) We think we're past that hurdle. Now I'm only devoting about 45 minutes a night, which is a huge improvement. He still crawls in bed with me in the middle of the night, and sometimes wakes me with kicking, or asking to go potty. But it's better. We think the nighttime dose of (generic) Children's Zyrtec played a role in aggitating him. I read those reviews a year ago, and I believe it. So the Zyrtec is gone.
Miss E, on the other hand, is sleeping anywhere from 7-11 hours in a stretch. So I either wake to feed her once during the night, or not at all!
Jack is still sleeping downstairs for mobility reasons, but he has been able to help a little (from downstairs) at bedtime. I have another week before I resume working, Hopefully it won't be too much longer before he can take over bedtime again.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Jack's Accident
Okay, so, I think everyone (or almost everyone) who reads this blog, also would have seen my posts on Facebook. But in case someone didn't (or missed part of them), here's what's been going on.
Jack was in a car accident on April 2. He was driving to the airport for work, and the kids, Marley, and I had gone with Jack's parents to their lake house for the weekend. Jack helped us load his parents' van, and then was planning to leave our house shortly after we left. Two hours later, I had missed a phone call on my cell phone, while I was nursing Ellyson and my phone was charging in another room. After the third time listening to the voicemail, I decided to return the phone call of the man claiming to be a police officer in a juristiction near the airport where Jack had been going. I thought it was some kind of strange joke. And then, as his phone was ringing, I got a sinking feeling and started praying for God to not let it be Jack . . . as the officer started asking about my ownership of (the car Jack had been driving), and about who would have been driving the car that day, and about how much time had passed since I'd heard from him, I thought I was going to throw up. He informed me that Jack had been in an accident and was being transported to (a specific large hospital in the city). He advised me to meet Jack there.
Jack's parents and I scooped up whatever we thought we might need for the day, and maybe the next day, unsure whether we'd come back to the lakehouse that weekend. Also unsure what state Jack was in. En route to the hospital (the long, two-hour drive from the lake to the city), I spoke to the police officer once more, then to an old college roommate who is a surgeon, and she got me in touch with Jack's ICU surgeon.
It turns out, Jack felt sick that morning. That much I knew, because he'd told me. I shrugged it off as mild anxiety over his business trip - the first since Ellyson's birth, and one that involved a pretty substantial trade show for his new job. While he was driving, and almost at the airport, he felt like he was starting to pass out, and attempted to pull over. For the next two weeks, we didn't know what happened next. Once Jack woke up in ICU, he was able to fill in the details the police officer didn't have. He pulled onto the shoulder (a grassy shoulder there, alongside the runways) and was trying to stop the car, but he remembers that his legs wouldn't push the brake. So he was reaching for the emergency brake. The next thing he remembers, a man was asking him if he was alive. It turns out he hadn't stopped the car, but instead hit a DOT truck at about 60 mph. Someone asked him if there was someone who should be notified, and he was able to give my name and cell phone number (here's a lesson to all: you need to know your emergency contact numbers; Jack's cell phone was never recovered from the accident, and he had to recite my number from memory). They used the jaws of life to cut him out of the car (for which he was awake), and then life-flighted him to the hospital. (He remembers lifting off in the helicopter, and then remembers nothing of the next 11 days.) Once at the hospital, the doctors were unable to intubate him, so he had a tracheotomy.
He suffered six broken ribs, which punctured a lung and caused it to collapse. He also fractured a thumb, a hip and a knee cap. He was semi-alert during some of the first 24 hours, but remembers none of it, then spent about a week unconscious, on a ventilator. It took another couple days for him to come out of the sedation. I always assumed the movies were right, in that people suddenly wake up from comas. That's not how it happened with Jack. He went in and out of sleep for about three days while he was waking, and doesn't remember any of it until the last few hours before they put a valve on his trach, which allowed him to finally speak and swallow. Coincidence or not, that's when his memory kicked in . . .
So he spent 12 days in ICU and another two weeks in acute inpatient rehab. By the time he left the hospital, after 26 days, he was walking pretty well with a cane. (Now he also walks relatively well without it.)
The rehab doctor suspects he may have a really minor, really common, underlying heart condition, which may have caused him to black out that day. So we are following up with a cardiologist in addition to everything directly related to the accident injuries.
And that's where the month of April went for our family. As for maternity leave? Everyone experiences this much chaos on leave, right? Here I thought my body healed quickly after birth because God knew I'd have to keep up with Carter. Little did we know it was actually so I'd be able to handle this so soon after Ellyson arrived.
Jack was in a car accident on April 2. He was driving to the airport for work, and the kids, Marley, and I had gone with Jack's parents to their lake house for the weekend. Jack helped us load his parents' van, and then was planning to leave our house shortly after we left. Two hours later, I had missed a phone call on my cell phone, while I was nursing Ellyson and my phone was charging in another room. After the third time listening to the voicemail, I decided to return the phone call of the man claiming to be a police officer in a juristiction near the airport where Jack had been going. I thought it was some kind of strange joke. And then, as his phone was ringing, I got a sinking feeling and started praying for God to not let it be Jack . . . as the officer started asking about my ownership of (the car Jack had been driving), and about who would have been driving the car that day, and about how much time had passed since I'd heard from him, I thought I was going to throw up. He informed me that Jack had been in an accident and was being transported to (a specific large hospital in the city). He advised me to meet Jack there.
Jack's parents and I scooped up whatever we thought we might need for the day, and maybe the next day, unsure whether we'd come back to the lakehouse that weekend. Also unsure what state Jack was in. En route to the hospital (the long, two-hour drive from the lake to the city), I spoke to the police officer once more, then to an old college roommate who is a surgeon, and she got me in touch with Jack's ICU surgeon.
It turns out, Jack felt sick that morning. That much I knew, because he'd told me. I shrugged it off as mild anxiety over his business trip - the first since Ellyson's birth, and one that involved a pretty substantial trade show for his new job. While he was driving, and almost at the airport, he felt like he was starting to pass out, and attempted to pull over. For the next two weeks, we didn't know what happened next. Once Jack woke up in ICU, he was able to fill in the details the police officer didn't have. He pulled onto the shoulder (a grassy shoulder there, alongside the runways) and was trying to stop the car, but he remembers that his legs wouldn't push the brake. So he was reaching for the emergency brake. The next thing he remembers, a man was asking him if he was alive. It turns out he hadn't stopped the car, but instead hit a DOT truck at about 60 mph. Someone asked him if there was someone who should be notified, and he was able to give my name and cell phone number (here's a lesson to all: you need to know your emergency contact numbers; Jack's cell phone was never recovered from the accident, and he had to recite my number from memory). They used the jaws of life to cut him out of the car (for which he was awake), and then life-flighted him to the hospital. (He remembers lifting off in the helicopter, and then remembers nothing of the next 11 days.) Once at the hospital, the doctors were unable to intubate him, so he had a tracheotomy.
He suffered six broken ribs, which punctured a lung and caused it to collapse. He also fractured a thumb, a hip and a knee cap. He was semi-alert during some of the first 24 hours, but remembers none of it, then spent about a week unconscious, on a ventilator. It took another couple days for him to come out of the sedation. I always assumed the movies were right, in that people suddenly wake up from comas. That's not how it happened with Jack. He went in and out of sleep for about three days while he was waking, and doesn't remember any of it until the last few hours before they put a valve on his trach, which allowed him to finally speak and swallow. Coincidence or not, that's when his memory kicked in . . .
So he spent 12 days in ICU and another two weeks in acute inpatient rehab. By the time he left the hospital, after 26 days, he was walking pretty well with a cane. (Now he also walks relatively well without it.)
The rehab doctor suspects he may have a really minor, really common, underlying heart condition, which may have caused him to black out that day. So we are following up with a cardiologist in addition to everything directly related to the accident injuries.
And that's where the month of April went for our family. As for maternity leave? Everyone experiences this much chaos on leave, right? Here I thought my body healed quickly after birth because God knew I'd have to keep up with Carter. Little did we know it was actually so I'd be able to handle this so soon after Ellyson arrived.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Search Overload
You know that Bing commercial that talks about "search" overload? You know . . . the husband and wife are talking, and he catches the key words and goes off on tangents about those words. Life with Carter, is like that commercial. A couple examples:
On Good Friday, he and I were in the car. We saw a crosswalk on the road and he called out that he saw a railroad track. I told him it was called a crosswalk, and he replied with "crosswalk, cross, Jesus on the cross." Which actually led into a pretty good discussion about Good Friday and Easter.
Carter and Jack were discussing berries the other day. I guess since it's berry season, and Carter went strawberry picking a couple times (I don't think I'll ever catch up on what we did - aside from Jack's hospitalization - for the month of April). Carter was talking about which berries he likes: strawberries, yes; blueberries, yes; blackberries, no (??); raspberries . . . Well, he doesn't really like raspberries because they're sometimes in coffee, and he can't have coffee because it would make him sick. Yes, we sometimes order raspberry mochas, and apparently he has come to those conclusions on his own.
On Good Friday, he and I were in the car. We saw a crosswalk on the road and he called out that he saw a railroad track. I told him it was called a crosswalk, and he replied with "crosswalk, cross, Jesus on the cross." Which actually led into a pretty good discussion about Good Friday and Easter.
Carter and Jack were discussing berries the other day. I guess since it's berry season, and Carter went strawberry picking a couple times (I don't think I'll ever catch up on what we did - aside from Jack's hospitalization - for the month of April). Carter was talking about which berries he likes: strawberries, yes; blueberries, yes; blackberries, no (??); raspberries . . . Well, he doesn't really like raspberries because they're sometimes in coffee, and he can't have coffee because it would make him sick. Yes, we sometimes order raspberry mochas, and apparently he has come to those conclusions on his own.
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