Yesterday at dinner William said, "I played a new game at recess." I was happy. He has been playing a basketball game called War that tends to get rough and cause some issues with a certain child who will remain nameless but who seems to cause trouble with William and his friends. I've been trying to get William to avoid this kid so I was thrilled to see him branching out and playing something different. "Great. What game were you playing?", I asked.
"Nazi."
I froze. Literally. I was standing at the sink and turned around slowly. "What did you say you were playing?", I asked, hoping I had misunderstood. "Nazi", William replied happily, "it's a fun game."
No. No. No way was my child playing a game called Nazi. So I asked him to explain the game.
"Well, we all lined up behind a kid and then we run away. The goal is to not let the kid in front see you. You know, Not See."
Ooooohhhh. Not See. I get it.
Thank heavens.
Thursday, April 24, 2014
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Saturday, April 12, 2014
The 4th Grade Field Trip
Every year at William's school, the 4th grade gets to go on a field trip to Salt Lake City. The itinerary varies - when Henry went they visited the Utah state capital building, the Natural History museum and the planetarium. This year William and his classmates were able to visit This Is The Place State Park, Hogle Zoo and the Utah Natural History Museum.
On a trip like this, parent chaperones are needed. I had always planned to go and help out, but then Jay had his surgery. He is still unable to drive (hopefully that changes on Monday) and had just gone back to work. Luckily Jay was able to stay home/work from home that day, so I signed up to go.
It was a loooonnnnggg day. We had to be at the school by 6:45 am for a 7 am departure. After a solid two hour bus ride, we arrived at This Is The Place Park:
We visited the school house, where the kids had a lesson as if they were attending school in 1865 in the Utah Territory.
They took turns pulling and pushing handcarts, like some of the pioneers who settled Utah:
William and his friend Kyron in front of the big monument:
Next we went to Hogle Zoo. It seemed like a lot of the zoo was under construction but it was still fun:
Finally we went to the Natural History Museum at the University of Utah. The Sky Terrace was a fun place to visit:
William loves fossils and dinosaurs, so much so that he wants to be a paleontologist when he grows up (although last week he wanted to be an astronomer):
This dinosaur footprint cast was pretty impressive:
Fossils, fossils, fossils!
It was a really fun day! Thank goodness for my friend Kassey! She chaperoned the trip as well and it was nice to have a friend to talk to during the long bus ride to and from Cache Valley. Four hours is a long time to ride on a bus that honestly isn't designed for the comfort of adults.
William was happy to proclaim this activity as the Best Field Trip Ever!
On a trip like this, parent chaperones are needed. I had always planned to go and help out, but then Jay had his surgery. He is still unable to drive (hopefully that changes on Monday) and had just gone back to work. Luckily Jay was able to stay home/work from home that day, so I signed up to go.
It was a loooonnnnggg day. We had to be at the school by 6:45 am for a 7 am departure. After a solid two hour bus ride, we arrived at This Is The Place Park:
We visited the school house, where the kids had a lesson as if they were attending school in 1865 in the Utah Territory.
It was a really fun day! Thank goodness for my friend Kassey! She chaperoned the trip as well and it was nice to have a friend to talk to during the long bus ride to and from Cache Valley. Four hours is a long time to ride on a bus that honestly isn't designed for the comfort of adults.
William was happy to proclaim this activity as the Best Field Trip Ever!
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
Good Riddance, Part II!
Jay's PICC line is out. After two months of daily IV antibiotics, he is done. This is actually two weeks earlier than we thought, but his Infectious Disease doctor called last week and said four weeks after surgery should do the trick. His blood work looks good and there is no sign of any more infection. So today we went to Logan Regional and they removed that nasty PICC line.
We are actually grateful for the PICC line. It allowed Jay to do his own antibiotics for eight weeks; he only had to go in once a week for bloodwork and a dressing change. But it was annoying and uncomfortable. So it's good to have it gone.
One more week and he has his followup appointment with the heart surgeon. Hopefully that appointment will see him cleared for driving. We can only hope!
We are actually grateful for the PICC line. It allowed Jay to do his own antibiotics for eight weeks; he only had to go in once a week for bloodwork and a dressing change. But it was annoying and uncomfortable. So it's good to have it gone.
One more week and he has his followup appointment with the heart surgeon. Hopefully that appointment will see him cleared for driving. We can only hope!
Friday, April 4, 2014
Good Riddance!
Thanks heavens it's April. I will take a thousand silly April Fools jokes from my kids as long as it means March 2014 is dead and gone forever.
Obviously Jay's illness, surgery and immediate recovery is the worst of the worst. Just when he started feeling better I ended up with an abscessed tooth. Fun, huh? It is on a tooth that has a root canal and it was nasty. My gums and jaw swelled up like crazy and it throbbed all the time. I had a hard time eating and between the lack of food and my frequent use of over the counter pain killers, I ended up really sick. I couldn't sleep. I was grumpy. But I felt like a heel complaining about my toothache because, you know, anything kind of pales in comparison to recent open-heart surgery.
I have been on an antibiotic for a week and things are looking better. The swelling is down and the pain is down to a dull ache that isn't too bad. I am scheduled for a re-do of the root canal on Monday afternoon. As going to any doctor who comes close to my mouth with sharp instruments is my least favorite thing to do, I'm not excited. But hopefully that will be in the end of that.
Jay is great, however. He's back to work and starting up Cardiac Rehab. He feels good. He should get his PICC line out next week (after almost two months) and it won't come a moment too soon.
The kids have been out of school this week on Spring Break. Between Jay's return to work full time, my dental discomfort and some less than ideal weather, we haven't done too much. I took the kids to see Muppets Most Wanted, which killed a rainy afternoon. They have hung out with friends a bit and played some new video games that they bought. I was hoping to do a fun day trip to Salt Lake but it just didn't happen. Hopefully they aren't scarred for life from the lameness that is Spring Break 2014.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Sunday, March 16, 2014
It All Started With a Cough
Ask me anything about aortic valve replacements. I know it all. Not enough to do one, of course, but enough.
So Jay had been sick. Not debilitated, exactly, but sick. His back finally healed in mid-January and then he started actually feeling worse. Achy, coughing, fever. Assuming it was just a virus he tried to wait it out but just didn't feel better. He went to his doctor, who thank heavens was very aggressive and proactive with his response - he assumed it was a virus but did some tests to rule a few things out. Surprise! He found something called endocarditis, an infection that attacks the heart. Jay went on IV antibiotics and had a few tests run to check his heart heart function. Those tests showed that he had something called a Bicuspid Aortic Valve, which is a fairly common congenital heart condition. His valve obviously worked fine up until now - he is 47 and never had a hint of a heart issue. But the endocarditis attacked his valve and damaged it, causing blood to back flow into Jay's heart.
We met with an infectious disease doctor and a heart surgeon, both of whom told us that Jay needed surgery to replace his valve sooner rather than later. He felt OK (the antibiotics did a good job) so we originally thought that we would do the surgery around April 1st. A series of circumstances (the surgeon being out of town and Jay realizing he didn't really want this hanging over his head for a month) led to scheduling it for Tuesday, March 18th.
Unfortunately, Jay was getting worse. He developed a terrible cough and his shortness of breath got worse. He tried Lasix to ease his breathing problem and it helped, but not before causing him to break out in hives. He was a mess. He was trying to work and was just not getting better at all.
On March 10th Jay went to his GP because he was not sleeping and his breathing was labored. His doctor took a chest xray, called Jay's surgeon and said, "you've got to replace his valve now." His lungs had fluid in them. Basically he was going into heart failure. So we drove down to Salt Lake on Monday night. After Jay was admitted the PA said they'd probably do surgery Wed or Thurs to give his lungs a chance to clear. But then they did an echo of his heart which showed his valve was flapping around and not doing anything. His surgeon decided at 11:30 at night to put Jay on the schedule for the next morning.
On Tuesday, March 11th Jay had open heart surgery. It went well. His lungs weren't in great shape which caused him to stay on the ventilator longer than normal and his right lung to collapse, but his heart was good as new. Better than new, actually, because this valve is not only not infected it is correctly formed. He was in ICU until Thursday morning. He slowly is becoming more disconnected to the hospital. As of tonight (Sunday, March 16th) he only has a chest tube and some pacing wires to remove. The pacing wires are put in just in case they need to regulate your heart's rhythm with a temporary pacemaker, which they didn't have to do with Jay. His chest tube is still draining fluid from his chest - they don't take it out until you are draining less than a certain amount. It's a pain but better to stay until they are sure he is fine and ready to be released. The last thing you want is to leave too early and have to be readmitted with pneumonia. So we're fine waiting.
Going forward, Jay just needs to recover from surgery. He will be off work for a few weeks but will probably start working from home a bit. The hardest part is that he can't drive for six weeks. Sigh. Luckily Jay works about 10 minutes from home so it won't be too bad. The driving part isn't because they think you will faint or anything - it's that your chest wall and rib cage need time to fully heal before you try to support a steering well. It's fine - he'll be well so that's all we care about. He has to start the clock over on his IV antibiotics as well. Once he comes home he'll do 5 more weeks of daily antibiotics through his PICC line. He already knows the drill so it's not a big deal to do and they deliver all the medicine and supplies right to our door so it's easy. Once that is over, he should be good. He'll have a yearly echocardiogram with our new favorite doctor, Dr. William Caine of the Intermountain Heart Institute.
For the record we can't say enough good things about Intermountain Medical Center and the Heart/Lung Center. The staff is amazing and we are really happy with the care Jay has received. It is amazing to us that people are trained and can fix problems like Jay had. We are incredibly grateful that we had such a good outcome and to all of the people who took such good care of Jay.
Talk to me in a month however. I may be good and sick of driving him around by then. If you see Jay catching a bus to work, you'll know that we the chauffeur hat didn't fit me as well as I would like.
So Jay had been sick. Not debilitated, exactly, but sick. His back finally healed in mid-January and then he started actually feeling worse. Achy, coughing, fever. Assuming it was just a virus he tried to wait it out but just didn't feel better. He went to his doctor, who thank heavens was very aggressive and proactive with his response - he assumed it was a virus but did some tests to rule a few things out. Surprise! He found something called endocarditis, an infection that attacks the heart. Jay went on IV antibiotics and had a few tests run to check his heart heart function. Those tests showed that he had something called a Bicuspid Aortic Valve, which is a fairly common congenital heart condition. His valve obviously worked fine up until now - he is 47 and never had a hint of a heart issue. But the endocarditis attacked his valve and damaged it, causing blood to back flow into Jay's heart.
We met with an infectious disease doctor and a heart surgeon, both of whom told us that Jay needed surgery to replace his valve sooner rather than later. He felt OK (the antibiotics did a good job) so we originally thought that we would do the surgery around April 1st. A series of circumstances (the surgeon being out of town and Jay realizing he didn't really want this hanging over his head for a month) led to scheduling it for Tuesday, March 18th.
Unfortunately, Jay was getting worse. He developed a terrible cough and his shortness of breath got worse. He tried Lasix to ease his breathing problem and it helped, but not before causing him to break out in hives. He was a mess. He was trying to work and was just not getting better at all.
On March 10th Jay went to his GP because he was not sleeping and his breathing was labored. His doctor took a chest xray, called Jay's surgeon and said, "you've got to replace his valve now." His lungs had fluid in them. Basically he was going into heart failure. So we drove down to Salt Lake on Monday night. After Jay was admitted the PA said they'd probably do surgery Wed or Thurs to give his lungs a chance to clear. But then they did an echo of his heart which showed his valve was flapping around and not doing anything. His surgeon decided at 11:30 at night to put Jay on the schedule for the next morning.
On Tuesday, March 11th Jay had open heart surgery. It went well. His lungs weren't in great shape which caused him to stay on the ventilator longer than normal and his right lung to collapse, but his heart was good as new. Better than new, actually, because this valve is not only not infected it is correctly formed. He was in ICU until Thursday morning. He slowly is becoming more disconnected to the hospital. As of tonight (Sunday, March 16th) he only has a chest tube and some pacing wires to remove. The pacing wires are put in just in case they need to regulate your heart's rhythm with a temporary pacemaker, which they didn't have to do with Jay. His chest tube is still draining fluid from his chest - they don't take it out until you are draining less than a certain amount. It's a pain but better to stay until they are sure he is fine and ready to be released. The last thing you want is to leave too early and have to be readmitted with pneumonia. So we're fine waiting.
Going forward, Jay just needs to recover from surgery. He will be off work for a few weeks but will probably start working from home a bit. The hardest part is that he can't drive for six weeks. Sigh. Luckily Jay works about 10 minutes from home so it won't be too bad. The driving part isn't because they think you will faint or anything - it's that your chest wall and rib cage need time to fully heal before you try to support a steering well. It's fine - he'll be well so that's all we care about. He has to start the clock over on his IV antibiotics as well. Once he comes home he'll do 5 more weeks of daily antibiotics through his PICC line. He already knows the drill so it's not a big deal to do and they deliver all the medicine and supplies right to our door so it's easy. Once that is over, he should be good. He'll have a yearly echocardiogram with our new favorite doctor, Dr. William Caine of the Intermountain Heart Institute.
For the record we can't say enough good things about Intermountain Medical Center and the Heart/Lung Center. The staff is amazing and we are really happy with the care Jay has received. It is amazing to us that people are trained and can fix problems like Jay had. We are incredibly grateful that we had such a good outcome and to all of the people who took such good care of Jay.
Talk to me in a month however. I may be good and sick of driving him around by then. If you see Jay catching a bus to work, you'll know that we the chauffeur hat didn't fit me as well as I would like.
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