10 Years

On Friday, T and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary! Because we only have daytime care for D, T took the day off work and we found a friend for G to stay with. Once we got the kids off to school we had the whole day to ourselves! We drove over to the town we lived in when we got married. We cruised by our first apartment and our first home. We ate a favorite restaurant and walked on the trail we used to walk/bike/roller blade. It was a very fun day!

Ten years ago I couldn't have begun to imagine where we are now. I'm so excited to see what God does with us in the next 10 years! J will be 19, Z 18, H 17, and G 15 in ten years. Yikes!

The top picture is from 2000 (we were married in 1998, but didn't go digital until later) at Z's baptism. The bottom picture is one we snapped ourselves last month.

Kid Kart and Thoughts

This is a Kid Kart. It's a pediatric wheelchair/stroller. Several weeks ago D had an appointment at a clinic and they reccommended that he get one of these to help him sit up straight, since he is unable to support himself. There are a lot of benefits to this chair, but the state insurance won't cover it, because they consider it a stroller. It's more than a stroller, because D ends up slouched in a ball when he's in our stroller, despite all the rolled up blankets we put around him to try to hold him in place.

The Kid Kart costs around $2,000 without any "options" and about $5,000 fully loaded. But D's foster care advocates called around and found a used one for $20! Incredible! So now D has his very own Kid Kart. And I think he likes it! He certainly liked being in the middle of everything last night while he was in it. We haven't gone for a walk around the block, but I know he'll love that! He'll be able to see much more than when he's packed in his stroller.

But T and I agree, it's pretty sobering. I mean, we know D has some pretty special needs. He's almost 2 years old, but functions physically at the level of a 4 month old. He looks physically different from a 2 year old or a 4 month old. But when we see him in the chair it just screams "I'm disabled!"

It's proabably a good thing he enjoyed it so much last night, or I'd be thinking of excuses not to use it. As it is, I think it's very good for him. So I'll have to swallow big and let go of pretending everything is "normal". And that's ok. I just didn't think it would bother me like this!

Time Flies By! Summer is Coming!

Even though the weather has remained (thankfully!) cool for the season, summer is here! The kids are down to just 4 days of school and my free time is sliding away. But I guess I'm acutally looking forward to this summer, even without the free time to myself I've been enjoying!

Lesson Learned, Part II

So, I have just shown the ER doctor my annoyance, and (here comes the lesson part) he calmly says "I know the wait is long. We had a car accident come in with a lot of kids involved this afternoon, and we've been running behind since then."

"oh."

*sigh* It is hard to be patient. Even when you've got a good book. But, thankfully, we were only there for a fever. And we wouldn't have been there if we had any other option. I won't even go into the people I saw in the waiting room who I couldn't imagine why they were there! But there I go judging again, and I should have learned my lesson by now!

But I'll finish my story. The doctor ordered lab work. I think by now I could almost just stop at the lab before I hit the ER next time and ask for the lab work myself (if they'd let me!). I think this would be a great solution! Heck, they would probably have the lab work done *before* I saw the ER doc! :)

So the drew blood and ordered chest x-rays. Those break my heart. D just started crying when I picked him up out of his stroller in the x-ray room. I think he knew where he was and what they were going to do - they hang him by his arms to take a chest x-ray! They are good and they are very quick, but... poor D!

We went back to our exam room and waited. The boss of all ER doctors came in and chatted for a few minutes with me. Then young doctor came in a while later. And when I was JUST about done with my book, young doctor came in and told me we'd be admitted. They had some more lab work to draw, and they wanted a urine sample, so the nurse would cath D and we'd go up to our room. ("cath" being "insert a catheter into his penis" to draw out urine)

"I don't want you to cath him. They can tape a bag on - we use these all the time at home."

"Yes, but sometimes with the bag you don't get a clean sample."

"I understand. I don't want him cathed."

"But if the sample isn't clean, it might come back as a false positive."

"I understand. I don't want him cathed. We can tape a bag on him."

"OK" and he left.

To explain my point of view, I've had this conversation before with other doctors. I already knew he was going to be admitted. I figured they could bag him. If the urine culture was positive for infection, but they suspected contamination, the could cath him the next day for a "clean" sample. He'd be in the hospital already anyway.

So a couple minutes later Mr. RN comes in with a cath kit in his hand. I spoke up right away. "I don't want him cathed. We can tape a bag on to get the urine sample." "Alright" and he sets the cath kit down, and I might be mistaken, but he looks relieved. I go on to explain "I did tell the doctor I didn't want him cathed." Eye contact. "He didn't pass that on to us. I'm glad you spoke up. The bag will be fine." And everything in Mr. RN and Ms. RN's body language is telling me that they are very glad I am speaking up for D.

I'm frustrated that I have to do it more than once. I wish I was fast enough with words to have been able to say the following to young doctor:

"I want you to pretend that you are my son laying in that stroller. And think about how you would feel, not being able to talk, or speak for yourself. Wouldn't you wish that your mom would speak up for you?" That's not even eloquent enough. *sigh* I am not a very assertive person, and it's such an adrenaline rush (and not in a good way) to speak up against an "authority" but I'm so glad I can do that for D. And I'm getting better at it.

So, they bagged him and we went upstairs to D's new room. We've been there enough times that we know the nurses. If I don't recognize them, they tell me they've taken care of D when he was in his previous foster home!

We settled into the room at 2am. And I thought to myself that this was not actually my longest ER-to-admit stretch. Whew. Oh, and I finished the last 10 pages of my book the next morning. :)

Lesson Learned

So, D is back in the hospital, and I continue learning lessons. This one is one I've read about before. I know you're always supposed to consider someone else's point of view, yadda, yadda, yadda. Here's my reminder lesson...

D spiked a fever and off to the ER we went. He and I arrived at 7pm. He was sleeping. At about 7:30 pm we were triaged... he was weighed and measured, given a gown, and we were sent back out to the waiting room. Savy ER customer that I am, I asked the triage nurse how long the average wait was. "2 hours. But the good news is that you're 21 minutes into it." Okaaay.

I can't complain too much, really. I just had me and sleeping D to deal with. I'd thought ahead and brought a new book from the library, so I was reading while I waited patiently. (ha-ha! Patiently! I did that on purpose!)

So at around 9pm a nurse called out several names, and one of them was D's! I weaved his stroller past the teen in the wheelchair and the wagon with the toddler and all the people. When I got up to the nurse I overheard this enlightening coversation between the desk nurse and the nurse who had called us back.

"Let me see those names. Where did you get these charts?"
"Off the pile over there"
"No! You have to pull them off the pile in the back! Those people have been waiting over 3 hours. These people have only been waiting..." (she consults the computer) "11 and 21 minutes!" (I beg to differ! I'm at 60 minutes now...)

Still, I remain calm as she sends us back to our seats. After a long look at the path back to my original seat, I accept an offer for a seat on the outside edge of the ER waiting room and open my book again. It's getting good!

About a half hour later, D's name is called again, and I follow a nurse back to the ER rooms. "A docotr with be with you as soon as possible." That doesn't sound too promising. So I open my book and D sleeps on. About 20 minutes after that, a nurse (as I can tell by his big RN badge) comes in and presses a stethoscope to D's chest. "Oh, does he have a port?" "Yes" "They didn't tell me that." And he walks out! Okaaay. I'm not sure what to make of that. I change a wet diaper and get back to reading. Another 20 minutes goes by and Mr. nurse comes in with Ms. nurse. It's apparent that he is in training of some sort. The do a quick eval and say a doctor should be in sometime. Hey! I'm halfway through my book! And it IS good!

At about 10:30pm a youngish looking doctor comes in and identifies himself. I think he says he's a resident. Anyway, I recognize his title as "low man on the totem pole". So he asks for D's history. I'm telling him about it, and I mention that I think he's "a little dehydrated" and then clarify. "Well, dehydrated probably isn't the right word. He's had wet diapers today, and he's drooling, but he's not had any bowel movements, and his diapers have been much lighter." He asks how many wet diapers D has had today (5) and tells me that 2 is enough, and proceeds to explain to me what dehydration is, and what it's symptoms are in a tone that makes it clear that D is not dehydrated. That annoys me! I'm quite familiar with the symptoms of dehydration, having been through it with more than one child, and with D himself just a month ago! And I already said dehydrated wasn't the right word! So I spoke up in a voice that I'm sure showed my annoyance, "I just telling you, as a mom, that his diapers are not as heavy as they normally are. He is not peeing as much as normal."

to be continued...