In Which We Turn Up The Drama To Eleven

So it turns out that instead of driving up the coast of California with Jeremy for our ten year anniversary, the two of us will be spending our vacation in the ICU with Connor while he recovers from major pelvic surgery.  This has not exactly been the best week ever.  Bear with me; a lot has happened so this will be a long post.

I got a phone call from the school Wednesday; they thought Connor was throwing up blood again.  I missed the phone call because I was taking a shower, so by the time I got down there he was asleep.  He woke up on the way out the door and by the time we'd been in the car five minutes he was incredibly pale, shaking and crying, which is an indication in our world that something is really wrong.  So I drove him to the ER.

He threw up again in the parking lot, and one more time in the ER bed, so his stomach was pretty empty by the time they took a sample.  What came up was pretty dark brown, so it was evident that even if he had been bleeding he was done now, but since he was doing his very best to blend into the hospital sheets and didn't really want to wake up, they were pretty concerned in triage and they decided to admit him and do a scope the next day.

They started an IV, gave him something for nausea and another medication to help protect his stomach if he did have something going on in there, and his color started coming back.  He crashed hard and slept through the whole night, though his IV seemed to be having some trouble.  Since it kept beeping "occlusion," the nurse put him in an arm board and wrapped it up from wrist to most of the way up his shoulder.  This proved to be an unfortunate decision.

Sometime during the night the IV blew and began dripping saline directly into the muscle of Connor's arm.  Since he was asleep the whole night I was asleep too, and didn't catch it.  The nurse didn't unwrap his arm to check it.  Nobody caught it, in fact, until we were downstairs the next morning for his endoscopy and they'd already injected the Propofol, which not only obviously didn't work as it had been injected into the muscle of his arm rather than the vein, but also probably burned like the fire of 1,000 suns.  They unwrapped him at that point and discovered the skin was so swollen Connor was purple at the armpit, he couldn't bend at the elbow and the whole arm looked like an overstuffed sausage.  The skin was stretched so tightly that when they took the IV tape off the top layer of skin peeled off with it in strips, leaving long swaths of open, raw flesh that looked like burns.  It took two days for his arm to finally return to normal size, and the whole inside of his elbow is currently a weepy, blistery mess.  Poor little guy.

The good news was that the scope didn't show any evidence of ulcers or anywhere he might have been bleeding, leaving the whole incident a mystery.  However, they did discover that the entire inside of his esophagus was swollen and lined with deep furrows, which is indicative of a condition called Eosinophilic Esophagitis (EoE).  It's a pretty newly discovered condition so there's not a lot out there about it, but you can find a basic explanation for it here.  We're waiting on the biopsy to come back before an official diagnosis, which should take about two weeks, but in the meantime they've started Connor on Prevacid, and they'll be doing another scope in a couple of months to see if that helps.  If the Prevacid doesn't improve matters, we'll play the find-the-allergy game until we can come up with a formula (most EoE is food allergy-related) that won't exacerbate the issue.  I'm glad they caught this; it's possible that this has been the cause of Connor's dysphagia and if we can get it under control he might be able to eat more by mouth!  That would be pretty cool.

Anyway, so we'd had an orthopedic appointment on Thursday that I really wanted Connor to keep, so I told anyone who would listen about it until word got back to our fantastic pediatric ortho doc, who told them just to send us down some time that afternoon and he'd fit us in whenever we came.  Connor's PT and I had been increasingly concerned about the little guy's scoliosis, as his curve seemed to be progressing a bit faster and he's been having some trouble breathing if he lies on his right side for too long.  

It turns out that Connor has about a 50 degree curve now, which is around ten degrees more than 2012.  However, the doctor still wants to hold out and delay his surgery until we're close as possible to ten years old, which is kind of the magic number as far as spinal fusions go.  So we have a shiny new referral to pulmonary to monitor Connor's lung function and make sure we're still safe to wait.

One of the major reasons we'll be waiting is because there's a much more urgent issue; one that I was pretty much completely blindsided by as it wasn't even on my radar.  It turns out that Connor's right femur is juuuuuuust about to pop out of the socket.  This is a pretty common problem with kids who don't walk at all and who have unusual muscle tone.  If he doesn't have surgery within the next month, it's likely that in addition to hip displacement he will begin experiencing hip dislocation issues, which can be enormously painful and do a lot of permanent damage.  His left femur isn't quite as urgent, but it's on its way out as well.

I swear, it's always something with this kid.  He doesn't do anything by halves.

So on May 20th, Connor is now scheduled for a bilateral varus derotational osteotomy with pelvic osteotomy, and probably an adductor lengthening as well.  Basically the surgeon will be taking my kid's thigh bones and hips apart, realigning all the pieces appropriately, and then bolting the whole mess back together with what looks like pieces of the Erector Set I played with as a kid.  Connor will spend the first week or so in the hospital, four-six weeks in a body brace, and will probably have a 3-6 month total recovery.  He'll be out of school for the rest of the year.

This will be the first major surgery Connor has had since he was about three weeks old, and it's by far the most complicated.  Jeremy will be able to be here for the first two or three weeks, but then he'll have to go back to his clinicals and the little guy will still be in his brace and almost entirely home-bound for another 1-4 weeks.  I'm still wrapping my head around how the heck I'm going to work this logistically; Connor will need around-the-clock care and frequent repositioning, and Eden will still need to do things like eat and occasionally leave the house.  I always like a good challenge, but this is kind of ridiculous.   

I also feel incredibly guilty because we're going to be putting Connor through some major trauma.  It's just not possible for us to explain to the little guy what this surgery is going to be like in a way that he's going to understand.  It will be terrifying and extremely painful, and he'll probably be set back a lot in his functional skills, and I really wish we didn't have to do it.  But the alternative is worse and the need is urgent, so we'll do what we have to do even if it's really really tough on all parties involved.  

So it's likely to be fairly crazy around here in the next few months, as we prepare for surgery and then begin Connor's long recovery.  It's not the news I hoped we'd get, but I'm so, so glad we kept the ortho appointment and found out he needed this done.  If we'd rescheduled, he might have already experienced a dislocation and we would have ended up with emergency surgery instead, which is never something we'd like to do.  I'd much rather have a plan in place and hopefully already have supports lined up for his post-surgery days.

I'll make my plans and figure out how the heck I'm going to juggle everything.  In the meantime, I'll be babying Connor's hip to make sure it doesn't pop out of the socket before the surgery, which totally sounds like something that would happen.  We do tend to do things in The Most Dramatic Fashion Ever around here, so I don't want to push my luck.  

So yeah, not the best of weeks.  I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed at the moment, and I'm kind of floundering around as I try to wrap my brain around everything that needs to get done.  I really hope this whole thing goes as smooth as it possibly could under the circumstances.  The little guy is such a fighter, and hopefully he'll bounce back quickly and be much more comfortable after he's fully recovered.

It'll be tough, but we'll make it!

~Jess

In Which Connor Meets More Firefighters And Takes An Ambulance Ride

Short blog tonight-- I'm exhausted.  Instead of giving my speech last night, I was in the local emergency room until the wee hours of the morning.  That afternoon as I was literally walking out the door, Connor's respite care nurse called me back because Connor was having a seizure. 

And he continued having a seizure for the next forty-five minutes.

Thankfully he kept breathing through the whole thing or I'd probably be writing a very different blog post.  I gave him the Diastat at five minutes in, and at around fifteen minutes in the EMTs gave him a dose of Valium.  Neither stopped the seizure.  It finally stopped on its own well after we got to the hospital. 

It was one of the violent jerking variety, and I'm pretty sure he was aware during the whole thing.  I think it scared him rather badly, which is completely understandable-- it had the same effect on me.  The doctors suspect it might have happened because of the reduction in seizure medication a week ago.  They went ahead and raised the dosage of one of his other seizure drugs to try and curb the problem. 

Amazingly, five minutes after the seizure was over Connor was signing that he didn't want to be there and was ready to go-- the seizure and the massive dose of sedatives he had on board didn't seem to slow him down much.  His left hand was paralyzed for a while, but it slowly started getting some function back.  The doctor was starting to talk about discharging him for the night and letting us go until Monday, when we'd go to Connor's primary care manager, when the little guy threw up a brown, chunky substance that ended up being blood.  Fantastic.

Luckily his complete blood count still looked good so they didn't think he was massively hemorrhaging or anything, and the blood didn't look fresh.  However, it was pretty worrisome to see, though the problem didn't seem to be urgent.  I'm pretty positive that Connor didn't bite the inside of his mouth or his tongue while seizing because we didn't see any blood coming out of his mouth during the seizure, so it's possible that he has some irritated patches in his throat from stomach acid, an ulcer, or even just that his g-tube got yanked on at some point during the transport and caused a bit of a tear his stomach lining.  At any rate, we're checking his stomach contents twice a day to make sure we don't see any more blood, and the little guy will be heading into the doctor's office on Monday to see whether or not Connor needs a scope done to figure out the source of the problem.  Whee.

So that was not, perhaps the best day ever.  We got out of the hospital at Early 'O Clock, and today for the most part we spent a very quiet time at home.  Connor slept for most of it, and he's out for the count now.  Other than the hand issue and the whole internal bleeding thing, he seems to have suffered no ill effects from his prolonged epileptic state, which is a real relief.  It was not, however, an experience I'd care to have again. 

Ever.

~Jess

In Which Nobody Puts Baby In A Corner

Today I decided was the day to look for a swimming team for Ellen.

While we're not sure which grade she'll be in yet, we're guessing that Ellen will probably end up in the eighth grade based on what level she's in school in Thailand.  The school district's swim team opens up for children in ninth grade and above, so she'll probably be here about seven months before she's able to join.  Because swimming is so important to her, we don't want her to have to wait that long before jumping back into the sport.  She's already going to be going through such a difficult transition; we don't want to take anything else away from her if we can help it.  If she chooses not to continue swimming that's an entirely different story, of course, but we want to have a place for her figured out before she gets here so we won't be left scrambling to find her a place.

At first we just figured we'd look into the recreational swim team options, but that was before we found out exactly how committed she is to the sport.  Not only is she apparently swimming seven days a week, but she's been competing on an international level.  Needless to say, if she wants to continue we're going to be slightly more involved in swimming than we originally thought, and a recreational team just isn't going to cut it.

There aren't any competitive swimming teams in our city, so I found a directory of teams in the local area and selected a few that I thought we'd be willing to drive to and would work with our budget.  I must admit to being more than a bit nervous when I picked up the phone to dial the first number.

I'm sad to say that I've run into more than a few organizations over the years who have either rejected Connor completely or were very reluctant to let him participate.  We ran into this issue long before the seizures started and his medical needs escalated, so this isn't simply a matter of people being unqualified to watch him-- something that is completely understandable.  I think it has much more to do with the fact that many Americans seem very uncomfortable around those with disabilities.

Case in point: I attended a church for about a year that encouraged me to leave Connor (who was about one and a half at the time) in the nursery.  They told me that the teacher was trained in CPR and had taken classes in early childhood development, and that Connor would have a great time with the other kids while I focused on the adult service.  So I finally decided to give it a try, and the teacher told me that she had everything covered and that she would come get me if there were any issues.  Every Sunday she assured me that he'd enjoyed himself.  The arrangement worked very well for about three months. 

Or so I thought. 

Then one Sunday I needed to leave the service a bit early and walked into the nursery to discover Connor lying by himself in a crib in the corner, staring at the ceiling while all the other children had story time.  It turned out that Connor spent an hour and a half in that crib every Sunday while all the other kids played, did crafts, and had a grand old time.  The teacher informed me that she "didn't know what to do with him and didn't want the other kids touching him, so it seemed like the best thing to do."  For three months, she'd been sticking him in the crib directly after I left for services and took him out about ten minutes before it was time for the kids to rejoin their parents. 

Needless to say, that was the last Sunday we ever attended that particular church.  And let me tell you, the incident in no way helped me get over my Helicopter Mom tendencies.

Anyway, most of these swimming teams cater to the serious, elite able-bodied athlete.  Since I was calling to ask them about taking on a swimmer with a disability, I wasn't sure what kind of reception I would get.  I absolutely didn't want to put Ellen in a program that would isolate her from the other kids or would simply accommodate her; I wanted to enroll her in a program with coaches that would be genuinely happy about her being there and wouldn't leave her in the corner, so to speak, while all the other kids had a great time.

On the second phone call, I hit the jackpot.

The swim team practices about twenty minutes away.  They already have several children and young adults with disabilities who swim competitively enrolled, and one actually went to the paralympic time trials for swimming this past year.  The coach was enthusiastic about the idea of Ellen joining, and explained how it would work.  He'd meet with her one-on-one to assess her skill level, and then she'd be assigned to one of the teams, which are mostly made up of swimmers without disabilities.  She'd be fully included and practice with the rest of her teammates, and if there was an exercise that she wasn't able to do they'd simply give her a modified version. 

She'd also be able to compete in the local swimming competitions with the typical kids, and there would be opportunities several times a year for her to travel to competitions for disabled swimmers in the USA and Canada, if she qualified in the necessary time trials.  It sounds like a fantastic program, and hearing the excitement in the coach's voice as he asked me when she'd be coming and joining the team made me so happy that I'd picked up the phone. 

I can't wait to get her home!

~Jess

In Which We Have A Near Miss

Today one of my neighbors came over and had a cup of tea, and as a result I ended up nearly killing us all, which made for an interesting day. 

We have a gas stove, and apparently when I took the kettle off the stove I accidentally jogged one of the other burner knobs just enough to turn the gas on.  It proceeded to leak through our conversation and well into the day.  Connor was down for his nap and I was unloading the dishwasher a couple of hours later when I started getting a pretty good headache and noticed there was a weird smell in the kitchen.  That's when I also realized it wasn't the fridge making that soft hissing noise I'd been hearing the whole time I was in there.

So I quickly turned off the burner, threw open all the windows, stuck the cats in their carriers and hauled them and Connor outside.  We spent a couple hours out of the house, and when we came back in the smell was gone and everything had aired out.  But I'm glad I noticed it before I decided to turn on my dishwasher, because blowing up my house was totally not on the agenda today.

Whee.

~Jess

In Which Connor Wasn't Sick And I Sew Some More

Connor started out feeling pretty punky this morning, but he slowly improved as the day went on.  I mentioned yesterday that he wasn't feeling well, but I didn't tell you all why.  Without going into too much detail he wasn't sick; we had a substitute night nurse this week. The week didn't go well from a nursing-care standpoint for a variety of reasons, and the problem culminated yesterday when the nurse accidentally left Connor's g-tube intake valve open, assumed his seizure medication had immediately run back out it and decided to just give him another full dose of Keppra. 

By the time I found out about it, enough time had gone by that he'd already absorbed the medication and emptying out his stomach wouldn't do any good.  So Connor spent all day yesterday acting like he was sedated, and I spent the day hovering to make sure he was still breathing and/or not slipping into a coma, which can happen when you overdose on Keppra.  Fun times.

Needless to say, I called the nursing service and we will not be seeing that particular nurse at our home again.  I will be very, very happy when our wonderful regular nurse is back next week. 

So it's taken quite a bit of time for the drug to work its way out of his system and he was still a bit loopy this morning.  However by the end of the day he perked up and seemed to be feeling much better.  We even got out to a few local stores, though we kept it pretty close to home. 

I spent the time he was sleeping it off working on the butterfly Christmas stocking, which is coming along nicely.  I have the first butterfly done and I'll be starting on the second (of seven) tomorrow.  I had no idea how much I missed sewing until I started getting into this project in earnest; it's very relaxing and I'm able to let my mind wander while I'm working.  I also forgot just how much I love seeing a project I can picture in my head come to life in fabric.

Of course, I wasn't really excited about the reason I had all this sewing time, but oh well.  The project will probably slow down a bit after today until Connor's in school again, but that's okay because I'd much rather Connor be active and awake than conked out!

~Jess 

In Which Someone Has A Smashing Good Time And It Is Not Me

While I was skating tonight, someone smashed out the passenger side window of our car (not Rowbert The Wheelchair Van, thank goodness) and stole Jeremy's weightlifting bag.  It was a smash-and-grab job; they hit two other cars in the parking lot as well.  I think they were probably disappointed because Jer's bag contained two very old pairs of shoes, his weightlifting log and a bottle of Excedrin-- quite the haul!  None of the other cars had anything valuable stolen either.

So I waited around with the two other lucky ladies who won the Burglar Lottery until the police drove up, filed a report and that was that.  However, having the window completely smashed out did not make the ride back to the house particularly fun for me.  There was glass all over the driver's side seat so I had to sit on my jacket during the thirty-five minute drive home, and of course it was forty degrees outside and halfway there it started raining sideways.  So that was terribly pleasant. Jeremy is out as we speak trying to find a store that's still open and stocks heavy plastic to cover the window until we can get it fixed.  Whee!

Oh well-- it could have been so much worse.  They could have, you know, stolen the whole car.  And now I'm home wrapped up in a cozy blanket with a cup of tea, some homemade bread slathered with a generous helping of marionberry jam, and three kinds of cheese.  So the night is looking up, even if judging by the amount of noise Connor is making right now he plans to be up until two in the morning.  Jer promised to bring me some chocolate from whatever store he goes to and finds the plastic sheeting for the car window.  I predict things will improve exponentially shortly after he gets home. 

Guess it was just one of those days!

~Jess

In Which I Look At Connor's Seizure Records And Totally Freak Out

So today I had a meeting with Connor's nurse about the upcoming school year, and I pulled out my handy Excel spreadsheet record that I keep of all Connor's seizures (yes, I keep an exhaustive record of every seizure Connor's ever had) to pull out some statistics showing how he's been doing over the summer.  I hadn't crunched the numbers since March, and so I was a little unprepared for what I came up with.  Here are the statistics for Connor's seizures over the past three years:

2008: 15 (14 before diagnosis)
2009: 11
2010: 91
2011: 246 so far

That's right-- two hundred and forty six seizures in the past eight months.  That works out to about 30 seizures a month, or a little less than one per day.  No wonder I've felt like he hasn't caught a break recently.  So that was kind of shocking and more than a little depressing.  I'll have to sit down and really look at the trends, but the short of it is that his seizures have been getting a whole lot worse. 

At least he hasn't had any for the past week.  We'll hope that his new medication continues to help.

In the meantime think I need a lot more chocolate in my house.  With that kind of news, I need it.

~Jess

In Which Connor's Brain Explodifies Again

Well that was not a particularly fun day.

Connor had seven seizures today, and he managed to cover just about all of the ways to get my adrenaline pumping.  He had three at home, two in public, and two on the highway.  The second seizure of the day was particularly nerve-wracking because I didn't realize he was seizing for a little bit since I was merging onto a highway, and then when I glanced back and saw his face turning gray there wasn't anywhere to pull over.  By the time the shoulder reappeared and I was able to pull to a stop, throw open the side door of the van and start pulling him out of his car seat, the seizure was over.  Unfortunately he'd aspirated quite a bit because of his upright position, so then we spent about five minutes on the floor of the van while he coughed and gasped and threw up his breakfast. 

Okay, never mind.  Make that eight seizures today.  He had another one just as I finished up that paragraph. 

Anyway, so I called the neurologist at around seizure number five and the message relayed was pretty much what I'd expected; give Connor some lorazepam and go get his levels tested on Monday.  The lorazepam doesn't seem to have done a whole heck of a lot for us, given that we've still seen seizures six, seven and eight today.  We haven't used the Diastat today because (except for the especially mom-panic inducing seizure in the car) all of his seizures have thankfully been pretty short.  I'm really hoping he's at least done for the night.

Oh, yeah.  And we had x-rays too of course, which we won't find out the results for until Monday, and not Thursday as I mistakenly told you yesterday.  Thursday is Connor's dental appointment.  Monday is Connor's orthopedic surgeon appointment, and also my birthday.  Maybe I'll wear a party hat to the hospital in honor of the occasion.

So now I am completely exhausted: too many adrenaline bursts in one day!  And if I feel like that, goodness knows what Connor feels like.  Hopefully tomorrow will be better and we won't end up having to take him in.  While the emergency room does have free cable television and all the ice chips I can eat, I think I'd really prefer to stay home.

Bleah.  No more seizures, kid!

~Jess

In Which Connor Scares The Bejeezus Out Of Me

So I walked into Connor's room today when his nap time ended to discover my child covered in blood.

He didn't seemed concerned about it at all.  He was giggling, wiggly and as happy as ever, only his face, hair, hands and bedsheets were liberally and artfully streaked with pink and crimson blotches and lines.  It looked like he'd been finger painting with a raw steak.

I, of course, was more than a little concerned.  I believe it would be accurate to say that I reacted the way most mothers would when in a similar situation; I completely freaked the heck out.  Connor and I have covered a whole lot of territory in the crazy medical emergency department, but walking into his bedroom to discover that he'd apparently been hemorrhaging all over the place was a new and terrifying development-- especially since I couldn't figure out where the heck he was bleeding from. 

My first thought was a head injury, though I couldn't figure out what he could possibly have hit his head on since he was square in the middle of his twin size bed.  I carefully parted his hair.  Nothing.  I felt up and down his sides.  Nothing.  I carefully rolled him over and felt his back.  Nothing.  Then I checked his hands, thinking he might have bit himself.  Nothing. 

When I pulled up his shirt to check his stomach,  Connor thought I was going to tickle him and gave me a big, open mouth grin.  A ribbon of blood spilled down his lower lip.  Oh, and that bottom tooth-- the one I've been telling you about the past few days?  Hanging by a thread.

Who knew a loose tooth could bleed so much?

After taking a moment to sit down and indulge in a fit of hysterical laughter (and coughing, as I'm still sick and miserable), I washed my hands, grabbed a tissue and carefully gripped his tooth, which came out without any pressure at all.  As near as I can figure out, Connor must have been pulling on it with his fingers (something he's been doing a lot lately) and managed to yank it most of the way out.  He's on an aspirin regime, and gums bleed pretty well anyway.  Then he kept putting his hands back in his mouth to feel the spot, keeping it bleeding and artfully decorating himself and his surroundings in the process. 

I kept a little pressure on his gum for a few minutes, and the bleeding finally stopped.  After I cleaned him and the bed up, I put my protesting child back down for a few minutes and went and sat down in the library.  I needed a cup of tea and some chocolate.  Badly.

So Connor lost his first tooth, and in his usual style managed to do so in the most dramatic way possible.  Only nineteen more to go. 

I can't wait.

~Jess

In Which Connor Gets Sick And I'm The Mother Of The Year

I swear I should know better than to write overly optimistic, upbeat blog posts.  I am really great at jinxing myself.

So we're pretty sure Connor's getting sick.  Before I put him on the Tylenol he was running a fever of about 101.4, which is enough to suggest that he's actually getting sick and it's not just me being paranoid.  That and the fact that he had nine larger seizures today.

Yes.  Nine.

None of them were more than about twenty seconds long, thankfully, and they were all the still-breathing kind, but nine seizures in one day is probably a new record for him and is way, way more seizures than I am comfortable with.  We gave him a dose of Ativan after seizure number five.  That was also the seizure where I thought to take his temperature and discovered he was running a fever.  I'm not really sure if giving him Tylenol helps stave off the seizures or not since he had four more after that, but if it does do anything I'd hate to think how many seizures he might have had without it.  I don't know why I didn't think to check his temperature until after he'd already had five.  Possibly I wasn't thinking clearly; I was flustered because of the earlier events of the day, which pretty much assured that I won't be winning any Mother Of The Year awards any time soon.

So about that-- after I dropped Connor off at school (he had a very short seizure right before school, which I probably should have taken as a warning) I headed home, picked up the books I needed to drop by the library, hit the bathroom really quickly and was off to my local coffee shop.  Then I swung by a little antique store and spent a leisurely time picking out a necklace and bracelet for Ellen to put away with her things for when she comes home.  After that I walked to the library, where I browsed for books for twenty minutes or so.  I thought I'd go back to the house and get the kitchen cleaned up before it was time to pick the little guy up from school.  When I got back I was surprised to see Jer pulled up in the driveway; he's normally at work that time of day.  He was throwing the car seat in the back of the car. 

"Have you got Connor?" he asked me.
"No," I said, baffled.
"He's had a whole bunch of seizures at school and they've been trying to reach you for an hour."

I threw myself back into the van and drove down to the school, cursing myself the whole way.  I'd left my cell phone sitting on the bathroom counter, where it had been ringing away more and more insistently the entire time I'd enjoyed my quiet morning.

I ended up talking with the nurse and teachers and we decided that since he'd had a quick recovery from his (three!) seizures at school that he could stay until the end of the day, and there was no harm done.  But I'm now considering having my phone surgically implanted into my body so that I can never leave it at home again.  Somehow I've managed to have it with me the other eight months or so he's been in school and I almost never get a phone call.  The one day I accidentally leave it at home is of course the day the kid's brain implodes. 

Yeah.  Mother Of The Year, right here.  I'll start working on my acceptance speech, because I've totally got that one in the bag.

I hope he feels better soon.

~Jess

In Which Connor Spends A Bunch Of Time In The PICU, And I Am Nearly Driven Insane By A Dancing Pig

Well that was not particularly fun.

Wednesday Jeremy left for a three day trip to West Point for work.  You will recall from the Yeti Incident that Connor has an impeccable sense of dramatic timing.

So Thursday morning I was pulling out of the driveway to take Connor to school when he started having a seizure.  I pulled back into the driveway, mashed on the brake, hopped out and gave him a couple breaths before he came back.  Then I wheeled him back into the house, put him to bed, and called the school to let them know that we wouldn't be making it in that day.

Connor woke up around 9:30 or so and stayed awake for about an hour before having another seizure.  This one was one of the twitchy-but-still-breathing variety.  He then promptly went back to sleep and napped until it was time to get up and go to his developmental pediatrician's appointment at the military hospital. 

Guess what he did while I was driving on the highway?

So after I resuscitated him for the second time that day, I called the doctor's office to let them know we'd be a little late as I hadn't factored my kid stopping breathing into our timetable.  We arrived and had our appointment, where I let the doctor know that Connor seemed to be kind of "off" and that he'd already had three seizures that day.  If he had a fourth I was probably going to end up taking him into the hospital since something was obviously going on.  I had planned, however, to take him into the hospital that's less than a mile from our house and to get a bag ready before I went there.

Connor had other ideas of course.  He had a seizure in the lobby as we were leaving the hospital, right in front of the information kiosk where all of the elderly volunteers were totally flummoxed as to what to do with us.  "Call 911!" someone shouted. 

I'm relatively sure that calling 911 from the lobby of a hospital is not proper procedure in situations like this.  Don't they normally have a big button somewhere they can push or something?  Or a PA code?  Not that we needed it, as by this point I am extremely well versed in doing rescue breathing, but one would think there would be some sort of better system in place.

Anyway, so the seizure was only about a minute and a half long and I only had to give Connor about three breaths, which was more than enough to get everyone in the immediate area in a tizzy.  The guys in the information kiosk pointed us in the general direction of the ER and insisted we go check in there.  So I hauled my limp kid over one shoulder and dragged his wheelchair over to the other side of the building, where we checked in with the nurse and then were directed to sit down and wait with all the not-so-urgent cases.

In the meantime at my request one of the volunteers in the lobby had informed our developmental pediatrician of what had happened.  We'd been sitting down in the ER waiting room about ten minutes when we saw him walking towards us.  "What are you doing out here?" he asked.  When I explained that we'd checked in and were now waiting to be seen he looked mad enough to chew nails and spit rivets.  "Let me go back and fix this," he said. 

We were in a room five minutes later.  Five minutes after that the entire pediatrics team from the PICU was downstairs getting Connor's information, a room was being readied upstairs for him and the attending pediatrician, who happened to be the little guy's primary care manager, had popped in.  We were headed upstairs soon after and settled into a room while they called the little guy's neurologist up in Seattle to figure out a game plan.

The rest of the stay was much smoother.  The nurses and doctors were all fantastic and we received excellent care.  So that was all right.

Connor ended up in a private room which was very nice, though putting him in the PICU was probably overkill.  I figured we'd probably end up in observation overnight while they decided what to adjust on the little guy's medication and then we'd go home.  I didn't have any entertainment for Connor (or me) at all as I hadn't planned to be at the hospital longer than the little guy's appointment required, but there was a large television in the room.  Television is a treat for Connor as we go weeks without turning it on at home, and when he's in the hospital we let him watch as much as he likes.  We figure the longer we can keep the hospital a positive experience, the better. 

The TV had about six channels on it.  Showing at the time was Jerry Springer, news, MAD television, more news, the weather, and what I initially thought was some sort of Barbie movie.  I resigned myself to the Barbie movie.

It wasn't a Barbie movie.  It was my own personal version of hell.

To be specific, it was a five minute loop of Barbie music videos and "bloopers" from various movies that the busty blond has apparently starred in.  Connor loved it, of course.  During the next three hours until Connor finally fell asleep I listened to "Get Your Sparkle On" thirty-six times.  It contains such lyrical gems as "when you're in doubt, glitter it out" and "let's rock the runway, this time we'll take the fun way."  You can watch it in all of its terrible glory here, if you dare.

After about listen twenty I actually found myself mouthing the words.  It was horrible.

We also got to watch an amazing modified version of "Unbelievable" sung by a bunch of cats.  Lyric highlights include "You burden us with your problems, you talk behind our backs, but now it's really clear to everyone that pink's the new black."  The video involved, among other things, a breakdancing pig.

Connor really liked that pig.  Also the dancing horse.

Anyway, they gave Connor a loading dose of IV Keppra and some Ativan, and we had a quiet night.  We were just talking about discharge the next morning when Connor (impeccable dramatic timing, remember?) had two more seizures about ten minutes apart.  Neither of them were very bad-- one was maybe a minute long and the other was only about 10 seconds, and neither involved him stopping breathing-- but they were enough to ensure that we'd be listening to "Get Your Sparkle On" another 800 times as apparently the Keppra wasn't going to do it. 

Luckily there were some other children's programs available at that point, or I might not have survived the day.

Jeremy got back from West Point shortly after midnight, and I left him at the hospital with Connor and drove home, where I brushed my teeth and showered for the first time in two days.  I also fed the cats and gerbils, both of whom were dangerously close to resorting to cannabilism.  When I came back up to the hospital this morning the doctors were just thinking about releasing Connor again.  This time the little guy cooperated and we managed to make it out the door.

So the doctors are thinking it's probably a medication issue that's triggering the seizures, as the little guy doesn't seem to be sick at all.  However Connor is maxed out on his Keppra and Trileptal, and we just upped the Lamictal last week and it's too soon to up it again without running the risk of triggering that whole skin-falling-off thing that's a potential side effect of the drug.  So until we can up his medication again (hopefully in about a week) Connor will be on a twice-a-day Ativan regime.  It's not something that he can stay on long-term, but hopefully it will get us through the week without incident.

Or if nothing else, at least until the Barbie music video marathon at the hospital is over.

~Jess

In Which Connor Scares The Bejeezus Out Of Me

Well this morning was not particularly fun.

Connor and I were supposed to be meeting some friends at Northwest Trek; a large wildlife park in the area with free roaming native fauna.  We were about halfway there and stopped at a red light, where we were chatting about what animals we were going to see when Connor went abruptly limp. 

We were in the center lane, with cars on either side of us. 

I jabbed the button for the warning lights and mashed the horn, waving frantically to the guy in the lane to the right (who didn't have anyone behind him and could easily back up) that I needed to get over.  He glanced over at me a couple of times and then stared straight ahead, ignoring me, his eyes fixed on the steering wheel despite all my pleading.  Just in front of him, and twenty feet from my van was the turn-in for the parking lot to a grocery store.  It might have well have been 100 miles away.  The guy in the car directly in front of me began honking back.  The guy directly behind me started flipping me the bird. 

Connor's body slumped completely still, hanging against his wheelchair harness.  His face was blue.

So I made the decision to throw on the parking brake and just get out of the car in the middle of traffic, open up the back and do mouth-to-mouth on my son in the middle of the road.  My hand was on the door handle when the light turned green and the cars around me started to move.  I slammed the parking brake off, threw the car into drive and shot over just behind the guy who had refused to back up and then straight into the parking lot, where I parked across three parking spaces and leaped out of the car, hitting the button to open the back door at the same time.  I unbuckled Connor, laid him down on the floor of the van and gave him three breaths.  He shuddered back to life and threw up into the parking lot.

So that was my morning.

Instead of going to Northwest Trek I drove us back home, where Connor went down for a nap and I had a small fit of hysterics in our living room and then consumed my weight in cookies, after which I felt much better.  He slept until 11:40, which is when I woke him up to go to his occupational therapy session. 

I used to cancel everything for the day whenever the little guy had a seizure, but the sad fact of the matter is that if I did that now he'd be missing way too many appointments.  As it is he's having a hard time physically due to all the seizures-- he's actually losing muscle tone on his left side because it's paralyzed so often right now.  So I took him to OT, which he did initially did not enjoy despite there being a swing involved, (usually a favorite activity) but he perked up by the end of the session.  He was feeling well enough afterwards that we joined a friend for lunch; something that Connor may have been relatively indifferent about but that I desperately needed. 

And the rest of the day was much better.  Connor's asleep right now (and still adorable, as you can see), none the worse for wear.  But I'd really like him to cut this sort of thing out.  Seriously, if the major adrenaline rushes I keep having didn't burn so many calories, I'd probably be 300 pounds by now.

Sheesh.

~Jess

In Which Connor Has Another Seizure And We Experience A Milk Explosion

I had just finished strapping Connor into his wheelchair today so that we could go pick up a prescription renewal of his at the pharmacy when he slumped over in his chair.

Yep.  Seizure.

I always freak out a little when he has a seizure in his chair because when he's upright it cuts off his airway pretty immediately, and also because it takes me a little while to get him out of all the straps.  So I wasn't thinking about the fact that he was plugged into his g-tube pump when I hastily undid everything and yanked him straight out.

His g-tube, connector still attached, popped out of his stomach.

Picture the scene, if you can.  I'm holding Connor, who is already turning blue-gray and about to stop breathing at any second.  The g-tube hole, now open on his stomach, is fountaining Pediasure all over my shirt, arms, and the floor.  The pump, still turned on, is busily pumping more formula onto my pants.  The cats are going nuts because they can't figure out why the heck we're throwing good food all over the floor.  Once I start mouth-to-mouth, I have to try and fend Loki off with my foot because he keeps trying to come up and investigate.

Not one of our brightest moments.

By the time I got him breathing again (the seizure lasted about a minute) and was ready to deal with the pump and the g-tube, it looked like Connor and I had gotten into a milk fight or something.  And of course he was extremely sleepy and crabby, and didn't particularly appreciate me reinserting his g-tube or giving him a shower. 

So that was my wonderful day.  We've got a call into the neurologist and hopefully we'll hear something back tomorrow, as Connor has now had five of these things in the last two weeks.  Lovely.

We could use some good thoughts this way, folks.  Also some more mopping solution.  I get the feeling I may need it.

~Jess

In Which I Make A Horrible Discovery (WARNING: DO NOT READ WHILE EATING BREAKFAST)

Okay, so that was pretty horrific.

We just finished up a lovely dinner with some friends of ours, and I went in to check up on the gerbils.  We had a vet appointment scheduled for tomorrow, and I was hoping the fuzzy critter would hold out until then, but things hadn't been looking too good earlier in the day.  When I went in, I was prepared to find the little guy gone.

What I was not prepared for was that the little guy was gone and the other gerbil was eating him.

Yes, I looked into the cage and was presented with a grisly Donner Party reenactment in gerbil form-- Lili, with a bloodstained muzzle, standing over the body of Teke, which he'd dragged to a corner of the cage.  Evidently he hadn't been too long at it because the dead gerbil was totally recognizable as a gerbil except that a good portion of his upper chest cavity was missing.  The only reason I didn't start shrieking at the top of my lungs was that Connor was sleeping and I definitely did NOT want him to wake up and see this.

I ended up picking up the ex-gerbil with about ten layers of paper towels, taking him outside in the rain (it being an appropriately stormy night), and burying him in the backyard.  Then I put a huge rock over the area so that there wasn't any chance some passing woodland animal would dig him up and eat him again.  I've been traumatized enough as it is, and picking up gerbil parts out of my lawn might just be what pushes me over the edge. 

So now we are not only out one gerbil, whose demise is probably directly my fault due to that whole water bottle thing, but I am also now totally creeped out by the remaining gerbil.  I mean sure, I read up on it and apparently this is natural gerbil behavior-- something about them disposing of bodies because they don't want to have predators attracted to the nest-- but despite that Lili now gives me the heebie-jeebies.  Other than the whole cannabilism thing he's perfectly healthy (though that may not be the case any more if Teke had something contagious), but he's also pretty anti-people, which is sort of fine with me right now.  They say that gerbils are social creatures and really need to be kept in pairs, but I think that Lili is destined to be a solitary gerbil.  I'm not sure I'd trust his reaction to a new "friend." 

I need a cup of tea.

~Jess

In Which I Am Faced With An Awful Dilemma

Connor promptly threw up his breakfast this morning, so he stayed home from school again.  I think he's on the mend, though, as he didn't seem nearly as stuffy today as he did yesterday.  Hopefully that's the case.  Jeremy was still feeling pretty lousy.  Thus far I remain blissfully sickness free, but since I have now blogged about it I have no doubt jinxed myself and will probably be horribly ill tomorrow.  Oh well.

I didn't get as much done today as I would have liked, because shortly after throwing up Connor fell asleep snuggling in my arms and slept for two and a half hours.  I love it when Connor falls asleep on me, but I used to love it a lot more when he didn't weigh about thirty pounds, which doesn't seem all that much until you factor in that somehow when he falls asleep his gravity increases.  I swear the kid weighed about thirty pounds per square inch of body he had draped over my arms and lap, and so when I finally put him down it was not because I wanted to, but because I could no longer feel my hands or feet and if I allowed him to continue sleeping on me I wasn't sure I would be able to feel them ever again.  Since I was iffy about whether or not I could actually walk and carry him over to his bed, finally I sort of slung him over the futon in our living room (which is where I was sitting) and he slept there for another two hours while I did that crazy pins-and-needles dance in the middle of our floor as I regained blood flow to my extremities.

Since the futon doesn't have an apnea monitor in it and Jeremy was gone at physical therapy, this meant that the entire time Connor was asleep I was confined to being within eyeshot in case he decided to have a seizure.  After about hour four I was pretty crabby because not only was I not getting any work done in the office, which was where I needed to be, but I also really, really needed to go to the bathroom. 

It was a serious problem and I was becoming desperate.  What to do?  Wake up my sick kid?  Rush down the hallway and hope he doesn't stop breathing before I get back?  Pee in a bottle?  Can girls even do that anyway, and would I be able to live with myself afterwards if I attempted it?  These are not the types of dilemmas I thought about when I thought of parenthood back before I had Connor.  I thought I would be dealing with things like which cute outfit to put on my kid that day and what preschool to send him to, not potential bladder explosions.  Luckily right before I had to make a decision Jer walked in the front door and saved me just in the nick of time, so disaster was averted.  Let's just say that vase on the mantle was looking better every second.  Eww.

Yet another reason Jeremy is my superhero.  Any man who saves his wife from a situation like that is worth his weight in gold.

~Jess

In Which We Have A Few Thousand Uninvited Guests

Tomorrow we've got the pest control man coming out to do an inspection and probably a treatment.

This is because last Friday the crew discovered termites eating our house.

It is perhaps an understatement to say that we were not thrilled by this development. While I am all about organic and sustainable pest management and am certainly ready to live and let live most of the time, my knee jerk response to this announcement was something along the lines of "KILL THEM! KILL THEM WITH FIRE!!!" The thought of a huge colony of insects munching away at our newly renovated property while I try to come up with some natural means of disposing of them makes me hyperventilate. Termites don't even have cuteness going for them as a redeeming quality, so I feel no remorse at the utter hatred I feel for this particular colony and any of its house dining brethren that may be as yet undiscovered. Luckily the crew only found them in a really small section of the siding where the chimney meets the roof and not in, say, our foundation. Hopefully this will continue to be the case after the inspection.

Anyway as a result we've got the pest control guy coming out, and he'll probably spray all sorts of nasty chemicals all over our house, and so it's a good thing that we aren't living there yet as I'm sure that would be fantastic for Connor's chemical sensitivity issues. Bummer. But on the up side, our beautiful new home will no longer be the main course for a couple thousand freeloaders.

Ugh.

~Jess

In Which Connor Rings In The New Year With A Bang

Well, so much for boring.

You may have noticed that I didn't blog yesterday. I wasn't too busy having fun somewhere, and I didn't decide to take a lazy day. No, I had full intentions to blog about what a great date Jer and I had, how I was looking forward to Connor starting school up again, and our plans for the next few weeks, but unfortunately I wasn't able to get to my computer. There were two reasons for this:

1.) I left it at home.

2.) They didn't have wireless in Good Samaritan Hospital's Emergency Room, so even if I had remembered to bring it I wouldn't have been able to post anyway.

Yes, during the time I should have been blogging, I was instead sitting on a chair in Good Sam's ER, waiting on the ambulance for Connor's transfer to Children's Hospital in Seattle and passing the time by trying to calculate how much chocolate I would need to consume in one sitting to erase all memory of the evening without sending myself into a sugar coma.

The day started out well enough. Joanna came over at ten in the morning to watch Connor while Jeremy and I headed out to the gym for our workout. While some people may not think working out together makes for a good date, Jer and I enjoy that sort of thing. After getting cleaned up we headed over to Best Buy, where we looked at vacuum cleaners for carpetless floors. Yes, I know-- working out AND vacuum cleaners in one date? I guess we're hopeless romantics. We ended our free time together back at the local conveyor-belt sushi joint, where I ate sushi and Jer used his sushi as a medium to convey massive amounts of wasabi to his mouth. Finally we went home, where Jer spent a happy hour getting the scar tissue broken up on his leg by Joanna, who also happens to be an excellent medical massage therapist (Please note: this was not actually a happy hour. This was an hour that involved primal screaming and liberal use of the "F" word. Apparently having scar tissue broken up hurts. A lot. But it will help with flexibility and rebuilding muscle, so it's worth it, though Lord knows what our neighbors think went on here yesterday, what with the screaming and cussing and then, an hour or two later, the ambulance and firetruck. Oh well).

Anyway, so Joanna left and Jer and I settled down to a quiet evening. We got about half an hour into our quiet evening when Jeremy looked over and realized that Connor was drooling a ton and his breathing was kind of funny.

Yep. Seizure.

I ran for the oxygen, we lay him down on the floor, hooked him up, and started a timer. This was one of the new seizures: starting with drooling and throat paralysis and then progressing later to jaw trembling, and finally to rhythmic jerking of his jaw and blinking of his eyes. After five minutes of him seizing we gave him the Diastat.

It didn't work.

When the EMTs got there after about ten minutes of seizing, Connor had just stopped jerking and seemed to be coming out of it a little. He was still pretty unresponsive, though, and his breathing was really erratic. They loaded him in the ambulance, whereupon he apparently began seizing again. They drove away, lights flashing and sirens blaring, while Jer and I piled into the wheelchair van.

By the time we got to the hospital the second seizure was over and Connor was responsive again. Apparently they'd put an IO (Intraosseous access-- basically an IV needle that is screwed directly into the bone with a miniature drill-- no kidding) into his leg in the ambulance and he hadn't even twitched, which tells you how out of it he'd been. When we walked in the door there were six or seven people around the bed working on him, but he was crying, responsive, and breathing again on his own, which was a big improvement. He stayed that way for five minutes or so and then went unresponsive again. At that point they gave him a dose of Ativan to stop the seizure and decided they wanted to transfer him to a pediatric hospital better set up for him if he decided to conk out for a fourth time.

I drove home, slapped an overnight bag together and grabbed some dinner for Jeremy and me, and then returned to the hospital just as they were deciding to transfer him to Children's in Seattle rather than another hospital in Tacoma.

Once the ambulance team arrived I explained to Connor what was going on, as by this time he was pretty much back to his normal self, albeit an extremely exhausted and irritated normal self. Then I loaded Jer into the van and we drove down to Children's. We hung out in the ER for a while and were admitted to a room sometime around two in the morning. Connor finally, finally fell asleep around three. Jer and I then crashed and burned on the pull-out couch.

Not only do they have a pull-out couch that sleeps two, by the way, but they also have a wireless network in the rooms and they let you use your cell phones in there. Cushy. I'll have to remember to bring my laptop the next time Connor is admitted there, which will hopefully be never, ever again, even if they did give him a super cute blanket with various vehicles on it and an adorable little hospital pajama set that makes him look either like a Shaolin monk or a prison inmate, depending on whether or not you ask Jeremy or me.

But I digress. Anyway, we had a quiet night, saw the neurologist this morning, started Connor on a new medication called Trileptal which he will now take in addition to his Keppra, and were discharged around four thirty in the afternoon. Connor is now snoring gently in our bedroom, which is where I am headed shortly to lay down and sleep for a few hundred years, or at least until seven tomorrow when it's time for Connor's next round of meds.

Bleagh.

~Jess

In Which I Warn You That This Is Another Post About Poop

This morning we drove to Jeremy's first physical therapy session. Basically it was an assessment where the PT asked about Jer's medical and surgical history, took a close look at his feet and leg, and talked a little bit about what he's already doing. Then we set up appointments for the next month. Jer will be going to physical therapy there three times a week and also continuing with his exercise regime at the YMCA. We're hoping in another month or so he'll be able to start using some forearm crutches and will be able to get out of the chair! Hopefully with the amount of work he'll be putting into building back up muscle and improving flexibility we'll see some quick results!

And that, if you are not interested in hearing about poop, is the last paragraph you should read in this blog entry. Really. Go look at pictures of cute kitties or something instead of reading on.

You can't say I didn't warn you.

Over the last couple of days Connor's appetite has dropped off, and when he started throwing up this morning I figured that the problem might be, joy of joys, impacted bowel. You can read more about this scintillating topic by googling it, but I'm not going to go into too much detail. At any rate, I donned my trench coat and fedora, took a trip to a Walgreens I am now never planning to set foot in again, and bought another pack of pediatric enemas. The day just went downhill from there.

At any rate I believe that I might have solved the problem, though if things don't clear up in the next few days I may need to bring him in to make sure he doesn't also have some sort of infection going on. There are many, many things I didn't realize I was signing up for when I became a parent. Sticking various medically recommended objects up my son's rectum is definitely one of those things that was not mentioned in any parenting book I remember reading. There are a number of other things I don't remember seeing in there, too. I believe I may slip an addendum in the back of What To Expect The First Year.

We could title it Chapter Twenty-Seven: When Things Go Horribly, Horribly Wrong. We could break it up just like the rest of the chapters, each section dealing with appropriate topics. I'm picturing something like this:

FEEDING YOUR BABY: Unconventional Diets

Determining The Nutritional Content Of Things Baby Ate Off The Floor * Cat Food As An Important Source Of Protein * What To Do When Baby Decides To Only Eat Things That Are Purple And Start With The Letter W * Identifying Things You Remove From Baby's Mouth * Proper Treatment Of Laundry Stains After Baby Eats An Entire Box Of Crayons

WHAT YOU MAY BE CONCERNED ABOUT

Baby Smears Poop In Your Hair In A Public Area * Proper Disposal Of Spit-Up After You've Caught It In Your Hand * Enemas As Weapons Of Mass Destruction * Baby Throws Poop On The Ceiling * Baby Throws Up On Santa Claus * Baby Learns The F Word And Thinks Your Reaction Is Funny * Removing Small Objects From Baby's Nose

WHAT IT'S IMPORTANT TO KNOW

Proper Toxic Waste Disposal * The Gas Mask As Fashion Accessory * How Much Ben And Jerry's Ice Cream and Hard Liquor Is Required After Baby Goes To Sleep To Erase All Memory Of The Previous Events Of The Day

I am especially fond of the last entry under "What It's Important To Know." There'd be a handy trauma scale showing correlation between events that occurred during the day and the corresponding type of ice cream flavor and variety of alcohol required to achieve proper amnesia. I believe this evening would probably rank somewhere between Cherry Garcia washed down with shots of Vodka and Chunky Monkey with Everclear. Since I don't really drink I'd just have to double the amount of ice cream I'd eat to achieve similar results. What else should go in this addendum, do you think?

Um, anyway, I got way, way off topic there but the point I'm trying to make it that it was not a particularly fun day for me. And I'm pretty well 100% sure it was not one of Connor's best days either.

Good night.

~Jess

In Which Connor Has Another Seizure

Today was not a very good day, unfortunately. Connor had another seizure-- his longest ever-- and we had to use his Diastat for the very first time.

Jer's brother was coming in to visit us for the weekend, and it was about five minutes before I had to leave to pick him up. I was getting Connor's stuff ready to go, and noticed that he was making some strange grunty/wheezy noises. Connor was sitting in his chair next to Jeremy, and he was looking down at his feet. I asked Jer if he was okay. Connor would still move his arms and legs and was still responsive, so Jer said that he thought that Connor just "needed to go potty." After two or three more minutes of listening to him I came over and lifted him out of the seat.

Connor was still responsive-- he would track, blink if you blew air in his face, etc, but he seemed to be having some difficulty breathing. He was also really, really drooling, as if he wasn't swallowing at all. I got him a new diaper and went to change him, but he was totally dry. Something just didn't seem right. A few seconds later his jaw started to tremble and we knew he was having a seizure.

I set him in Jer's arms and ran for his oxygen. After we put his nasal cannula on he stopped having trouble breathing, but the trembling progressed into a rhythmic jerking of his jaw. He was still weakly tracking and could move his arms and legs. Jeremy grabbed the camera and started video taping so we could show the neurologist what he was doing.

We didn't really have any instruction on what to do here-- it was kind of a judgement call. Normally we'd administer the Diastat two and a half minutes into a seizure, but normally during a seizure he's not breathing, which wasn't the case here, so we weren't sure if we should give it at the same time or wait a while longer. In the end we waited until after he'd been trembling and/or jerking for five minutes. Right before I gave it to him he stopped breathing and went unresponsive and blue on us. I did rescue breathing until he came back, but I didn't have to do it very long as the seizure stopped about a minute after I gave him the medication. We're unsure exactly how long the whole incident was, but from the time I noticed him making the odd noise to the time he started breathing again it was probably somewhere around eight minutes.

We were told to call 911 any time we had to use the Diastat, so Jer did that while I performed rescue breathing. The EMTs came and checked him out. Since he was breathing well (breathing is a potential problem with Diastat, which is a respiratory depressant) and we seemed to know what we were doing they decided he could stay at home rather than going to the hospital. Connor has been asleep ever since.

Of course it's a Friday. Also Connor's neurologist is out of town until the end of next week. And we have no more Diastat. This is not a wonderful situation to be in, but we'll work on it. What this means, though, is that Connor's current medication is no longer doing its job. That is a scary, scary place for us to be.

Please keep Connor in your prayers as we try and figure out where to go from here.

~Jess

In Which The Dog Walker Strikes Again

Back in August I posted briefly about a man in our apartment complex I witnessed walking his dog by motorcycle. Now obviously that technique doesn't work in the winter months here, as it's rainy and the roads are very slick. What's a guy to do when a dog needs exercise? Besides, you know, walk.

We discovered the answer to this burning question yesterday when we loaded up the car in a light rain to go to the grocery store for a couple of forgotten items. We rounded a corner in the apartment complex to discover a white sedan crawling down the middle of the street flashing its emergency lights. The leash slung out the car window was attached to a collar on that same poor, poor Pomeranian, who was trotting along frantically next to the car. The little dog had pulled the leash taut in a desperate attempt to walk as far away from the wheels as possible, and its stubby legs were going a mile a minute in an effort to keep up.

There's no excuse for this. As far as I can tell this guy doesn't have any sort of disability whatsoever-- he doesn't have a handicapped license plate or a placard on his car and he sure as heck balances on a motorcycle pretty well, as was demonstrated this past summer. And I'm sorry, but I don't really care if he has some sort of medical issue that makes him unable to walk the dog; if he can afford to have a dog in the first place he can afford to hire a dog walker. It would probably be pretty cheap if he factors in what he'd be saving on gas.

And if he doesn't have a reason that he needs to not be walking, WOW. I really, really wish I'd thought to get this idiot's license plate number so I could report him for animal cruelty. I also wish I'd had my camera with me; I'll have to start carrying it in the car on the off-chance we see him again. How could he possibly think this was a good idea? How lazy does one have to be to walk one's dog like this?

My snippet of advice to that guy: if you really, really don't want to walk the dog, here's an idea-- don't have a dog. Have a goldfish. You'll never have to walk them, and you won't really have to interact with them other than to feed them and clean out the bowl once in a while. On second thought, I wouldn't want to inflict you on a goldfish. Have a pet rock. That sounds like an appropriate level of responsibility for you.

On a side note: what the heck does he do if the dog has to go to the bathroom? I'm not sure I want to know.

Yeesh.

~Jess