Run Away!

That’s exactly what I did on Thursday.

I am here in the hotbed of sin known as Salt Lake City, Utah, having a fantastic time sans children, razzing my mom about turning 60, hanging my head in shame at how creative my sister Em and SIL Tres (are as evidenced by the FABULOUS party they threw Mom on Friday), kicking my brother’s butt at Rummikub (that’s right, BRO, yer butt!) and dragging around our Chinese exchange student, Tony all the while.

No worries, tomorrow I’m taking him sight-seeing to make up for the abuse of hanging out with my family.

If you feel I have been remiss in my visits and would like the opportunity to be graced by my presence, don’t call my cell because I forgot to bring the charger.  Reach me at the in-laws, who I now believe to be equally as crazy as me since they are letting us stay with them and use a car, they can be found in the phone book.  The public one and the secret Mormon one.  LOL.  Ok, really.  They’re in the white pages.  You know my last name.  The married one, not the old one.

Reality settles back in on Wednesday, but not until the afternoon and only if I make it through the flight without downing my bottle of xanax.  The magic of flight wore off and I am now terrified.  Just ask the attendants. 

Wait.  Don’t.  I have a certain reputation to uphold.

 

See you Wednesday!

Or Tuesday, depending on how cool you are.

Neurology Report

Well, we visited the pediatric  neurologist in Oakland today.  Can I just tell you how much I hate driving an hour to Oakland and two hours (which all things considered, I’m actually pretty lucky it’s so short!) back in beginning rush hour traffic for a 25 minute appointment?  But that’s not what you came here for.

Dr. Kim says….

He thinks S is doing incredibly well considering how severe his injuries are.  I was able to see the MRI results (friggin’ awesome, I gotta tell ya… especially the eyeball layers!!) and you can totally see this huge white spot where the “contusion” is.  It’s about as big as my wadded-up thumb.  The fracture is actually not a crack like when you break your arm, but an indentation (think smashing your thumb into a hard boiled eggshell).

The thing on his brain stem is called a tectal glioma.  The short answer is:  it’s a very small tumor, but they don’t expect it to grow or become malignant.  We do have to watch out for the same symptoms we’ve been watching for the brain bruise as that can be a sign that it’s grown and is pinching off a pathway for the spinal fluid to get to the brain which could cause him to have blindness, imbalance, nausea, and a bunch of other uninteresting symptoms.  So as of now, no surgery or anything is anticipated.

Also during the examination, he noticed something with S’s eyes/retinas?  He called it “hibbs” or “higgs”, but when I googled it all I got was somebody’s name.  Anyway, he said that when you flash or shine a light in S’s eyes his pupils get really small like they’re supposed to, but then they bounce back & forth rapidly between big & small.  So now we have an appointment with the opthamologist.  Yay, because you know how much I want to get a job to help pay for all this gas we’re using!  Not to mention all the classes I’m going to be missing.  (Sigh…)

I hope that didn’t sound bad.  Of course I am happy to do any and everything to take care of my S, I just wish these appointments were closer to home and I worry about my grades.

Anyway, that’s all I have to report until we see the orthopedic department on the 28th.

Again, I am so grateful for all of your thoughts, prayers, and words of comfort.  I really worry for S.  When we warn him to be careful in all he does instead of it going in one ear and out the other, it never makes it into the ear in the first place because he’s moving too fast.  He got busted by the yard duty yesterday for being in line to play wall ball.  Thank goodness these ladies care so much about the kids they are in charge of instead of resenting how overloaded they are with responsibilities!

Love to all, Me.

I Think It Was Summer

Instead of writer’s block.  Because now I can’t shut myself up and keep thinking of all kinds of things I want to blab about!  Like:

• Big Hair Bands.  And I’m not talking about the kind from the hair care aisle at Target, either.  Bon Jovi, Van Halen, or Poison, anyone???
• Holy ’80’s Music Resurgence, Batman! Ok, first of all I am impressed that I didn’t need spell check to tell me how to spell resurgence.  Second of all, I think Michael Jackson’s death just amped up the royalty checks of ’80’s musicians and one-hit wonders across the world!
• Funny Things My Kids Say.  My friend C and her two youngest came thru town Monday night and had a sleepover with us.  D told C that he knew what 1st grade was.  It was “kindergarten with deskes!”
• I wish you all had Twitter, because then it would be like we were having conversations all the time!  And when I have one lyric in my head, I could tweet it and you could tweet back the next line, and it would be like we never left _____ (insert name of town I know you from here)!!!
• Can you hear how hot David Cook looks when he sings like I do???
• Who’s going with me to the Neurology appointment next week?  I’m scared it’s like one of those things where you’re supposed to bring a friend with you so they can tell you everything you didn’t hear after the hot Austrian Dr. says “it’s a toomah”.
• Where are the heirloom tomatoes this year?  My store usually has them earlier than now and I am craving squaw bread & tomato sandwiches!!
• My sister turned the comments off of her blog to make it more freeing for her to write whatever she wants.  I get that.  But I’m an attention whore, is that so wrong???  I mean, I do write this for me because I do like the sound of my own voice sometimes, but I also like knowing people out there read me.  I guess it makes me feel not so alone.
• Am I the only one who thought Adam Lambert would make an AWESOME replacement for Freddie Mercury in Queen?  Think about it.  Get back to me.  But only if your answer is  “Heck yeah, that would be cool!!!”  I don’t have time for the haters.
• I am having serious esteem issues. On the one hand, I’m super excited to go back to school on Monday.  My brain has gotten lazy and needs to be whipped into shape by some Statistics!  On the other hand, I am seriously stressing out that nobody will like me in my classes.  Because, did I mention I’m going to the actual campus this semester?  I’ve outgrown the sattelite building here in town.  On my other left, what am I worried about, these kids are like fresh out of high school!  On the other right, I feel cool when they ask me questions.  SO the drama!!!
• How come nobody told me that once your kids go to school full-time, your dream life begins?  I don’t have to wake up until 8:00!  I can go out to lunch and not worry if I’m back in time to pick someone up!  I can run my errands in the morning or the afternoon!  I can spend longer than 10 minutes at the bookstore!!!!

Ok, I’m dying of thirst.  It’s 9:31 p.m. and it’s stilllllll 84′!  Shoot, it was 93′ just 90 minutes ago!
Toodles!

“Decompressure”

That’s what you get when you have “Under Pressure” by David Bowie going through your head while thinking about all the decompressing you’ve been doing (ba-da-doom-baa-ay) in the last 48 hours.

“Next!” or “Bring It On!”

I wish I could say that life has returned to normal since we got home the other day, but it will be at least three months before that will be true.  I had to write a letter to S’s teacher yesterday so she would be prepared for him when he gets to school on Monday and all the many things he cannot do right now.  No playing on the playground.  No tether ball.  Nor any other kind of ball that might hit him in the head.  No P.E.  No running.  He can’t be left alone (like if I want to run to the store for a few minutes), and he can’t go over to a friend’s house either – because even though the moms are really good and pay much more attention to the kids than I do when they play, it’s different now and it’s too soon to take that risk that something might happen.

The best part of this is, that’s not all.

On Monday we get to go back to Oakland for an MRI.  You see, when S had the CT scans while in the hospital, they found a calcification deep in the brain stem (unrelated to the accident).  Sounds simple enough, right?  No.  Because according to our pediatrician, that means it has the density of calcium, not that it actually is calcium.  Which in the unspoken language of “I-don’t-want-to-say-because-we-really-need-to-take-a-closer-look-at-it” means, “It’s a tumor, but we don’t want to freak you out until we know for sure.”

I KNOW!!!!

Ok.  Maybe it isn’t a tumor.  But dude, bone just doesn’t up and grow inside your brain stem, right?!  What the heck else could it be???

Somebody needs to get the neurology team hip to giving me Xanax before they tell me stuff like that.

In Case You’re One Of The Few

…people who haven’t heard about what our family’s been up to lately, here it is:

Our middle son, S, was hit by a car on Monday evening.  He was riding his bike without his helmet on.  They medi-flighted him to UC Davis’ PICU where we stayed overnight and then we transferred to Kaiser Oakland PICU on Tuesday.  He has a small skull fracture and a small fracture on his lower spine.  There was some fluid in his belly but they say it will be re-absorbed into his body and there’s no need for surgery.  Although it was all really horrible, it may have turned out to be a blessing in disguise… the neurosurgeons found a calcification in his brain stem which was unrelated to the accident and may have gone unnoticed otherwise.  If it turns out to be nothing, then oh well, but if it turns out to be something… we have caught it very early.  So anyway, we return to Oakland on Monday for an MRI so they can further examine what this thing is.  His pediatrician called me today to talk about what happened (he just found out this AM) and he says that this neurologist is the best Peds neurologist in the US.

I am just amazed at the outpouring of love and prayers that have been said on our behalf in our little community.  While we were waiting for the paramedics to come, I heard one woman behind me chanting some kind of prayer about/with Jesus for him and she asked me if I wanted her to pray with me.  Big burly guys came up and hugged us, and kids have left notes and stuffed animals for S on the doorstep – and we have no idea who these people are.  It makes me feel good to see so many people turning to God and using their faith to show their care for us.  Our home teacher drove out with Honey & the kids on Tuesday night to help give him a blessing, when, since we were so close to the Oakland Temple we could’ve just called some missionaries over.  My VT brought me out some stuff last night to replace what Honey thought he was supposed to bring me the night before.  Shana the Beautiful has watched our other kids and a few of my friends from church have brought over dinner.

Either I’m over-medicated or there have been hoards of angels holding me back because the only time I was really upset was when we first found him.  I was shaking so bad and then the dry mouth was the worst.  But all through this I just felt like he was going to be fine.  And mostly, he is.  Once you have a brain injury like he has, you’re super-likely to have more (there’s a percentage involved in there but it’s all a blur what the docs & nurses said).  He can’t ride a bike or go to P.E. or play on the playground or any contact sports for 3 months.  He’s not happy about it because he -loves- teatherball.  He walks a little funny now but I suspect that will change when the spine fracture heals.  Little by little his personality is peeking out, but he’s been really quiet and hanging out like a bump on a log.  He’s also worried about going back to school.  When it happened, there was a football practice going on at the school fields so there were many people on the scene, and it appears that we made the front page of the local paper as well.  Many people have called or stopped by with well-wishes while we were gone, and some are still just finding out and he doesn’t really want to talk about it most of the time.  We came up with a strategy for him to say “Thanks for asking but I don’t really want to talk about it right now.” and he seems happy with that.

Thanks again for all of your prayers and good vibrations.  Although it’s only been a few days I feel like I’ve been away for weeks and I just want to crawl in bed and move on.

I’ve Been On Vaycay (And other AMAZING lies I have to tell!)

I haven’t had much time to write lately (lie).  I have all kinds of time to write, but not much to say (also a lie, but only partly).  I’ve actually had several things I want to write about, I just don’t get around to it (true).  Since school’s been out for the summer, I spend all my time with the kids (true).  We’ve been going to the beach, museums, camping, swimming, and I’ve had loads of fun projects for them to do to help pass off stuff  in their Cub Scouts books (total and complete load of crap).  Seriously ladies… if you were in the running for Mother of the Year 2009, I just cut my way to the top of the nominees like a hot knife thru water (complete truth)!!

All kidding aside, here are some blog posts I would have written had I not been spending every waking moment playing “Pirates: Rule the Caribbean!” on Facebook so busy keeping the house clean and the garden weed-free.  And now, in no particular order:

• “Are We There Yet???” in which I write that we had to stop more often for the kids to pee than we did for the dog on the drives to Utah and back on Memorial Day Weekend.  Also, there are NO DRIVE-THRU STARBUCKS ON I-80 BETWEEN SACRAMENTO AND SALT LAKE CITY.  That’s like finding a town that hasn’t been invaded by Wal-Mart!  Only worse!!
• “Holy Mother of All Things Parental Abuse” in which I would have written about whomever thought up Summer Vacation should be drawn and quartered.  This post was thought up at 5:39 a.m. the day after school got out for the year.
• “What the Eff???” I have got the worst potty mouth.  Ever.  I could make sailors blush.  And I’m not bragging, I actually feel pretty bad about it.  Do they make a patch for this???
• “17 Again”  Except I’m 34.  Let us note that at this moment, it is 2:20 a.m. and I am still wide awake.  The monkey that I flung off my back all those years ago has come back.  Monkey, thy name be Coca-Cola Classic.  This morning I slept until 10:30.
• “Good Mourning?”  It’s 2+ weeks later and I can’t stop thinking about Michael Jackson.  I didn’t even think about my grandma this much when she passed away last month.
• “Barter and Taxes”  Why do you have to pay sales tax if you make a barter with someone?  Not that I’m going to, but Honey has been tutoring a little girl this summer, and in exchange her parents pay for supplies and the mom has a housecleaning business which now visits our humble abode twice a month.  Why should I let the state get in on the action?  I have used none of their resources, why do they get a cut?

Since I have to get up for church in about 5 1/2 hours, I guess the responsible thing to do would be to go to bed.  The lightbulb finally went off in my head and I understand why I’ve been slipping back into old habits.  The staying up all night because I can, is my way of asserting control over something (anything!!!) since I have none now that the way I spend 3/4 of the year has been interrupted by this summer vaycay.  I can’t promise I’ll stop doing it, but at least I understand why now.

Toodles!

Oh, and p.s…..

Join my friggin’ Pirate crew, will ya????  I need more members to get more booty!!!