Mom is the star :)

We were able to visit mom yesterday (Thursday). She wasn't feeling well at all on Tuesday, wanting to be alone..which was hard. I want so badly to help her somehow. In reality, however, I can't. She has to process this both mentally and physically, while we as a family have to process it mentally and physically too. There's been numerous phone calls to clarify information between my dad, my younger sister (my youngest sister is away at a lake for the week), myself, my husband, my aunt and a very close family friend. The last two people are very close to us and we want to keep them updated, as well as having them for support.
Here is what we know so far as of yesterday evening:

• Mom tore a muscle and ligament when she stepped off of the last stair wrong, sometime last week. She heard it/felt it tear/pop, but wasn't in any great amount of pain because of the painkillers she was already on. She spoke to her surgeon, who said it was nothing. In his defense, it sounds like the only way he would have known that she had done something was to get in her knee to see.
  
• The fill-in surgeon (very nice man - I wasn't so sure in the beginning but I'm better now) did clean her knee out, and fixed everything before closing her up. He took several cultures to check for infections.
• Infection is our biggest, baddest and scariest issue right now. Mom does have a type of staph infection, but evidently it's the good kind that everyone has on the outer layer of their skin.
  The infectious disease specialist has decided to hit mom with all they've got as far as antibiotics....in the event that the cultures that are still growing show something other than what we know right now. If that's the case, they will fine tune the dosage and the types of medications. I counted 5 bags/bottles of things that were hanging on the IV pole next to mom...all the medications that she had pumped into her PICC line yesterday. Both infectious disease specialists agreed that these medications can make mom feel pretty nasty....but if it's going to keep her healthy and prevent any further complications, I'm all for it.
  

• Mom is back to square one as far as therapy and healing. She did have three therapy sessions yesterday at the hospital, so she isn't just sitting there. She also has a contraption, which I'm sure has a very important sounding name, but it's a "move-your-leg and-bend-it-a -few-degrees-for-you-every-few-minutes-without-you-moving-your-leg-yourself" thing. It looks scary but I had to use the same thing after I had my knee scope/fixed torn ACL.

• Mom is weak..both mentally and physically. We overheard the doctor (dad made us stand outside the room while the doctor was there, which was fine. Her room is really small) that her blood levels were "low" - not sure exactly what that means but she has been bleeding and draining basically non-stop for two weeks, so it's not too surprising. She looked better and sounded more like herself yesterday though, and that relaxed me somewhat.
  

Today:
I'm waiting. :) Mom is supposed to be discharged either today or tomorrow - the surgeon thought that it would be today. However, it really depends on the infectious disease specialist. We have to find out if -

• Mom will be sent home either today or tomorrow

• There is a slight chance that she could go to a rehab center but we're praying that she can come home where she is comfortable, relaxed and where she is exposed to bacteria that she normally is exposed to, as opposed to new germies in a rehab center. Less chance of infections. I'm also slightly concerned about how she would feel emotionally in a rehab center...besides, we want her home!
• Dr. O, the infectious disease specialist, will determine today/tomorrow how much of the antibiotics she will need. It will also be decided whether the antibiotics can be given at home by either us or a home health nurse. This would be the optimal choice because it takes 4 hours for her meds to drip and if she has to go into the clinic every.day for 4 hours a day for 6 weeks...it just feels like it would be easier on mom not to have to go up every day, but we'll go with whatever Dr. O says.
  
• Mom's fill-in surgeon has determined that mom needs a hospital bed on the main floor of the house - the kitchen, living room, dining room and bathroom are all on the main floor, which deletes any possibility of hurting herself on stairs again. So, the case-worker at the hospital is working with Mom and Dad's insurance to find out if they'll cover to rent a hospital bed.
  

• I'm waiting for mom to call me to tell me a) if the bed is going to be delivered today and if so, what time... b) if she'll be discharged today and if so, when ... c) if I have to get her medications from the Infectious Disease specialist or what.
  

No phone call as of 12 noon...so, just relaxing as best as I can until I hear something.
Let me tell you something, our family is always full of drama and excitement :) And as much as it frustrates me, I love them and will do anything I can to help them.

More on momma

Mom's surgery ended sometime shortly before 11 pm.
When the doctor got into her knee, he found something not expected....
A week ago, mom had stepped down off of a step with her good/non-surgery knee, which caused her to bend and twist her hurting/surgical knee....
Evidently, she tore her muscle and ligament by her knee. Badly.
...
So, the doctor not only cleaned out her incision, but had to open it deeper than expected to fix her muscle.
Today, she is supposed to meet with the Infectious Disease Specialist that treated my Hepatitis C, so I'm happy that Dr. O will be treating her. And she is being treated with heavy-duty antibiotics so that she doesn't have further complications.

She's in pain, frustrated, tired and scared today.

So am I.

Update on Momma

Took mom to the hospital at 5pm tonight.
Her surgery was supposed to start at 7 but she wasn't taken back until 8pm. I was upset because she was so upset/worried/nervous/stressed before going back. Thankfully they gave her a dose (maybe two?) of the "happy" drugs, in addition to two medications for her upset stomach and two doses of pain reliever for her knee...which worked a bit. I left the hospital because I had not eaten anything since around 11am, was getting nauseated and exhausted.
Dad texted me around 9 and said that they had just paged him to let him know that surgery had started....2 hours late.
It's now nearly 20 minutes after 10 and no word from dad. I called my mom's close friend and my mom's older sister to let them know that at 8, they had taken her back...not knowing that surgery wouldn't start until 9. The friend has to work early, so I won't be calling them back tonight. My aunt wants a call back as soon as dad calls...hopefully she'll still be up.

I'm worried and tired and scared and worried.

Ugh...

Momma Drama (title yanked from my seester)

I'm doing this in bullet form because I'm tired and frustrated and scared.

• June 22, 2009 - My mom had her left knee replaced. This was done a week earlier than originally planned because her surgeon, Dr. M, is going to be out of town the week her surgery was planned for.

Her surgery went well but she really struggled after the surgery. A lot of pain, a lot of nausea, a lot of swear words (from her, not me) that she doesn't remember, a lot of tears from me and a fine dance between nurses to determine was the right amount of pain medications. They finally got it figured out but it was nearly unbearable for me to be there. I actually left early because I simply couldn't stand to be there any more. Dad, Caleb and my younger sister all agreed this was probably better...for her and I.

• Mom came home June 24 in the evening and was in pain, but she DID just have major surgery. Throughout the next week and a half, she has a home health nurse and therapist come to the house.
• She ends up back at the doctor's office on June 30 because of a red area on her shin (something she got with her last knee surgery too) that the home health care nurse was thinking could be infection. The doctor gave her an antibiotic (she wasn't on ANY antibiotic until this point, which still confuses me) to "get the nurses off his back". I wasn't there to hear him say this so I don't know if he was just being funny or what...It did help reduce the redness....the redness is there as a result from realigning her knee.

She also wears compression stockings, which scares me to put on her bad knee because I'm so afraid I'm going to hurt her. They tried to go get a second pair, so that one pair could be in the wash as she wears the other pair but evidently, you have to give up your first, second and third born children in order to get it.

• Last Thursday, July 2, Mom had her staples removed by her surgeon. Her knee, at this point, has no stopped bleeding/draining since her surgery. After the removal of her staples, her knee starts bleeding a lot. By the time she got home around 5, the gauze is completely blood soaked. She changed her bandages and when she checked it again at 6, the bleeding had slowed down. When she was getting ready to go to bed around 10, she went to change her bandage and her incision had split open :( She called the home health nurse, after trying to get ahold of the doctor. The nurse came out immediately, looked at the incision and told mom that she could see a blood clot in her knee. The nurse then tries to get ahold of the doctor,(who is not the surgeon who did her knee replacement but another doctor in the office) who called back around 12...nearly two hours later. He talked to the nurse and told mom to get her butt in the ER.

So, on July 3, Mom was in the ER. They cleaned it out, got the blood clot out ( the doctor told mom that there are good and bad clots. This clot was a good one - trying to stop all of her bleeding.) and used sutures to close it up. The ER doctor told her that it wasn't the staples being taken out - whether she had had them taken out when she did or this week, the incision still would have split open.
Moved forward to yesterday, June 6:

• I went over there to help her throughout the day. She wanted to take a shower, but needs help because she still is so tired and not able to stand up too long by herself. She did very well and stood up for the entire shower - it was a quick one but she did it :) As I was helping her get out of the shower, I realize that her knee is still draining. I think I said something to her and she said that her doctor told her that because she's overweight, she is going to drain more. I helped her bandage her knee back up, got her stockings back on and got her ready for her post-ER check-up.
• Getting her in the car caused tears for both of us, both getting there and back. She just can't move her leg like a normal person, which makes getting in and out of a car extremely difficult.
• We got to the office and she gets to see her surgeon's main nurse - a WONDERFUL woman who cares a lot about the patients and is feisty :) Being that the doctor who saw my mom yesterday was not her "boss"/the surgeon and I think the nurse struggled a bit with dealing with this other doctor.
• The other doctor, Dr. T, came in, asked mom a ton of questions, pushed around on her knee (made her whince and her knee drain a lot), looked at her drainage and told her that if this was his knee and if she was his patient, he would send her to surgery. Because he is the active doctor (her doctor is on vacation until Monday),and she IS technically his patient right now, she's having surgery today.
• The surgery is set for 7:15 pm, and we have to be at the hospital at 5:15pm. They are going to re-open the knee (the sutures from the ER really didn't pull her incision completely closed (which they want it somewhat open so that it can drain....but it is too open), irrigate it out with a "squirt gun" (the doctor's words), culture it and then staple it back shut. She's going to be in the hospital until at least Friday on IV antibiotics.

From the sounds of it, Dr. T believes there is some type of infection going on - which could be causing her nasty drainage, lack of healing and all around problems. This is going to set her back a few weeks but I know that this doctor knows what he's doing and wouldn't be sending her to surgery unless he felt it was necessary.
She will have to have IV antibiotics after she gets home and she will be getting those through the Infectious Disease Specialist - the same one who treated me during my Hepatitis C treatment. I LOVE her, her staff and her partner (I've only worked with him once but he seemed to know what he was doing) and am happy to hear that they will be taking care of her :)

I'm emotionally exhausted and physically just as tired. I'll be taking mom to the hospital because everyone else will still be at work. Dad should get there shortly after we get there.

I want to be strong and need to be strong but I want to just sit and cry.

Life has been crazy around here lately.
- My Pre-School graduated last Thursday and I bit my lip so hard (in attempts not to sob) that I bled. I am so proud of them and am going to miss them immensely. Seriously - they are a spectacular group of kids and I can't wait to see them as they grow up!

-We got news back from a high-head-honcho from our home warranty group in regards to our roof and electrical work..... they don't cover pre-existing ill-installed issues or flat roofs...both of which apply to our two leaking areas. SO, we are now going to have to look in getting yet another loan, this time a home loan. It is extremely unhealthy for us to have nasty wet wood and insulation exposed to our living space. And they are sending a new company (from GR) to look at our electrical work. We do need to call the home warranty company and triple-check that we will not have to pay another 50 dollar deductible in order to have this third company come and check things out.

- I haven't been feeling well lately - we're thinking it's due to stress....I've had a hard time sleeping at night and not feeling hungry. Today, though, we re-discovered that we had purchased some chocolate with peanut butter swirl ice cream (my absolute favorite type of "hard" ice cream) and for once, it's something that sounds good. Not the healthiest snack in the world but it tastes good.

-I'm teaching swim classes for the next two weeks (and last week, too) for a local university. It's been more draining on me than I remember it do be. I'm having to plan things out in more detail....lesson plans, if you will. My struggle is that I have 3 kids in the first session (in a class of 14) that are border-line ready for the next level. We have already moved one up and I was told on Friday that another was being moved up on Monday. The third child decided he was okay to move up next year and is comfortable in our class. This week, I add two more classes on in the morning, and I'm hoping they will go just as smoothly as last week's session.

-My mom is having her other knee replaced on June 29th -two years to the DAY of when she had her first knee replacement. I wasn't around much for the first knee replacement, as we had just discovered that I had lost our first baby. This time, though, I will be around to help once she gets home. In addition to this, we just found out that my dad has a bone spur inbetween his 6th and 7th (if I remember right) verterbrae and has to have immediate surgery. We're praying feverishly that God will bless us with a different surgery date other than the same week as mom's!

-Not a whole lot else going on - I've been lazy all weekend, fighting migraines and just all around yucky-ness. Yesterday, my lovely sisters and husband came with me to pack up the rest of my classroom and moved all of my stuff out. We came back here, unloaded, order a ton of pizza and watched TV. Caleb and I napped after the girls left and just laid around the rest of the night. Today has been much of the same - he's working on the laundry, I've been sleeping off and on due to a nasty migraine. I need to work on swimming lesson plans, checklist for swimming and finish up my preschoolers last assessments. :)

Yay for lazy weekends!

Poem

For those of you who read this (is there anyone?!), I apologize for not posting in over a month. Work has been slowly and consistently gaining speed as we gear for the last two weeks of school and PreSchool graduation. I have done this for the past two years; however, both of those years I worked with another teacher. I didn't realize until late that she was an amazing person and a God-send (no joke). I have cried more in the last month than I have more year due to the added pressure of end-of-year and graduation stuff.

We have decided to switch to a different OB - the one that we initially weren't sure about. He seems to be much more attentive/aggressive in concerns of our case and has promised that when we do get pregnant again, he will do everything he can (read: weekly appointments and bloodworks and frequent ultrasounds) to help us and our baby and to keep everyone on top of everything.

I've been extremely tired lately due to late night bedtimes and early morning wake up times for school but I wanted to post this poem I found on Kelly's blog around Mother's Day. She has since taken it down from her blog, but I believe she has posted in on another one of her blogs that she moderates. Please understand that I post these words with the pain and heartache of losing three babies and the pain that this has caused my husband, family and friends. I also mean these words with an overfull heart of love and concern for my children.

I have longed and waited.
I have cried and prayed.
I have endured and planned over and over again.

Like most things in life, the people who truly have appreciation are those who have struggled to attain their dreams.

I will notice everything about my child.
I will take time to watch my child sleep,
explore,
and discover.
I will marvel at this miracle every day for the rest of my life.

I will be happy when I wake in the middle of the night to the sound of my child, knowing that I can comfort, hold, and feed him and that I am not waking to take another temperature, pop another pill, take another shot or cry tears of a broken dream.
My dream will be crying for me.

I count myself lucky in this sense; that God has given me this insight, this special vision with which I will look upon my child.

Whether I parent a child I actually give birth to or a child that God leads me to, I will not be careless with my love.

I will be a better mother for all that I have endured. I am a better wife, a better aunt, a better daughter, neighbor, friend, and sister because I have known pain.

I know disillusionment, as I have been betrayed by my own body. I have been tried by fire and hell that many never face, yet given time, I stood tall.

I have prevailed.
I have succeeded.
I have won.

So now, when others hurt around me, I do not run from their pain in order to save myself discomfort. I see it, mourn it, and join them in theirs.
I listen.
And even though I cannot make it better, I can make it less lonely.

I have learned the immense power of another hand holding tight to mine, of other eyes that moisten as they learn to accept the harsh truth when life is beyond hard.

I have learned a compassion that only comes by walking in those shoes. I have learned to appreciate life.

Yes, I will be a wonderful mother.

Mindless banter...

We had the roofers come out today - in the end, the roof is still leaking and we now have a medium sized hole in our ceiling. A call will be going out tomorrow to the Home Warranty people. I am NOT AT ALL impressed with American Home Shield home warranty company. Now, because of the medium-sized hole, I feel like we've got a window open somewhere. I think we're going to have to shove towels up there or something.

Ugh.

I went and had my two hour glucose test done today - not nearly as bad as I had anticipated. I was given the choice of flavors and ended up with lemon-lime. The lab tech told me that it tasted a lot like flat Sierra Mist/Sprite and was *hopefully* less likely to make me puke. It did taste a lot like flat "white" pop (something that my parents gave us when we had stomach aches as children) and wasn't all that bad. I felt okay during the two hours, and had my blood drawn again without incident. Only when I got home and ate lunch from yummy Lenny's did I start to feel yuck-o. Felt off since about 2pm...just ate some french toast and sausage. Still not feeling fabulous but okay.

I had today off, as well as tomorrow. Caleb took these two days off as well so that we can spend time together. Today? We didn't wake up until nearly 10 (well, we got up at 7:30 to let Miss FancyPants out but both fell back asleep promptly) and I went up the hospital at 11 - didn't get home until after 2pm. Since then, I have literally stayed on the couch until about 8. I don't have any energy and am content where I'm at. So is Caleb :) We are going to head out to Wal-Mart in a bit to grab a few things and return a container of cream cheese that we purchased the other day...it was open and NASTY.

I wish I had the energy to write more, express more of what's going on in my head and in our lives....but I don't.

I'm going to work on PreSchool graduation ideas tonight and tomorrow and just relax.

:)