March 2012 Updates
March 9, 2012 – The year is flying and I am so behind getting the website updated. Let me catch you up.
On January 23rd we had Ryan's tonsils out. We'd put the word out that we'd be back and while we were waiting to go back for pre-op the chaplain came to find us. She has been following us since Ryan's birth. It was great to see her. She couldn’t believe how big Ryan is. I actually went back into the OR with him for the induction process. This is something new that St. Lukes has started in an effort to be more family centered and try to help the anxiety of the patient. Not all anesthesiologists participate in but this one did. I really enjoyed being back there even though he was fine and didn’t care that I was there. Ryan did great in surgery. The doctor said the tonsils were definitely infected and pretty much touching. She also said because of his tone from the CP they were sagging. From how she said it, it was like she hadn’t seen that one before. Post op he was cranky and it took us a bit before we got upstairs to our room. Luckily they put us over in Oncology where we prefer to stay. Ryan did great throughout the day – you hardly could tell he had tonsils out. We had Megan come down with the great grandparents in the evening and she was concerned about him. She of course wanted to run around the halls so we had to take her for walks. I stayed with him overnight and about midnight it turned awful. Crying, screaming, throwing fits. The nurse and I could not get him settled down. We played with a few things to see if it was pain management and he’d settle down and then get started again. I finally had to call Scott at 3 a.m. and have him come down to see if he could help us get some oral medicine in him. It was rough. The doctor came in around 7 a.m. and we talked about the night. She said we’d change a few things on his pain management and then left. We never discussed going home so we assumed we wouldn’t be going home that day. We spent the day hanging out, going for walks around the unit and having visitors. We got to see lots of our friends. We had a session with the music therapist. At first I was hesitant as I wasn't sure Ryan would participate but thought we’d give it a shot. I was in tears of happiness once he got engaged with her and participated. Luckily one of our nurse friends was there and she said you need a camera, which luckily I had, so she did get part of it, which I’ve posted so check it out. In the afternoon Scott was talking with the nurse about discharge and the nurse told us the doctor wrote the discharge instructions so it was up to us and the nurse when we’d head out. We decided to wait until early evening so Ryan got the last round of meds. We got home about 6 p.m. and Ryan did great. He slept great that night as well.
The next week and a half were really rough. The Norco he was on for the pain made him sleepy & not want to do anything, he really fought us drinking or eating anything so getting meds in him was a very difficult. We were trying everything we could think of and just at about 2 weeks the scabs must have come off because things turned for the better. We were honestly about to take him in to the hospital to get hydrated. He lost about 6 lbs during those 2 weeks. Now he seems to feel better, has warded off getting sick by just using nasal sprays and his eating has improved a little bit. We’ve been working on table food and he’s been having pizza, hotdogs, oranges, pasta, among other things. For a little while he was a starving child eating a ton. Right now he doesn’t seem as hungry so he isn’t as interested in eating table foods.
About 10 days into the tonsil recovery we had Megan’s adenoids taken out. This was an outpatient surgery that was quick. She didn’t seem as much of a devil child coming out of the anesthesia this time as last time but she definitely was not happy but once we left she was ok. After the first day, though, she did have trouble sleeping. We were told after surgery there can be nightmares. We think that is most of what was going on. It didn’t help that she ended up getting a sinus infection right after she got off her antibiotics so that played into it too. She is sleeping better but getting her down is still a struggle but we’re working through it.
We finally got up to McCall the weekend of February 25th to get the kids in the snow. They kind of liked it but didn’t. Scott & I had more fun than they did. Megan definitely loved seeing Tucker the dog. Almost every day she asks about him, grandma and grandpa. When she is playing in her play kitchen she'll get on the phone and call him. It is really cute.
Now that we’re healthy and recovered here is what else has been going on:
Ryan is plugging along with his therapies. He’s in a good mood majority of the time. He has learned how to get himself off the couch. He usually can only get himself down on his feet so he is standing but we’ve been working on getting all the way down on the floor. He wants to help more with turning on lights, shutting and opening doors. He’s really started saying Megan’s name. Granted it sounds like Nagan instead of Megan but he’s trying. Usually when he gets up in the morning it’s before Megan and he usually says her name like he wants to know where she is at. He’s been doing a lot of wanting you to mimic his facial expressions. It’s really cute. He’s been trying to sing more and school has said he’s doing better with trying to say works and object recognition. I want to start him up in outpatient music therapy. Hoping to get working on that soon.
Megan is still developing like crazy. We’ve been working on sitting on the potty and this past Sunday night she actually went pee pee on the potty! Yeah! We tried her in soccer last week but they said she doesn’t have the balance yet to do it so we then tried gymnastics (or Magic Tumblebus) and she loved it so she’ll be continuing on with that until we can get her to a point where she can start back in soccer. The words she is saying and things she is doing still amaze us. She loves to sing, loves to make people laugh, loves Tucker the dog, loves having us play with her in her play kitchen, loves playing outside and going shopping. She is definitely like me – if we’ve been in the house too long we go batty. On the weekends she is always asking to go shopping. We’ve had issues with her biting her little friends at school the last couple days so we’re working through that. Time out really doesn’t work for her. Last time she was bad and I told her time out, she just went over to the time out chair, sat down, and stayed there until I told her she could get up. It didn’t even faze her like it had before. Taking things away from her like binky, blanket or puppy seem to be the way to get her attention. We've had to do it a lot this week. Today she bit someone again and this time when they took the binky away she didn't care. This may help us break her of her binky but may not help us to get her to stop biting. We did take her to the doctor yesterday as she has been having a lot of drainage that is causing her to cough, especially during the night, and lots of green eye goobies. One of her ear tubes is plugged so she has an ear infection. This may be playing into her biting. We've started the ear drops and hoping this will open it up soon.