Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Yamim Noraim


Yamim Noraim

Teresa’s mom fell and broke her hip in FLA (my friend and coworker) :(
Frail older lady who suffers from osteoporosis and anemia (come to find out that she needed blood transfusions after the surgery because she lost so much blood) 
Teresa and I have become pretty close these last few years...

Alarm to our house went off – constables dispatched, kids re-living trauma: 
No harm, no foul - there was really no reason for the alarm to have gone off - I remember checking the mail and then turning the key in the lock, but the front door was open when the officers arrived. I also remember setting the alarm off before I left, and checking the keypad to make sure the proper lights were lit and nothing was red or yellow or some number indication. It all looked good so I left and rearmed the alarm.
When I first walked in and it looked like the place had been ransacked (as is the normal state of my house on most days) I only saw the coffee table which is pushed in front of the TV table so my new walkers won't topple the TV over on themselves. So I initially though the plasma screen was gone, but it was there as was the XBox which the officer noticed I didn't seem too worried about. For some reason all that was different is that we were left with a mysterious white medical grade cord in the middle of the living room that we can't figure out what it belongs to.

Mezuzah question from officer- "What is this?"
my simplified answer - "It protects the house." 
His retort -  “It sure did it’s job this time”

Dr Katkin’s office – clinic visit at TCH
Panic attack – walking through doors of the bldg information center which is next to the ER. No fear until we entered the building and then a continuous building shaky feeling all through the lobby area to the area where we waited for the elevator to the clinic. Too much anguish there in the building? Or maybe my residual trauma from all we have endured there? I think I may need some therapy LOL!
Once we reached the check-in desk and started the feelings subsided. 
Jonathan showed  his devilish side for the apt. much to my mommy chagrin.
Good news is that 1.doc says you would never know by listening to him that he is missing a chunk of his lung (YAY!) and 2. we are off the asthma meds (I never believed he had asthma in the first place) and on to allergy meds instead. Also evaluating getting the tonsils taken out....

Today Jonathan is headed to the Astros game with his camp and I was given vendor tix 2 hours before the game for much better tickets than those. Then tonight we (3 tix bought) are headed to the fundraising event of the Dynamo game where we will also be getting custom T-shirts with Houston Dynamo in Hebrew. Sure to be favorite t-shirts for the near future.

Friday, July 01, 2011

hand foot and mouth disease - still developing

from my twitter feed this weekend:

glad my kids know how to #share. hand foot & mouth disease shared w/ older brother & both miserable. #matzohballsoup #minttea to the rescue

Updates are in purple

 
Since one of the first notes I saw from our new camp this summer politely informed us that one of the kids in machane aleph (thats the little kids who share everything) group came down with hand foot and mouth disease I just hung my head. That would explain why my princess was acting so out of sorts and ill feeling. Turns out she had a pretty mild case that lasted a few days with a few blisters and her swollen lips. And one dramatic instance of bleeding gums toward the end when she was brushing her teeth.


Yael joined me and bubbie for a fancy lunch and a few hours at my office, but she was unable to eat much. So I got her a shake and some yogurt and she still wasn't eating. Other than that she was in pretty good spirits most of the time she was sick and even went to camp the same week she got sick (Friday) so she could have some Tasti-D-lite when the ice cream truck came for a visit.



Not the case with Jonathan. As per his usual sicky self, he got a brutal case of mouth sores that led into some major swelling of his mouth and then a putrid smell emmanated when he would get it open at all.

Finally took him to the dr after a few days (his dr was of course out of the office but we saw a colleague) who suggested that it may be another strain of the virus since his gums were so swollen also and that we could only dull the pain until the thing had a chance to run its course. So he got 2 prescriptions in 2 days of Tylenol with codine [the first got spilled all over the floor by a well-meaning butterfingers who shall remain nameless]

He eventually got severly dehydrated and I made some poor parenting choices in not taking him to get IV fluids when he was too weak to eat/drink or do anything but sleep. When he finally did urinate after several days, it was the color of our beloved iced tea and a few hours later he went all clammy. I knew that the two were connected but it was only in later research (thank you internet medical websites that list scary symptoms and what they might mean) that I discovered that my poor sick kiddo was probably in shock. It's a good thing he was in a bed under a ton of blankets in the middle of the hottest Texas June on record.  Poor parenting choice maybe, in that he probably would have benefited from a bunch of IV fluids, but I was too nervous about him becoming a pin cushion at the hospital to take him to the ER or the medical center. When he finally did go back to camp after a week at home, I called to check up on him and was told that there was no nurse on staff, but that they had an ER dr at their disposal [dr d happens to be the father of one of J's classmates] so it was all good and he was eventually a pretty happy camper. He lost a lot of weight between not being able to eat or drink anything and what I think may have been a growth spurt as his feet peeled which is usually my sign that he is growing.

In fact, he may have lost almost 15% of his weight, all of his favorite shirts are literally falling off him!

One other thing I did notice was that he was not coughing, not during the day, not at night, not at all.
and he did not have any asthma related problems the whole time he was sick, and that he slept much better. He didn't get up every night and roam the house [read: get a drink of water and end up in my bed]  He also had a nasty looking blister on one of his thumbs that is turning into a black blood blister as it is trying to be reabsorbed by the body. And on the other thumb, he had a blister/sore that popped that was on the edge of/under his nail and thank goodness for chlorinated pools, that the finger looks a lot better [I originally thought the infection was so bad that he was gonna lose part or all of his fingernail]
Good note: he hasn't sucked his thumb in almost a month!

Also, my kids who were sick (not the babies thus far) were so kind to their caretakers. They gave a version of the virus to both grandparents in some form or other.