They say a picture is worth a thousand words

What she was looking at out the window:

   

 

So today was Kenzie's MRI. *exhales giant sigh of relief* So glad THAT is over! I knew going into it that it was going to be hard, but I had no idea HOW hard it would be.

See we arrived early(which is fine) and of course I'd forgotten to charge the portable DVD player that I packed so we were stuck watching some random irritating crud on the waiting room TV(or she was while I talked to a wonderful lady from Alaska). Finally 10 minutes after we were supposed to arrive, they whisked us off to the back to prep her, and let me 'settle in' (ha!). We had a wonderful nurse's assistant who was just a joy, and a great nurse too(actually the same one who put her to sleep last time we were in!) so we were very very lucky.

The poor wee thing did something she has NEVER ever done at the hospital before she broke out in a full on scream fit. I felt horrible because normally the nurses RAVE about how well behaved and quiet she is. Thankfully once we were in our torture cell sedation room, she calmed down as there was a very engaging playground below our window. She had to wear the embarassing gown, that somehow actually covered her bum!

We hung out snapped some pictures on my cell phone than the Anesthesiologist came in to put her to sleep. Let me say she did a wonderful job though my nerves at the time might not of said so. We were escorted from our room to the prep area for the MRI, where she'd set up the mask and almost everything we'd need. Poor Kenzie, though was very dead set on NOT being there. She kept pointing at the nurses, waving and saying 'Bye bye', while clinging furiously to me. So one of the assistants had me sit down in an office chair while they shoved gently placed the mask onto her face. Kenzie promptly held her breath aside from muttering 'Bye bye' repeatedly. That is when the scariest thing I have ever heard come out of a nurse was said "Oh by the way mom, don't be freaked out when her eyes roll back in her head, and it drops back" a moment later I got to see what they meant as we laid her out on the table. *shudders*

It was at that point I was kicked out dismissed to go 'grab a bite to eat'. I went and grabbed a quick salad, and came back to the room where I sat writing(strangely my muse decided THEN would be a good time to show up) and waiting.

Not long after, they brought her back, still asleep and went off leaving her attached to the monitor while they went to knock out sedate another child. Of course as soon as they were part way through that her alarms had to start going off, drawing in an NA, who of course had to wake her up *le sigh* and send us on our way. Literally I think we were there maybe 10 minutes after she woke up till we left and were on the road. *shakes head* So now we just wait until the 22nd to get the results.

Oh, on another note L is having a BOY.

My feelings about the situation in which we find ourselves

Today's post will be a follow up of sorts to yesterdays post.

I received the phone call from the pediatrician explaining WHY the schedule had been bumped up, and it is much as had been feared.

She is leaving her practice.

Now that may not seem a big deal to most people out there but let me explain something. I HATE most pediatricians(I'll spare you the down and dirty details as to why for now). So for me to not only take Kenzie to one, but to also fully switch 100% over(from a family practice) is NOT like me. I have raved in the past about our pediatrician, and all of it still stands true. Sadly she is moving her practice to a city that is much too far to drive for 'routine care' visits, about an hour and a half one way, so I can't follow her. *sighs*

My feelings about this whole thing are rather mixed.

~ I feel rather like I 'broke' kenzie in the fact that she has had numerous 'issues' since birth, and has seen not 1 or 2 but this will be her 5th 'ologist'

She has seen:

* Urologist * Cardiologist * Opthamologist  * Audiologist

~ I 'know' that I did NOT 'break' her but try rationalizing that to my single parent brain in which I am the one who provides all her care, and food, and such. I have no one else to blame the 'issues' on.

~ I feel kind of cold and alone, as I cannot make her father aware of the issues that she has or it becomes an 'oh woe is me' festival, in which the world must revolve around him and how screwed up his life is because Kenzie is 'broken'(doesn't help with my issues).

~ I tend to bottle my feelings until the point at which they 'explode' and I end up spending hours on the phone to my BFF Tiff, bawling my eyes out over how 'horrid' of a parent I am.

~ If I try and discuss any of the 'issues' with my family, I continually hear 'Oh she's young she'll just grow out of it', or 'Well why aren't you doing ____ or ____?' or 'You MUST of done SOMETHING to cause this, after all YOU put her into speech therapy'

~Some days I just want to curl up in a burrow and hide from the world for fear of another 'issue' cropping up and forcing me to learn about another 'ology'.

~ I wish I could wave a magic wand make my baby all better, and not have to go through another medical procedure.

~ Having had MRI's myself, I know that they are not 'painful' I'm just worried about how I'll control a toddler whilst she is having her BRAIN scanned.

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Having said all these things do let me say this one-

I KNOW ITS NOT MY FAULT!

Sadly this doesn't help all the time, and while I have been preparing for hearing the words spoken(Your daughter needs an MRI, and to see a Neurologist) I had not been prepared for them so soon. Something about my favorite person on the planet is leaving, and wants to tie up all the 'loose ends' before she does so.

All your kind words have meant a lot to me, and I hold them near and dear as they help to buoy my spirits as we enter this, new phase of our medical journey. Hopefully this time the doctor won't give me a hard time about being 'smarter than their resident'.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to research Neurologists and pick the best one for my daughter.

In Which I reveal all

So the past week has been very long and trying for me, as a parent and as a person. Kenzie has been undergoing speech therapy since the middle of February having been diagnosed at the end of January, with a 'speech delay'.

We've gone in weekly for her appointments, been doing all the 'homework' that was required, and making some progress. Alas, that has not been enough apparently. We now have to go down sometime next month, and see a Neurologist, and have an MRI preformed at Children's Hospital.

I'll back up a minute and explain. See back in late March/early April Kenzie went into see our pediatrician, about some unrelated thing.  While we were there, we discussed her speech therapy, and the physical therapy, and the newest thing we had noticed which was a 'slight' tremor to her muscles. The pediatrician was concerned but not overly so, suggesting that we watch it, and re-convene in July, to re-check, and discuss at that point possibly having a Neurology consult done. She also at that time expressed interest in having a Occupational Therapy assessment done when we got the chance.

Fast forward now to last week. Wednesday we were at speech therapy, and I asked the therapist about the OT referral we had received as here it was a full month and a half later, and it still hadn't happened. This conversation turned into discussion of the Neuro consult possibility before we left. 

Skip to the next day around noon. My phone rings, and I glance at the display, and see that it is the pediatrician's office calling us. I pick up to the very lovely voice of our AWESOME nurse whom I love. She was calling to inform me that they were going ahead with the consult referral, and just wanted to give me a heads up so that when the Neurologist's office called me I wasn't totally shocked(You mean like I am right now?!).

Now skip to today. We arrived for ST, and PT, at our usual time, went and did our thing. While we were there I casually brought up my conversation with the Ped's nurse last week. I was curious if they had, had a 'discussion'* with the Pedi at some point the prior week, thus bringing about the phone call. They both answered in the negative that they had NOT had a discussion with the Ped; BUT they both felt very strongly that we should proceed with the consult as she is not making 'marked' progress and is still occasionally exhibiting signs of a slight tremor.

So as it stands right now, at our PT, ST, and Pediatrician's recommendation we are going in July at some point(date TBD) to see a neurologist, and have an MRI preformed. Looking for what? Nobody quite knows(this is the answer I continually get), so its basically a crap shoot as to wether or not we 'find' anything. I will keep you updated.

* Our Pediatrician and our speech therapist/physical therapist all share a building and a lunch room, all have freely admitted to having 'discussions' about Kenzie over lunch. Which honestly freaks me out a little, because seriously, don't y'all have something better to talk about like say the weather?

My ER Trip

So as I mentioned in last nights blog, I was sent to the ER by my doctor for my kidney pain. In case you don't remember I was diagnosed back on 2/15 with a kidney/bladder infection. They put me on a 7 day course of antibiotics that ended up doing DIDDLY squat for me. So I called and finagled another appointment with my regular doctor. She confirmed that I still had the infection, but brought up the possibility that it MIGHT be a kidney stone. She sent me home with a new prescription, and told me that if I felt worse and started running a fever not to hesitate to call in over the weekend. Which brings me to last night.
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As I mentioned since sometime Friday I had been running a low-grade fever, and couldn't even drink water without being nauseaous. We all had gone out to dinner and I just could NOT get comfortable for the life of me so when I got home I called the office, and she recomended that I go in and be seen.

So off I went on my sojourn to the ER. I arrived got all triaged, and checked in and sat down to wait, and wait, and wait; thankfully I'd brought a new book with me to read. Finally about 11:30ish I got taken back to a room and settled in to wait there. After a while the doctor came in and ordered blood, and urine tests, and a CT scan and X-ray of my abdomen. Then he went on his merry little way. I went off and had my CT done, came back almost got kicked out by the nurse(apparently the doc wrote discharge orders while I was off getting the CT). After another little while the X-ray tech came in did her thing and again I waited. After what seemed like forever, the nurse came in and discharged me saying that everything had come back clear, and they could find no reason for my pain. So I left with my pain killer's in hand(the doctor insisted that I MUST have some to go home with) and went to bed.


This morning shortly after I got up my phone rang, and I picked it up and it was the ER on the phone informing me that they'd had their in house Radiologist double check the films, and that they had found that YES, indeed, I had a kidney stone. They apologized profusely and said to follow up with my regular doc this week. I have an appointment for Wednesday at 3:40pm with her.

Could somebody just shoot me?

Okay I sit here, once again feeling as if I am dying. I have a call into my Doc's office(thankfully MY doctor is on call) to find out what to do. I have been running a low grade fever since sometime yesterday(99.9-100.5ish) and CANNOT for the life of me get warm. I hate the full body chills and the feeling that somebody is sitting behind me stabbing me in the back whilst someone else spears my kidney from the front.

*pauses to answer the phone*

Well my doctor just called, and I'm off to the ER to get a CT scan, wish me luck and look for a post monday about my fun filled ER visit.

A round up of the trips to seattle

So yesterday was obviously our trip to Children's that went remarkably well with Kenzie passing all her tests with flying colors. Audiology came back great, she missed a couple sounds, but she was very focused on the audiologist in front of us at the time. Her eye test was okay though it is really difficult to get a good reading on a toddler as they can't do the reading chart. We have to follow up with her Opthomologist in November, to recheck her eyes, and the cup to disc ratio which was a wee bit wonky last time.

Today I drove down to the U-Dub and met my wonderful new Endocrinologist. I felt very comfortable with him, and didn't feel rushed at all. Though I was a little dissapointed that there wasn't much he could tell me right now since we didn't have a current set of my numbers in front of us. We did look at my TSH numbers from December and they were about a 1.3 and the 'normal' is between .3 and 3.o according to my Endo. We also looked at my Free T4 numbers which were very elevated but not outside the 'normal range' of 4.5 to 13.3 I was sitting right about an 11.4. The issue is that we didn't have a current Antibody count in front of us therefore limiting what we could figure out. He did order a Thyroid U/s so that we could get a baseline picture of what my thyroid looks like since I have a sizable goiter at the moment. He wasn't able to provide me any 'new' information that I haven't learned and until we get the test results back I don't know when I will be following up with him yet.

Day 3, and a fun trip

So, I have made it through yet another day of the "No-Ponytail Challenge". This has been a lot easier than I thought it would be. In fact thanks to this I'm thinking about letting my hair grow out some and go back to my NATURAL color of dirty dishwater blonde. Maybe a nice chest length would be cute or something I don't know yet.

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Today was an Island day, Kenzie and I drove out to Whidbey, and visited our good friends out at TLBF. They have been having baby goats since mid-january and today was the first time we got to see them. I have forgotten(like I do every year) how small they are! Gosh, I am excited now to have our first kids of the spring. Our babies aren't due until April 1st(yup april fools!) this week I am going to try to carve out some time to preg check the girls and see if I can get a guesstimate on how many they are carrying. I can't wait to hear those fast little heartbeats thud-thud-thudding along as they ride around in mom. Pretty soon we should be able to start seeing them kicking and moving which is always neat!

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I have also discovered that apparently Blue Extra strength Benadryl and I are NOT friends. At least not in the 'recommended dosage'. I had an allergic reaction to something today and popped the 'recommended dosage' which worked great on the swelling and itching that goes along with allergies. Though it really hit me hard as I was driving home and thankfully when I got home kenzie went straight to sleep(she hadn't taken a nap AGAIN) so i was able to pass out and sleep it off. Next time I'd like someone to cut me off at one blue benadryl please!

Insert witty title here

So today has been an all around F'ed up day. It started with me 'oversleeping'(read sleeping for the first notable stretch all week), and running behind. That was followed by a long day with Gma, and a trip to the mall. All of which involved my current least favorite activity- riding in the car.

On a bright note I went to the local grocery mart here and they agreed to donate 300 bottles of water to our Country Living Expo.

In case you hadn't heard(and i know some of my fair readers havent) I was in a car accident a week ago thursday(yesterday). I wasn't physically hurt(i'll confirm this fact tuesday hopefully if all goes well) but mentally I have become a hyperventilating ball of goo. My neck and upper back have been seriously sore since it happened, and so the Dr. at the Walk In Clinic prescribed me muscle relaxers for 4 x's a day. Uh, how'mI supposed to take care of Kenzie? So I have been trying to avoid them as A) they turn me into a ball of goo, and B) they make me a wee bit paranoid(the other night i spent 4 hours sitting by kenzies crib watching her sleep). To make everything even more wonderful the last few nights(since Tuesday) I have been having horrific panic attacks. I literally cannot close my eyes easily and fearlessly. I have taken to sleeping(laying there staring at the ceiling) with Peter, and Bob along with my sound machine set to waves after making the whole room smell like coconuts to distract me.

I tried to explain to Dad today that yesterday the reason I was so mad at him was that when I updated him on the stituation with the insurance company that at that time I just wanted to vent not have him ride in and 'save the day' for me. I probably would have gone to him for help but I wanted it to be MY choice not HIS. He apparently thinks that I am just telling him to leave me the heck alone. *sighs* why are men so annoying?

Oh and on another front I got my Pap Smear letter in the mail today(mind you I had it last month on the 13th) telling me that my results came back 'not normal' so they ran an HPV test but that came back Negative, so that I should 'just follow up in a year'. I sat there shaking my head as I DISTINCTLY remember my Dr. telling me that if anything was 'not normal' she'd give me a call and let me know. So, uh, why am I just now finding out about it? Almost a FULL MONTH later?! Tuesday I think I will be following up on that and asking about my 'normal' thyroid levels as I still am really tired(though now i can't sleep so ironic aye?) and depressed and am gaining mass weight but not really eating. *sighs*

Oh and a week from tommorow is the BIG DAY! I can't believe it is here already, it seems like just yesterday we started planning! Today my box from the USBGA arrived in the mail and it was like christmas all over again except for it was all for me I don't have to share for a whole week!