Author: Doris

I haven’t posted since Monday!  An eternity in just regular folks time.  We are fine, lots of stuff going on, shall we give the run down since Monday?

Me:  I’m struggling with this nursing thing.  It’s exactly how I expected it to be, but now it’s staring me in the face a couple times a week.  It’s still going to happen, but I’m hesitating at the threshold.  I’ve seen an 85 year old man, unaware, incontinent, with bed sores all over his body.  I’ve seen suicide attempts (failed), drug overdoses, violent patients, code blue – full resuscitation & lonely patients.  I’ve fed countless peoples’ parents while their children are watching because I now realize no child wants to hold a spoonful of oatmeal to their parent’s lips.  I wish I could say these words, “I’m sorry” “I’ll be right back” “I hope you feel better”  “Do you need to go to the bathroom” “Does it hurt?” “Your son/daughter/family member/friend will be back soon/at 1:30pm/tomorrow” and “Are you hungry? Cold? Hot?” in the following languages: Spanish, Italian, Farsi, French, Korean and Vietnamese (probably I need more languages, but I haven’t gotten so many patients yet – less than 50 so far).  I’ve also seen many patients feel better, appreciate the care that they get and walk out of the hospital into a car driven by a family member or a friend back to a warm house with food.  It’s not always like that. 

Family: Vince is mad at me right now.  I’m not sure why as it’s spring break eve and he’s going to Florida in a couple of days with the Boy Scout troop (all his besties) and Jeremy.  He’s usually not mad at me, I’m worried that something is up with him.  It’s probably a passing thing and I shouldn’t dwell on it.  Edda’s appointments just beget other appointments – the neurologist this week (which Jeremy covered because I was at the hospital) said we should follow up with a physical medicine doctor to look at the foot braces and think about Botox injections to relax some of her musculature.  Jeremy is fretting about work, though this week I’ve been falling asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow at 10pm, so I haven’t been chatting with him as much as I’d like and then next week he’s gone – out of cell reach.  I think the boys will be even out of reach of electricity.

Community:  Our two local high schools have been in the news recently, for less than stellar reasons.  The NYTimes wrote about the first one at Rockville High School here.  Today something happened at Vince’s high school and you can read about it here.

I think I’ll skip the national/global news…

I am more chipper than this gloomy entry sounds.  I’m getting enough sleep, not exhausting myself.   Which is always my #1 goal. 

Love,
Doris

Vince put white-out over his sunglasses and then took it off the lenses.  He is weird.

• Someone has stolen all my underwear.  I don’t know who did it, but I used to have an unending pile of underwear that I’d never get to the bottom of, but now every time I reach for some underwear, I have none.
• Jeremy is worried about his inguinal hernia.  He frets about it, but the earliest he wants to fix it is Oct so it won’t screw up his biking season.
• Edda got a haircut from me this weekend.  Usually I have a second person (usually Kitachi) to eyeball it with me to prevent me from missing spots or going too crooked.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have anyone home at the time I gave Edda a haircut, so I had to go back again and fix some errors.
• Vince knows his math. Esp. parabolas and directrix.  He’s having a good math term.

Mary Ann made me a pussy hat.  I’m very excited.  I had a nice day – working some & doing some taxes.

****

Jeremy went on a gravel ride with some new biking friends.  Vince came home mid-day from a sleepover when Jeremy was out and asked where he was.  I told Vince he was out having fun with friends and Vince was like – Dad has friends who he goes out with and has fun with?!?  Yes.  Your dad has friends now.

A long bike ride is rewarded with ice cream.

****

Scout banquet tonight.  The chicken was excellent.

Back to Children’s today for a cardiology consult.  They did a quick EKG and echocardiogram.  I love that I can do all these appointments at their suburban branch three miles from the house.  Everything cardiac-wise is fine.  All clear for the surgery with a note to preferentially avoid any drugs that might influence her QT length (though it is fine right now).

*******

******

It was pouring rain today, so my mood dropped accordingly.  But it was all fine, we just got more wet that I would have liked to.

Lydia, the therapy puppy came to dinner today!

Vince is working on hyperbolas this week.  I’d forgotten what hyperbolas were and Vince initially called them hyperboles which is confusing because hyperboles are usually not found in math.

******

Edda had a nice day and was very smile-y at dinner tonight.  Jeremy usually doesn’t wear his chef outfit on a weeknight.  But maybe the roast chicken called for it?  Not sure.

******

I miss three weeks of quilting and they’ve already done so much sewing!  It’s very brown.

We’ve been grabbing these prepared salad bags.  You get greens, dressing, crunchy toppings and all you have to do is rip the bag open and dump everything together.  It’s easy, nice and tasty but it’s not really green.  I’m not sure if I can really count it as eating a vegetable.  Vince really like the asian sriracha one.

**********

Jeremy took me on a Whole Foods date tonight.  We did not buy any bulk quinoa.  I wanted a cookie, but I didn’t get a cookie.

Today marks the start of the appointments for Edda’s spinal fusion in May.  We went to her pediatrician, mainly for her birthday annual checkup but talked about what we need to do to keep our pediatrician in the loop of all the surgical pre-op appointments and procedures.  I want her pediatrician to be the hub of all the medical information I have on Edda.  I did get Edda the HPV vaccine because we are pro-vaccine, even though we aren’t anticipating Edda to need protection from those types of papillomavirus.

*****

Then we went to Children’s Hospital where I met with a hematologist who I wasn’t too thrilled with.  Edda has low platelets, I just want her cleared for the surgery and provided a protocol so if she bleeds excessively during surgery to monitor her platelets and do the infusion if necessary.  The hematologist had back surgery himself a couple of years ago and had to take a bunch of time off work and he told me – Edda’s surgery is going to be so much worse than mine!  huh.  Thanks for that boost of confidence.  Let’s just focus on the bloodwork Mr. Hematologist!

*******

Typing Edda’s blood.  I need to sit down and really write down all of Edda’s appointments, they are starting to multiply like bunnies and I just have them written down on random sheets of paper.

******

Finally to school, where I checked in with her teacher.  I haven’t seen him in a bit.

*****

Got an unexpected extension on a ten-page paper, so I headed downtown to happy hour.

On Sat, we held our 5th annual birthday party/pancake breakfast fundraiser for Edda.  A bunch of Edda’s pals came over (50? 60?) and we made a bunch of pancakes.

Served with blueberry compote.

There was some pancake art:

Lauren made the beautiful birthday cake!

We all sang happy birthday:

And here’s us!  We made it another year.  I’m grateful for Edda’s health and happiness.  I’m grateful for all the support our families and friends provide us.  I’m grateful for all the services that Edda receives.  Thank you all for being part of our everyday.  <3