Isaiah 7.17 : Updates, etc.

Yeah yeah yeah, not as catchy as when it rains it pours, but still true none the less, at least at our house. Looks like we've got a roof leak staining our ceiling in the entry portion of our living roof. It started small with a little brown spot on the ceiling when my Mom was here earlier this month. Since its right near the wall and perfectly in line with the outside eave vent I figured it was from some blowing rain getting up in there. After yesterday and last night's rain I'm not so sure since the winds weren't that bad, we just got hit with a good amount of rain. The stain just about tripled in size overnight which means its getting worse. I crawled up into our attic to see if I could see anything but basically I just shined the flashlight around because I'm a bit too big to get all the way out to the eave with our low roof pitch and I don't especially want to pull down the drywall right now. Our roof is in decent shape, or so we thought, but I do kn...

We got the word earlier today from Dr Fearon's office that we are pretty much a go for surgery so we are going to make the trip out to Dallas. Isaiah is not a 100% yet, but he's trending upwards and hopefully should be fine by monday when we get the official go ahead after all the preop stuff. If I had to guess I'd say we're 97% certain the surgery will go as planned. Rachel and I are already pretty worn down even before we started packing. Rachel was sick last week into the early week, and I'm getting a stress cold, and with Isaiah being sick we've been doing nebulizer treatments 7 times a day (xopenex every 4 hrs, and a double dose of pulmicort in the evening between xopenex doses) which doesn't allow much time for sleep. We're also sticklers for trying to get as much of the billing stuff figured out ahead of time with all of the doctors so we don't have a surprise in 3 months when the EOB comes from insurance saying they're not covering s...

Isaiah has seemingly bounced back from the flu fairly quickly which leads us to wonder if he really had it at all. We know he was sick, but everything we've read said he'd have a fever for 3-5 days, and he's gone the last two days sans fever. He's almost back up to his normal appetite, but he's still sleeping a ton. Unfortunately it seems like Rachel is getting whatever he had now from taking care of him this week and she's off trying to rest as I take care of the little guy today. Hopefully we can all nip this in the bud sooner than later because we miss hanging out with our neighbors and being able to go out and about. It's been raining here pretty much all week, and making us all a bit stir crazy.

We thought we got through Disney this time unscathed. He wasn't throwing up the entire time home, and even though it was even hotter than last time, he didn't act like he was getting heat exhaustion because we were careful to keep going into the A/C. Well the last couple days he's been fairly crabby and yesterday he woke up with a fever of 102.1. We gave him some Tylenol and it helped for a while, by noon he was back up to nearly 103 and Rachel took him to the doctor. Turns out he has the Swine Flue. Wooohoo! I guess its better to get it now than a couple weeks before his next surgery in November, but still not fun in the least. It also means we're all on a virtual quarantine for a while. I'm essentially only going to work and the store when needed, and Rachel is planning to stay in with Isaiah. He was pretty miserable last night and got up numerous times. He's going to have a fever for the next 3-5 days and we're trying to manage it with some Infa...

So it turns out when Rachel took him back to see Dr. Leonard earlier this week that he had gotten another bug as well as another ear infection! Sooo fun! Well we got the new meds and he just didn't seem to be getting better. He kept wheezing and breathing much louder than normal so Rachel took him back in yesterday. Dr Leonard did some more looking and tests and said his ear was healing, but that he should definitely get tubes put in his ears and that he has the Asthma. Its the height of pine pollen here which could explain some of it, but I'm fairly certain Asthma, among other breathing problems, is pretty common in Apert kids. We're just lucky he doesn't need a trach at this point, just more nebulizer treatments. They tested for RSV again and did the whole chest x-ray thing to be sure on everything and all came back reasonably well. We're just hoping he heals enough and in time for us to still have the surgery as scheduled in Dallas. Maybe him being sick...

We just can't seem to shake this bug from Orlando. Either that or we've been hit with something else. Isaiah seemed to be getting better recently and the last couple days he's gotten worse again. His nose won't stop running, causing him to barely be able to breathe at night which in turn wakes him up all hours of the night. Now you say we should be used to this by now, and we are to some extent, but I've got something going on too. Starting last week my ears kept feeling full of pressure and I haven't been able to get them to pop consistently so I went to an ENT who gave me some Prednisone, the same steroids Isaiah was on a week earlier, to help with my ears. The issue with that is, they keep me up more than my normal insomniac self so they were prescribed with Ambien so I could get some sleep. Therein lies the rub. I'm out cold for the night, dead to the world on sleeping pills, and Rachel is left with the baby, so she's exhausted and getting si...

Sorry I haven't updated in a few days. The good news is we haven't been back to the ER, the bad news is when Rachel took him into see our pediatrician on Monday she discovered Isaiah had dual ear infections on top of his other maladies. For a couple of days there he was on 8 medications. We're down to 5 now including his nebulizer treatments. He's doing better but still has the occasional coughing spell and is vomiting once in awhile. In development news he fully flipped over on his own finally and didn't like it one bit. He hates his tummy time since his hands are so sensitive, but for the last month he's been hanging out on his side a bunch more so we knew it was only a matter of time before he would make it all the way over. He's a bit delayed in doing this compared to an average kid, but much of it has to do with his hands sensitivity and the pain/discomfort being reason enough not to try to do it on his own earlier. Speaking of his hands, we just ...

Day 4… Magic Kingdom part two. After our late morning trying to make sure Isaiah was hydrated and well rested we got to the park around 1pm and met up with Grandma Kolis and Aunt Becca in Tomorrowland. We rode a few rides, he enjoyed It’s a Small World and tolerated Peter Pan, but while in line for Peter Pan, only little more than an hour and a half into our visit he was already getting crabby. We walked back to the other side of Fantasyland and got some ice pops to let him have some down time in the stroller and wait for our fast passes for the Winnie the Pooh ride. Just before we boarded the ride he spit up right down Rachel’s shirt. He was really warm and since Rachel felt pretty gross, (which is understandable) we left the park around 5. He slept the monorail ride back to the car and most of the way back to the condo. When we got him home we were worried he was suffering from heat stroke since his whole body was hot and his heart was beating crazy fast. We stripped him dow...

Well today has been interesting and eventful. I went back to work today and stopped by to visit Mom and Isaiah at lunch since I had a site visit nearby that I was able to schedule right after lunch. Hannah and Rachel's Mom spent pretty much the whole day here with her which was good because while he did well through the surgery, he's got a good ways to go for recovery. He needed another blood transfusion this morning since his hemaglobin levels were low, but that's pretty common due to the bleeding involved in head surgery. He's been pretty fussy and up most of the day, but he hasn't needed morphine since yesterday at 4pm, just his normal dose of tylenol every four hours. We did have a bit of a scare this evening though. About 8pm when they came to do his vitals they realized he had a fever of 101.2 and in all the fuss of getting him out of my lap and back into the crib his IV's came out of his arm. His antibiodics were being administered through his IV as...

So I was on the phone with my Mom and Dad today and my Dad threw out another nickname for the little guy..."Ice" I don't know if that'll make him to grow up to be one of those white boy wanna be gangsta rappers, but its another nickname to add to the stable. I've been a bit fluey lately which worries Rachel because we don't want Isaiah sick before the surgery so I'm on super handwashing duty and not allowed to touch things that will directly go into his mouth. Unfortunately it does not completely absolve me of my late night feeding duties though, but Rachel was nice enough to let me skip one last night so I could get more sleep. Personally I think its more flu like symptoms because of the extreme lack of sleep I've had lately (moreso than usual, like 2-4 hrs a night until last night) so this holiday weekend is a good thing so I can try and catch some cat naps during the day. I'm taking zinc and vitamin C supplements to hopefully curb anything else ...