Jon is here visiting this week, and we have just gotten back from one of Daniel’s appointments at the Autism Center in Seattle. My brain isn’t putting together coherent thoughts, so here are 7 songs that are in my head right now.
Prayer request. My friend Bekah had her son Declan at 28 weeks due to preeclampsia. She and Declan are doing OK, but Mr. D is going to be in the NICU for a bit. Prayers would be appreciated.
So I was thinking… I was looking over some entries from 13 years ago, and I used to be a more whiny and negative person than I am today. Granted, there was a lot that wasn’t going well at the time, but a lot of stuff used to derail my day pretty easily. This changed a lot with my pregnancy with Daniel.
Sickness. It was hard a lot of the time. I didn’t know when I got pneumonia in October 2008 that I was pregnant at the time, and that definitely would have changed the treatment I sought for it. Thankfully, none of what I took hurt Daniel that we know of. I also got some pretty serious colds, and I was very much limited in what I could take.
Something about Mary. I started thinking about the Virgin Mary that December when it was -20F for weeks at a time, and I would be driving into work with gloves on with socks over them, trying to keep my hands warm and to keep them from aching. It struck me one day how hard her last few months of pregnancy must have been, especially the journey to Bethlehem.
Daniel’s birth. The traumatic experience of Daniel’s birth and the shock it gave me in so many ways changed how I approached each day. That first week, I was so shell-shocked that it seemed like things were getting worse by the day, but my little creature held on. Despite everything getting thrown at him, he was able to persevere through. One of the nurses told me to start finding those little joys in each day because we were in for a marathon with him. Her advice proved helpful as it gave me something on which I could focus to hold onto hope that he would eventually make it home, given that it took a month before I could even form the words to pray, and I had to work through A LOT of anger.
10 years later… I have held onto that practice of seeking out the joy in every day, even when we went through Daniel’s epic hospitalization 8 1/2 years ago, and that joy was sometimes that he didn’t die that day. It has stayed with me through more hospitalizations, Daniel’s autism diagnosis, the end of my marriage, and the divorce process that took two years. Even on the worst days, I choose to seek out some small joy in something. I don’t know that I would have survived if I could not do this.
This past weekend, the family gathered at a small wooded cemetery outside of Pedee, Oregon to bury part of my grandmother’s ashes. (The remainder of the ashes are sitting on the china cabinet downstairs and will go into the memorial garden at my parish, where she was a member for more than 35 years.) Stories were shared, some tears were shed, a Baha’i prayer on the death of women was shared, I read part of the commendation prayers from the Book of Common Prayer, and her obituary was read as well. The grave flowers are from my mom’s dahlia patch, which provided many flowers placed in Grandma’s room over the last three years.
Pedee is a very special place for all of us. I didn’t appreciate it the first time I went there in elementary school (we were in the area on the way to Washington and I kind of wanted to just get to my grandparents’ house), but I fell in love with it when I was there in 2006 to bury Grandpa. It’s a peaceful place and everyone comes when there’s a burial. (A second or third cousin of mine flew out from New York as a surprise for the occasion. I hadn’t seen her in 16 years, so it was special that she came, especially as she had only met Grandma a handful of times.) Two of the daughters of Grandma’s sister, my great-aunt Jean, were able to join us from Montana, so that was incredibly special. I hadn’t seen them for 15-20 years despite living in Montana for 4 1/2 years during that time.
My grandma. She was buried in a Chinese ginger urn with her wedding ring. We are so happy that she is back beside her “roommate”, as she and Grandpa used to call each other.
Backstory. Daniel puked up a feed on Monday afternoon, and I decided to withhold his evening feed to give his stomach a rest. Well… he couldn’t keep anything down on Tuesday, and he started puking up stuff that looked like coffee. After a Google search on what it might be, I made the decision to take him to the ER. It turns out (after an x-ray and bloodwork) that his lower G-I was completely impacted with poop, and nothing was getting through. We made the decision with our ER doctor to admit him for hydration and to see if they could get him pooping again.
Wednesday. They tried various things and he puked up everything they gave him through the tube… so they ended up taking him down to the OR and manually disimpacting him under anesthesia. (I’m not going to describe how. You can Google it.) The good news: he came out of anesthesia well, and I need to find out what they gave him to get that outcome because he has been crankier than cranky the previous two times he was under anesthesia.
Last night. He’s been on a continuous drip of GoLytely, which is the stuff they give you to clean you out before a colonoscopy. I slept for a good chunk of the day because I was up until 5 a.m. with people coming in and out of the room to change his training pants and also change blankets and sheets. Thankfully, the nausea is gone.
Today. My priest woke me up at 10:30 a.m. to anoint Daniel and me. (I had been dead to the world yesterday when he stopped by, so I told him he was allowed to wake me up if I was asleep when he came by.) It has been a day of changing training pants and sheets, and unfortunately, the nurses were having to do it all as I accidentally took my night meds this morning and took a decent nap this afternoon.
Tonight. We’re letting him get up and walk around a bit as long as he holds on to his IV pole. We are currently waiting for his CNA to be available to take him out on the floor for a walk and maybe stimulate him to poop. Once kiddo is asleep tonight, they’re going to figure out a way for me to get a shower. Mom has been bringing me clothes and I thankfully do have clothes to leave in tomorrow.
An interesting discovery. When they disimpacted him on Wednesday, the blockage that they were able to get out without cutting him open had a bunch of his ADHD meds in it… UNDISOLVED!!! This explains the really severe behavior issues we have had as of late.
Prayer request. Please pray that the walking tonight causes him to start to pass the rest of the solid blockage. As much as this is an easy hospital stay thus far, I’m almost out of clean clothes and I am going to feel guilty if I have to make Mom do my laundry to get more. I live only a mile from the hospital, but my car died its final death on Monday, so I would have to borrow Mom’s car to get home and shower or do laundry.
