Thanks to all who sent up prayers for David and us. We are grateful to be surrounded by so many caring people.
There's a new album called "David's Seizure 8/29/09" in our online photo albums, if you want to see what you were praying for.
Rob
Monday, August 31, 2009
David is back home from the hospital. His diagnosis is epilepsy. The damage in his brain from birth is believed to be what caused his seizure. He now has a new medication for the prevention of seizures and a new emergency medication to give him if he has another one. Apart from feeling a little wobbly, he seems fine. We're all wrung out from our weekend, but glad to have it behind us.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Here's the latest: David had a huge seizure at around 5 this morning that lasted for the better part of an hour. He was airlifted (along with Pam) to Scott & White PICU in Temple. He woke up and has been fighting everyone over his tubes and wires. Pam helped him back to sleep, but now they're waking him back up to hook him up to a 24 hour EEG monitor. Still no test results.
Rob
Rob
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Post-move stress disorder
We’re slowly getting settled in our new house. We still have lots to sort, put away, give away or throw away. It is depressing to think about all the junk and clutter we have accumulated over the years. The growth of that accumulation has been greatly accelerated with the addition of Abby and David. I will give Pam credit, though. She has become a master at whisking away unused and abandoned toys from the kids. I hardly know where to begin with that stuff. I would always have a fear of getting hit with the question, “Where is my _________? …I used to play with it all the time and now I can’t find it anywhere…” But, I have a disadvantage in that I am away from home and at work most days and I don’t know what the kids play with during the day (apart from what they leave out for me to trip over when I get home). But, Pam seems to know what won’t be missed and can dispatch it with the speed and craftiness of a ferret.
The old house is still on the market and as of this writing we have not received any offers. People have been looking at it and it is being advertised on a local cable channel along with a handful of other homes listed through our realtor. Having two homes is adding a layer of stress to our lives at the moment as we wait for the old one to sell. That stress has been magnified recently as the bills roll in for both homes. We just got the electric bill for both houses and that was pretty shocking (no pun intended) by itself. It gave me one more reason to pray harder for the early arrival of fall weather!
The next monkey-wrench to get thrown our way was a dead laptop computer. My laptop, the one I use for everything I do online (e-mail, blogging, photos, videos, music, etc.) crashed and burned on me a little over a week ago. It could turn it on, but the screen stayed blank and it would not boot up. The hard drive did not spin. I think my problem stemmed from something stupid I did in the days following our move to the new house. Pam and I were both operating on practically no sleep because of the move and because David was refusing to stay in bed and waking us up all hours of the night. Well, in a moment of sleep-deprived haze, I took my laptop’s power cord and crammed it into a USB slot while it was booting up. That put 19 volts DC into the data line of the USB slot and needless to say, fried my USB controller. It gave off that bad, burned electric component smell. The computer worked fine apart from not having any USB functionality. So, I purchased an add-on PCMCIA to USB adapter and used that as my work-around to my problem. Well, the initial damage must have administered a slow poison to the system and my laptop eventually surrendered. The laptop is out of warranty, so I priced replacement parts online. That is when I discovered I could have a newer and faster laptop for what I would spend to fix my slow, old one.
Armed with that information, I went shopping for and purchased a new laptop for about half the price I spent on the one I just killed. So far, I’m happy with it. I have been busy this evening trying to get some of my old data transferred back into the new machine. Thankfully, I have a fairly recent backup of my important files and I have a device I can use to salvage the hard drive from the old laptop and use it to help me restore some of the data.
I mentioned before about David having trouble sleeping. I’m happy to say we finally have that under control. The problem was when bedtime came around; David would refuse to stay in his bed. As soon as Pam shut his door, he would open it back up and call out for her. She and I would take turns going back up and making him go back to bed, but as soon as we closed the door, he was back at it and calling out again. This would go on for a really long time. Then, I fixed David’s door so he could not open it so easily. That led to massive screaming fits and we would go back up and have to settle him down again. This was not working and people were telling us to let him cry it out, but we were afraid his noise would also keep Abby from sleeping. But, we finally bit the bullet and let him cry it out. After about three nights of tortured screaming, he gave up and now he stays in his bed at night when we put him in.
The other thing David would do is wake up sometime between 2 and 4 in the morning and call out for Pam. This was happening during the same time that he was having trouble going to bed. We discovered that after breaking him of the getting back up habit when we put him to bed, he also stopped getting up in the middle of the night. That has been a pleasant change for Pam and me. We still don’t get enough sleep most nights, but that is entirely our own fault now. We stay up too late playing on our computers and watching TV shows most nights. We’re working on fixing our own bad habits, now!
Well, Abby’s summer is nearly over. She goes back to school next week. I think that will be a welcome break for Pam. I still remember the look of dread on Pam’s face when she was faced with an entire summer of Abby not being away at school for most of the day. I think Pam is looking forward to the return of a normal schedule for her – not to mention a much shorter drive to and from the school now, thanks to the move!
I haven’t been taking many pictures since we moved. I don’t feel like a room full of stuff that needs to be put away is all that picturesque any way. But, it is getting better and I hope to soon be taking pictures from inside our house and posting them to our web albums and this blog.
David met with his kidney doctor this week. All is about the same for him. His numbers from his blood test are practically unchanged. Actually, they were just slightly better, but the difference can easily be written off as testing variances, so nobody needs to be dancing in the streets. We’re glad he is no worse right now on the kidney concerns. But, we remain ever-watchful for clouds on his horizon.
In other news, I’m still liking wearing contacts instead of glasses. I’m discovering that 12 to 14 hours per day is about all the contacts can take of my eyes, though. Even though they are still comfortable to wear after being in that long, they begin to look smoky or hazy to my vision and I have to take them out, soak them for the night and switch back to the bi-focals. It is still really nice to not wear glasses for most of the day now. They used to bug me terribly. Now, they’re just a necessary evil when my contacts need to spend time in the solution.
My music hobby has been on the back-burner for a good long while thanks to all the activity associated with the move. I am grateful to have a new, much larger room to use for my music hobby, but it is so full of boxes and junk that I don’t have a place to set down an instrument case and open it. Needless to say, I’m not getting any practice in and that frustrates me greatly. I was invited to jam with some local friends a few weekends ago and even though I had not been practicing, I jumped at the chance to play – even if it meant I wasn’t going to be entirely on the ball. We had a fun time and I’m glad I went. I just hope I can do some practicing before I get my next invitation to play.
That’s about it for this time.
The old house is still on the market and as of this writing we have not received any offers. People have been looking at it and it is being advertised on a local cable channel along with a handful of other homes listed through our realtor. Having two homes is adding a layer of stress to our lives at the moment as we wait for the old one to sell. That stress has been magnified recently as the bills roll in for both homes. We just got the electric bill for both houses and that was pretty shocking (no pun intended) by itself. It gave me one more reason to pray harder for the early arrival of fall weather!
The next monkey-wrench to get thrown our way was a dead laptop computer. My laptop, the one I use for everything I do online (e-mail, blogging, photos, videos, music, etc.) crashed and burned on me a little over a week ago. It could turn it on, but the screen stayed blank and it would not boot up. The hard drive did not spin. I think my problem stemmed from something stupid I did in the days following our move to the new house. Pam and I were both operating on practically no sleep because of the move and because David was refusing to stay in bed and waking us up all hours of the night. Well, in a moment of sleep-deprived haze, I took my laptop’s power cord and crammed it into a USB slot while it was booting up. That put 19 volts DC into the data line of the USB slot and needless to say, fried my USB controller. It gave off that bad, burned electric component smell. The computer worked fine apart from not having any USB functionality. So, I purchased an add-on PCMCIA to USB adapter and used that as my work-around to my problem. Well, the initial damage must have administered a slow poison to the system and my laptop eventually surrendered. The laptop is out of warranty, so I priced replacement parts online. That is when I discovered I could have a newer and faster laptop for what I would spend to fix my slow, old one.
Armed with that information, I went shopping for and purchased a new laptop for about half the price I spent on the one I just killed. So far, I’m happy with it. I have been busy this evening trying to get some of my old data transferred back into the new machine. Thankfully, I have a fairly recent backup of my important files and I have a device I can use to salvage the hard drive from the old laptop and use it to help me restore some of the data.
I mentioned before about David having trouble sleeping. I’m happy to say we finally have that under control. The problem was when bedtime came around; David would refuse to stay in his bed. As soon as Pam shut his door, he would open it back up and call out for her. She and I would take turns going back up and making him go back to bed, but as soon as we closed the door, he was back at it and calling out again. This would go on for a really long time. Then, I fixed David’s door so he could not open it so easily. That led to massive screaming fits and we would go back up and have to settle him down again. This was not working and people were telling us to let him cry it out, but we were afraid his noise would also keep Abby from sleeping. But, we finally bit the bullet and let him cry it out. After about three nights of tortured screaming, he gave up and now he stays in his bed at night when we put him in.
The other thing David would do is wake up sometime between 2 and 4 in the morning and call out for Pam. This was happening during the same time that he was having trouble going to bed. We discovered that after breaking him of the getting back up habit when we put him to bed, he also stopped getting up in the middle of the night. That has been a pleasant change for Pam and me. We still don’t get enough sleep most nights, but that is entirely our own fault now. We stay up too late playing on our computers and watching TV shows most nights. We’re working on fixing our own bad habits, now!
Well, Abby’s summer is nearly over. She goes back to school next week. I think that will be a welcome break for Pam. I still remember the look of dread on Pam’s face when she was faced with an entire summer of Abby not being away at school for most of the day. I think Pam is looking forward to the return of a normal schedule for her – not to mention a much shorter drive to and from the school now, thanks to the move!
I haven’t been taking many pictures since we moved. I don’t feel like a room full of stuff that needs to be put away is all that picturesque any way. But, it is getting better and I hope to soon be taking pictures from inside our house and posting them to our web albums and this blog.
David met with his kidney doctor this week. All is about the same for him. His numbers from his blood test are practically unchanged. Actually, they were just slightly better, but the difference can easily be written off as testing variances, so nobody needs to be dancing in the streets. We’re glad he is no worse right now on the kidney concerns. But, we remain ever-watchful for clouds on his horizon.
In other news, I’m still liking wearing contacts instead of glasses. I’m discovering that 12 to 14 hours per day is about all the contacts can take of my eyes, though. Even though they are still comfortable to wear after being in that long, they begin to look smoky or hazy to my vision and I have to take them out, soak them for the night and switch back to the bi-focals. It is still really nice to not wear glasses for most of the day now. They used to bug me terribly. Now, they’re just a necessary evil when my contacts need to spend time in the solution.
My music hobby has been on the back-burner for a good long while thanks to all the activity associated with the move. I am grateful to have a new, much larger room to use for my music hobby, but it is so full of boxes and junk that I don’t have a place to set down an instrument case and open it. Needless to say, I’m not getting any practice in and that frustrates me greatly. I was invited to jam with some local friends a few weekends ago and even though I had not been practicing, I jumped at the chance to play – even if it meant I wasn’t going to be entirely on the ball. We had a fun time and I’m glad I went. I just hope I can do some practicing before I get my next invitation to play.
That’s about it for this time.
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