Updates on Laurel: August 2002

The Tylenol brought her fever down just fine, but she's definitely a sick kid. She could use a few get-well vibes and ESPECIALLY a few please-don't-get-another-ear-infection vibes!!

WOO-HOO!!! This morning I saw 140 on the scale - that's my goal! I've lost 28 lbs!

You know, I am SO proud of myself for what I've accomplished this year!

I felt like a fuzzy-headed wreck for most of last year. This year, my New Year's resolution was to get back in control of what I *could* control. I kind of had four sub-goals: lose weight (I would have been reasonably happy even if I had just lost the 10 lbs I gained while PG, so I'm over the moon to make 140), get the four projects at work I had due on June 30 wrapped up, start Laurel at NACD (I'd heard about it last summer, but didn't feel like I could deal with it then), and make up our minds about having another baby (and start TTCing if that's the way we decided). Now all that's left is to start TTCing! :-) Although I've decided I need to wait another month, the last several months have been so stressful at work that I need a break from stress for a little while. (I'm expecting being PG to be stressful for me this time around. :-( )

Quick, is it OK to give both Motrin and Tylenol if you're having trouble bringing a fever down? I gave Laurel Motrin about an hour ago but she's still at 101.6. I called the doc's office and got an appt for 4:50 but the woman answering the phone was a flaming idiot who didn't know anything and didn't want to bother the nurses.

Thanks, everyone - our doc told us to give one or the other every 3 hours alternating. It's helping with the fever, although Laurel is still a pretty miserable little kid. It doesn't help that we can't give her cough medicine because it makes her throw up - she could sure use some. I just finally got her settled, anyway. 

Oh, and the doc didn't find anything seriously wrong (a relief - I was starting to worry about pneumonia because she's come close to it a couple of other times and that is a NASTY cough she's got) but all was well there and (so far) with her ears, too.

Does flu ever go around in the summertime? I'm getting sick now too and I feel very "fluish" - achy and my skin feels prickly and sensitive. (Although so far I'm not sure I'm running much of a fever - I just ate breakfast so it'll be a while before I can check, but I don't feel hot.) I started getting sick on Friday and I started, strangely enough, with a chest cough (that's usually one of the last things I get). Then, except for a slight cough, I felt pretty good yesterday. Now I definitely feel like a truck is backing over me, but it doesn't seem either like a regular summer cold or really what Laurel's had. Bob started to get sick yesterday but he started with gobs of mucus like Laurel did. So far, I haven't had that. I suppose I really should see a doc just to rule anything scary out, but of course, it's Sunday.

Laurel, meanwhile, we thought was turning the corner - she was actually perky for about an hour last night. But then she was up at least 5 times during the night (I lost count) and is whining and miserable again today.

I think we could all use some "get well" vibes here and if anyone knows anything about whether there's any flu going around, I'd appreciate that, too!

I just put Laurel down and then came in here to e-mail work so I wouldn't have to worry about calling in the AM. I am NOT going to work in the morning, I can tell that already (from my standpoint, not Laurel's - we haven't decided yet whether she'll be OK enough to go to the sitter's or not, we'll see in the morning. She's doing better but still kind of fussy). Bob feels like crap too, but I think he's got a meeting he has to go to in the afternoon. But at least he's asleep! :-P I should really give it a shot, I just have this feeling I'm going to feel worse when I lie down, ya know?

Taking many of you back in the way-back machine, I'd like to ask a question about gripe water...

Laurel suffers from terrible gas anyway (I think it's the tube-feeding) and when she's on antibiotics, as she is now for an ear infection, it really goes over the top. She was up for a lot of the night last night with it. Yesterday our PT said that she'd heard from parents of another little girl with HIE and a g-tube that gripe water had just worked wonders for her. She gave us the name of a drugstore you could buy it at, and I already stopped by to get a bottle because they close before I'm planning to leave work, but I'm curious for any insights, feedback, etc. you might have from the days when your babies suffered from colic and you might have tried it (including recipes...that stuff is EXPENSIVE). I've also got a call to our pediatrician in, just to make sure there isn't any reason I shouldn't give it to her (I saved the receipt just in case). Thanks!

Agh, we are FINALLY leaving! Good thing we're only going to New Jersey tonight!

We're off to spend several days in Mystic, CT with Bob's family, then a couple of days visiting with Shannon in Boston (party.of.five - boy is she going to get sick of us! ;-), and then a couple of days in New Hampshire before turning around and heading home - we'll be back the night of Sunday the 25th. Take care, everybody!

So, we're baaaack...

Things picked up when we went to Boston. After we checked in, we went over to Shannon's (party.of.five) house where she fed us dinner, gave us a tour of the house (including Emma's wonderful mural) and we had great conversation until way too late. The next day we went on a walking tour of Boston and took a ride on the swan boats in the Public Garden (Shannon told us we hadn't been to Boston until we'd been on the swan boats so now I guess we have ;-). Back to Shannon's again for dinner (I guess Shannon recounted how they lost us, LOL - I haven't had a chance to read the archives yet, but Bob said he saw it - we had a map so we didn't get too lost!), but we had to pack it in earlier so we could do Laurel's laundry. Thanks so much, Shannon, for the meals and the great time we had!

The next day we were off to New Hampshire (making a visit to Lexington and Concord before leaving the area). There was a light drizzle our first full day in New Hampshire but we hiked the Flume Gorge anyway. It turns out Laurel LOVES riding in a backpack! She was in it for an hour and a half and getting slightly damp, and she still cried when we took her out! We had only recently had it modified by her OT (she needed an additional strap to keep her from slumping forward) and hadn't done much with it because it's a bit heavy and a pain to load her in, but we'll definitely be using it more! We are so psyched that short hikes look like something we'll be able to do again. We also tried a hip carrier (something that Renee had mentioned at Hershey) with a fair amount of success, so we are feeling more mobile than we have since oh, probably about my seventh month of pregnancy. ;-)

The next day was absolutely stunning and we did a scenic drive and then drove up Mt. Washington and had a wonderful view. Then, time to turn for home. It POURED on Saturday (wish we'd gotten any of that here - came home to find that we're under mandatory water conservation), but Sunday was beautiful and we stopped for another hike in Pennsylvania (Bushkill Falls) before the final stretch for home.

Funny side note...Not long before the trip, we'd turned Laurel's seat around (thinking she might be happier forward-facing), but it seemed like not such a good idea as it seemed like she cried more than ever, especially coming home. We were thinking maybe we'd better turn her back, but as I got tired of listening to the "Net Music Countdown" on the only station we could get in, I popped in a James Taylor CD. (We hadn't been playing CDs because we have one of those players that plugs into the cigarette lighter and it's kind of a pain in the butt). Darn if she didn't shut up and we heard scarcely a peep out of her for the remaining hour-and-a-half of the trip (good thing we had a double album...). I guess she just didn't like the music? Wish I'd realized sooner what a little critic she is!

So, yesterday was a hectic first day back, but things are starting to get under control (obviously, I'm writing this instead of getting back into the swing at work, though ;-). 

We were sad to find out when we got home that my mom lost one of her kitties while we were gone. He was doing fine and then suddenly he wasn't, and it turned out he had stage IV liver cancer. My mom is dealing pretty badly with it, and feeling like she needs to justify putting him down instead of paying $5000 for him to have chemotherapy that her vet told her she had never seen work yet. I wonder if, as Bob says, she is taking it extra hard because Sam was the last cat that she and my dad had together (she has another cat, but it was a stray she just took in this past year).

And me, I'm a bit nervous because I'm going to the doctor this afternoon to have a mole looked at. I've had the mole (which is on my back so hard for me to see) for a long time, but Bob noticed before we left on vacation (and I didn't have time to do anything about it before we left) that it had gotten larger, and the new part is a different color than the old part. So I could use a few "it's nothing" vibes.

All righty, now I really should try to get some work done in the couple hours I have before I go to the doctor! Thanks for reading my novel! :-)

So, about that mole...

The doctor said it was abnormal-looking and definitely should be removed. He also said that it's unlikely that it's melanoma - but that it's better to be on the safe side, and the removed skin will be sent for testing. I've got an appointment to have it removed a week from Friday, and then he said it would be about a week to get the lab results back. I guess I'll probably stay a bit nervous until then...

Laurel drank a little bit out of a cup for the first time this morning...it was just a few sips, but toward the end she was doing pretty well with it (although she was awful fidgety about it). Her therapists (both her OT and her speech therapist are working some on feeding at this point) have decided it's time to bag the bottle idea and move on to something more age-appropriate. Fine by me, I'm tired of trying the same thing over and over with so little positive result!

Also, I didn't mention this in my vacation post but we had fun feeding her assorted things on our vacation. She got to try a cheese doodle, molasses sugar cookies (her favorite), and oyster crackers, as well as having tastes of chocolate icing and whipped cream. Her previous feeding therapist would let us offer her things like oyster crackers, but we weren't allowed to let her bite anything off and I think after a while she got frustrated with that and she lost interest. We hadn't really talked about it much with either of the new therapists, but we just decided the heck with it, if Laurel wanted to bite we were going to let her bite, and we'd just make sure she didn't get anything big enough to choke on. So she got a number of bites! Most of the time she tended to push it back out, but a couple of times she moved it appropriately to the side of her mouth, chewed and swallowed! We reported it after-the-fact to the therapists, and they were happy to hear it.

So, I'm feeling very cautiously a little more hopeful on this front - definitely looking forward to doing some different stuff with her, anyway!