Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Time for a really quick catch-up post

October 10-11
Dina had her monthly scrapbooking workshop at our house, so I got to take care of the boys Friday night and Saturday. I took them to the zoo on Saturday, which was lots of fun (but a bit cold). On Sunday we all went to the mall and I bought a bunch of clothes, since I haven't bought clothes in a very long time, and I needed to restock for my work trip to London (I'll be there Oct. 25 - 28). Can't wait!

October 16-17-18
Dina had a scrapbooking retreat she was helping organize, so my mom came up and helped me watch the boys all weekend. There was also some drama with my wife's side of the family, so sadly she wasn't able to relax as much as she would have liked.

Oh, and I recorded a song over the weekend, which a friend from the Jabberboard turned into this, for the Jabberboard Coversong Challenge (Round 20). I played mandolin and sang, while he added all the other effects and remixed.

That brings us to now.
I'm wrapping things up this week at work and home to get ready for my trip to London, where I'm presenting at an info session about the product I work on. I'm really excited to go, though it'll be tough for Dina at home alone that many days with all the boys.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Wow...what a draining weekend that was

I meant to write this entry earlier this week, but it's basically taken me this long to recover from the weekend. On Friday Caden and Rohan were sick; they had colds that had moved into their lungs and had deep coughs. Dina asked me to stay home from work to help bring them into the doctor, so I did.

We brought them to our clinic and the doctor had us nebulize them twice since they had short, wheezy breath. Rohan responded well, but Caden didn't, so the doctor checked Caden's blood oxygen level. The reading was so low he thought his machine was broken. We were informed that Caden would be taking an ambulance to Children's Hospital in Minneapolis. Dina rode with him while I took Griffin and Rohan back home. I dropped off Griffin with Uncle Guy, gathered some things to bring to the hospital, and drove over there with Rohan. Caden was in the emergency room getting oxygen, getting nebulized, and getting steroid treatments. They gave him an IV shortly after I got there, but they had to try five times before they got a good one...the poor kid was frantically unhappy.

Eventually he got moved out of the E.R. to the regular area for kids with respiratory problems. They determined that his lungs were having an asthmatic reaction to the RSV virus. They were able to keep his oxygen level up if they gave him oxygen with a nose tube, so they wanted to keep him until they healed his lungs up enough to keep his oxygen up himself.



For the next couple days Dina stayed with Caden while I drove back and forth from home to the hospital, bringing things Dina needed and shuffling Griffin between other family members. Caden steadily got better, but progress was slow. On Sunday we were making preparations for dealing with having him in the hospital for part of the work week, when the doctor surprised us with the news that he was comfortable with Caden going home that night! We were a little unsure and surprised, since the staff during the day told us to prepare for him to be there another day or two, but were were also happy and relieved to be going home.

We still had to give both boys steroids twice a day for a few days (which they hated because of the terrible taste), and we have to use the nebulizer on both of them every four hours through today, then continuing as needed.

Those events were pretty draining, so we've been keeping it pretty low-key this week at home. Hopefully this weekend will hold much less excitement.

I'm very thankful to everyone that helped us out over the weekend, and to everyone who showed their concern and offered to help us out. We really appreciate it!

Also, lots of thanks to Children's Hospital, which is an amazing place, filled with amazing doctors and staff. All of whom we hope never to have to see again. :-)