Steven's finger update

Steven got his picc line taken out today! Yay, things are almost back to normal around here.

Steven's finger update

We went to the infectious disease doctor today and he said the picc line can be taken out this Saturday. Yay! No more antibiotics, no more nurses coming to the house!!! Well, the nurse still has to come twice before then, but we are almost finished! Plus, Steven can go back to work, starting Sunday.

The incision is healing nicely

He still cannot straighten his finger all the way and he still has a good amount of swelling.

Misc. Pictures

If you are squeamish, don't scroll down to the last picture. It isn't too gross, but it is a picture of Steven's finger, just before the stitches were removed.

Some of the heirloom tomatoes

The leave and stick piles Mike has been building up. The leaves are patiently waiting to be turned into compost and the sticks are waiting until it is safe to have a fire.

Mikey's hard work behind the sunroom. He cleared out two huge climbing rose bushes and pruned and tied the remaining one. Now we just have to remove two more rose bushes, remove the tree seedlings that planted themselves, and transplant the hydrangea and the camellia, that are growing on the side of the sunroom.

Alex took this shot at the end of the garage sale

Steven's finger, just before the stitches were removed

Steven's hand update

We went back to the surgeon today and they took out Steven's stitches. It was pretty painful, unfortunately. Luckily, the nurse was pretty quick, taking out 22 stitches in only about 5 minutes. The doctor said he actually has less swelling than would be considered normal two weeks after surgery. He also said that his range of motion is better than would be considered normal, so it was all good news. He also confirmed that the dog had not nipped the tendons, so he can expect that he will eventually have a complete recovery. Thank God, since he will need full range of motion for his culinary career! The doctor advised him to keep working hard on the physical therapy and continue frequent visits with the infectious disease doctor. He needs a follow up appointment with the surgeon in 6 weeks.

Stuff and more stuff

Steven continues to slowly improve after his surgery. He has been to the physical therapist 4 times, which is still really painful for him, but he is sticking with it and doing the exercises. We went to see a lawyer today to, hopefully, get his medical bills paid. She said he has a very good case and she is going to ask another lawyer to join her on this case because he has a personal injury practice and has a lot of experience with dog bite suits. I'm not really thrilled about having to bring in a lawyer, but since the dog's owners don't want to help with the bills, we don't have a choice.

Janine is here, arriving several hours earlier than expected on Saturday. CUP was freaking out because he had to rush to get ready. He gave her a hard time about it, but the important thing is she got here safely and without any traffic problems! Mike, Jack, Janine, Steven, Hannah and I all went to Richmond Saturday night to see Chuck's band again. It was fun. Since it was a beautiful evening, they played outside on the patio and that was really nice.

I have a black and white shirt that I joke around with my mom about. I call it my "hot" shirt. At the restaurant, I told Mike that I had my hot shirt on and his reply was, "I have my compression stocking on." Wow, talk about a reminder of how old we are getting! When we were dating, we hung around with Chuck and Roni a lot. While we were at the concert, I told Mike that it reminded me of when we were dating because he smelled like beer and we were hanging around with Chuck and Roni!

I forgot to blog that another friend of Steven's was killed last week. He had two friends killed in an accident last summer (they were drunk and high) and now this friend was hit head-on by a drunk/high driver and killed instantly. I find it hard to believe that people still think it is fine to drive drunk or under the influence of drugs. As we were leaving the lawyer's office, Steven got a call from one of his friends who told him that another of their friends had committed suicide. How sad.

This morning Alex had to stay home for a little while because he had such a bad nose bleed and it wouldn't stop. Every time I take him to the doctor and tell her that he gets these terrible nose bleeds, she tells him not to pick his nose! Hello, he is 14 years old, he doesn't pick his nose! I'm going to take him in again and see if there is something else we can do to prevent this, besides banning the nose picking. When he gets these really bad bleeds, he can soak through several towels and lose a ton of blood, which can't be good. I wonder if we should just take him to the ER the next time it happens. Of course, it almost always happens in the middle of the night or early in the morning and sometimes he doesn't even tell me when it is happening because he doesn't want to bother me. Sometimes I see the tell tale blood splatters and figure it out that way. I always joke that if a murder is committed in our house and the police spray it with luminol, there is going to be blood all over the place from his bloody noses, as well as Hannah's! He does a pretty good job of cleaning the blood up, now that he is older, but sometimes he misses some.

Catch up stuff

Steven is recovering nicely from his surgery. The incision is large and creepy looking (22 stitches), but it is healing really well. He had to start physical therapy 3 days after surgery, which was incredibly painful. To his credit, he actually has been doing the exercises at home, as the therapist told him to. I didn't expect that at all. The therapist was shocked when he went back on Day Two and had already improved tremendously!

Giving him the IV infusions at home isn't as bad as I thought it would be. We have the routine down pat now and it goes fairly quickly and smoothly. Steven is even beginning to be able to handle some of it himself, which was impossible at first because he couldn't use his hand. He has the IV's going for 9 hours a day. He is also taking one oral prescription in addition to his pain medication. I have to change his wound dressings, but that isn't as bad as I thought it would be, either.

Having him back at home has been okay, especially since he slept about 22 hours a day for the first 5 days or so! For the most part, he has been very nice and respectful, with a few minor exceptions, so that is good. He had a reaction to one of the IV meds, but they slowed the rate at which the medicine was infused and had him taking Benadryl a half hour before the meds started and that took care of the problem. In addition to the 3 physical therapy appointments this week, we also saw the infectious disease doctor, who is in charge of his medications. The home nurse has been to the house twice, but only has to come once a week from now on. She will check on him, change his picc line dressing and draw blood.

This is just a quickie post to keep my fans quiet, but I hope to post about his surgery/hospital experience soon!

Janine is coming to visit, again, tomorrow. She will be here for a little over a week and we are all looking forward to seeing her. She is bringing me some Autism Awareness ribbons that she made and is selling to raise money for Autism research. I meant to blog about this earlier, but never got the chance. If anyone would like to purchase a ribbon or ribbons, please let me know and I will put you in contact with Janine.

Update

I'm being nagged by people from multiple states to update my blog. Thanks, I needed to be nagged because I haven't been blogging because I just haven't felt like it.

I've been keeping a notepad with things that I wanted to blog about, so I wouldn't forget. Now they all look really stupid and boring, which leaves me with almost nothing. Ugh.

I do, however, have an update on Steven's finger situation. We went to the doctor on Thursday (after I forgot about the appointment, overslept, and had to get ready in 14 minutes, which is a record for me!) and the new specialist gave us a lot of information. Number one, he told us that when the dog bit the finger, he got part of the tendon. That is something the first specialist (the one who was such a jerk) told us hadn't happened. This doctor demonstrated how he could tell and after that, it was pretty obvious. The good news is that, apparently, there is more than one tendon and the one that was damaged is a secondary one. This does explain why Steven is still having trouble bending the finger fully. I'm not sure how that is going to affect him long term, yet.

By Thursday, the antibiotic had started to work and the swelling was starting to go down. The doctor said that Steven has about a 10-20% chance of needing surgery. He said it is a good sign that the antibiotic is working, but also, at his young age, his body is strong enough to appear to be doing better while still on the antibiotic, but as soon as he stops taking it, there is a chance that it will just flair up again. If that happens, he will have to have the surgery and IV antibiotics. He has to go back to have it checked again while I'm in California, so that should be interesting. I'm going to make CUP go in with him because Steven will never come out with an accurate description of what the doctor said.

The appointment was actually pretty funny because when we had gone to Drew's surgeon, Dr. W., on Tuesday, he told us a bunch of stories about how things used to be when he was the only surgeon here. I loved the stories, but Steven didn't appreciate them because they cut into his social time (or maybe it was nap time). When the new specialist, Dr. C., asked what Dr. W. had said, Steven blurted out, "Oh, nothing really, he just told us a bunch of stories that had nothing to do with my finger." Dr. C., apparently knowing the much older and very friendly Dr. W. very well, burst out laughing!

The only other thing worth blogging about is that I got a really nice thank you note from Janine. That was very sweet of you, thanks, Janine! Of course, I got it a couple of weeks ago and I'm just getting around to blogging about it. I really have been slacking lately.

Also, if I comment occasionally on your blog and I haven't been doing it lately, sorry. I'm also behind on my blog reading and even when I do run over to check things out, I'm usually in a hurry and don't leave a message.

We set a new record today

Shortest time ever in the Emergency Room! Yes, I was in the local emergency room, again, just 3 weeks after the last time. I was keeping my head down, hoping no one would recognize me! We set a new record for fast ER visits, though. We were out in 1 hour and 15 minutes. Wow, I usually allot between 3 and 6 hours for an ER visit. While we were there, we figured out that 6 out of 7 kids have been in the emergency room in the last 18 months. That is a record I don't want to break!

Everything is fine, although Alex has a sprained ankle. He was at play practice at school today and apparently the set wasn't built too well. They had a wooden staircase and it collapsed and he fell through. The play starts in 10 days, so he should be okay by then. He has an ace bandage wrap and an air cast. He will be on crutches for about a week and then he should get back to normal pretty quickly.

We had some fun at the ER. The x-ray technician came in to get him and my first thought was that she looked like a cave woman! Alex actually let out a startled, Uh, when she started coming in. She had long hair, looked like she was high, and her hair was all wild, just like they always depict cave woman. She asked Alex his date of birth and he told her and she said her birthday was December 1st also. Then she said in a monotone voice, "1957". Just the way she said it was so funny.

Then the triage room was right across the hall from us and the triage nurse had a very loud voice. Some poor woman came in and the whole hall heard that she had bipolar disorder, was having a panic attack and hasn't been taking her medications!

Cats, hysterics, and dog bites

Well, yesterday started out normal and turned into quite an eventful day. First of all, Steven was on day two of moving out. He came over to get some clothes and a few other things, like a cat. I mentioned before that he was going to take Booty-Boy (aka Spaz) to live with him. Well, that didn't quite work out because we couldn't get Booty into the cat carrier. Not even with a catnip bribe. So, we tried a box, but that didn't work out, either. There were four of us and we could not get this cat anywhere near the box or carrier. It was actually quite funny and CUP, Luke, Steven and I were having a good laugh, much to Shauna's dismay! While we were trying to stuff 20 pounds of furious orange and white fluff into a container, Shauna was in the room sobbing and screaming because Steven was taking Booty. She was really hysterical, so I was trying to calm her down at the same time as we were trying to wrestle the cat. Hannah and Alex were already in bed and had no idea anything was even going on, although, how they slept through all that noise is beyond me.

Since Shauna was so upset and we couldn't get Booty in the box, anyway, Steven asked Shauna if she would be happier if he took Sassy (aka Fridge Cat, Kitchen Cat or Cabinet Cat) (No, none of our cats have one name, like normal people's cats!), instead. Shauna said she would still miss Sassy, but she would be a little better with Sassy going instead of Booty. So now she was still sobbing, but the screaming stopped. First they put Sassy into the box, but then as they were taping it shut, she crawled out. So, they put the carrier out and Sassy, being the most laid back cat on the planet, just walked right into it. She had to be pushed a little to go all the way in, but it went really smoothly. So, Steven left with his clothes and his cat. It took me a while to calm Shauna down, but she had taken her melatonin and was getting tired, so that helped. Steven had told her that she could come visit Sassy anytime, so she was already making plans to go every day to see the cat!

After I got Shauna into bed, I decided to watch some television and crochet for a little while. CUP had taken Steven to his new "crib" and was going to help get the cat settled and check out the new house. About an hour or so later, CUP came home and told me that Steven's new house is very nice and the people who live there are very nice and that Steven had gotten bitten by one of the dogs. These dogs seem to be really nice dogs, but one of them was eating a cigarette butt and Steven didn't want him to get sick or choke on it. He put his hand out and said, "drop it" and the dog bit him. He is used to our dog and we trained him from a puppy to let people touch him and his food, so he doesn't bite, even when the kids pry his mouth open to get things out (which happens more often than you would think!). This dog got upset and sunk his teeth into Steven's middle finger. He has one pretty serious cut and several other puncture wounds. One of his housemates had a first aid kit, so he cleaned the cut very well and while I knew Steven would have to at least go to the doctor since it was a dog bite, I thought it could wait until today.

When I got to Steven's house today, it had begun to swell, but didn't look infected at all, which was great. Steven called the doctor's office said they couldn't handle a dog bite and we needed to go to the ER. By the time we waited and waited and waited and finally got it to see the doctor, it had swollen up quite a bit more. The doctor said that had he come in last night, he would have gotten stitches, but it was too swollen at this point. He took an x-ray, which I'm assuming was negative because he didn't tell us anything more about it. He put Steven on two antibiotics, gave him instructions about cleaning it and keeping it very dry and told him he has to go to a hand specialist right away on Monday to have it checked further. He also told us what the danger signs are if it starts getting infected, which he said may still occur, even though it has been well-cleaned. Animal Control will also have to be notified, as mandated by law. I just hope that the dog is truly current on his shots (as the owner's say he is) because if he isn't, they will quarantine the dog for 10 days. Probably not the best way to start a relationship with new housemates! The doctor also said that Steven can't work for at least a week, so I'm not sure how he is going to be able to pay his rent. Steven's boss is really mad because Valentine's Day is one of their busiest days and they were counting on everyone working that weekend.

So now Steven is back at his place and I am home, completely exhausted and fighting a headache. I took ibuprofen a few hours ago and it is still hurting. I don't get headaches very often, so this is a little weird for me. I think I just need a really good night's sleep.

Drew's injury

Well, first Luke broke his tibia and fibula in July, 2007 and was in a cast for over 5 months. Then, I tore my hamstring in June, 2008 and am still having problems with it after almost 7 months. Now, Drew broke his collar bone and has to have surgery tomorrow. What a way to end the old year and start the new. Ugh! I just hope that Drew doesn't take as long to heal as Luke and I did.

Drew has to have a plate put in his shoulder, to reconnect the broken bone. The doctor said to picture your index fingers touching each other at the point. That is how the bone should be. Now make an uppercase "T" with your index fingers. That is how Drew's bone looks. There is a visible lump where the bone sticks out. Yuck.

Since Drew's injury, technically, was last year, I'm sure 2009 will be injury free for us!!!