Phoenix Business Trip

I got to go on an all expense paid trip to Phoenix AZ for a managers meeting for my work.  We stayed at the Arizona Grand Resort  and it was fantastic!  My only out of pocket expense was meals and incidentals in the airport and 1 drink when we went out before a vendor opened a tab for everyone.  It was a lot of fun getting to know people I had talked to on the phone.  I even had a few drinks with the owner of the company who is really awesome and down to earth. 

 

There was a vendor expo and I got loads of free stuff including a Coach wristlet.  I love that we sell Coach frames.  :o)  There was all the food you could eat and drinks you could drink.  And the food was ~divine~  The resort was beautiful and the weather was even better.

  Saturday we got to choose an outing.  I chose to go horseback riding in the desert.  I'm glad it wasn't too hot, though it was pretty darn warm. 

My horse was a little bit cheeky when we were waiting to get out of the coral and I could hardly rein him in.  I suppose that's what I get for saying I had ridden before.  He was trying to eat the flower buds in the trees along the fence line.  Lovely that it turned out to be something I was allergic to.    When they opened the gates he was the first one out and fell in right behind the lead horse.  He kept riding up on her and nipping her rear.  I had him reigned in the entire time and he just wanted to GO.  I wanted to snap a few scenery shots on the ride and was having a hard time handling him so I didn't get any great shots.  Though I got a few decent ones.  Plus I busted the shutter on my camera.  Darn, suppose now I'll have to get a new one!

Though I hate to fly and the trip there was extremely terrible, I look forward to the next one.  Flying over the mountains was really cool and I'm glad I had a window seat.  I saw some funny round shaped fields.  Anybody know why they do that?  I really missed my family though.  It was the first time I was away overnight.

  

 

  Me with the kiddos in our airport.  Trevor was being a stinker, I think he knew something was up.  I was really sad to be leaving them and worried they'd think I was gone forever.   They were so happy to see me when I came home and I was happy to be home

End of an Era

I am happy to report that Jayden is now weaned.  My goal was for that to happen before I went to Phoenix to make it a little easier on both of us while I’m away.  She’s now been one full week without nursing.  She still acts like she wants to sometimes but she’s not nearly as demanding about it as she was a week ago.  She’s now chugging down whole milk from both bottles and sippies and really seems to like it.  Hat’s off to mammas who do extended b/f but it’s not for me.  I’ll be happy when I can pack away the bottles!  I suppose the next step would be to cut back my calorie intake or I’m going to blow up like a balloon!

Still here

Here it is about 2:30 and we have yet to see a doctor make rounds.  We are really annoyed.  Not to mention we didn’t see a doctor at all since we’ve been here.  It’s just been care and observation by respiratory therapists.  On the bright side, his oxygen levels are good and the neubulizer treatments seem to be helping.  He’s coughing only occasionally now the respiratory therapist says his lungs are sounding better.  I’m sure the doctor, if he/she ever shows up, will release him.   The nurses all think he’s doing good and seemed confident that we’ll probably be going home “soon.”  So that makes it much more annoying the doctor is MIA.  The nurse said the same doctor does Peds, NICU, and Mother/baby unit.  Last we talked to them around noon they said the doctor still hadn’t showed up.  They also said that the doctors always start in the NICU to avoid the possibility of making the tiny babies sick.   So we are potentially going to be here for awhile.  Grrrrr

On the bright side for awhile today Trevor was unhooked and went to the play area and had a blast.  For a little while he didn’t act sick.  He drew on the chalk board wall, played with blocks and various other toys.  He did a lot of running from one wall to the other and yelling “Run!”  I was so glad we were able to get him out of the room for a bit, he was going stir crazy.  I think he wore himself out because now he’s snuggling quietly in the bed with daddy on the verge of falling asleep.

He still hates the neubulizer, though the last time he did much better and just sat and cried rather than kicking and screaming, trying to get it off of his face.  I think he’s started to get used to it but he’s still a little scared.  I put the mask on Tigger this morning to try and get him to laugh about it.  He did think it was funny that Tigger was wearing it.  I had hoped that it would help for the next one but it didn’t seem to make much difference.  The nurse even gave Tigger a little “treatment.”  I’m glad I thought to bring one of his bedtime friends to the hospital.  He has about 4 tiggers, 4 poohs, a big fluffy puppy, and a fuzzy bunny in his bed with him at night.  So I grabbed just 1 tigger and it seemed to do the trick.  He snuggles Tigger when he’s going to sleep.

Oh and it’s SNOWING again today.  Well it was snowing now it’s sleeting and it’s really gloomy outside.

Boredom Continued

Since the last one got super duper long I decided to fill in a bit more pieces of Trevor’s hospital stay.  He got to ride on a wheel chair so far three times.  He really seemed to enjoy it.  He didn’t even mind to terribly when we went on the elevator, normally he has this huge fear of elevators.

When ever a nurse or someone enters the room, he greets them with, “Hi Dawn, How are you?”  Most seemed to think that was pretty funny.  Our night respiratory therapist, name unknown, was really good at trying to calm Trevor.  She even went so far as to put the mask on Tigger.  It didn’t work though, he was pretty ticked off by that point.

The pediatric rooms are TINY.  You can’t have the bed tray next to the bed and the bathroom door open at the same time.  But at least it’s a private room.  I can’t imagine having to share a room.   The view overlooks the parking lot.  For Trevor I suppose that’s the best view there is.   He spent a lot of time trying to stand on his bed so he could look out the window to see the cars.

Grandma H came to help take care of Jayden when Travis and I are both at the hospital.  Bless her heart!  I ~LOVE~ my mom!  She didn’t blink an eye when I asked if there was anyway that she could come to stay with Jayden.  She even canceled the overtime she had signed up for on Saturday night.  It’s so hard with the two little ones that don’t yet understand what’s going on.  I wish I could clone myself for the day so I could be with both of them.   Jayden’s never gone to bed for the night without me so I worry about how she will do.  I suppose this will be a good “trial run” for her for next week when I go to Phoenix for work.   I’m Looking forward to dreading going to Phoenix next week.  It will be the first time I’ve ever been away from the kiddos for even just one night, let alone three.  But it will be nice to get to meet my fellow managers.  Plus, the place we are staying at is a really nice resort and I get to go horseback riding on desert trails.  And it’s completely paid for, including gratuity, by my company.

I got this crappo laptop ~solely~ for the purpose of being able to webcam chat with the family when I’m in Phoenix.  I tell you, this thing is so slow I don’t even know if it will work.  I plugged in my external hard drive to try and move stuff around and it didn’t even enough oomph to do that!  Plus it’s supposed to have a wireless card and I’m not getting wireless when I should be. 
Wow, again I’ve rambled on and on.  It’s my blo-og and ramble if I want to, ramble if I want to… Anywho… I suppose I should try to get some sleep.  My brain is starting to fuzz and tomorrow is likely to be yet another super long day.  Either we’ll be here all day (hopefully not) or if we get discharged I really will need to go into work at least part of the day.  It has the potential to be a really hectic day and I’ve already got one of my girls off.  I don’t want to throw my new girl into the fire if I can help it, I don’t want to scare her off just yet.

Now off to see if I can make room for me in the tiny little bed that Trevor is hogging.  Hopefully I can not watch the numbers too much and actually get some rest.

Hospitalized

~ancient post, cleaning out drafts~

Friday 4-11-07 10:53pm
What a day!   Last night out of nowhere Trevor’s nose started running and he was coughing like crazy.  He coughed so hard he made himself sick.  He coughed through the night and in the morning he seemed better.   No temp just a little coughing and acting fairly normal though he seemed tired.  So off to daycare we went.   Travis had 2 job interviews today and it would have been a really bad day for me to miss work.  Not that any day is good for me to miss… but today was especially so.

Not even 45 minutes into my work day my cell rings and it’s daycare asking me to pick up Trevor.  His temp was up to 102 (?)  and that he was having major coughing fits.  So when I picked him up his breathing seemed a little labored so I took him into the doctor’s office.  I figured they’d tell me it was one of those viral bugs going around, give us some cough syrup or something to give him some relief.  I was in no way prepared for all that came next!

After a basic exam and listening to his breathing they hooked him up (rather tried to hook him up) to a nifty little machine that measures the oxygen in the blood stream.  He wanted nothing to do with it.  The easy way it just clamps onto a finger for a little bit and that tells them what they need to know.  But Trevor didn’t want to do it the easy way, we had to do it the hard way.  It involved me restraining him so they could tape something similar to his toe.  He thrashed and screamed like a wild animal.  The nurse recommended leaving it on so that when they tested again it would be “easier” and covered it with his sock.   After the test was over he continued to scream and kick and tugging at his sock to try and get it off.  So I took it off and he settled down pretty quickly.

The results of that test were not what they wanted to see.  His oxygen levels were too low.  So the doctor said they were going to try a neubulizer to see if they could get it where it needed to be.  Ohhh my was that all kinds of fun.  There was even louder screaming and thrashing.  It took me and the nurse to hold him down so that he could get the treatment.   And the two of us could barely hold him.  He’s a tough little guy.  I’m going to have all kinds of bruises on my shin from where he kicked me.  It was what seemed like the longest 10 minutes of my life!  I cried right along with him.  He screamed “mommy” over and over then started screaming for daddy.

So after that torture was over they had to test his oxygen levels again, oh Joy!  When the nurse came in she seemed visibly annoyed that we had taken the toe thing off and made a comment that now we’ll have to go through that all over again.  I said, “well 5 minutes of fighting with him to get it back on is better than 30 minutes of him screaming and fighting trying to rip it off.  Because he wasn’t going to leave it alone”  So another nurse came in to try to get the test going and lucky for us Trevor cooperated with the easier finger test.  Though he still got all worked up and screamed about it he at least left the thing on his finger.  We got daddy on the phone so that he would settle down a little and talk to daddy so they could see what the levels were while he was at “rest”
Levels were still not good.   The doctor said based on those test results and that his chest is constricting instead of expanding when he breathes that they wanted to admit him for at least overnight for observation.   She said that it’s likely a bronchial infection but that they will probably do further tests to make sure he doesn’t have pneumonia or any other kind of nasty infection.    I was REALLY not prepared to hear that, after all I thought it was ~just~ a cold and that we’d be on our way.

So here I sit on my laptop in his hospital room while he sleeps.  Not that I can blog real time because this thing is a piece-o-junk and I can’t get on the hospitals wireless with it.  And even if I could it would be really slow.   Anyhow, I’m at least thankful that I can use it to write something to cut and paste later.  

So it’s been a really long day.  Since we were admitted at around 1:00pm he’s had 3 more nebulizer treatments and all involving restraint.  He’s been hooked up to a machine that constantly monitors his oxygen levels.  He’s doing really well with that and not trying to fight to take it off anymore.  Sometimes he picks at it but that’s really it.  I think he might even think it’s kind of cool.  When Travis came to the hospital after his interview I asked Trevor to show daddy his finger and he grinned and held up his thumb.  It glows red and looks like an ET finger!   I took some pictures tonight in the dark because I thought it looked kind of funny.

He’s had his finger poked and X-rays were done.   Again all with much drama.  I’m surprised how he handled the finger poke after the initial poke,  he just watched her in amazement as she collected the blood.   Me personally, I was about to pass out!   So results of the tests were good so he’s been cleared of having Pneumonia or RSV.    The neubulizer treatments seem to be helping and he isn’t coughing so much.  At the moment he is sleeping peacefully and hasn’t coughed since right after the last treatment and right before he fell asleep about an hour ago. 
With any luck in the AM when the Doctor makes her rounds we’ll be discharged.  I really hope so!   Trying to keep a 2 ½ year old in the bed is really difficult, especially when there’s all kinds of new things to get into.   I’d say to keep your fingers crossed for us, but if you’re reading this then we’re home safe and sound anyway!
Sorry to ramble on and on.  I’m bored and don’t have anything better to do at the moment.  Not like I’m actually going to be able to sleep tonight anyway, worrying about Trevor + all kind of strange noises in the halls + crappy pillows and blankets + an annoying clock that tic tocs – the soft hum of my fan for white noise = one sleepless night  for mamma!  

Spring, Glorious Spring!

The weather was wonderful today so we took the kids outside to play.  All of the neighbor kids were out and about.  All the kids came over to talk to Trevor and Jayden.  A couple of them asked if Trevor could “come over and play.” Oh gee, I’m not ready for that yet!  We blew bubbles, both thought that was a lot of fun.  Jayden had her first up close and personal with the grass.  Travis put her down in the grass and apparently she didn’t like the cool wet feel on her hands so she dropped to her tummy and did the airplane thing.  After awhile she warmed up to it, though she was still doing an odd form of crawling, lifting her hands up in the air with every movement.  Up until now the weather has been really crazy, lots of snow and cold weather even when it’s supposed to be spring.  I hear the weather is supposed to get nasty again next week.

  

She'll be walking any day now!