"This Is Dedicated to the One(s) I Love"

My real motivation for creating this blog is Joseph, our fourth child. Of course, all of the family will be included, but I want to dedicate this site to my little Joe.
People often ask how Joseph is and this provides a great reference tool as well as an opportunity to share my son's life and his defect with those who care the most.

Monday, November 9, 2009

It's ABOUT Time!!

Ya, it's definitely about time. About time I posted again and all about time as to why I haven't. Brad and I joke about how before Lainey's birth it seems we had time to keep up with most of our goings on. Now, I'm just lucky to be dressed by noon. Blogging has taken a major back seat.
So, let's see if I can sum up the main highlights of the past few months...

August: the kids went back to school- Yippeeee!! Not that I don't love my kids at home, but 2 1/2 months of hearing "Tyler, stop it!!" starts wearing on my nerves.

Joseph moped around all day when the kids went back to school. His school didn't start till after Labor Day and he just couldn't understand why the other three kids got to go and he didn't. He carried his new gymboree monster lunch box around the whole day and kept saying "school? school?"

September: We had season passes to Disneyland so we went one more time in the middle of September for Joseph- it's his favorite place, mine too.

After returning from Disneyland, Joseph was finally able to start school. He was so excited. I was worried that he might be upset to have me leave him, but it didn't bother him a bit. He attends a special pre-school for developmentally challenged children. Each week, along with the normal pre-school activities, he'll receive speech therapy, physical therapy, and occupational therapy. In just the last month and a half, we have already seen improvement.

One downer to our September Month was on the 23rd. At around 9:45pm, Joseph had a seizure for the first time since his surgery in May. It was quite a doosy. One of those moments that the thought crossed my mind "is this it? Is the Lord going to take him from me?"

It came on slowly and almost in an undetectable fashion, very different from his past seizures. Once we realized he was definitely having a seizure, his sats started to plumit. Brad called 911 and ran to grab our oxygen tank while I prodded Joseph to breathe. By the time I finally got the oxygen mask on him, which was only about a minute but seemed like forever, his sats were below 39- I stopped looking at the monitor when I saw 39 and just focused on getting the mask secure. The paramedics transported him to our nearby ER where they had to intubate him. His seizure was persistent and the only way to stop it was to give a very strong anti-seizure medication. Unfortunately, a side-effect to that medication is respiratory failure. Thus, the reason to intubate. Once he was stable in the ER, Primary Children's LifeFlight team came and picked him up and flew him to PCMC. We spent that night and the next day in the PICU. By the next afternoon, though, Joseph was back to normal- side tracking the nurses and trying to escape down the hall to the exit. We were back home within 24 hrs- I think our shortest stay in the PICU to date.

October: I think the most dreaded month for me out of the whole year. Everyday, all I hear is "what I'm going to be for Halloween ....". My kids change their minds daily as to what they're going to be. Joseph was old enough this year to know what it was all about and he showed me at least 3-4 times a day on the Calendar when Halloween Day was. Thank goodness Lainey is too young to know or care. Other than on Halloween when she thought I was torchering her by making her wear the very warm costume I had purchased. Usually Halloween is cold and nippy but this year it was quite warm. The poor little thing was sweating to death in minutes- she spent most of the night, not wearing her costume.
So, the final outcome: Sam was Wonder Woman, Tyler- some green haired hit man(not pictured because I couldn't find him to do so- he got dressed and left before I had a chance to take a picture and by the time I picked him up to come home, I was too tired to care about another picture- sorry Ty, your 2009 Halloween is undocumented), William was Darth Mall, Joseph-Super Mario, and Lainey, a darling pink butterfly.