Of course…
By Michelle | August 28, 2010
The day before family pictures, Samantha had an “accident”! One of the family room end tables fell over on her (I’m pretty sure she was climbing on it, but i was upstairs at the time) and hit her square in the forehead. She has a pretty large bump and it is black and blue…thank goodness it did not break the skin because I’m pretty sure it would have required stitches. Needless to say it appears that gymnastics in the family room is ramping back up…something that mommy has missed since Sarah Jo has been sick. At her 1 year family pictures, Sammy Jane had a black eye, very fitting that at her three year family pictures it is a nice black and blue forehead! Good to know we are keeping with tradition!!
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Sarah Jo Update….
By Michelle | August 22, 2010
Sarah Jo did great in surgery last Tuesday and we even got to go home instead of staying the night, like the surgeon originally planned. They had us in an overflow room at Children’s Hospital and it was TINY….nothing like the fancy rooms at Evergreen Hospital that we have been used to the last few years. There was a sleeping chair for me, but they told Jeff that if he wanted to stay as well, they could pull a gurney in and he could sleep on that. Sarah Jo was up eating popsicles, drinking, crafting, and taking visitors by the afternoon, so when the surgeon saw her and her little sissy all cuddled up together in the hospital bed, he asked what we thought about sending her home. I jumped on the idea because that “chair bed” really did not look very appealing. He assured us that she was not at any increased threat of additional bleeding or blood clots and they would send us home with the same pain meds that they would give her at the hospital, so Jeff and I felt pretty comfortable with our nursing abilities. The surgeon said to me, “it will be good for her to get out and fill up her lungs with fresh air”, and Sarah Jo proceeded to loudly inhale and exhale. She made the surgeon and all the residents laugh (seriously I am getting old because the residents that were doing rounds with the surgeon that afternoon looked to be in their 20s….which Jeff loves to remind me that they probably are!!) and the surgeon said he definitely thought she was ready to go home.
The first night was rough, up every hour. The mornings this past week have been rough too as I have “appeared to remain calm” when Sarah Jo is gasping for air and telling me that she cannot breathe. The breathing thing is pretty normal from the surgery because her throat hurts so bad that she could not clear it and her nose was all stuffy, so she got the feeling that she could not catch her breath. My girlies have never had breathing problems, but luckily the mornings this past week have been Seattle summer cool, so I quickly took her out the front door and she immediately was able to catch her breath….thank goodness! Today we are actually attempting to wean her off the pain meds and on to regular Tylenol, which has been a little rough, but we are are getting through it.
Every night has been movie night at the Kujath house and I’m pretty sure we are going to settle in for another movie soon. Samantha has been a great little sister and even though she has been stuck in the house too, she has been playing nicely with her big sissy. I’m certain the transition of having her big sissy go to all day school in a few weeks is going to be rough on all of us. Samantha was frightened with all the wires that Sarah Jo had hooked up to her at the hospital, so she was thrilled when Sarah Jo came home wire free!
The road to recovery has been slow going, but we are certain we will have our bubbly, can’t sit still, doing gymnastics all over the house, Sarah Jo back with us very soon. In the meantime, Samantha Jane has done a fabulous job stepping in to keep us on our toes with her craziness.
Thanks for your continued prayers and well wishes, we appreciate them! I’ll post pictures from the day of the surgery soon.
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Tonsil Surgery Schedule Tomorrow
By Michelle | August 16, 2010
We received the call this morning regarding Sarah Jo’s tonsil surgery tomorrow and we will check her in at 8:50AM at Seattle Children’s Hospital. We are hopeful that surgery will be shortly after that. She is scheduled for a one night stay, so we hope to be home and resting by Wednesday afternoon. Sarah Jo is less worried than her mommy about her surgery and is very excited that daddy….”the fixer of all”…will be with us for the next two days. Le Le (my sissy), Nana, Papa and Le Le’s big dogs will be taking care of Samantha while we are away. We are looking forward to getting the surgery behind us and getting Sarah Jo back to her bouncy, happy, energetic self.
Thanks for sending lots of prayers her way tomorrow, we appreciate it!
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Tooth Fairy
By Michelle | August 9, 2010
I wanted to send a quick note to update you on Sarah Jo. We took her back to the pediatrician today and she did have some enlarged lymph nodes and her liver enzymes were a bit off in her blood tests last week (all very common mono symptoms), but overall the pediatrician thought she looked a lot better and finally had some color in her face. She lost a pound because she hasn’t had a great appetite lately, but we hope that this will turn around for her soon. The pediatrician took a look at her tonsils and agreed that the large, inflamed, infected tonsils would be much better out of her than in her at this point. We have a call in to the surgeon and are praying that he agrees because we are scheduled for surgery on August 17th (next Tuesday). The pediatrician told us that she would also like her to not do any organized sports (gymnastics and swimming) until September, just so we give her body plenty of time to heal. Not the way we thought we were going to end the summer, but Jeff and I agreed that if she is already down, we hope to just get the tonsil thing over and done with.
On another note, we heard back from the hematologist at Children’s Hospital regarding the blood work that we did back in July to determine whether or not Sarah Jo has a Protein S deficiency (makes your blood clot more easily). The initial report was that yes she had it (we got her tested because I was diagnosed with a blood clot and the Protein S deficiency last summer and we wanted to know before her tonsil surgery), but the doc would now like to retest her with some additional tests. It is not critical, so when both her and Samantha are healthy (hopefully in about 3 months) we plan on taking them both to Children’s for the blood draw. I’m sure they will be thrilled to get poked (Sammy’s first time), but daddy will come so all will be well, I’m sure!
Now onto the most exciting news of the day! Sarah Jo lost her first tooth!! Samantha, her partner in crime, actually knocked it out for her when they were playing around on the couch! Samantha was horrified because she had no idea why Sarah Jo was so happy about losing a tooth. I think Sammy Jane thought she might be getting into trouble, but Sarah Jo told her that she owed her a lollipop because she helped her knock out her tooth and it didn’t hurt at all. Hey, that is what little sisters are for right? She has been SO PROUD all day and I’m trying to get on board…but the new hole makes her looks so big…boohoo. My babies….they are growing way too fast!! Speaking of growing up, Samantha Jane is doing AWESOME with potty training…she asks us all the time when the puppy will come…we told her that if she goes potty in the big girl toilet “all the time” a puppy will come…note to self…be careful what you promise!
We will keep you posted on what we hear from the surgeon and hopefully update you on how Sarah Jo is doing next week after surgery. Thanks for your thoughts, gifts, prayers, emails, and phone calls they mean a lot. Oh and we’ve attached a picture from the big tooth event today…..which reminds me…the tooth fairy needs to get movin’ tonight!
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Good news and not so good news….
By Michelle | August 8, 2010
Not sure why all of my summer posts have been medical updates about our little girlies who are otherwise really healthy…makes me a little sad for them especially since it is summer and we are supposed to be out having fun (although this dreary Seattle summer is getting the best of everyone I think!). The good news is that Sammy Jane’s hip is absolutely fine, thank goodness! The x-rays come back totally normal, so we are super relieved. Not sure what was going on, but I have a theory about it…..my theory is to come at the end of the post.
Bad news is that we found out on Tuesday evening that Sarah Jo has mono! She has just not been acting herself ever since we got back from vacation, but Jeff and I chalked it up to being tired from our super fun vacation and summer. I also thought that maybe she was just growing and getting a new tooth so that can make anyone tired, right?? It all came to a head this past Tuesday when she fell asleep before her gymnastics practice and asked to go to bed right after her gymnastics practice (at 1 in the afternoon)…not our kid! I told Jeff that I was just going to take her in to the doc, “just in case” and that I did not need him to get off work because I was certain she just had an ear infection from all the swimming we had done over vacation. Needless to say, whenever daddy is not at a doc appt, it does not go well. Of course the same was true for our doc appt on Tuesday afternoon. Sarah Jo just laid on the exam table telling the doc that nothing hurt, she was just TIRED. By the time we were done with that doc appt, my nerves were shot! I had little Samantha with us and since we had brought Sarah Jo in to see the doc in early July because of all the headaches she was having, the doctor wanted to start with blood work, but warned me that she might also need a CT scan of her head. Sarah Jo is so brave, but totally fell apart because we had not discussed the possibility of a blood draw at this visit (the other two times she has gotten a blood draw we had processed it many days beforehand). She was screaming while sitting on my lap and Samantha Jane was just in shock and looking at me wondering if they were going to poke her with a needle next! The good news is that we survived it and headed home after a very long doctor visit.
The doctor promised to call me that evening and around 8:30pm she called and said that she was glad to inform me that she believed she had an answer to Sarah Jo’s headaches and tiredness…mono!! The doctor was happy and relieved (as were we) that is what it is and that hopefully this explains all of her symptoms. We are going in for a recheck tomorrow morning at 9AM and YES daddy will be going with us and hopefully we will find out if we can keep her tonsil surgery which is currently scheduled on August 17th. We are praying hard that we can keep the surgery date because we have almost waited a full year to get it (that is how backed up Children’s Hospital is) and we all know that the beginning of school would be so much better for her without the enlarged, often infected tonsils. I’m convinced that the reason that she got mono in the first place is that the tonsils are depleting her immune system because most kids are exposed to the virus but are able to fight it off without getting symptoms. My other “theory” is that Samantha was fighting off the virus for the past month and that is why her hip hurt…I’m no doctor though…it is just my crazy mom theory!
I will post tomorrow after the doctor appointment with an update.
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Vacation and medical update…..
By Michelle | July 30, 2010
I know that all good things must come to an end, but I was really not ready for our summer vacation to come to an end last Monday. We had a GREAT time at Little Diamond Lake about 45 minutes north of the Spokane area and the biggest decision we made on a daily basis was how many times per day to swim (2x a day was the minimum). We flew kites, golfed, rode bikes, rented paddleboats on the lake, star gazed, chased prairie dogs, listened to coyotes every evening while roasting smores, found big bullfrogs down by the lake, celebrated daddy’s 37th birthday and Sarah Jo’s 6th birthday, and did a ton of geocaching (our new family hobby) in Newport and the Priest River area. Priest River is amazingly beautiful and we hope to explore Priest Lake when we head back next year. We are taking one more long weekend this weekend to celebrate our 12th wedding anniversary (crazy that it has been 12 years…a good crazy!) and plan to do a little geocaching around the area.
I cannot believe that August is here and that Sarah Jo will be getting her tonsils out on August 17th. Before we headed out for vacation we visited the hematologist at Children’s Hospital to determine whether or not Sarah Jo has the Protein S deficiency (which makes your blood clot more easily) like her Mommy. We finally got the results back today and it appears that she does have the deficiency (we are waiting on one more test, but are 99% sure at this point). The good news is that now we know and we can hopefully avoid any blood clots in her future. The hematologist encouraged us to go ahead with the tonsil surgery because the benefits far outweigh the risks. I more worry about her childbearing years, but realize that with so much technology ahead of us, it could really be a non issue when she gets around to having kids. The hematologist also encouraged us to get Samantha tested as well which we plan to do in either August or September. Hopefully she will end up on the other side of the 50/50 genetic dice and inherited all of daddy’s good genes. Speaking of our little Sammy Jane, Daddy and I just got back from the doctor’s office with her. She has been complaining on and off about her hip for over a month, so we agreed that we needed to get it checked out. The good news is that she passed the actual physical exam with flying colors, but the doc wanted to get a few x-rays to rule out anything else. Friday night at the imaging clinic with a 3 year old was not my idea of fun, but daddy met us there and of course all was well and she did fantastic! We hope to have the results early next week and are praying that everything is absolutely fine.
Hope you are enjoying these long summer days as much as we are!
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