Shunt Problems?

Emily's headaches have been more frequent lately. And in our usual fashion, we seem to make excuses for them at times. You know...she must be sleepy, or she must be hungry, or she just got over-heated, etc. I try to always document when she has a headache, but I know there have been many times when they have gone undocumented, especially the ones that may not have caused undo stress at the time or were away from home when they happened and away from my calendar. Knowing that an appointment to the neurosurgeon is unavoidable, I knew that I had to compile all of my documentation of her headaches together and get things ready for a discussion. When actually putting it all together on one calendar and documenting the information all down, I got very clear picture of what is going on with her. She is absolutely having some type of shunt problems, or other pressure issues in her brain right now. And I can even pinpoint the exact moment when the problems began. It was on March 16 and was when she was accidentally slammed in the head with the car door. Since that date, her headache episodes have happened quite frequently, with an average of almost one a week. And they increased to her having three just this week alone.

I will call tomorrow morning to schedule an appointment with the neurosurgeon and see when we can get an MRI done. So far this summer isn't turning out to be a good one.

Ethan Update

I know that I should have posted this sooner, but we have been busy bribing our kids with gifts out of guilt for not being able to make it to camp this year. :) Okay, in all seriousness, Ethan is doing much better. He did get released from the hospital on Sunday morning. We could have left and headed up to camp, but we would have had less than 24 hours there, and the weather up there was not good. We would have had to drive through some pretty bad storms to get there and we didn't want to risk the bad weather for such a short amount of time there. We chose to stay home instead and try to make the most of what was left of the weekend. We went to the new Splash Park near here and the kids had fun playing in it and the we went for ice cream after they played. The only restrictions that Ethan had on him from the doctor was that he couldn't be around smoke or campfires (he knew we were planning on heading up to camp).

On Monday we actually went to Waterville. This is the one place that the kids have been begging to go to for the past three years and we have never taken them there. Not only did we go to Waterville, we bought a family season pass for the summer. See what a little guilt will do when your children have to miss out on Family Camp because one has to be in the hospital? After talking about it, we decided that a family pass will come in very handy this summer for us. We used to use our boat almost every weekend during the summer months, but since we sold our boat, we thought this would be a great way to fill that void. The kids absolutely loved Waterville and it was everything they thought it would be. Ethan quickly got over his fear of water getting in his face and he was having the time of his life. Emily took a little while longer to warm up to the stuff, but she eventually was going down the slides and playing on the stuff, too. I can see where we will be spending a lot of time at Waterville this summer.

This week I got my military ID card and we have been able to do some shopping now on the Navy base. Ethan was so excited that he got his hair cut at the barber shop on base. He kept saying that he got his hair cut where all of the "soldiers" get their hair cut. Now that his daddy is back in the Army, he is very much into anything military related. He is having a hard time understanding the difference between the different branches, though, and I have given up trying to explain it all. And since we live near a Navy base, they don't have Army related items here. He can't understand it and it upsets him since we live here and his daddy is in the Army, not the Navy.

Emily had another bad headache episode yesterday. They are happening so much more frequently now. I have started documenting them and they are happening at least once a week now. That is not a good sign. I am in the process of calling the neurosurgeon to get an MRI scheduled. I just pray that her shunt isn't failing again.

Summer Vacation = Hospitalization

Gosh, I just don't know how to even begin this post. It certainly isn't going to be anything like it should be right now. Yesterday was the last day of school. It was a very busy day, and a bit emotional, too. One thing that made it extremely busy was that we were packing and getting ready for our Family Camp weekend that we had been counting down to for months. In trying to get ready for our weekend, go to the store and buy our snacks for our trip, still take care of Grandma like I normally do, and also enjoy taking the kids to school on their last day, I had to make an extra trip up to the school yesterday because Ethan was having some asthma problems and needed a breathing treatment at school. He woke up yesterday morning and his asthma was acting up. I had given him a couple treatments before school and also the one during school. By yesterday evening, his oxygen sats were starting drop into the lower 90's. It was obvious that the breathing treatments alone weren't going to do the trick on this one and so I gave him 15ml of oral steroids and continued with his breathing treatments through the night about every three hours. Ethan was still acting okay, except for a cough, and we were just trying to catch this one before it got as bad as the last one did. He wasn't retracting and wasn't panting. Rob and I had discussed it and decided that as long as his sats were holding in the 90's and he wasn't having breathing difficulties, then we would still head out to Camp, and would just head home early if necessary or go to the nearest hospital if Ethan got worse. Well, when we got up this morning and I took Ethan's sats, my heart just sank to the floor!!!!! His oxygen level was only at 84!!!!! It was obvious that we weren't going anywhere. The hardest part was knowing that I now had to break the news to my kids. Ethan already knew it because he knew that he was sick. Emily woke up and came stumbling into my bedroom expecting us to quickly get ready and hit the road since we had packed the car the night before. Now I had the hard job of sitting her down and telling her that this trip that we have planned for months, and just packed the car for the night before, is now not going to happen. She cried like I have never heard her cry before. It was the most heartbreaking thing I have ever heard. It tore my heart out!!!!!!! I literally sat on the floor and cried with her. She looked at Ethan like he was a piece of trash. And Ethan was crying just as hard, but not because of missing camp. He was crying because of the pain that Emily was feeling about missing camp. Ethan felt so guilty. When I saw Emily blaming her brother that I when I had to intervene. I told her that it is okay to be sad about not getting to go, but it is not Ethan's fault. It could have just as easily been her that was sick or in the hospital, or even me or Daddy. She ended up getting over the initial disappointment and accepted it. A little while later she told me, "Then I guess I practiced for the talent show for nothing." That made me sad all over again simply for the fact that we do look forward to and plan for this trip all year long. Emily's day was made a little brighter when Aunt Vicki called and invited her to go to the movies with Kaitlyn, Avery, and Sophia. They saw the new Night at the Museum movie and had a great time. Of course, now I have to deal with Ethan's disappointment about that one because Ethan has been waiting and waiting for that one to come out so we can see it and Emily saw it while he was stuck in the hospital. Sometimes things happen and we can't help it. I don't know why Ethan suddenly got so sick and why it had to happen right now, but it did. And it was a good thing that we stayed, too, because the x-ray showed that the lower lobe of Ethan's lungs had started to collapse due to the asthma.

Ethan is doing better this evening. He has been doing pretty well at maintaining his oxygen in the low 90's. We are hoping that he will be released in the morning. If he gets released early enough, we might try to go ahead and head up to Camp to salvage what is left of the weekend. We talked it over with the doctor already. As long as Ethan can hold his sats at 92 or better on room air, then we should be fine since I had already started him on the steroids early enough and they are in his system. We are continuing the daily dose of the steroids for 5 days.

With all of this going on, it really didn't allow me much time to get overly emotional about the last day of school. I did almost tear up as we were walking out, though. That was tough knowing that that was the last day that our kids will have each other to lean on since we are separating them next year. And of course it was hard leaving the best teacher in the world! :)

So now it is officially summer vacation. I am hoping that this hospitalization is the only bump we have in the road this summer! We do have a few fun things planned for the summer and we are looking forward to them. It is just a shame that we had to start out with such a huge disappointment!

Kindergarten Awards

Yesterday was the Kindergarten Awards ceremony. Ethan and Emily both received their award for Accelerated Reader. They received a hat and also a pin to put in their hat. Receiving this award is a very big honor. The fact that they received a pin for their hat is a VERY big honor. Out of all of the Kindergartners, only nine students earned enough points to receive pins. Two of those nine students were Ethan and Emily. They were extremely proud of these hats and are excited to start working on earning their points for next year. They will be able to go to the library this summer and the books they read and test on will count toward next year's points. Heck, maybe they can earn TWO pins next year for their hats. :)

Yesterday morning before the award ceremony, Rob and I went to the kids' classroom so they could give their teacher her gift for the end of the year. She opened it in front of the kids and all of the kids got excited to see it because they all had a part in making it. I had gone in for several days in the past couple of weeks and had the children in the class write their names on a scrapbook page. Then I decorated the page with photos and things to represent the school year. After she was finished looking at the framed picture, I told her to reach down in the bag because that wasn't all of the gift. She pulled out a second smaller bag and read the words written in Emily's handwriting..."Roses are red, Violets are Blue, Here is movie, Special for you." She started to cry and I told her that she needed to watch it now because the children would all enjoy seeing it. She put it on the big LCD projector in the room and the kids all went crazy when they saw themselves on the screen. I had put together a video montage of all of the pictures I had taken throughout the year of all of the field trips and school events. Mrs. McFarland was very emotional during the video and it was such a joy for me to see the excitement on the children's faces as they were watching the video. After it was over, I told the teacher that the reason I wanted to give her the gift then and not the last day of school is because I wanted to know if she thought the kids would like to take a copy of the DVD home with them, too, even though there were more pictures of Ethan and Emily on it than of them. I did make sure to include every child in the class on the video, but I obviously have more photos of my own kids than of the others. She told me that by judging by their excitement while they were watching it, she didn't think they cared if there were more pics of Ethan and Emily. So last night I made 15 more copies of the DVD and delivered them to the school today. When I got there, one of their little classmates came over to me and she told me that she went home and told her mommy all about the movie I made and how neat it was. That made me feel so good that I can give each of these kids this special memento to take home with them from their Kindergarten year. Most of them didn't have their parents there at any of the events and they don't have photos or special things to remember it all by. I'm glad that I can give them this to keep forever.

My Little Mathematician

On Friday, Ethan came home from school with a bag full of blocks. He got these out of the treasure box in the class for being one of the quietest in the class that day and was so excited. When I got a good look at the "blocks" he had in his bag, I was was as excited as he was about them. These weren't just ordinary blocks, you see. These were Base Ten Blocks. These are the exact same blocks that were used as lessons to teach addition and subtraction to the children back at the Montessori school that I used to work at many many years ago. Knowing how much Ethan likes math, and knowing how easily he picks up math, and knowing how his teacher has already introduced the kids to the concepts of ones place, and tens place, and hundreds place, by way of "bundles", I just KNEW Ethan and Emily would love doing some math with these Base Ten Blocks.

I spent a few minutes with them comparing the cubes and rods with the straws and bundles they have at school that way they would understand that the value is the same. Once they got that down, then they were ready to go. Then I showed them how to create a math problem on the ground by using the cubes. We started out with a very simple problem like 3+5, so they could see the concept how the cubes work. After that, we created some harder problems using the tens place. They really liked doing that. My little math genius that Ethan is, though, would just blurt out the answer without taking the time to work out the problem. I had to make him work it out anyway by figuring out the ones place first and then doing the tens place. Emily's face lit up brighter than the sun when she got it and understood it all and she was ready for me to give her a whole entire page of double digit math. Ethan told me he wanted to move on to hundreds and so we did. It was nothing to him. I kept all of the problems simple enough so he didn't have to carry anything over. I figured that would be a lesson for another day. I am so very proud of my Kindergartners and all that they have learned this year. I can't even imagine what next year will bring.

The End is Near

Only one more week of school left! How is that even possible????? My kids are almost finished with their Kindergarten year! I think I want to cry! [deep breath, deep breath] Okay, now that I got that out, I can continue with my update. :)

Last Sunday was Mother's Day and it was honestly just like any other day. The kids were really sweet to me and kept making me little cards throughout the day, and Rob stocked my supply of chocolate up before he had to leave. Rob had to leave early that morning to go out of town. I hadn't blogged about it specifically up until that point, but those close to us already knew about it. Rob was in the process of re-enlisting in the Army. Only this time he was joining the Reserves instead of going Active duty. He had to leave on Sunday to head back up to Montgomery to go to the MEPS station and was there until Monday night. He came home a soldier since he was sworn in on Monday. The kids were so excited and even stayed up late to wait for him. Rob and I got a good laugh because he was like the old man to all of the new recruits that were there. It has been 17 years since he GOT OUT of the Army the last time and the guy he was sharing a hotel room with was only 17 years old. Ha-ha! Well, after Rob got home with his cute little camo backpack filled with goodies, the kids had a fun time going through all of the pamphlets and folders and neat stuff that was in there. While holding up a folder, two bumper stickers fell out. Rob picked one up and then busted out laughing. The stickers say..."I'm the Proud Parent of a Soldier!" Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha!!!!!!! I am so tempted to put one on my car just for the joke factor of it. :)

On Wednesday the kids had a circus program at school. I'm quite amazed at how many little programs they have had this year. In the circus show, Emily was supposed to be a dancing poodle and Ethan was a dancing monkey. The day before the show, Emily was given the job as the "dog trainer" because the little girl who was going it was having a difficult time. When her teacher was telling me about it, she said that she asked Emily if she thought she could do the job as the dog trainer and Emily's chest just puffed out and her eyes just lit up. I was laughing so hard during the show. Emily enjoyed her little power trip as the dog trainer way too much. She was a bossy little thing out there in the middle of that gym with her little "poodles" following her.



Ethan was the cutest dancing monkey. He knew all of his steps and didn't miss a beat. Ethan gets very nervous in front of a crowd and wouldn't smile. Or he has this nervous habit where he chews on his tongue (which drives me insane, by the way!). His teacher was trying to get him to smile, and he just looked so cute out there.

The kids both came home yesterday and were so excited because the Reading Fairy came in their class and they both got pens for having over 10 AR (accelerated reader) points for the year. I am excited about the fact that the school library will be open this summer and the kids will even be allowed to take AR tests on the books they read and they will count toward next school year. I really hope that will keep Ethan motivated this year on his reading. He has finally started getting excited about reading and I want to try to encourage him in any way I can.

Yesterday morning as I was walking through the kitchen, I noticed a notepad laying on the counter. I glanced at it and it brought me a big smile to my face. I don't know when Emily left it there, if it was before school that day or maybe the day before. It is a big circle drawn on the center of a page with an arrow pointing to the circle and the words on the page say "Rite the gosre list rite here". For those that can't read Kindergarten writing, I'll translate. That should say...write the grocery list right here. :)

As I said earlier, there is only one more week of school. The kids have a Kindergarten award show on Wednesday, and their last day of school is on Friday. We leave the very next day to head to Magic Moments Family Camp. We are VERY excited for Family Camp!!!!! Last year was so much fun and we know this year will be, too.

Something sweet and something funny

In my usual last minute effort to get the Mother's Day cards out to the out of town grandmothers, I sat the kids down at the kitchen table and started setting the cards down in front of them like an assembly line for them to sign. My life always seems so rushed and out of time, but I should really just take a moment and follow in the kids' footsteps for a little bit and slow down and pay attention to to the life around me. I don't know what I was thinking when I thought they would just sign the cards and move on. No, they actually took the time to read each card and wanted to know which card was for which family member. But the really sweet part was when Ethan got to the card for Grandma Hall (Rob's mom). He said, "I'm going to be sure and write my name really big so she'll be able to see it." This thoughtfulness from him just brought tears to my eyes. You see, Rob's mom has a terrible disease that has left her in a bedridden state. She can no longer communicate and Ethan is aware of this. The last time we went to Dallas to visit the family, Ethan would go in and talk to her, but Emily wouldn't go. I thought that it was just a wonderful gesture on Ethan's part to think to write his name big in hopes that his Grandma Hall would be able to see it when somebody showed her the card.



Now for my funny story. I am often telling the kids about adventures that I had when I was little. These adventures often included my best friend, Wesley, that I grew up with. The other night, Ethan and Emily were laying on my bed and I was telling them about how one Christmas break when Wesley and I were around nine years old, we decided to build (dig) an underground clubhouse. We spent the entire two weeks of Christmas break digging a big hole, only to have it filled with rain each night, and we'd spend half of each day just digging out the water before we could even continue digging the dirt. Emily looks at me with the most ridiculous look on her face and said, "Wow! Well, that was just stupid." I busted out laughing. I told her that it was a pretty crazy and far fetched idea we had, but we had the best time doing it back then. Emily, who is Miss Sensible, would probably never spend two weeks digging to nowhere. :) After this happened, I had to call Wesley and tell him about this and he just laughed. We sure had a lot of fun, and Emily doesn't know what she's missing.

And to go along with my little Miss Sensible, I don't think I have ever blogged about what I have nicknamed Ethan. He is known as my BACKSEAT BUGGER!!!!! You've heard of a backseat driver, well Ethan is a backseat bugger because he bugs the heck out of you while you are driving. "Mommy the speed limit is 35, are you going 35?" "Mommy, are you driving on the grass because the grass looks really close to us?" "Mommy, there is a stop sign coming up." "Okay Mommy, nobody is behind us, you can back up now." "It's foggy outside. Are your headlights on?" Oh, I can go on and on and on about this. I always knew that Ethan was overly cautious, but it gets really old sometimes. Now when he starts doing it, Emily yells for him to quit being a BACKSEAT BUGGER!

Accelerated Reader

I'm not sure how many people have heard of the Accelerated Reader (AR) program, but it is where the kids have to read books and then take a test on the book on the computer and they earn points for it. In the lower grades, the books are only worth .5 points each, but as they get into the higher grades, the books are worth many points each and they have to reach certain goals. Well, since Emily started out the year as a reader, I had to really push to get the Kindergartners into the AR program. She started out the year reading on a second grade level and is now reading between a 3rd and 4th grade reading level. Ethan is doing very well, too, and is reading at a first grade level right now. It took an act of Congress to start the program and it ended up with me having to totally volunteer my time to do it for the Kindergartners because they didn't have anybody to sit with them at the computers and help them log in and work with them on teaching them their passwords and the computer program. I agreed to do it and I have been working with seven of the eleven Kindergarten classes for over half of the school year this year and teaching these kids how to use the program and helping them earn their AR points and keeping them motivated to keep reading.

Well, I just found out some amazing news this morning when I was working at the school and it almost made me want to cry. Per ca pita, the Kindergartners have OUT READ the first graders!!!!! And we didn't even start the program until mid-year when the first graders have been doing it much longer. I am just so darn proud of these kids and I know that they will do awesome next year when they start school.

Ethan's Test Results

I got the blood test results back this evening. Although I'm happy to finally have some answers, they really aren't the answers that I wanted to hear. Ethan is allergic to just about everything!!!! His severe asthma attacks are being triggered by his environment most likely. Some of the things he is allergic to are pecan trees, hickory trees, several different types of grasses, dust, mold, cat dander, dog dander, and the list goes on and on and on. I think the only thing he doesn't show an allergic reaction to is cockroaches. His pulmonologist said that it is critical that he sees an allergist as soon as possible so that we can figure out what course of treatment we need to take. And just because he shows an allergic reaction to all of these items doesn't mean that it is high enough to set off an asthma attack at all times. The treatment could be something as simple as a pill like Singulair or Zyrtec or more invasive like daily injections. Whatever the course of treatment, this doctor will have to work closely with the pulmonologist to make sure that Ethan is getting the right combination of medications to treat the allergen issues as well as the BPD and asthma. I guess our summer will be spent with more doctor appointments.

And then poor Ethan, he has complained all afternoon and all evening long of his chest hurting him. I even started getting concerned for a little while. He said he had an accident on the playground today at school when he fell down and landed on his chest on top of a big toy truck. Well now he says that his chest just hurts him. I'm thinking that he must of bruised something. I'm waiting to see how he is in the morning.

Field Trip and Field Day

The last week has been very busy. Last Thursday the kids went on a field trip to the Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo. They were so excited to go and had been watching the Animal Planet series, about the zoo, The Little Zoo That Could, in their class each day to prepare them for it. We had a perfect day for it, too. The weather was sunny and warm. We all got good and sunburned, just in time for Field Day at school the next day.

Emily woke up Friday morning and proclaimed, "I hate Field Day! They should rename it 'Tiring Day' not Field Day!" Now, mind you, this will be the child's first ever Field Day. She has never seen, or participated in, a Field Day. Luckily her cousin, Avery, had her Field Day the day before and I was able to show her the fun pictures from hers. The kids got their special orange class shirts on (each class, or team, had a different color shirt to wear) and I got them all greased up with sunblock, and off we went.

It was so much fun watching the kids compete in the little competitions. Some kids were just clueless about what to do and some were in it to win it. I think the best part of all was watching the kids that were absolutely clueless play the games with the biggest grins on their faces. I loved every second of it. Ethan and Emily were cracking me up, though, because they knew that it was a race, and when it was their turn, they were serious competitors. Emily had some difficulties with the sack race and had to get help from her teacher to finish the race. The hopping was very difficult for her. And that dreaded tug-o-war was borderline torture for Emily. The second the rope started to pull her forward, she would lose her footing and fall forward and then that was it. She would give up and start crying. Both she and Ethan said their favorite race was the obstacle course. We may have to set up some fun obstacle courses in the back yard this summer for them to have their own little races on. They love doing that kind of stuff. By the time the day was over, we were all covered in sweat and dirt and we were almost falling over from exhaustion.

By the weekend we were saddened to see that our baby kitty (who really isn't a baby anymore) was sick. Jasper just wasn't acting right and by Friday evening it was quite obvious that he was getting worse. By Sunday, he wasn't eating or drinking and he was getting very lethargic. I kept hoping that he would come out of it and I was giving him water every so often through a medicine dropper to keep him hydrated. I was worried that maybe he had gotten into some kind of poison, or worse yet, had been poisoned. By the time I had gotten him an appointment on Monday, he hadn't left his bed in over two days and had not gone to the bathroom or eaten or drank anything other than what I had given him through a medicine dropper. Unfortunately, the only vet appointment I could get was at 3pm. I had the cat in the car with me and had to go straight there after picking up the kids from school. When I told the kids where we were going when I got them, Emily started crying hysterically because she knew this meant that Jasper had not gotten better. The vet informed us that Jasper was running a very high fever and that it was a very good sign because it meant that he had some kind of infection and wouldn't be something like poison or antifreeze or something he ate that would be causing this. More than likely it was from a bite of another animal, although they couldn't find any kind of puncture wound on him. Jasper was hooked up to an IV with some high powered antibiotics and some fluids to rehydrate him. We were able to pick him up tonight and he is almost 100% back to himself, ornery as ever. :)

On a totally unrelated topic, I have to tell this story. It is so funny and shows the stuff we have to deal with all the time with our daughter, the six year old who think she is going on sixteen. Rob and I just got new cell phones. Rob's phone wasn't working right and so we were needing to take it back to the place we got it from to see if they could fix it or give him a new one. The kids asked where we were going and we told them it was to fix Daddy's new phone that didn't work. Emily looked at her daddy and said, "Is it the phone that isn't working right or is it just that you don't know how to work it?" When she said this, I almost started crying because I was laughing so hard. After the initial shock wore off, even Rob got a chuckle out of that one. :) This girl really is going to keep us on our toes.