Monday, February 23, 2009

Funny Story

Jenna is having her 1st birthday next week and I wanted to make her something to snuggle. I was at Porters and saw a good idea for an animal blanket so I bought a little pink stuffed dog and some soft fabric. When I go home Jenna was still down for a nap so I explained my idea to Johnathan and showed him the puppy. Of course Casey saw it and fell in love with it and wanted to carry it around the house. I let him while I read the instructions for making the blanket. Finally I convinced Casey to give the stuffed animal to me and he went off to play in the other room.

Now, I caution you now to NOT do what I did. NEVER, EVER, EVER cut a stuffed animal in half!

I had the puppy all laid out to cut in half so I could sew one half to the top corner of the blanket, and the other half to the bottom corner of the blanket. I picked up the little thing, and the scissors and proceeded to cut...the exact moment Casey came back into the room.

Horrified at what I was doing he burst into tears and ran and hid under the table. He cried and cried and was SOOO sad. I was trying to hurry and put it back together so that he could see that everything was going to be ok, but he was so sad I had to love him. When I brought him out to the living room he refused to look at me, or the puppy dog and when I put him down he ran back under the table.

Johnathan had to run an errand and he offered to take all the kids with him. Casey decided he wanted to go but he was still crying and I tried to tell him the puppy would be fine and I would have it fixed when he got home. He seemed ok with that and left. I finished the blanket just as they came home and when I showed it to him I could see that he wanted to be sad. I quickly explained that I had made it a long skinny dog like our old dog Cookie who was a wiener dog. He thought that was a great idea and wanted to keep it for himself. I told him over and over again that it was for Jenna and he finally gave it back.

Needless to say, don't ever cut a stuffed animal in half in front of your tender hearted children. Wait to do it when they are asleep!



The contravirsial blanket!

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Update

Andie had her surgery this morning and she is home and doing well. The doctor found and removed quite a bit of Chlosteatoma and also removed the ear tube that he believes has caused the whole problem in the first place. He did not see any of the growth behind the eardrum and that is really good news. We have to put steroid drops in her ear for a week to help heal the damage that was caused by the growth but other than that she is really good shape. And the thing that she is most excited about is that she can go back to school tomorrow! So thank you for all of those how have kept us in your thoughts and prayers and hopefully now we can be done with ear problems.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Andie

As most of you may know Andie has struggled with ear problems her whole life. We have had tubes put in three times and finally 3 years ago we thought we had gotten on top of the ear infections. Her left ear tube fell out finally but we never saw the right one, but there were no infections so we were grateful. About a month ago she was complaining of ear pain so we took her in and the Doc tried to clean out the earwax build up so he could see her eardrum, but no luck. A week later we were back in, but he still could not see if she had an infection. Two days later we were in the ER at 10:30 pm with a ruptured eardrum. Ten days later she was finished with her Meds and two days after that it ruptured again. We got her on some really heavy meds and she seemed to be doing better until yesterday when her teacher called me and told me her ear was bleeding.

Johnathan came home from class and I took her back up to the ER. After the doctor started cleaning the ear out he became rather concerned and stopped to call a Ear Nose and Throat specialist, 10 minutes later we had an appointment for later that day. The ER doc suspected Cholesteatoma, he didn't give me very many specifics but what he did say didn't sound good. We packed up and came home, searched the Internet, and waited for our appointment later that day.

So what is Cholesteatoma? It is when dead skin cells come together and then mutate from smooth cells to spinney cells and form an aggressive tumor like mass. It then erodes away anything it is around, flesh, muscle, tissue and even bone. If left untreated it can cause deafness, paralysis and even Death. Yeah!

Armed with this info Andie and I went to see Doc. McMasters. He took one look at the bits and pieces that were coming out of her ear and said, "Yep, it is Cholesteatoma." Things went really fast after that, we set up Surgery on Thursday of this week and he ordered steroid drops to try to shrink the existing Cholesteatoma. He is hoping that the mass is only on the outside of her eardrum and that he can scrape it away on Thursday. If he does that and finds that it has moved back into her middle ear and past her eardrum than more extensive and aggressive surgery will be needed. So we are praying that this will all be resolved this Thursday, but it has been kind of a scary few days. Johnathan has given Andie a Priesthood Blessing and we are feeling as comfortable as we can with the whole thing but as a parent this is news that you never want to get. Anyway, just thought we would give an update as to where we are with Andie. Any prayers would be appreciated and we will let everyone know what we find Thursday.