Gabe: Blog Of The Day

Jack because he would like it.

Avery: Blog Of The Day

Lucy (the dog), because she would love to read my stories about her. She would also like reading about the week, so that she would know when we get to come to Nana's house and visit her.

Daddio: 2/15/10 Blog of the Day

We're rearranging our school schedule and changing the way we do some of the subjects.  Mommio will post more about that later.  But one of the ways we're changing our writing lessons is to start using the blog.  So every school day either Mommio or I will post up a topic for the Blog of the Day-- it can be a question, or a story idea or an essay topic-- and then each of the kids will post up in response to the topic.

We'll start off with an easy one: If you could have anyone in the world (including historical figures from other times) read our blog, who would you pick and why?

Mommio: Roll With The Punches

So, things were starting to look up around here.  After several days of sickness we had a "normal", low key day yesterday.  And then....BAM!

Last night Marney started throwing up, Daddio went back into quarantine and it became clear that we are not done with this illness.  Potentially three more kids to go (and various adults too).  In our big family you get used to rolling with the punches when things aren't going as expected, but there sure have been a lot of them lately and I think we are all feeling pretty beat up.  Here's to hoping there are no more unexpected punches to come!

Marney: Marney Day

I am making a day where I spend time with Kennedy Gabe Max Ava Jack.  And they get to pick the game to play.  And it is going to be awesome because I spend the whole day with them.

Marney: A Nana Day

It was Nana day on Tuesday and we made same cookies.  the cookies are oatmeal cookies and the cookies tasted good.  I love cookies because they are good there my favorite food.  I love Nana day because I get to spend time with Nana. 

Avery: Lucy's Amazing And Creepy Adventure

One day I was home alone with George and I could not sit on Nana's head! It was really boring all I could do was sleep and watch Max and Ruby in the morning, Nana always left the tv on whenever she leaves the house. Also I am locked up in a room! But then Ava came to the house around 10:00 so that she could let us outside to use the bathroom! "Hi Lucy. Hi George. How are you guys" Said Ava. "Hay! I am a girl not a boy! Only George is a stinky drooling boy!" "Lucy, boys are not bad at all. They are bigger than girls and they are smarter than girls." said the stinky George. "Hey I thought Ava was writing this story, not you" Said George. After George and I barked at each other Ava let us outside. "Go out dogs" said Ava in a tired voice. After Ava let us in Nana came to the door. "Hi Nana! Let me out so that I can sit on your head and pee on the carpet."I said in an excited voice. " By Nana" said Ava. Then Nana let us out of the play room, I ran to the carpet and and fell asleep.

Mommio: Bunk Bed Ban

Have I mentioned how much I HATE changing sheets on bunk beds?
 

I hereby declare that for all future illnesses of the vomiting or diarrhea type there will be no sleeping in bunk beds and plastic blow up beds will be used for the duration of the family illness.

Daddio: Camping Out at Nana's

So I have this surgical infection which I'm recovering from (and I think I'm doing pretty well), but it's important that I don't get sick with something else.  Cue the stomach virus.  Four of the eight toes have been violently throwing up.  Two more are feeling sick to their stomach (the first sign).  I got tired of being quarantined in my bedroom with a face mask, so I'm now camping out at Nana and Popo's house until the virus burns through our house.

We're trying to figure out which of Job's plagues we'll be stricken with next.  I'm guessing boils.

Marney: Marney Talks

I love Nana day I love the part where I spend time with Nana.  Because I love her she is the best Nana ever.   I think she is awesome.   And today I am at her house.  It is the best day ever.  I love blogging.

Mason: The Kids Are Sick

The kids (Gabe, Ava and Kiki) are Vomitting and me, Connor ,Max, Jack, Marney are at Nana's.
 Daddio is wearing a masks so he won't get any germs and vomit.  If he vomits, he will have a blow out and have to have surgery again.  We have to do school at Nana's house today.  We are having Mac and Cheese for lunch.  And I love my Nana a lot.

Mommio: Big Family Secrets

In the never-ending fight to get back to "normal" around here we have yet another roadblock...kids throwing up all over the place.  This is one of those things that happen in a big family that you never get to see on those tv shows and you can't really understand it unless you have experienced taking care of a large number of tandem heaving children.  When one vomits- especially in the middle of the night, you know that there is a LOT more to come.  There is never time to get to them all and the house smells horrible because every time you think you have the laundry under control another member of the house manages to throw up on five blankets, two pillows and seven stuffed animals (all at the same time).  I imagine it wouldn't make very good tv.
I think we large families need a special sick room for these occasions...tiled from floor to ceiling with all disposable blankets, pillows, etc. and built in buckets that suction all grossness somewhere far away immediately. And this is where the extra mom lives.  I bet those Duggar people have one.

Mommio: Back To Our Week

So we had a few hitches in the plan last week....first of all on Monday Daddio found out at his doctor appointment that something was very wrong from his last surgery, Tuesday Daddio and I spent a very long, frustrating day at Seton hospital in Austin where they did some tests, discovered he has an internal infection and inserted a drainage tube into his body. Wednesday we had a little fun at our homeschool Valentine's party in the morning and then took care of Daddio.  Thursday I taught him how to flush his own bag of puss (see earlier post) and that night Marney's right ear was swollen and the skin was covering the front of her earring so in to Urgent Care we went where they cut  a big hole in the back of her ear and put her on antibiotics after I kindly handed them $300.  Later that night I got a call from Grandpa Toe letting me know that my Granny (who is almost 90 and lives in a nursing home in St. Louis) was in ICU and most likely was not going to make it through the night. Friday Nana Toe got bronchitis.  The weekend was pretty much a blur of sick people and exhaustion, oh yeah, and the Super Bowl. 
Despite that not-so-fabulous week things are already starting to look up for this week.  Nana is feeling (and sounding) much better.  Marney's ear looks so great that we were even able to put the earring back in yesterday morning.  Granny made it not only through the night, but out of ICU in time to watch the Super Bowl and we think she will even be making it back to the nursing home. And Kyle's doctor told us just yesterday that he is doing great, although he does still have to keep the drainage bag in and stay home until his check up next Wednesday.  He is super tired and not feeling too well, but out of pain completely and going to start working at home today as much as he can tolerate.  So...here is the plan for this week (and we are sticking to it!) starting with today:
T- Nana Day, Connor orthodontic appointment, Wii Night for Connor and Mason with friends
W- school at Weaver's Bottom (art- more murals at the kid's request, music- recorder, voice, keyboard, drama- beginning to work on a group production of The Gingerbread Man play, book club- Sounder and shadow puppets)
T- morning school, Poe Unit Study (re-introduction and The Raven), Avery and Gabe yoga, Connor and Mason Teen Library League
F- house chores, morning school, Poe Unit Study (more on The Raven), park and cooking with Lily and Elder, family movie night
S- yard chores (cleaning up the garden for spring planting, pruning some trees, making some plans), Mason archery with Nana
S- pajama day

Daddio: How To Change a Bag of Pus

Yes, faithful readers, you will be happy to know that I've finally documented a step-by-step tutorial on how to change your very own bag of pus. For the uninitiated, here's my situation: my parent's they went off on a week's vacation; and they left the keys to the brand new Porsche!

Okay, sorry. The deal is that I had a hernia repair and a week after the surgery, it was inflamed and infected and full of nasty pus and fluid. I went to the hospital, yelled at a bunch of people, and they drained it. But to ensure that all the fluid gets drained, and that we get any new fluid that's formed, they inserted a drain tube into my body. The tube is attached by a simple stitch at the entry point, and it's connected to a collecting "jug" for lack of a better term. The jug has all the air removed from it when it's attached to the tube and is applying suction to the tube as it tries to return to its normal shape (which is kind of like a grenade, you'll see). As this thing collects fluids, it's important to flush it out every day to ensure that nothing is getting clogged up and blocking the tube.

So once a day I have to flush out my pus bag and here's how I do it.

The first thing is to make sure everything is sterile. I don't have pictures of it, but before starting, I wash my hands thoroughly, dry them and then use some of that alcohol hand sanitizer. It's also important to make sure that you have everything you need set out properly. Here's my tools- a pre-sterilized syringe filled with distilled water; a new cap for the valve on my drain line; some alcohol swabs; and a basin to collect all the pus we'll be draining out:



Here I am modeling this year's latest model of pus bag. As you can see, it's in a transparent plastic so that you can really appreciate the bloody pus that's accumulated inside. By the way, the move I'm showing here is patented (kind of like Blue Steel). I call it, Disco Stu Needs Antibiotics!



Before touching anything, it's important to glove up. This drain goes into my body, so you have to do whatever you can to reduce the chance of introducing new bad stuff to the system. 



Now you carefully open everything up and lay it out in front of you. You want to make sure that when you need something, it's easy to just grab and use it.



Here's everything opened and ready to go. Let's flush some pus!



Here's a close up of the valve- this is the crucial device to the whole show. See the blue cap pointing down? That's a sterile cap (or at least it was sterile when I put it on). That's where the syringe is going to go. See the white handle just above the blue cap? That controls the flow of the drain. Essentially, whatever direction it's pointed to is "turned off." Right now it's pointed at the cap, which means that it's flowing from the end of the tube in my body to the drain jug. If you turn it towards the drain jug, then the flow goes from the syringe to inside my body. If you turn it towards my body, the flow goes from the syringe to my drain jug. We'll be using all those possibilities in this process.



Before attaching the syringe, you need to get the air out of the very tip-- you've seen this happen in movies all the time. I tried to hit Jen in the face with it, but missed. She was not amused.



Now you remove the blue cap and you screw the syringe on.



At this point you turn the handle towards my body, which means the flow is going from the syringe to the pus jug. You push a couple of mls of fluid towards the jug, just to clear the tube a bit from the valve.



Then you turn the valve the other way so the flow is from the syringe to the body. Then you inject the rest of the water into your body. If you think this sounds weird, it is. You can feel the water being injected in, and if you look, you can see the swelling.

You may also notice my stretch marks at this point. In my defense, I've had eight kids, so don't give me any crap about it.



Now here's the gross part. All that water I just injected into my body? Well, we've got to pull it out. So now you have to pull back on the syringe and suck out all that fresh, clean water that.... OH MY GOD, WHAT'S THAT! Yeah, it doesn't come out clean. It comes out all bloody and full of pus. And it's a little tricky because the syringe wants to push back in because you can never pull out as much as you put in-- but you can't let that happen! The only thing you ever want going in there is sterile water. So while you're maintaining tension on the syringe with what you've pulled out, you flip the handle on the valve all the way around to switch the flow from the syringe to the pus bag.



Here I am pushing back all the stuff I just sucked out back into the pus bag.



Now here's the pus jug. It's not very full, the first day it was about 3/4 full, this is hardly anything.



All you have to do is pop the top open and this thing reverts to its normal shape.



Now it's as simple as turning it upside down over your basin and squeezing out the juice. A word of warning. Don't squeeze too hard. There's a... splash effect... that can occur. You... uh... really don't want that to happen.



Once it's emptied, you squeeze all the air out of it and cap it back off so it starts applying suction to the drain tube. But it's important to make sure you've swabbed off and sterilized the drain cap before you do so.



And here we go! A drained pus jug! Awesome!



Before adding a new, sterile blue cap, you also have to make sure you've swabbed the area of the valve where the syringe was.



Oh my god! That was so refreshing!



And here's what we flushed out. As you can see, it's not all just blood and pus, there's also some detritus and what look like dead tape worms.  Yes, I'm aware of how gross it is.  Cut me some slack.  It's draining out of my body.



And that's how you change a jug full of pus.

Mommio: Infections, Infections

Ooooh- gross!  Daddio has a tube draining yucky stuff out of his body:

And now Marney has an infection in her ear and had to have the back of her ear cut to pull the earring through it:

Avery: Dad

Dad is feeling a lot better today! He still is in a little pain but he looks really good. He has to stay in his bedroom until Monday. On Monday he has a doctor appointment.  I bet he can get really bored when has too stay in his bedroom for a long time. He like to just watch movies, drink water, eat some food, post on his website, and he likes to talk to people sometimes.When he needs anything he calls one of the kids or mom. I can't wait to see how he is doing tomorrow.

Daddio: Back to the Hospital

It turns out that I'm not so good at this surgery thing.  I've never had a surgery before in my life other than getting tubes in my ears as a kid and having my wisdom teeth removed.  Quite frankly, those don't count.  So to have my first hernia surgery rupture and having to have the surgery done again-- well, you would think that's bad enough luck.

But now I'm having complications again.  I was recovering really well and the swelling and pain were much better the second time around.  Then, exactly one week after my surgery, something went wrong.  I started getting new swelling and new pain.  Saturday was worse, and Sunday was worse than Saturday.  By Monday, the swelling was the worst it had been since my surgery and my pain was actually worse than when I first came home after my second surgery.

So I went to the Doctor yesterday and he was worried that it had ruptured again and we'd have to do the surgery a third time.  But he wanted to get x-rays of the surgery site to see what was going on.  I went to the radiologist and had a CT scan.  On our way back home, the doctor called with good news-- it appeared from the CT scan that my surgery was intact, but that there was a large amount of fluid collecting there.  He doesn't know if the fluid is from internal bleeding, infection or what. I started running a fever last night, so I'm suspecting that it's infection. But the point is, the fluid can be drained and will help with my pain almost immediately.  The problem is this: he needs to know for sure that the hernia surgery hasn't ruptured before someone sticks a giant needle into my pelvis to drain this fluid.

Here's where we are now: at 10:30 this morning we're leaving for the hospital.  They'll check me in and have me drink barium (god help me- it tastes like liquid chalk) and then do another CT scan.  This will let them know positively if the hernia has ruptured or not.  Assuming it hasn't, then they will drain the excess fluid.  They may want to keep me overnight if they think I have an internal infection.  If the hernia has ruptured, then we're probably going to be having surgery again.

You know, I used to be one of those people that said, "I'd never change anything about my life because it got me where I am today, and I'm happy with where I am in life."  That's no longer true.  Now I have one thing I'd change.  If I could go back in time I wouldn't have eaten that stupid Italian cream cake.

Max: Taco

This is Taco.

I love you Taco!

Mommio: The Big Boy

We've been telling Max for a while now that when he turns three it is time to start using the potty.  And he has been telling us for a while now that he's not going to.  This week he went shopping with Nana and bought a thousand pairs of new underwear. Saturday we told him it was time and he actually did it!  There have been many accidents in the last two days, and we have gone through about 20 pairs of the cool underwear...but he has gone in the potty several times too.  Even telling us when he needs to pee.  Way to go Max!

Mommio: Our Week

Looking back at last week's plans we did actually do most of them.  Even a field trip to a new, really cool park in Bee Caves, sleepovers with friends, cooking and all Max's birthday stuff.  We got school started again and need to make some adjustments with that, but we always do!  Here's this week (all subject to change depending on what Daddio's doctor says today):
M- Poe Unit Study, yoga, Daddio's post-op appoitment
T- Nana Day, Connor leg doctor appointment
W- Adventure Club Valentine's Party at Weaver's Bottom, D&D
T- morning school, Poe Unit Study, A&G yoga, C&M Teen Library League
F- morning school, Poe Unit Study, house chores, park and cooking with Lily and Elder, movie night
S- yard chores, Mason archery with Nana, science with Daddio
S- family day, Super Bowl