December 22, 2011 Ashlyn's Ear surgeries

Ashlyn did really well with her ear surgery. Poor thing is all bandaged up, but she is being a real trooper. It’s a good thing we took her out of soccer because she can’t do any physical activity for about 6-8 weeks.  She’s not in a lot of pain at all, which surprises the doctors.  The funniest thing though...as we were walking out from post-op to holding she was telling everyone good luck and she did the same thing when being rolled out on the bed from holding to the OR.  Too funny!  She gets claustrophobic I think because when they put the mask on her, she said that was when she kicked.  She had a large bruise on the heel of one of her feet and she said it hurt real bad.

One year ago Jason was rushed to the ER from an urgent care doc when he was having chest pains radiating through his back. Turned out to be pneumonia in the bottom of his lung. Well, this year at the same time, Kaylyn was just diagnosed with pneumonia. She's had almost a 103 fever for 7 days straight now diagnosed with strep in the beginning. She also had a cough and the fever hadn't gone away after 9 doses of antibiotic. We saw the doc again yesterday (12/23/11) and she didn't know what it was, but ordered a chest x-ray just in case and some blood work to see if it could be mono. The chest x-ray showed some pneumonia so we started her on z-pack last night. Doc said she should be fever free by Christmas morning. Poor baby had to be isolated everywhere since Ashlyn was having surgery and we stayed with my sister and her 6 month old. She had Motrin at 5:00 am this morning with a 102.7 degree fever.  Hopefully she breaks the fever tonight.  I wish I could help her with her cough though, but she is sounding a little better today (12/24/11)!

 Both ears a few weeks ago.

 Left ear that had the cholesteatoma surgery (this is pre-2nd surgery)

 Left ear pre-surgery

Ashlyn in the pre-op room.

 Ashlyn in the holding room.

Ashlyn with her surgery bears.  They come out of surgery bandaged exactly the same as her!  Really cute.  She named the bears Ashlyn & Tucker :-)

Ashlyn in the recovery room coming in and out of sleep.  Was okay once we were there...she would open her eyes to make sure one of us was there and then she would go back to sleep.  Poor thing!  She did so well though.

December 22, 2010

Going back in time to tell you about something that happened to our family a few weeks ago...

Yeah…so the morning of Wednesday 12/22, I guess it was about 2:00 am, Jason woke up with chest pains and thought it was heartburn. He got back in bed and was shivering the entire bed with no fever for at least an hour. When he woke up, his chest was tight and had severe pain in his chest when breathing that radiated through his back. With his heart conditions, I made him at least go to urgent care that morning and the doctor ended up feeling more comfortable if he was ambulanced over to the hospital (thought it could be his heart), so the ambulance came and got him from urgent care (he had a panic attack when the EMTs came in the room…lips turned blue and wasn’t getting oxygen, so they put him on oxygen and he got better). They got him to the hospital and took a chest x-ray, did a cat scan, and did some blood work. His white blood cell count was tripled the normal, so they suspected infection and the x-ray and/or cat scan confirmed that it was pneumonia. As soon as he got there, they put him on morphine and anti-naseua medicine to help with the chest and back pain. They put him on IV antibiotics when they saw it was pneumonia and before they let him go, they gave him more morphine. We got him the antibiotics prescribed, and by the next morning, the chest and back pains were gone, but the chest tightness was still there until Sunday 12/26. They said that if he would’ve waited another day or two, he would’ve been admitted for about a week.

The funny thing was that he showed no “normal” symptoms of pneumonia…no coughing or cold like symptoms. Just the chest pain radiating through his back. It was because it was directly in his lung and not in the bronchial airways. Who would’ve figured?!?! Anyways, he’s better now, but it sure seems like everyone’s been sick over the last two weeks whether it be pneumonia, bronchitis, stomach flu, etc… Crazy sickness going around! As far as we know, it did not affect his heart, but because of the white blood count being so high, it probably affected his thyroid. He’s suppose to go back in a couple weeks and get another x-ray to make sure the pneumonia has completely gone away. He’ll probably get his TSH levels checked then too, to make sure his thyroid is going back to what it should.

Let's just say, I'm glad my husband is ok...and he sure did give us a scare! I told him that he wasn't allowed to do that again ;-)