The Tooth Saga

Two weeks ago, on Saturday night, I brushed Eli's teeth before bed.  I'm a pretty detailed brusher, and I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary.  On Sunday morning we were rushed, as usual, and I put toothpaste on the toothbrush and let Eli do his own thing.  Eli went to the nursery at church.  Picking him up was uneventful.  We got home, ate lunch, and then the protesting of the afternoon nap began.  In mid-whine I happened to look in his mouth, and I was shocked to see a broken tooth, and I was even more shocked when I could see blood in it.

This looks like one of many terrible stock photos I looked at on all kinds of dental websites trying to figure out what to do for Eli.

I have no idea how or when this happened.  Of course it was the weekend, and he didn't seem to be in pain, so I waited until Monday to start making calls.  Unfortunately, Monday was Columbus Day, and apparently many dentists, or at least the ones that will accept our cheap-o military insurance, were closed.  So Tuesday rolled around, and I got Eli into a pediatric dentist near our house.

It's a really long story, but the only option this dentist wanted was basically a root canal and crown placement under general anesthesia with a breathing tube all placed by a nurse anesthestist in his office.  Then there would be clear liquid diet for 24 hours, and then soft foods for two days, and all kinds of pain killers.  Oh, and I was going to have to go back to work in order to finance the whole deal.  Not really, but almost.

I ended up getting a second opinion with another dentist who said she would also do general anesthesia for the procedure, but she would only do it in a hospital with an anesthesiologist.  Then she talked about extraction.  She said in the long term, it will make very little difference whether or not Eli keeps this tooth.  Extraction is traumatic, but she said she could probably make him loopy and the whole thing would take ten minutes.  He should be back to himself by lunch time.

After a lot of back and forth, we've decided to have it pulled.  As much as I would love for him to have all his teeth, I have had to put my children under general anesthesia waaaaay more than I ever wanted, and it's not something I take lightly.  Not to mention, there's the whole almost needing a second income to finance the whole thing and all the recovery drama.  I'm hoping to get it taken care of this week, so wish us luck.  It will not be fun, but hopefully it will be quick, and then we can just forget the whole thing ever happened.

Once I put my two year old through a tooth extraction I think it's going to be time to face the music and finally get the old wisdom teeth removed.  Then again, maybe I can put it off a little while longer.

My Firefighters

Alternately titled: Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum

These boys are into firefighting lately.  They can often be found running around with the attachment hoses to my vacuum cleaner putting out fires all around the house.  I love all their games, and I especially love that every now and then they can play nicely together.

Catching Up!

It's been a while, again, but we're still here.  We're in the groove of school and t-ball these days, and those things keep us pretty busy.

The last time I updated, we were waiting to hear a date for Clayton's surgery.  And now, we're still waiting.  Last week I started to feel a little impatient and made some calls.  Apparently Clayton's cath results were never mailed to Stanford, and that's why we haven't heard from them.  Honestly, it just wasn't that surprising.  Infuriating, yes.  Surprising, no.  Over the years I've learned that when you have a child with issues, everything is pretty much all your responsibility.  If you don't double and triple check everything, nothing gets done or done correctly.  EVER.  So that's that.  And you can bet Stanford's phone will be ringing this Friday to confirm that OU actually mailed the package this time.  So that's that.

Eli is growing, growing.  At Clayton's doctor's appointment, Eli was two pounds heavier than Clayton.  He's still about two inches shorter, but that gap is narrowing quickly.  The kids all seem to go through phases where one requires more attention that the others, and we've definitely got our hands full with Eli these days.  He's everything you've ever heard about two year olds.  We're working on it.

Aaron is also growing, growing.  At 14 months he's wearing mostly 18 month shirts and 12 month pants.  He is really turning into quite the butterball.  He's my heaviest, chunkiest little guy, and I love it.  He's so squishy.  He's a pretty happy kid, but has lately become a little bit of a picky eater.  I'm trying to hold my ground on that.  We'll see.  The past week or two we've seen Aaron stand alone for a few seconds, but I don't think we'll see walking anytime soon.

Also, have you met the newest member of our family?

This is James.  Clayton named him.  James has been living on our patio all summer, and he's still there.  He was hanging out under the grill as I was cooking tonight. 

I think he was smiling at me.  It's sad that I have more recent pictures of a toad than I do of my children.  I think I need to work on that.

First Day of Pre-K

I hadn't gotten around to posting this until today.  Pre-K is going so well for Clayton.  He goes half day, everyday to our public school, and is really loving it.  Clayton especially loves Wednesdays which are library days.  He gets to check out a book there.  On Fridays they get to spend their pre-k coins that they've earned at the treasure store, which is also very exciting.  Each week they have to memorize a nursery rhyme.  If they can recite it on Friday, they get a rhyme club card, and this too has been fun.  We work, work, work on those nursery rhymes each week.  I've been so surprised how much Eli has picked up as well.

I think this is going to be a really great year.  Clayton's teacher has tons of experience in early childhood education, and I'm thinking they will be a great match.

Ophthalmology...

Just add it to the long list of specialists we visit regularly with Clayton.  Thank goodness for good insurance (when they actually pay, but that's a whole other can of worms).  Anyway, did you know that when you have juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, you're at a high risk for developing inflamation of the optic nerve?  Well neither did I, until recently.  So off to the ophthalmologist we went today.  Clayton's eyes got a clean bill of health, but he will have to come back every six months until he's an adult or forever if his arthritis continues.  Fun, fun. 

In other health news, we still haven't heard anything from Stanford on Clayton's Fontan.  I'm hoping they forgot about us, so we can just ignore the situation.

Heart Cath

It's been a couple weeks since I've update on Clayton.  The cath lab called and got us in a lot earlier than I was expecting.  It was probably better that way because I didn't have weeks to agonize over Clayton's heart cath.  So anyway, Clayton had his heart cath last Thursday, August 18th, which was also the first day of school.  Oh well.  Everything went really well.  We checked in at 6am.  They started around 8am, and he was out around 10:30, much sooner than I expected.  He was intubated for the procedure.  Although we haven't heard anything official, the cath lab doctor said the pressures in the lungs were fine, which is one of the main measurements they look for before a Fontan.  They were also looking for collateral veins that often develop in his situation, and they only found one worth coiling off, which is probably why they were done so quickly. 

Clayton was pretty cranky coming out of anesthesia and had a little nausea, but once we moved out of the initial recovery room and into a little more private quarters, he did much better.  A huge thank you to the inventor of the portable DVD player.  Clayton had to lay flat for three hours.  Try telling that to any 5 year old boy in a hospital.  The DVD player was a trememdous help with that.  Clayton was discharged at 1:30pm, and we rested most of the rest of the day.  They entered through veins in his neck and groin.  The neck entry went well, but wow, there was (and still is) some severe bruising at the groin site.  I'm thinking this was partially due to him having to be held down by two nurses and a doctor before I could get back to the recovery unit after the procedure.  It will still be weeks before that goes away.

The next morning Clayton felt up for school, so we let him go.  We live about two minutes from the school, and the teacher said she'd call me if she had any concerns.  Everything went great with that, and he even went to his first t-ball practice that night.

The information collected in the cath has been sent to Stanford, and they will get back to us with their recommendations for Clayton's surgery.  I have no idea when it will be, but we're hoping to put it off at least a couple months, as Ryan is in a really busy season with work.  We'll see.

Thank goodness that step is over.  Seeing Clayton thrashing around after the cath and begging for something to drink after being intubated sure does make me dread surgery.  I know it will not be fun. 

Cardiology Clinic

Clayton had his cardiology check up on Wednesday.  Weight gain since January... wait for it... none.  Yep.  I promise I feed him (see attached picture).  So I had to ask the question, "Is it even possible for Clayton to achieve 15kg?"  And the answer I got was, "Maybe not."  That said, after some discussion between OU and Stanford, Clayton will have a heart cath this fall here at OU Children's (I'm trying to be okay with that).  Those numbers will be sent to Stanford, and they'll decide if they want to go ahead and proceed with Clayton's Fontan.  Clayton is going to pre-k this year, and it would be nice to have this done before kindergarten, so we'll see what they say.  The whole thing makes my heart pound a little too much.  I'm in no rush to do this surgery, but I do really want it behind us.  I can't believe it's been almost five years since we've been to Stanford.  I can still hear the beeping (and smell the parent lounge... gag).