(Saturday)

Well, after a decent few hours during which Preston was laughing and being himself again, he woke about 2:30am crying with stomach pain again. We made it through the night (mike spent the night in the room with him) and called the dr in the morning. By the time it was time to leave for the doctor, my poor little man could barely move without screaming in pain. After a quick check with the neighbors to take care of Matt, Mike took P and I followed.

Blood work, CT Scan, X-rays, Ultrasound…. 7 hours later we had a confirmed diagnosis of appendicitis. (Apparently, it’s difficult to diagnose in the very young because they are all small and not clear on pain verbalizing and their organs are all squished together).

Unfortunately (fortunately? I’m still not sure), they decided against doing surgery right away because they thought his appendix had perforated, and was thereby leaking lovely infected fluid into his body (ew). The course of action was to treat with IV antibiotics, so he was admitted to the hospital.

It hasn’t been easy, but admittedly, could have been much, much worse. The very worst thing for him was the blood draws (my baby has very very few visible veins and even the pediatric er nurses were struggling). They even tried his foot once – can you say TRAUMATIZED?!

Mike and I switched off staying the night with him so one of us could be home with Matt. On Monday he was finally allowed to have actual food instead of liquids and was able to have his beloved juice, and his turnaround (well, plus the antibiotics, I’m sure) was nothing short of amazing! He came alive again, being silly, talking, smiling. SUCH a relief! His pain has lessened tremendously, and he only had pain meds ONCE this whole time!

The one horrible thing that happened was that once he was feeling better and had visitors, he was playing and throwing his stuffed animals back and forth with my dad and he pulled out his IV line, unbeknownst to all of us until later. Talk about TRAUMA. Poor kid. So not only did they poke him again, more than once, after saying they wouldn’t need to, they had a hell of a time getting the IV in and had to switch to the other hand. UGH.

We’ve been keeping him busy with Legos and (lots of) television; books, ipod games and shows, playing cars, etc. He’s really been SO good; I am so proud of him.

This morning they told us his white blood count was great and his fever had been gone for 24 hours so we get to go home!! YAY!

He’s still sleeping right now, so he doesn’t know yet, but I’m SO ready and I know he is too. It was heartbreaking when he would cry to go home – I just wanted to pick him up and run (but of course I couldn’t – (a) he’s like 70 pounds and (b) he has a security tag on!)

The nurses have been pretty good, some better than others, of course. They’ve teased and bribed and smiled and tried so hard with him and I truly appreciate it.

He’s going to have a hard time when he gets home though – no one at his beck and call for juice all night long; not being able to watch tv all day and part of the night – but I’m sure he’ll be fine. I know I will be!!

The idea is for 7 more days of antibiotics then a follow-up with the surgeon, and then schedule surgery for about 8 weeks from now to be sure everything is a-ok and not infected (less chances of complications, so I’m glad about that! Although I do have to admit it would have been nice to get it over with already!!

So that’s what I’ve been up to, how about you?

I, of course, have a million things to do at home and have promised Matt his room would be done by this weekend so he can move back in to it. Oh, and my wedding anniversary is this week – oops.

*First, let me just say that everyone is fine….

I had this great idea for a post about the last day of school from yesterday and the first day of summer vacation (today), but all of that has been preempted by my little man and his pains.

This morning, Preston said that his side hurt, but seemed ok with it, so I figured he probably slept weird or moved wrong or something. When asked about it after breakfast, he was fine. He mentioned it again late afternoon, but also said he was really hungry, so (once I realized we never ate lunch [mother of the year!]) I fed him and he was ok….for a little while.

Mike took him to get gas for the grill and came back pretty concerned, as P was having trouble getting out of the car. It seemed to be getting worse, this crazy right side pain, so while Mike called the pediatrician, I put a call out to twitter.

A little while later, we hit the road for the Pediatric ER. I was shocked to find we were the only ones there at 7:30 on a Friday night (sadly, I jinxed them, because when we left after 10, they were super busy!).

Preston was a real trooper, but while waiting for the doctor to come in, his pain got a lot worse and he was crying non-stop. I felt so horrible [if you're a parent, you know that those words don't even come close to covering the feelings you have watching your kid writhe in pain in a hospital bed].

While I was worried about appendicitis, the doctor determined that it was constipation. Yep. Poop in his intestine blocked up and causing him pain.

Damn poop.

[See, Preston has had issues with pooping - as in, he doesn't want to, so he has all sorts of accidents. Turns out maybe this has been building up for quite some time and those accidents weren't 100% his fault. Which sucks, in so many ways.]

So my poor baby had to have an enema. The nurses were awesome explaining it to him and telling him exactly what was happening when, so that was a relief. He did great. (but, um, eeeewwwwwww!!).

Now, more fiber, Miralax, and less cheese and my boy should be good to go. Literally.

And that was my Friday evening, in a nutshell. How was yours?

Hi! Here I am, 3 days post-op. I finally got into the shower a little while ago – felt good to be clean, but by the end of it, I was pretty wiped out again. I also had to change my bandage on my lymph node incision (which is the one that stretches and pulls and burns, btw), so that wasn’t very enjoyable.

But I am clean, and freshly bandaged. If you are curious or like gross pictures, here is a picture of my leg incision from today. Seriously, if stitches and stuff make you squeamish, don’t look, eh? Couldn’t get a picture of the other incision – first, it’s very upper thigh – in the crease of the leg, and I can’t bend without stretching it, which makes it hurt like hell. Besides, they wouldn’t let me shave for a week before the surgery and then they didn’t shave me when they did the surgery! Nobody needs to see that. hehe

I’ve been up and around more today – even started some laundry and crutched around a little…plus let the dog out!  It doesn’t seem to take very much to exhaust me though, so I’m trying to take it slow.  Truth be told, I’m not nearly as anxious or bored as I thought I would be at this point!  I’m not getting much of anything accomplished, save for some People Celebrity Crossword puzzles and a lot of twittering and magazine reading, but that’s ok.  Maybe tomorrow I will try to get some work done…today I’m just too sleepy.

I think I might move down to the couch to sleep tonight though.  I can’t sleep on my back during normal conditions, but now I can’t sleep on my sides, so I’m kind of stuck.  The couch at least allows me to be propped up so I don’t slide down and wake up with screaming back pain in the wee morning hours!

So there you have it – update in a nutshell.  Feel free to yahoo message me, dm me, tweet me, leave comments and / or email me.  You can be pretty sure I’ll get right back to you!!

xo

Here I sit, comfy and cozy on my couch, dog by my side on the top of the couch,

Daisy on top of couch back

leg elevated, watching GMA (gasp!).  The house is still quiet but I am awake.

Yesterday was a LONG day. We left the house about 8:30am and got home around 8 (I think).

We started with a blood draw at our doctor’s office (yearly physical stuff), and then headed to U of M Nuclear Medicine where they injected a lovely (and oh em gee, freaking painful – like a 100 stinging bees + the fire of a thousand suns) blue dye around my original mole site so that it could travel to the sentinel lymph node(s) that needed to be removed and checked for cancer cells. I had to lay in the this lovely machine

imaging machine

other end of imaging machine

which was actually really cool and probably cost forty eight gazillion dollars.  Each scan took 5 minutes and luckily I only had to have 4 taken.  Then we were printed out copies to take over to surgery.  The appointment was supposed to last 2-3 hours.  We were done in an hour. My surgery? Scheduled for 3:15 (had to be there by 1:45.  So, we had some time to waste.

Mike wanted to eat after fasting all night and morning and I didn’t blame him (totally jealous, but didn’t blame him!).  He pondered and thought and thought some more and then ended up exactly where I knew he would: Zingerman’s (jackass). I started to stay in the car, but that was a bit boring, so I went inside to join him. He had this to eat:

mike's lunch

I inhaled as much of the fabulous scents that I could without eating.  Pretty sure that ranks pretty high on the list of things that suck: going to Zingerman’s and NOT eating. 

We still had hours to waste, so we went to the bookstore.  I honestly can’t remember the last time I had nearly unlimited time without the boys to wander a bookstore.  I was a little confused at where to start without having to head to the children’s book section!!  Plus, I use my Kindle all the time now, so buying actual books seemed a little strange! Of course, there is something to be said for holding a book in my hands; plus they aren’t all available on Kindle. So I picked out some books while Mike borrowed WiFi from the store and did some homework.

We still ended up arriving at the surgery center early.  I was starving and BORED. Mike played on his computer, I played games on my iphone and we chatted.

Mike waiting

And when they still hadn’t called me back by 3:00, I went up to the desk to make sure they hadn’t forgotten about me.  They came out about 10 minutes later, explaining that the doctor was behind.  I was hooked up to my IV, monitors and had electrodes stuck to me. I met the nurses, the anesthesiologists, and the resident assisting. Finally, well over an hour later, they wheeled me into the operating room.  The last thing I remember was them putting the mask over my face – I didn’t even need to count backward! heh.

About 2 hours later, they finished removing surrounding skin and cells and ended up taking 2 nodes out instead of just one, since the dye lit that one up as well.  They’ll have the results in about 5-7 days; I’ll have my stitches out in 10-14.  I can’t drive for a week and I have to use crutches to get around since they don’t want any pressure on my leg for the first few days.

I’ve plopped myself on the couch and Mike has been amazing about getting me everything I need as soon as I ask for it. He’s my hero, yo.

My pain isn’t too bad, but I am totally afraid that once all the good hospital drugs are out of my system that I will be hurting.  I remember feeling pretty damn good the first day after each of my c-sections, over doing it and then hurting like hell.  This time I’m not only NOT overdoing it, I’m not doing anything!!

Thanks for all of your comments, tweets, good thoughts and prayers – I really appreciate it!  If you’ll just keep fingers crossed that the nodes check out all clean, I would appreciate that, too!