School holidays - Day two and I already want to kill myself.

We've been patching Matthew's left eye, on his Opthalmologists instructions. It's not going well. He can't see a fucking thing out of his right eye with his left one patched and so far, I have not been able to come up with one single activity he can actually see enough do to while away the hours.



My heart is breaking for him. And please - don't post telling me the good Lord above wouldn't give me more than I can handle, because sometimes he just fucking well does.

...cast off!

Waiting patiently to be called...

One final photo of his cast for prosperity.

The saga is finally over. Last Tuesday Matthew went back in to hospital to have the wires removed from his elbow and his cast removed for good. It was a really long day. His surgeon had called to tell us he wouldn't be taken to surgery until at least 12pm but of course the hospital still wanted us there by 7am for admission. Luckily Matthew was allowed to have breakfast at 6am - he didn't end up going to theatre until nearly 1.30pm. The poor little bloke was starving. He's normally pretty patient and tolerant of inconveniences like that but it really was starting to take its toll on both of us.

The surgery went well. He was only under for about 40 minutes but it took a long time once we was back on the ward to wake up and get moving. We didn't end up getting home until well after 7pm that night. It was a long day and one I think he is glad is now behind him. He can move his arm well now and there isn't any pain but he still can't straighten it right out. His surgeon says he will do so in his own time. For now, he is pleased to be back riding his bike but has assured me tree climbing is off the agenda. Good man...

"Ugly" fabric

A few weeks ago Helen had a giveaway to rid her stash of some fabrics she didn't like anymore - I believe she went so far as to call them ugly. Of course, I couldn't go past the opportunity to fill my sewing cupboard with more fabric I'll probably never use, I entered- and won. Yay!

Helen's lovely package arrived today and amazingly enough, I actually found some stuff that would complement some of my exisiting stash quite nicely. (I'm not actually sure what that says about stash but anyway...). Thanks again Helen (and Ryan thanks you for the Freddo. It didn't last long!). You've boosted my quota of girly patterns too. I don't have many of them enter the house with two boys. :)

Opthalmologist # 4 & Rhuematologist

Matthew had his review on Tuesday with both his Opthalmologist and his Rheumatologist.

Rheumatologist

Brilliant results. Matty currently isn’t showing signs of swelling, warmth or pain in any joints at all. He’s got a good range of movement in all his joints although the muscles on the back of his thigh (hamstring, I think – Dr Jenn will be sure to correct me if I’m wrong…) are still a bit tight but hopefully the stretching he does at TKD will help. Or he could just be like his parents and not particularly flexible. Even in my most active & sporty days, I don’t ever recall not be able to touch my toes as being a problem.

Anyway, this news thrilled me. It will be the first winter since 2005 that he has been pain free. Amazing stuff and long may it continue.

Follow up – 6 months (15 December)

Opthalmologist

Left eye -6/6 (perfect), cataract stable Right eye - 6/12 good, but not great.

This is so frustrating. No matter what we do, we just can’t seem to get fantastic vision from his right eye. I don’t actually ever notice that he has a vision problem – when he is using both eyes he compensates remarkably well and there isn’t much he can’t see, but when his right eye is isolated, it is obvious that there is a problem.

There is now no reason he shouldn’t be getting better vision from that eye and Dr D thinks perhaps his left eye is over compensating, which means his right eye is becoming slack. Sooo, back to patching the left eye over the school holidays to force the right back in to action. Matthew is not a happy camper. He hates this game immensely and I completely understand why.

It’s going to be a miserable couple of weeks. :(

Follow up- 6 weeks (28 July).

Cast on...

and back to school tomorrow!

Broken wing

My poor boy has broken his arm. He fell out of a tree he was climbing at school on Monday morning. He did a spectacular job of it - the red circle on xray below shows the bit that is broken. It should be over in the space where the blue arrow is pointing.


Thankfully I was just at home when the school called me. I got there quickly and asked them to call the ambulance for him. There was no way in the world I'd have been able to move him, he was in too much pain. He was so brave - I can only imagine how much it would have hurt and how scared he would have been but he did nothing more than a bit of a cry when the pain got too bad.

The ambulance took him straight to the hospital while I raced Ryan home to stay with Tom's parents (who incidently deserve a medal for all the times they have come to our rescue lately). When I got to the hospital, Matthew was still holding it all together. I thought going by himself in the ambulance may have freaked him out a bit but he was fine. After they did the x-ray they warmed me that he would be taken to surgery to have it repaired. I was thrilled to hear that the orthapeadic surgeon was they same surgeon who did FIL's hip replacement last October - he is a great doctor and a lovely bloke to boot. Matthew had actually met him in the past so that helped a lot to ease the fear.

Matty finally made it to surgery at about 4.30pm. He is now sporting a couple of pins in his elbow to hold it all together and will need another anaesthetic in a few weeks time to remove the pins once his arm has healed. For now, he is wearing a blackslab and will have his proper fibreglass cast put on next Monday. I think he's looking forward to the kids at school being able to sign it.

Here he is in the emergency room, looking fairly unhappy. Note the unnatural point of his elbow. Ugh.

Sleeping peacefully after surgery.

He hasn't been in too much pain since he has been home. He was very tired and worn out the first day but is now just going about things with surprising ease.

Kids are amazing - and you in particular young man, are the bravest of them all. xx

Flooding

Yesterday was a bit scary. We had such heavy rain on Tuesday night that by 8am on Wednesday morning the water was already lapping at the side of the road on the roads near our house.

By lunchtime, it hadn't let up and I was starting to get pretty worried about whether or not I would make it home that night. Ryan's daycare centre is in a bit of a pocket - the suburb has the Brisbane River on one side and only one major road in (with one other minor, flood prone road). I rang his daycare centre about 3.00pm who told me that the major road had been cut. I left work about 3.30pm in a complete flap, worried about how the hell I'd ever get to my son and hoping that the rumour I'd heard about letting 4wd's through would be true.



Traffic was at a stand still most of the way - it took me 45 minutes to move roughly 300metres. At one point I had Tom's sister driving up the Ipswich Motorway, Tom's parents coming from Toowoomba & me heading through the western suburbs to see which one of us would make it to the kids first.

This photo shows the point the road was cut off. I'm not sure what time it was taken but thankfully by the time I got there most of the water had dispersed and 4wd's were being let through - although it was starting to rain quite heavily again and I'm sure wouldn't have taken long to flood again.

We ended up getting home shortly before 7pm. A trip that normally takes me 40 minutes stretched out to over 3 hours.

Luckily The Shack withstood the weather and we had no dramas with damage whatsoever. The backyard is pretty well submerged though and will no doubt take a few days to drain away.

Hi there, remember me?

Wow, you know you've been neglecting your blog when even your husband starts making sarcastic comments. Sorry for the delay, friends and neighbours (yeah, all three of you...lol) - I'll try to make more of an effort.

So, first things first - Matthew's follow up Opthalmologist appointment.

Finally, we got some good news. The long month of removing and inserting his lens paid off - the fluid was right down. Unfortunately we didn't get an accurate measure of his vision in that eye as his lens wasn't in but from what we could tell, it seemed to be much better than in previous visits. Fingers crossed anyway. Medications will stay the same (unfortunately) for another 5 weeks, just to make sure that the fluid has settled.

Follow-up appointment 16 June.

~~~

Next to Ryan. On Friday Ry had his visit to hospital to have his teeth dramas sorted. I made the trek in alone as Tom had to get Matthew off to school. The day went as well as it ever can when you have to watch your child have a general anaesthetic. Surely that has to be up there as one of lifes most distressing events. Tom had the task of being with Matthew when he had his surgery, so this was all new to me and it's not an experience I wish to repeat anytime in the near future. About 30 minutes in to his procedure, the dentist called me from theatre to tell me that he'd done x-rays of Ryan's front damaged tooth and found a small dark spot that could either be:

a). a possible infection starting; or
b). just general damage to the nerve which means he may lose his tooth earlier than normal.

The choice I had to make was whether to extract the tooth while he was under a GA to eliminate any future problems or leave it alone and take the chance that the spot may not be an infection. Given that I'm not exactly reknown for my decision-making abilities at the best of times, I wasn't sure which way to go. I had to quickly ring Tom to see what he thought and after much deliberation, we decided against the extraction. Ryan's dentist did make it clear he was happy to go either way but I've been beating myself up about it since. Should we have removed it just to be on the safe side & avoid having to have another GA? I don't know. If I had longer to think about it I may have chosen to extract but I can't be certain. Argh, this parenting gig is tough sometimes - I felt like someone had asked me if they could lop off one of his legs.

Anyway... Have some photos. Here he is in recovery munching on sandwiches, ice cream, jelly & lemonade. He thought the lemonade part was just fantastic. Cute.

So anyway, as if the day wasn't harrowing enough for his poor parents, the good Lord above decided to throw in a dose of croup as well, just for shits and giggles no doubt. Now, this house hasn't been without a fresh bottle of Redipred since 2003 yet somehow he managed to pick a night where I was needing to get a new script filled. He was quite bad too, I guess being intubated didn't help at all and for a while there I thought we would be heading back to the hospital. We managed to get through the worst of it by sitting in the bathroom with the shower running and then pulling the humidifier out of retirement but it was quite hairy for a while there. I'm well armed for tonight - I have more drugs than you can poke sticks at.

Opthalmologist appt #3

I've missed an appointment somewhere. Just to recap, after not so great news in January Matthew had a follow up appointment in February, which was a bit of a non-event. The fluid in his eye was down a little bit so we were keep meds the same, to be reviewed in April, which leads me to today's appointment.

Left eye -6/6 (perfect), cataract stable
Right eye - 6/36 Not good, that's only the second line of the eye chart. A scan showed there is still fluid on his retina.

Meds: Dr D wants to trial a stronger topical steriod for his right eye for the next four weeks. All his other medication will stay the same. The new drop will have to go in 4 times a day and his contact lens will have to be removed each time. Oh, he's just going to love that news...

Medication:
Flucon - ceased
Prednefrin Forte - 4x per day, right eye
Homatropine - One drop every 2nd day both eyes
Redipred - 1ml every 2nd day
Methotrexate - 10mg per week
Naprosyn - 250mg per day
Folate - 50mg per day

Follow up 4 weeks (12 May 2009)

Making progress

Look what my clever husband built me. Isn't he handy?

Much better than the old fence, I think. Not as likely to kill someone in a strong wind...

Not only that, he went above and beyond the call of duty by building me a gate down the side of the house which increases the size of our backyard by another 3x10-ish metres. Happy boys and dogs (well, they would be if it would stop raining long enough for them to get out there and use it).

Now we just need to find someone willing to put in a swimming pool so we can steal their excess dirt to fill up the ditch that runs along the fence. With that done, we should gain another metre of our land back.