It's a good thing. . .

. . .that I really, really like the ENT who will be doing Micah's atresia surgery, because the surgical coordinator has been put on Earth to try my patience to its uppermost limit.

Yesterday the paperwork came from the ENT's office in anticipation of Micah's August 19th pre-op appointment and August 25th surgery. Wow, earlier than I expected. How efficient.

Until I looked more closely at the cards clipped to the various papers. August 19th pre-op appointment. Check. August 18th surgery.

Oh, just bite me now, you stupid wench.

That is just right up there with me calling and leaving a message to call me at my office and then getting a message on our home voice mail, little Ms. Synapse-Failed-to-Fire.

August 18th was the original date given to us by the ENT's office, which was changed within a day or two of being set by that office to accomodate the surgeon's vacation schedule.

So now more phone calls are needed, just to make sure everything's still on the two dates that I've put on my calendar.

It might be the aches and pains in my knee, but I'm feeling really mean. And she is the perfect foil for the rage I'm feeling. Working today and being on-call for the weekend isn't helping the mood much either.

Meanwhile yesterday Tesh took Micah and Thea to play miniature golf while I was working. Micah's first time, Thea's third. This forever endeared Tesh to Thea, she came into the office just beaming and saying, "I l-o-o-o-o-o-ve miniature golf." Micah scored a hole-in-one, which as much of a thrill it was to those watching, it was a disappointment to him because the goal in his mind is to whack the ball as many times as possible.

Thea's vacation is over on Monday, it's back to YingHua for Chinese camp. The last two weeks in July she'll be going to the YWCA's Adventure Camp with her friend, Emily, but otherwise she's back with her friends from school. Micah has two more days of freedom and hanging out with Tesh before he starts Summit's ESY program.

Addedum: Summit School Graduation, Etc.

Visiting one of the blogs I follow, http://thelawrencetriplets.blogspot.com/2009/06/busy-days.html, I remembered that I finally have a use for Miley Cyrus. The song playing in the background was used as the background music for the slide show at graduation. I feel fortunate that Thea has not been bitten by the Hannah Montana bug, she's even more oblivious to the Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana phenomena than she is to Disney Princesses. The lyrics were printed on the back of the program. There's a short video on the blog, and Micah is in the back row, and Cormac's mom managed to capture a few seconds where Micah actually seemed to be trying to follow along.

Meanwhile, my right knee is giving me major grief, starting last week and escalating to the point where I actually was willing to go back to see the orthopedist. So off I went yesterday, after a three-year hiatus (love those Hyalgan injections). The xray was ugly, my right knee's arthritis has progressed since the last xray and is now bone-on-bone, and there may be a Baker's cyst. So unlike last time when I went in for my left knee and the doctor drew off about 30cc of fluid and put in marcaine and cortisoid, gave me a neoprene knee sleeve and off I went to pick up Thea at daycare to drive down to Maryland, there was no joy. The PA said that he didn't think there was much in the way of fluid to draw off (it was all shunted behind the knee to the Baker's cyst), so he just put in the marcaine and cortisone. I probably should have let him try, but he described it as being torture if there was no fluid to draw off, so I completely wimped out.

And after the needle, it hurt worse because instead of putting in where the pain was the greatest (I'd probably have killed him) he went laterally and went deep behind the knee cap. I was hobbling and miserable for most of the evening.

Today at work, for at least part of the day, I was trying to walk a little less stiff-legged, but the knee was still really hurting at the end of the day. I've actually worn a skirt or dress for the past two days to be able to put Voltaren gel on it, so hell is going to freeze over.

Plan B is that I'm going to try the Hyalgan again, once Aetna approves the medication and it is sent to the orthopedists office. Which the PA says should be a week. Which I remember as taking almost a month in 2006, and I doubt that the prescription plan would cover SynviscONE, the single injection, so I'll get multiple trips to the ortho, multiple co-pays and multiple chance to screw up the schedule at work.

We'll see who is right, and if it helps, otherwise I am one step closer to getting a new knee. Which would suck. Given my mother's experience with knee replacement and the pulmonary embolism she had a few weeks after coming home, I am much too young to be following in her footsteps.

Flags, Mars Landing, Etc.

I am still addicted to seeing the little flags pop up on the map, so much so I added a second flag counter just for the heck of it.

The blog got a hit from Sitka, Alaska - how cool is that? And Mars, Pennsylvania - someone in Mars stopped by, though it would sound more interesting if it was 'on' Mars instead of 'in'.

I sort of know that the Mid-Atlantic East Coast/I-95 corridor hits are friends and family, but som many of the other flags are complete mysteries, intriguing little mysteries.

Thanks to all who have stopped by, I have no idea how or why you found this corner of the blogosphere, but I'm glad you stopped in.

Graduation Day

For Summit Speech School's Class of 2009. Not Micah. He'll be graduating from Summit, provided our school district continues to renew his IEP, in June 2011. Five kids are moving on and into the mainstream.

Graduation was tied to the theme for the week, bugs. The school's director did an amazing job weaving bugs into her graduation address, using Eric Carle's The Hungry Caterpillar as her focus. We, the parents of children with deafness and hearing impairment, are like the hungry caterpillars, searching for and devouring all the informatin that will help our children. And somehow, we are fortunate to have our children come here, and into Summit's protective coccoon. Today is the day that five beautiful children emerge from the coccoon, ready to take on the challenges of mainstream education. I was totally verklemmt, and my child wasn't even graduating.

Then the children came in, paired up, followed by the individual graduates wearing white caps with orange tassels.

After pulling it together, my focus became, "Please God, don't let Micah misbehave while up on the stage." He made a few monkey faces, did not exactly perform on cue - I think that he'd worn himself out on singing "I'm Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee" while riding in my car over the last week, but overall he was a good boy. He was also within arms reach of one of the teachers or aides (wise move on their part.)

Come July 1, the start of the ESY for those fortunate enough to have Extended School Year in their IEPs, Micah will be moving to Miss Margie's room along with his friends Tom and Ava. His current teacher is wonderful, and with the SLPs, has gotten so much from Micah. I will miss her emails and her amazingly upbeat and optimistic outlook; Micah is also a little nervous about the change - he wants Miss Heather to come with him to his new room. The ESY will also bring a new bus or van driver into our lives, the amazing team of Bob and Diane take the summer off.

After graduation and the reception afterwards, I had planned to take the kids to Rainforest Cafe at the Menlo Park Mall. Until we actually got there, and Micah was a little intimidated by the animatronic snake wiggling overhead and sticking its tongue out, but he marched forward and we were being seated when Thea decided the trees scared her and she was having no parts of the place. Back to the car, and off to Bertucci's. The next time I go to Menlo Park, I am taking myself to The Cheesecake Factory. Alone. Or maybe with a book.

Today we finally had some sunshine in the afternoon, so we hauled out the small pool and a few bottles of bubble goop and just had some water fun. And I even pulled out the laptop and got a bunch of correspondence read, labs reviewed/letters sent and prescriptions renewed.

Tomorrow is the orthopedist appointment, and he'd better give me back my knee, and it doesn't have to be like-new, wonderful. I'd settle for my old crappy knee, just without the pain or the need for the icky neoprene knee brace.

The Real Housewives of New Jersey

Is there any show more ridiculous? How do they recruit 'housewives' for this tackiness? Wanted: useless, spoiled woman who is as far from the description of an actual housewife as possible to whine, spend more money than the average American earns in a year in one thirty-minute episode and who is a friend to silicone, liposuction and Botox, to make a complete ass of one's self and tarnish the already tarnished repuation of the Garden State? Atrocious northern Jersey accent optional. Pretentiousness masquerading as manners also optional

The original show was slightly humorous in a strange way, but the spin-offs of the spin-offs of the spin-offs have just run the concept straight into the ground.

First Day of Summer

The equinox arrived at sometime after 1 am today. It's also my birthday, at least for all of the 50 minutes of June 21, 1960 that I was around for. It has been a day or more than a few days of feeling my age, thanks to my right knee. It has been giving me enough unrelenting grief that I am ready to call the orthopedist, who thanks to the Synvisc injections his PA put in my knees over the course of ten weeks, I have not had to cross paths him (or the PA) in the past three years. He or whatever colleague had damn well better have some non-invasive tricks up his sleeve. The way it's been hurting has me I am worried about having words like arthroscopic surgery and MRIs being used in reference to me. Three years ago I was 'the perfect candidate' for knee replacement surgery and I politely told him, "no", which may have come out as " bite me, no way."


Meanwhile we went to see Thomas the Tank Engine at the Strasburg Railroad yesterday, along with hordes of other parents and children. This is our third Thomas adventure - the last one was just before we went to China to bring Micah home. This time the weather was not on our side. There was a downpour right after we got off the Thomas ride that sent us right into the trackside cafe for lunch. And during this downpour with no inside toilets in the little restaurant, the Little Man announces he has to use the potty. Port-O-Potties. So Steve had to hustle him outside, getting drenched in the process. Everything got wet, but the pull-up remained dry.




The biggest fun seemed to be the Cranky Cars, the little hand-cranked carts that kids could power around a track. I remember them from KiddieLand Amusement Park in Langley Park, Maryland. Because the rain shower had cleared out much of the crowds, they could take a spin around the track, run out and back around and be going on another ride within five minutes. In 2007 Thea had to wait almost 30 minutes for one run around the track.



Meanwhile, Micah is down to one BAHA. His new one has been sent back to the manufacturer, Cochlear in Colorado, for a new battery hatch door. Thankfully, the pediatric audiologist at Micah's school took care of all the logistics. I hope that sending it back to the US mothership does not mean that Cochlear/Colorodo does not have to send it back to Cochlear in Sweden for something as trivial as a little plastic door. Note to Cochlear: Micah's surgery is August 25th and we may not need two BAHAs after that. Move it and get it back to him. Having two took some getting used to, for me, but now that he's back to one, he looks like a rhinoceros and all of his photos from Thomas look like they are from pre-January 2009. School has a loaner BAHA, but it's only for school.

Been a while. . .

. . .since posting anything. Then I read about the sheer numbers of blogs that are created versus the number that remain active one year after their creation. I have to look up the actual statistic so I can misquote it properly, but it's staggering.

In a 2008 survey by Technorati, of the 133 million blogs created, only 7.4 million have been updated in the last 120 days. (Source: the NY Times June 5, 2009 article, Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/fashion/07blogs.html).

So rather than being one of The Fallen, I will write about not much going on. Thea finished school on Friday, the school had a little end of the year celebration Saturday, which I missed because I had to work. Yet another virus has crawled into my upper respiratory tract, first masquerading as allergy symptoms before it segued into my nose, throat and trachea. As long as it just passes through with the kids missing the worst of it, I can live with the annoyance (not really but it sounds so much more noble than I am hacking, miserable and would prefer staying in bed all day with endless cups of tea.)

Micah has another week of school before a few weeks off. He'll be moving to a new classroom for the summer session, which I think means that he's making good progress. The date of his surgery has not changed during the past two weeks, so I am somewhat hopeful that it may actually be set.

Meanwhile, the new physician assistant started at work. She's been coming in a few days here or there, but this week is her first full week. Thanks to her it wasn't a horrific Monday, and I arrived home with all my charting done for a change. And this probably means that a meteor will strike the house tonight.

No new photos of anyone - unless I count the pictures of a patient with some sort of strange photosensitivity reaction. The patient is going to a dermatologist, but had another flare and wanted to go back on the prednisone that I had prescribed for a prior bout, but also wanted to have the specialist see the skin at its worst. Conveniently I had my camera in my car so I retrieved it, took a few pictures and uploaded them to print at the local CVS. Considering all the semi-obscure labs the specialist wanted drawn turned out blisteringly normal, and considering that we don't have the means of doing punch biopsies at work, the pictures will have to do.

Short-Term Experiment in Sleep Deprivation

Working more or less full-time is not for me. The house is a disaster, and I vacillate between not giving a damn and being horrified at the squalor. Dinner is happening later than we usually eat and therefore bedtime is also sliding. Once the kids are asleep, I retreat to my chair/ottoman in the living room and chart. For hours, and hours. And then I read correspondence - and since one of the providers is out, it involves reading information on patients that I am not all that familiar with and then updating medications and diagnoses.

That first week and how well it went was a total fluke, and made it seem like I could do it.

On the up-side of life, Thea has been incentivized to go to sleep on her own, without one of us sitting in her room until she falls asleep. It doesn't take her that long to fall asleep, but the tape of Chinese school songs she's been listening to for the past three months is beginning to wear on me. Five nights of going to sleep on her own and she gets a packet of Pokemon cards, which is her new obsession, thanks to the boys in her kindergarten class.

We also had the last parent-teacher conference of the year and got Thea's end-of-the-year report card, and she's still the same smart kid she was for the previous two reporting periods. Reading and doing math well above grade level. The surprising part is how well she does in Chinese considering the total lack of reinforcement we're able to provide her at home.

She also lost her sixth tooth. The first one came out last year while we were at Oma's - it was the first couple of days in July maybe (without going back to the blog log to look.) We've bankrolled the tooth fairy to the tune of $10 so far ($5 for the first, $1 for the subsequent ones.)

Micah is making decent progress in being potty-trained. He wakes up many mornings dry and is able to hold it until he gets to the bathroom. Since he's still sleeping with us, the overnight diapers will be the last to go.

Other than those few tidbits, there hasn't been too much to write about - or I'm just too tired to search the cobwebby corners of my brain for something interesting.