dog update

Long story short....my wonderful friend Barb sent me links to two places:
here, http://www.softpaws.net/?gclid=CMjbltCClqICFYd-5QodsBxuGg
where I got some nail covers for the dog that are acrylic or plastic and you glue on over his own nails.......

and I got him some booties from here: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=bl_sr_kitchen?ie=UTF8&search-alias=garden&field-brandtextbin=Ultra%20Paws%20Durable%20Dog%20Boots

Monday, John went to play golf, I picked the dog up from the vet and gave him a bath, flea/tick treatment and massage and brushing. Then I put the nail tips on him and I thought it helped a lot to keep him from scratching. When J came home, he was mad and grouchy for about two days. Then I whipped out the booties and they work PERFECTLY to make him not scratch the floors. I also played the sympathy card and told him that dogs are therapeutic in recovery and that we needed to do whatever we could to help Whitaker next week when we come home from the hospital. (No wonder he is such a maniputlative little guy!) Now the dog looks like this, happy and comfy in our house after his week of being an outside dog.

can you see the love on that face?Tebow is not totally crazy about the booties, but we are crazy about him, so this is how it is going to be. for a while. until the kids scratch the floor up so badly that the dog's marks will be unnoticeable. hehe

some great Chiari info

Found an informative and easy-to-read sheet about Chiari Malformation here.

http://www.conquerchiari.org/awareness/Chiari%20Patient%20Education%20Sheet.pdf

Breif details about Whitaker: his "tonsil" of the cerebellum is descended 23 mm below the base of the skull. It is attached to the top of his spinal cord and there is VERY little to no cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) between the cerebellum and the rest of the brain. He has been symptomatic with severe headaches in the back of his head during coughing, sneezing, exercise, and when he wakes in the morning. He also sometimes vomits in the mornings and has difficulty swallowing when he is congested.

Surgery outline: 4-5 hours, and from what I understand, the doctor will do the following:

• make an incision down the back of the neck at the base of the skull (about 4 or 5 inches)
• cut through the neck muscles and remove a section of bone from the back of the skull
• separate the top of the spinal cord from the tonsil
• shoot electrodes through the elongated tonsil to shrink it
• shrink the tonsil to the point where it is closer to if not all the way up to the base of the skull

this is where I get a little confused:

• he will carefully sew in an expandable patch that will be at the top of the spinal cord and the base of the brain and cranium.
• sew up the muscles and the fluid pouch at the top of the spinal cord
• seal the opening

Whitaker will have a neurophysiologist (I think ??) monitoring his spinal cord and nerve activity the entire time. He will have an anaesthesiologist with him the entire time as well to watch the levels of anaesthesia.  Yesterday he had blood taken so they could determine the levels and thickness of his blood in order to fully prepare for blood loss during surgery. We can give blood to be given to him, but it is only good for three days, so it would have to be Monday or Tuesday.  My blood pressure is too low to be able to donate, but I have O- blood, so we may look for an alternative method. We are hoping he won't need any, but John might give some on Monday if he can. I am pretty sure John and Whitaker are both A+ but I can't remember for sure.

He will be in intensive care for the first 24 hours. Other than bleeding, and infection, there is a risk of developing a leak of CSF after the patch has been placed, which might require a drain. We really, really hope this does not happen. We know that all the prayers will work for him to have no complications and a smooth recovery.

He should be moved to a regular room after he gets out of the ICU.  He will be there for a couple more days until he can eat and everything seems to be working well. Then we will come home and hopefully celebrate Father's Day together by being lazy and lounging.

The surgery will take place at Kosair Children's Hospital Our pediatric neurosurgeon is named Dr. Charles Stevenson. He is young and brilliant and we have every confidence in him. He went to SMU, then Vanderbilt, and is headed to Cincinnati Children's Hospital in a couple of months to become part of their team. We trust that God has put us in good hands.

Kosair Children’s Hospital

231 E. Chestnut St.
Louisville, KY 40202
(502) 629-6000
KosairChildrens.com

If you need to contact any of us, for anything, our cell phone numbers are as follows:

812-449-8981 (amy)
812-719-0402 (john)
502-819-5387 (Bon Bon - amy's mother)
502-777-4944 (Granddaddy- amy's father)
812-630-8282 (Grandma and Grandpa Lyons aka Gene and Agnes)

I will try to update people on the website or on facebook. Thanks everyone for your kind thoughts and prayers. We are so thankful that this is a fixable problem and that he is going to make a full and complete recovery.

Here are some pictures of Whitaker's MRI scans. His chiari and his spinal cord are basically fused, so it is hard to see anything except a big blob at the base of his skull and the top of his spine.

Another view looks like this, but I probably couldn't explain it if I had to.....

If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask me. We have nothing to hide, but we also don't always know the answers. We know that this is a routine surgery for pediatric neurosurgeons and we know that his Chiari is a large one, but we still are so thankful for so much: the diagnosis, the total lack of neurological damage, the resilience of children. If you have any knowledge to share, please feel free to write us or call us, as we are certainly open to suggestions. If you are a nurse and we come home with a drain, we might be calling you!

this guy is going bye-bye

         Here's my crazy scoop for today: floors are finally done, dog has been scratching them up ever since we put them down. John says dog has to go. Neighbor said our dog had his dog down on her back with her neck in his mouth and he had to kick him as hard as he could to get him off. Then dumb dog went after next-door neighbor's dog and did the same thing. We told the boys we would have to give him away and it was the same week that Whitaker had the hour and a half MRI, a not-so-great doctor's appointment, and we determined an approximate date for surgery. Whitaker cried, said his life was falling apart, that every time we get an animal it either dies or we give it away, blah, blah, blah.

       So my dad escorted me kindly to Lowe's where we purchased an 8 foot long log chain to tie to his lead for him to drag. Not only does he not run as far, he doesn't go as fast either. This has helped with our outside problems, so I thought we were going to get to keep the dog. Until today. When John saw this absolutely gargantuan scratch the dog made right in the center of the family room. He said I have to think about where this dog is going, and then he slammed the door.

        I am also trying to grade a mountain of papers, pack up my entire classroom, complete an online training course for Preschool, earn three more hours for library media (even though I will probably never get a library job), and survive the last three days of school with seventh and eighth graders. Plus, we got the date for Whitaker's surgery and it is June 15, just three weeks from today. I am so stressed right now my chest hurts, but don't worry, I already have an appointment for heart tests on June 3. If I make until then, I am certain they will tell me there is nothing wrong with me. It is all in my head. I am just crazy.

         In addition to all of this, I am so fat that I am cramming myself into my fat clothes, which only constitute about 5% of my closet, so I have been wearing the same clothes for a whole semester now. I need a personal trainer fast. I hate my body. I don't think the timing is right at all to get rid of our dumb dog, even if that is the right thing to do. Now I gotta go watch baseball, and go eat with my in-laws. Our treat. :-)

        I am trying to think of an invention that we could put some sort of gel-caps or something on the dogs claws that would at least help with the scratching. I have finally decided to try to day-quil gel-caps, empty them out, slide them over the end of the dog's claws and fasten them with the little rubber bands they use for braces. It might not work, but it is a start. I love him and the boys REALLY love him, and I don't want him to go. Any ideas, please advise.

boys, baseball, and beautiful wood

Okay, so I haven't updated the blog in a while because we were busy doing this:

And then we went and did this:

and while we gone, my Tretter did this:

Yes, that is a nine-year-old, doing homework on a laptop, in a vehicle. Hello, 2010, where were you when I was in 3rd grade? Oh, yeah, it was 1980. 

So eventually, the floor progressed like this:

and finally, it looks kind of like this:

Only it is completely finished now in the downstairs and we have enough left over to do the hallway upstairs (yippee!) and then we will be done for a while. In all of that hullabaloo, we removed the wood floor from the dining room, ground off the nails, carried it upstairs, removed the carpet from the boys' room, laid the old dining room wood floor in the boys' room, and laid our new Acacia Brazilian Cherry floors in the dining room and family room. It's gorgeous if I do say so myself.

In the meantime, since that whole process took about 3 and a half weeks, we had baseball

If you have a magnifying glass you will see Whitaker on second base, Tretter up to bat, and John as the third base coach. If you don't have a magnifying glass, you'll just have to take my word for it.

We also had Mother's Day, and this is my present:

They cleaned, vacuumed, and washed my vehicle for me, which was adorable, and a very nice gift. It was much-needed and much-appreciated. Until they vacuumed up my charger-cover.....and John had to fish it out of the new shop-vac.

and I, of course, thought this was hilarious.

We also had a rainstorm that prompted large trash bags for a slip and slide,

and a triathlon at the boys' elementary school.

How cute is that? All those little healthy kids warming up!

Finally, we also had an MRI on Whitaker that lasted an hour and 15 minutes (followed by barbecue ribs at Outback Steakhouse) and met with the neurosurgeon again. His scans had not changed - no improvement, but no increase in severity either - in the four months that he has been taking growth hormone treatments, so it seems he will need to have his Chiari I Malformation surgically "repaired." That seems like quite a euphemism to me, but I am the mom. The surgeon told us all this other info too, that I will post later. maybe. if I feel like it.

check it out - new flooring!!!

Okay, first, I had to share to my super-cute little hunter. It was 4:37 a.m. and he was READY!

(haven't gotten a turkey yet, but we're still trying)

Now, to share my big news of the day: we FINALLY made a decision on the hardwood and here it is: this is a picture of the price tag:

and this is a picture of what it looks like when it is put together.

Here is the BEST part (which is what I would consider a "kiss from the King" as in Jesus, the King of Kings) and that is that I waited until John and I could make the decision together, so I took him back to this store the next day, after deciding that this was what I like. When we got there, the wood had gone ON SALE - to

$2.99/SQUARE FOOT! THAT MEANS WE SAVED OVER $600.00!!

How cool is that?

I'm so behind

I'm so behind and I have finally come to a realization: I can only get caught up on one or two things at a time. If I catch up on my grading, my laundry falls behind. If I catch up on my exercising, my grading falls behind. If I catch up my friend time (which isn't much because I don't have very many), I fall behind on my little boy snuggle time. Right now I feel like I am 1/4 caught up and 3/4 behind in about six areas.

My biggest struggle right now is with work. First of all, let me make it clear that I love my job, love the people for and with whom I work, and love my school. I do not, however, always love junior high kids. I love all of them some of the time and some of them all of the time, but I don't love all of them all of the time. I also don't love the paperwork that comes with my job, but there is no perfect job, and amost every job has at least some paperwork, so I have to put my big girl panties on and deal with it. There are a whole passel of people out there right now who would love to have any job, and much more a job like mine, so no complaining here.

Having said that, right now, I am especially behind (even more than normal for me) on my grading and entering of grades. I also am trying to prepare for teaching preschool next year, learning a new curriculum, moving buildings and room locations, and trying to mentally and physically prepare for a different - well, everything. I am extremely excited about the move, anxious to get to know the children, and desperately wanting to do an amazing job.

Also, in the midst of this move-from-junior-high-to-preschool-while-finishing-my-second-Master's-degree thing, we are trying to remodel our house. I know, right? here's the scoop:

• Have been discussing what to do with white berber carpet in the living room since we moved in,
• finally decided to continue wood from dining room throughout the rest of the downstairs,
• went to get it/order and they don't make it anymore,
• decided to replace all the wood downstairs and move dining room wood to boys' bedroom (you don't even want to know what that carpet looks like),
• searched for exactly what wood, width, and shade we want in the living room/dining room,
• have decided on a 5-6" width, dark color walnut, cherry, bamboo, or some sort of solid, not engineered wood. 

Thankful for those decisions so far.....almost have dear hubby talked into wood stairs and wood hallway in the upstairs so we would be chipping away at the rooms with carpet (yippee!) So thankful for this incredible abundant life God has blessed me with.

Here's my little prayer for tonight: God, please help me stay focused this week and try to catch up on several areas. Also, help me remember not to take my blessings as burdens. Amen.

Also, one of my friends posted this as her facebook status and I thought it was kind of cool, so I copied it:

"Commitment is what transforms a promise into reality. It is the words, which speak boldly of your intentions. It is making the time when there is not. Commitment is the stuff that character is made of. It is the power to change the face of things. It's the daily triumph of integrity over skepticism."

Thanks, KB! Maybe that will help me restore my commitment to exercise. Like I told my students the other day, the only place I have been running lately is to Wendy's for a coffee toffee twisted frosty. I'm gonna work on that, too.

how cute is this?

Ok, so I totally stole this pic off my friend's facebook page to tempt someone into adopting him from here. His name is Dodger and he really, really wants a home. Not my home, but maybe yours.