It's Not A Tu-muh!!

Well, thank God, the whatever-it-is on Joe's pituitary is not a tumor!" Which begs the question: what, exactly, is causing his central sleep apnea?  19 episodes in one night is apparently nothing to sneeze at. So while I am content to leave well enough alone and just leave the kid be, Dr. Rutter is having none of it. He threw out terms like "empty sella" and "LH/FSH tests".  Well, I'm no medical genius, but I have had not just one but TWO semesters of anatomy, and I know that an empty sella turcica is just bad. I also know that adding an endocrinologist and/or neurologist to my stable of medical lovelies was not on my short list of things to do.

Also, in the "Mom of the Year" category, guess what? The moderate hearing loss that Joe has in his left ear? The very small problem which we have never addressed because, well, he had so much other crap going on? The thing that I have not really taken seriously this whole time? Well, it turns out that the hearing loss is not only NOT moderate, it is conductive hearing loss, which means that at some point, he will have to have a titanium bone implanted to conduct sound in his left ear.  Some mother's instinct, no?

Good news of the week, though: Joe has been cleared for thin liquids! This means that, while the g-tube can't come out right now, it is definitely on its way out! Hip hip hooray for Vital-Stim therapy and his awesome therapist, Beth! You need to get throat and facial muscles moving, Beth's your girl.  Today, Joe drank four 8-oz glasses of milk and water, so hopefully getting sufficient volume won't be a problem. Just one more step toward tube-free living!!

But it was good to check "under the hood" on Joe, so to speak, and see all his awesome docs and nurses. I just wish that we could be done. I had hoped we were, but as with so many things with this journey we're on, the timetable is slower than I would like, but at least we're moving forward.

Above, see my birthday present from Julia! I also got a gorgeous pair of earrings from Kristi, but I don't have a picture of those.

They were given to me at our party on Sunday. We had Dave/Julia, Lee/Kristi, John/Kathy, Duke/Claudia, Russ/Ronda, and Tim/Janine. With all our assorted progeny, the total was 26 in our back yard.

I would include pics from the party, but I don't want to have to get permission from people to post them. So, screw it.

After all the water toys were put away, and the towels were drying on the deck next to the big bags of bottles and cans, all I could think was: "Man, are we lucky!" To have so many really nice, funny, wonderful people in our lives, how much more can anyone ask for? Plus, with the property values crashing the way they are, no one can sell their house and move away for a very long time!

I'm goin' back to Cinci, to Cinci, to Cinci....

This week I am prepping for yet another trip to Cincinnati Children's hospital to have doctors peering at Joe looking for still more previously undetected defects. Honestly, this poor baby has been under the microscope since our 18-week ultrasound. Just like looking at the word "usual" for too long, anything begins to look wrong if you stare at it long enough.

What we are looking for this time is whether the growth on his pituitary gland has grown, and if it has, then find out what kind of cells they are. On his list of stuff-to-do: Barium swallow study, hearing test, MRI of brain, Pulmonology consult, Broncoscopy, and I think that's it. All I know is that I just don't have time to deal with a brain tumor. Nursing school starts in less than a month, for pete's sake!

Joe has used Cincinnati Children's for almost all of his care since he was five months old. He sees Dr. Michael Rutter for his ENT needs (such as a crico-tracheal resection; laryngotracheal resection with rib graft (LTP, LTR); assorted broncs; tonsils/adenoids; and a aortopexy last summer {not done by Dr. Rutter, but by Dr. Alonzo, a heart surgeon there}). If you ever have a kid with a massively screwed up airway, and want a good laugh at the same time, Dr. Rutter's your man. Get thee to Cincinnati by hook or by crook. They're worth it.

However, while I love it in Cincinnati, I am looking forward to Joe being released from Dr. Rutter's care. I am sick of sitting in the little room hearing about more bad stuff just waiting to get fixed. Last time, Dr. R. threw out the term "Chiari Malformation" as a possible explanation for Joe's sleep apneas. Oh, thanks, let me worry about his spinal cord now. So here's hoping I get the "Have a good life" speech this time.

Ode to Julia

Here's a Julia with the middle name of "Louis":

Here's a Julia who can make a ratatouille:

Here's a Julia who's always named "Best Dressed":

Here's a Julia I love above the rest:

Pet Peeves

Today, I explore one of my pet peeves. It has to do with the laundry. {As an aside, I find the term "pet peeve" funny. I always picture a fussy Brit in a velvet smoking jacket stroking an inbred longhaired cat, saying, "Have you met my pet, Peeve?"}

Anyway, I am doing laundry again, it's a shock, I know. And what do I find but a bunch of rolled up, sweaty socks that need to be cleaned. Ick. I have mentioned this to my menfolk about how disgusting it is to reach into someone ELSE's dirty sock to turn it right side out, and could they please take care of this before it hits the laundry chute? Now I just throw them into the wash as-is and let them come out as a dirty wet ball of cotton if need be. Screw them.

This always reminds me of the part in "The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell where the poor broken sodomized priest is forced to work in the laundry after his rescue. He does just fine with most of his tasks, but the unballing of the socks is really troublesome for him. It seems that the aliens cut all the tendons in his hands to make him more appealing and needy and now his fine motor skills just aren't what they oughta be. While I can't relate to all of this (never having been sodomized by aliens-ok, just once, but I didn't like it), I can certainly feel his pain vis-a-vis the monumentally selfish, self-centered, entitled SOBs who compel him to push his poor useless hands into their wet stinky socks just so they can have sparkling white whites in their sock drawers.

Darned Food Stylists

Went out to our friend's cottage yesterday. It was totally fun! The kids tubed, attempted waterskiing, played badminton, ghosts in the graveyard, you name it.

This post isn't about that.

No, instead it is about the totally cute and completely asinine task I was given by my dear friend Kathy- make these:




It was all going really well until I picked the sticks up out of the soaking water. Apparently, the food stylists at Kraft or wherever predrilled the holes into the asparagus used for the above pic. I, in my ignorance, just attempted to jam them through the chlorophyll-laden cell walls all willy-nilly. For my troubles, I pierced my hand at least five times, and split the ends of the asparagus so they would not stay on the stick. Finding my mojo, I successfully managed to get the little buggers on right, except my sticks were about one inch apart at the bottom and five inches apart near the top. Grrr.

Kathy, in all her helpfulness, offered to finish up for me, as it appeared that I was thinking evil thoughts about the evening's side dish. With no piercing or splitting, she managed to make two lovely rafts in about 20 seconds. Snot.

Darned good asparagus, though.

Frankie Says...

I saw this bottle of wine at Costco to bring to a friend's cottage this weekend. My question is this:

Can anyone of a certain age (say, like around mine) see this word and NOT think, "Don't do it! If you wanna go to it. Relax, don't do it, when you want to come..."

Speaking of which, do you remember when they would play "Mony Mony" at high school dances, and everyone would scream, "GET LAID! GET F****D!"? Or maybe it was just me and my friends doing that. Anyway, I can't believe the school honchos would even let the DJ play that. Ha. Good times.

Please excuse me as I brush up on my moves for "The Bird". Morris Day was truly a forgotten musical genius, don't you agree?

"Come on now! Whawk! Hallelujah! Who-o-o-oa!"

Happy Birthday to Me!

Tra-la! I'm now thirty-eight! Yikes! That's getting really close to forty. Here is a pic of me in my birthday suit (the only one anyone would be willing to view, besides Tim!) It was my present from Tim and the boys.

But oh well, in the words of my fave coffee mug, "I'd worry about getting older if I weren't still so darn CUTE!" So there.

To celebrate (yesterday, the actual day) Tim's mom took all three boys for the day, and my friend Kathy and I trekked out to a very chi-chi part of town to tiptoe through the tulips at the Northville Garden Walk. (cue the Tiny Tim ukelele bit) We went through some truly amazing specimens of horticultural artistry, then went to lunch at a cool cafe in downtown Northville called Edward's. I had an awesome sammich with Havarti cheese, caramelized balsamic onions, tomatoes, and basil, along with tomato-basil soup. I enjoyed it so much I am attempting to recreate it at home today for dinner. The boys are gone with friends to their cottage, so we can have grown-up vittles. It is supposed to be vegetarian, but the Havarti cheese makes it not vegan. Bummer. I'm trying.

True Confessions

I will admit it: I don't really always like being around my kids. I just got in my almost-thirteen-year-old son's face at 9:30 at night (literally, I was holding his face and yelling into it). He was supposed to be practicing piano, and didn't want to. Now that I have that in print, I think perhaps I may have overreacted.

Whatever, I am sick and tired of the attitude and general snarkiness that rules my life since these kids have gotten off school. We all went away for a very fun weekend up North, and it was great, and the buzz from that should have carried us all for more than 12 hours, don't you think?
But no, if my children do not want to do something, then we all have to listen to much bellyaching and whining and pissing and moaning, and frankly, I'm just tired of it. If I ask you to help with dishes, then just do it. If you need to take a shower, do I really have to hear that you haven't sweat in the three days since your last one? If it's time to go to bed, I mean NOW, not in five or ten or fifteen minutes from now.

I realized today that I have been letting my boys get away with far too much crap that my mom would have beaten out of us. I need to go channel her now. Now, where did I put that Ouija board?