Seizure, Super Kid, Hives, Medication Management, Parent Teachers, Field Trip, Etc.

Wow, what a week is all I can say.  It has been pretty crazy!  Last week the elementary school had parent teacher conferences so that meant it was early out all week for the kids.  They got home 2 hours earlier than usual all week long.  We had parent teacher conferences Tuesday.  It was a nice visit.  Josh, Daniel and Sarah are all doing well and enjoying school.  It has been nice being able to volunteer this year in their classes.  I get to know the students and the teachers a bit better which is nice.  The scary thing is Josh's teacher gave us a bunch of information about Junior High School for Josh.  Eeeeek!  That seems crazy to me to have him going into Jr. High!!  Anyway, all is well as far as school is concerned.  After all the parent teacher conferences they kids each got a freebie meal from different restaurants.  SWEET!!  In addition Matthew got to spin the prize wheel at the orthodontist's office and won a $5 Subway gift card, too.  Saturday we put all those freebie meals to good use.  After cleaning the whole house we let the kids use their coupons and got dinner.  Yes that meant we had to stop by 4 different restaurants, but we only spent $2 to feed all the kids.  That was awesome and everyone was happy as you can see and I got a clean house.  Win-Win situation.

During parent teacher conferences we brought the kids along with us because the teachers like to visit with them and us.  That meant there was a lot of dead time for the kids while we were visiting with the teachers.  Sarah and Noah put it to good use taking random pictures of their characters on this tailor app on my phone.  My phone camera is covered with them.  Oh well at least it kept them quiet for the most part.

Wednesday morning was a pretty hectic morning.  Josh and Matthew both had orthodontic appointments which meant I had to get everyone up and ready for school including myself and out the door by 7:50 am.  We were a bit late, but we made it.  However, because everything was so rushed I forgot to give everyone their morning medication.  Whoops.  Well later on that morning after I had dropped everyone else off at school Noah had a preschool field trip to the Rush Funplex.  Noah got to pick two activities to do and the first one he chose was bowling.  He is Mr. Independent and refused to let me help him with his bowling ball.  He dropped it a few times, but still wouldn't let me help him.  Crazy kid!

 After the first three turns I finally talked him into using a ramp for his ball because he had gotten two of his bowling balls stuck at the end of the lane when I tried to roll them without the ramp.

 However, he got really frustrated when he wouldn't knock over all the pins every turn.  If he didn't get a spare or a strike he would tell me that he was done with bowling and wanted to do something else.  What a stinker!  We finally got through our whole game.  Neither one of us broke 100 points, but we had fun.

For the next activity he chose the bouncy slide.  He went down it head first because he is a crazy kid.  He had fun with that until it was time for lunch.

 They had a pizza party.  Noah loves pizza and was in heaven.

 On the way out Noah even got to try out a big size version of Fruit Ninja.  He had fun playing that game.  He couldn't get the fruit at the top of the screen so getting those was my job.  It was fun.

 Wednesday night Daniel had basketball.  He is the only 3rd grader in the 4th grade team.  He is the little guy out on the field wearing yellow. 

He was already little compared to the other 3rd graders, but compare him to some 4th graders he is really little.  Oh well he doesn't seem to let it bother him much.

Well early Thursday morning Aaron and I were woken up by Daniel in a panic at about 5 am.  Daniel had run upstairs and woken us up to let us know Josh was having a seizure.  I ran downstairs and sure enough he was in the middle of one.  I had to start timing because that's about all you can do while he is seizing besides turning his head to the side to make sure he won't block his airway when he stops seizing and starts breathing again.  This seizure lasted about 2 minutes, but those were some of the longest and most helpless two minutes ever.  Josh had missed his morning dose of medication the previous morning, but he shouldn't be that sensitive that missing one dose should set him off.  I called the neurologist and left her a message about what happened and just waited for more instructions on what she wanted to do next.  She finally got back to me the next day and increased his medication dose by 30%.  Wow.  I hope this works because I hate seeing Josh like that.  So does Daniel.  Daniel is scared of seeing Josh have a seizure.  Every night before Daniel goes to sleep he sneaks upstairs to ask Aaron or me if Josh has had his medication that night.  Poor guy!  The weird thing is Josh doesn't even know anything has happened when he comes all the way out of it--which takes about 30 minutes after the seizure.  During those post seizure 30 minutes Josh is usually unresponsive which I HATE, but as long as he is breathing you just let him rest.  The neurologist likened having a seizure to running a marathon.  You expend about the same amount of energy only with a seizure it happens in a very short amount of time.  Josh did say he had a headache that morning, but that was it.  Weird.  Aaron said that after he had a seizure he had the world's hugest headache and felt pretty horrible the next morning.  That's the hard thing with Josh is you never know he's having them at night unless someone catches him.  We need to get the night vision motion camera up and going again to monitor him.  Anyway, he's doing ok for now.  Hopefully it stays that way!!

Thursday evening there was a Transition Fair for all kids and their parents in the school district that had an IEP (individualized education plan) and/or a 504 (special accommodation plan).  Since that affected two of our kids (Matthew and Josh) Aaron went.  I had to stay home to complete my nursing continuing education hours since my nursing license was expiring soon and I had to renew it.  Aaron was really overwhelmed with all the information that was presented there.  There are so many choices that need to be made about Matthew and his future.  It is really overwhelming.  It ranges from possible college for really low functioning kids to employment to living accommodations, etc.  There was a lot of info!!  I am grateful for all the services that are available, though.  Now we just need to start sorting through everything to see what will apply to us.  It was good that Aaron went because he was able to talk with the Davis School District's applied technology specialist about Josh.  Josh has problems with his fine motor ability in his hands which makes his writing really hard to read.  He has had multiple problems marked wrong on tests since the corrector can't read his writing.  Anyway to help with that he has been given a portable keyboard called an Alphasmart that he can type up all his schoolwork on which has helped.  It is part of his 504 special accommodation plan.  Well Aaron mentioned to the Applied Technology guy what Josh was using and the guy said it was completely out of date.  There is better technology that would help Josh.  In order to see what would best help him Josh needs to be evaluated by the assistive technology team and to go from there.  Pretty awesome. 

I did get my nursing continuing education done.  I did a 30 hour class on asthma in the child and adult.  I already knew quite a bit about asthma since I have had to deal with Daniel, but I learned quite a bit, too.  A lot more about Daniel's asthma plan and medications now make better sense to me.  Well I renewed my RN license and I am ready to practice.  Too bad I couldn't count dealing with my kids crazy health, tests and their hospitalizations as my continuing education.  I really have learned more through that than any class could teach me :).

Noah had a hot chocolate party in his preschool last week.  Here are some of the pictures the teacher took of Noah:

 Noah said he had lots of fun. His face was covered with chocolate when I picked him up so I assume it was a good party :).

Friday I had an appointment with the dermatologist.  I have these weird marble sized cysts in my head that I have wanted to get out for years.  I needed to get them out because they keep growing bigger.  I haven't gotten them removed because our Flex Spending is always gone at the end of the year so I kept putting getting them taken out for a while.  I finally went in Friday and had three of them removed off of my scalp.  The doctor had to snip some of my hair off to get to them so hopefully I don't have three huge bald spots on my head.  I don't know since I can't really look at my own head...Here's the hair she cut off laying on the medical table:

 She sliced me pretty good.  Each cyst she removed it took about 5 stitches to stitch up the hole.  Yuck!  Here's one you can kind of see with the blue stitches sticking out of my hair:

After the procedure everything was fine for a few hours.  Then for whatever reason one of them started really bleeding all over.  Yuck!!  After about 10 minutes of pressure it stopped again.  The bad thing was I wasn't at home.  It was a girl's night out and I was at someone else's house.  That was a bit embarrassing, but what can you do?  I did get in trouble because the the ladies got to talking and didn't realize it was 2:30 am until Aaron paged my phone.  My phone had been on silent and I didn't realized he was trying to see where I was at and if I was ok.  I got in some trouble with him, but I am glad he cares.  He kept asking me if I had grown up over the weekend since only teenagers stay out after midnight.  Ha-ha Aaron.  Anyway, my wound did ooze the rest of the night (or morning) and got blood on my pillow, but it stopped bleeding completely by later the next morning.  Head wounds always bleed so much.  Anyway, I get my stitches out next Tuesday which will be nice.  I have to be really careful in combing my hair so the brush doesn't catch on them.  I have three cysts down and only about 7 more to get out.  Gross!

 

 Sunday we had a Superbowl party with some friends the Einzingers.  Both of us had a bunch of snacky foods we brought and everything was so yummy.  However, later on that night Daniel started complaining of being itchy.  He didn't have any hives at first so we just told him it would be ok.  Well he came to me about 30 minutes later COVERED in hives from head to toe.  I have no idea what he ate that he reacted to, but we started with his emergency meds.  We first gave him some Allegra, but after 30 minutes it hadn't touched him.  We then gave him some Ranitidine which didn't touch it at all either after another 30 minutes.  We finally texted the doctor and he told us to give him the Prednisone which we did.  Finally about 30 minutes later they started fading a bit.  It took a good couple hours for them to finally go away.  The next morning Daniel had a bunch of raw patches all over his skin from all his scratching--poor kid.  The pictures don't even show how bad the hives were:

 They were EVERYWHERE:

 We never did figure out what he reacted to.  Hopefully, it won't happen again.....

Sunday morning as we were getting ready for church Matthew had a ginormous meltdown.  Aaron was at meetings so it was just me that had to deal with it and it was not pretty.  Matthew has been steadily having worse behavior.  We finally got to the point that we needed to call the doctor for an appointment to see if we could adjust his meds.  Unfortunately his appointment was Monday so that didn't help me for his HUGE tantrum Sunday morning.  He broke the frame to his bedroom door from slamming it so hard.  I am sure our neighbors heard him screaming because it was so LOUD!!  He was so worked up that I had to stay home with him from church because there was no way he could go in that state of mind.  Aaron took all four of the other kids.  He had his hands full.  He texted me this picture of him sitting in the foyer with Noah because he was being such a stinker. 

I can only imagine what the other three were doing inside the chapel without any parental supervision....

We finally got Matthew to see the psychiatrist and she adjusted his medication, but that can only go so far.  She recommended that we see a behaviorist to help in dealing with Matthew's behavior.  Wow I don't even know where to start in finding one of those, but we need something.  His behavior is reaching and sometimes surpassing what our limits are.  We really do need help.  Hopefully I can find someone and we can get some therapy started.  Crazy times....

 In Primary they have all the kids fill out a spotlight form.  Daniel got chosen to be spotlighted on Sunday.  Here was what he filled out:

 This week is Noah's turn to be the Super Kid of the Week at preschool.  They read his spotlight form and Tuesday afternoon I got to go to the last 20 minutes of class to read Noah's favorite book to everyone.  I ended up bringing 5 Little Monkeys, Va-Va-Vroom, and How Does a Dinosaur Go to School.  He was so excited to have me there.  I was glad I could come, too.  He got to wear his special hat and had some special classroom privileges, too.  Now for Thursday I have to think of a fun show and tell for him to bring that is something just about him.  What a cute boy: