oren had a ct scan and follow up with his neurosurgeon today. he handled getting the iv well (for the contrast fluid to be pumped into his veins for the ct scan to show blood flow). he was still for the scan and they got a good picture–he’s an old pro, i suppose.

at the neurosurgeon’s office we met up with the resident who we saw most often while we stayed at the hospital in december. she and oren get along well even though she gave him his stitches without any anesthesia and then removed them too. they are happy with his progress. she showed me the scans from 12/14 and today. there are two blood vessels at the site of the dent (fracture) that have gotten much bigger, so it is very apparent that the brain is doing its work and increasing circulation where it is needed. that amazes me, quite frankly. it amazes me that it was something i could witness too, and not just take the doc’s word for it. to me, even something like this that is considered the normal healing process is miraculous.

the main doc said that he’s passing along oren to a neurologist since he doesn’t think he’s a surgical case anymore (yay!). he said that they are familiar and comfortable with weaning a patient off of diamox, something that he admits he is not comfortable doing. we will probably see the neurologist in a month, and another appt with the opthomologist in that time frame too, so i hope that by then we actually WILL start weaning oren off the meds. the drug itself is harmless, but oren really doesn’t like getting blood sucked out of him once a week (he has to have his electrolytes regularly checked because diamox is a diuretic). so far, after a month, his electrolytes have been fine… we wish now they didn’t have to check so often.

i was reminded today by one of the technicians who scanned oren of what a unique case his was… she and some other people remembered him, the kid who fractured his skull from falling backward in his chair. the kid they didn’t want to operate on. it was a bad accident, but here on the other side, we’re feeling very blessed at how far that seems from us now because oren is doing so well. at some moments, we can witness that God made our bodies amazing. even here and now, we are still able to see the goodness of creation peeking out through the dark places.

Posted on February 1st, 2010

when i walked down the steps this morning first thing, i was met with a view of my two sons sitting together on the couch. it isn’t that this never happens, but what made it so special was that the older had a book open and was reading to the younger. and no one had asked him to.

now, before i had ever convinced myself that homeschooling was for our family, i asked my oldest sister why she did it. she said, one of the reasons was there was a sort of life-affirming feeling you get when you teach your kids how to read. she may not have said it in those exact words, but that is how i remember and put it in my own.

i was saying some of these things to a friend of mine on the phone later today, and seb piped up, “mommy, you didn’t even have to do anything!” so maybe we’re in disagreement as to who did all the work of teaching him to read–it seemed to happen on its own. i will concede this much–if i did the work of teaching, he did that of learning.

this is good work.

Posted on January 25th, 2010

the temps today are in the 30s, and if there wasn’t snow on the ground, i think we’d be running around without jackets and mittens on. well, at least the mittens. i just sent oren and seb to play outside, because what good is homeschooling if we don’t play outside while everyone in school is stuck inside? especially on a day like today with the sun melting the snow away and making MUD.

on the way down the back steps, seb grabbed oren’s hand to help him out since there is no railing. i didn’t even have to ask him to! he’s been such a good big brother lately, in between all the fighting and arguing and telling oren what to do, of course. he has embraced his role as protector of his little brother so he doesn’t hurt himself again.

things seem normal now, except that we are still careful with oren going down steps, etc. thankfully, he’s his own best caretaker. he is very cognizant about what he should and shouldn’t be doing, and i’m glad i don’t have to be the one to draw the lines. he’s become very vocal about warning people not to do things to him because he has a head injury (don’t touch me, i have a head injury… don’t look at me like that because i have a head injury). we play with friends and we play at home and we don’t do things that require a helmet. or should require a helmet. although who knew that eating dinner at the dining room table at home should require a helmet? (no, we don’t all sit around eating dinner now with helmets on!)

we’ve battled through most items on the list i posted previous to this. a lot of those bad habits were easy to break because we just didn’t do those things at home. like, peeing in a bottle while laying in bed. the ones that are a little harder are screaming at the help (namely, anyone who tells oren to do something), and not watching TV every day. my explanation, “we just don’t do that” doesn’t always suffice. oh well. i’ve been saying, “suck it up!” to them A LOT in the past few weeks. “just go PLAY, for CRYING OUT LOUD!” parents have to say (holler) the strangest things.

friends of mine have asked me, recently, “are you still paranoid that something is going to happen?” by this, i assume they mean “something” by his head suddenly emploding. believe me, at one point i was totally paranoid about that very thing. my answer now is, “no… as long as he doesn’t hit his head.” but i’m still surprised how often that actually happens. maybe in my life PHI (pre head injury), a bump on the head never caused a second thought. now, AHI (after head injury), a bump on the head can bring back the evil Hover-Mommy from the hospital days. are you okay? can you see? how many fingers am i holding up? does your head hurt? why are you tired?

time goes on and life is becoming much less PHI and AHI, but our lives will always be colored by it in some way, i think. especially for oren. his current way of delineating time now centers around his accident. he’ll say, “remember when we did thus-and-such (okay, so he doesn’t himself say thus-and-such)? it was before i had a head injury.” or, as i like to think of it, before he received blunt-force trauma to his skull and bled all over the dining room. some things are not easily forgotten, should not be easily forgotten. oren is also more focused on blood in his play time. blood, and getting nails driven into different body parts (which is how he described his IVs at the hospital). i’m glad in a way that he can so easily work it into normal parts of life. i think it means he’s dealing with it well and accepting that it happened. though i doubt he’ll ever have a great opinion about hospitals, those disgusting, gross and stinky bastions of pain and torture.

Posted on January 14th, 2010

uh, no, no milk at midnight.

and uh, no popsicles at midnight or for breakfast either.

bolt, again? today? uh, no.

wallE, again? today? nah.

in bed all day watching tv? well, no

uh, no laying down and eating. no.

peeing laying down? well, no.

no, no. everyone who comes to visit us does NOT have to bring presents.

yes, we do have to take a bath every once in a while.

and please, PLEASE, stop screaming at the help!

Posted on December 14th, 2009

we had dinner of a salad and chicken and are watching Bolt. just him in his bed and me in a chair. it’s a friday night, so we normally watch a movie as a family, but tonight it’s just him and me. brian is at home. sebastien is at grandma and pop-pop’s. oren and i are at children’s hospital in our cushy room on 6a. the night nurse just came in at the start of her shift and suggested that we would leave tomorrow. but i had to say, “no, maybe wednesday, though.”

“he looks so good!” she replied.

and he does. he looks really good. he acts pretty normal. he’s a little shaky on his feet. but the past two days it has been a little easier to forget (not that i actually have forgotten) that ten days ago he hit his head, and that we spent a night in the ER where they told us he had a skull fracture. then they told us they’d keep him for a night to observe him. then a few hours later, they told us that they’d keep him one more night. one night became a few more.

it’s hard to believe that just a week ago, oren’s eyes went crossed and they had to give him a spinal tap to relieve the pressure that had built up in his skull. then they said that if the pressure couldn’t be kept down, they’d have to do surgery. surgery with a high amount of risk… of what? that oren could die on the table? “an alarming amount of risk” were the docs words.

for seven days, i have been waiting for this to happen. i have been waiting for oren’s beautiful blue eyes to cross again. i have been fighting off panic attacks every time he complains of a headache or rubs his eyes or even gets tired.

“does it hurt?”
“do they hurt”
“what hurts?”
“are you okay?”

i hover. (it’s not hard to understand why oren prefers brian to stay overnight at the hospital with him.)

but he looks good. he really does. every new nurse we get says, “oh he’s so cute,” or “we heard this little guy was cute,” or “look at how cute he is.” he is. he’s so cute. i’m so glad that i can sit here and watch a movie with him tonight. and for some reason, i’m not even slightly upset that we’ll be here tomorrow on his birthday. i’m just so glad that we get to celebrate oren’s fourth year.

Posted on December 12th, 2009

my essay “three” that is part of my thesis, mommy’s doing pull-ups in the basement again, is published here.

woo hoo!

(though i have to say, it’s kind of anticlimactic when my work is alongside those who have had “over five hundred poems published”. well, only slightly… woo hoo! i’m published!)

Posted on November 4th, 2009

while he and seb sat together on the couch and brian and i sat working on our computers in the dining room,

“you guys can talk chothers, and we can talk chothers, cause me and seb are sitting out here on the couch drinking juice and you guys are sitting in there.”

of course, it was said sans the /r/and may read more accurately like this,

“you guys can talk to chothows, and we can talk chothows, cause me and seb aw sitting out he-ow on the couch dwinkin’ juice and guys aw sitting the-ow.”

Posted on October 15th, 2009

oi! i don’t know what i was thinking. in other years when we have climbed at rifle, we’ve had at the very least 4 days of climbing in the park. having at least 4 climbing days is necessary just to get one’s head into it. climbing on slippery limestone can be a little daunting if not frightening. so i don’t know what i was thinking when i decided that 2 days of climbing at rifle would be productive. well, i suppose it was productive, per se… i productively fell off every climb i attempted. my body was productively worked, and i was sore for a day or two, which is never a bad thing. in terms of sending, however, i was completely unproductive.

the little boys got to climb some, and my friend kathleen got some pictures of them (which we’ll need to post soon). and of course, brian posted here about it.

Posted on August 22nd, 2009

we adults have been playing this game every possible evening. we’re totally addicted and talk about the previous night’s game the next morning as if we really are settlers of catan… this may be the beginning of a d&d-type craze in our family. okay, maybe not.

Posted on August 14th, 2009

in broomfield CO for a few days now. the two days of driving it took us to get here felt … short. i’m not exactly lying through my teeth. admittedly, the end of the first day of driving at about 11p on the other side of st. louis MO seemed more like the end of the world, and we wouldn’t get to our sleeping destination for another two hours. i wanted to claw my eyes out. but after a short sleep (2a-ish until 8a-ish) in a very weird campground (that really could have been called a grass-ified parking lot), we all jumped back into our vans and made great time to broomfield.

this morning, i’m writing as evan practices piano on the baby grand that graces the living room of my oldest sister’s house (it’s her husbands house too, but i fitting all of that into the sentence didn’t sound good to me, so i’ll add it here in parentheses). after finally receiving my own piano the friday night before we left pittsburgh, i’m imagining what it will be like to play whenever i want, if i ever want to, and whether i really will. i’m also hoping that this exposure to their cousins playing will encourage seb and oren to want to play and take lessons. we’ll see… of course, i’ll need to get it tuned first.

here’s the list of things we’ve done so far:

•  nothing
• swimming at the broomfield rec center
• the kids have been riding bikes around a local bike path while uncle brian has been doing a little bit more
• a short hike up to dream lake in rocky mountain national park (by short, i mean, it only took us a few hours to go a mile or two, instead of all day)
• a train ride on the georgetown loop
• and i have gone climbing here

there’s some other stuff on our agenda yet: a little mini-climbing trip to rifle sun-mon and then hopefully another jaunt into the mountains with the rest of the fam before we leave next thurs.

Posted on August 14th, 2009