December Recap

Wow, where did the month of December go?  For that matter, where the heck did the year go?! We've been busy this month with lots of opportunities for Jack to get out and about.

Earlier this month we attended the Ryan House Holiday Party where they had "snow" (a machine blew out soap bubbles.)

Jack has the reputation at Ryan House of being a Beatles fan (Mark is a big Beatles fan, so he put a lot of Beatles songs on Jack's iPod).  The harpist remembered Jack and played a few Beatles' songs for him at the party.

Jack's gifts from Ryan House

Last week I flew to Southern California for the day to participate in a video that is being produced by Children's Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) to promote the TouchStones of Compassionate Care program. My dear friend Sarah (Keturah's mom from the Trach board) is on the family advisory committee at CHOC and she really pushed to get the hospital on board. For the video, they chose several sections from my "Dear Future Physician" letter and several moms each read a section for the video.  A CHOC physician was also featured in the video, as was Keturah.  The plan is to roll out the whole program (video and TouchStones) in February.  I've been invited to attend the roll out in February and I'm so honored to get to be there to see it happen.

The group of CHOC moms and Keturah who participated in the video (and me, of course) 

A few days before Christmas we had our annual family cookie decorating party.  We've been doing this for a few years now and it's become quite competitive.  This year there was a lot of pre-decorating planning involved and one sister showed up with her own special decorating tools! It was a lot of fun and many thanks to all of you on Facebook who voted.  :)

The winning cookie 

(apparently a Pinterest idea)

A close second

A few days before Christmas, a woman I work with told me about a rescue dog her husband was dropping off at the animal shelter.  She had her husband (who works for animal control) bring the dog by the office first so I could see him. The dog was calm, sweet and had really sad eyes that said "take me home". So what could I do? Ugh! I called Mark, he took the kids down to the shelter to meet the dog and they decided he was a "yes".  We are now the proud owners of __________.  We don't have a name yet that we can all agree on.  It's changed three times already.  I'll let you know once we decide.  So far, he's working out well. He's quiet and calm.  A perfect fit for our family. (I can't do dogs that bark a lot, jump a lot or that need to be housebroken.)  Unfortunately, we've already forked over a chunk of change since we got _______ because he's got complications from being neutered (performed at the shelter before we could take him home).  Vet bills less than a week into dog ownership is not what I planned, but, then, what ever goes according to plan, eh?

Mary and our dog ___________

Poor Mary has been working her tail off since she got home from college.  She's working at Target at the guest service counter. You can imagine how nice people have been to her the days before and after Christmas (not!)  They scheduled her with full-time hours, so she's not getting in much relaxation during her Christmas "break".   For the most part, she's not complaining as she needs money for lift tickets and snowboard rental when she returns to school in a few weeks. 

Next week, I'm taking Jack to see his pulmonologist to talk about putting him on a new ventilator.  This vent - the Trilogy - is supposed to be more sensitive, making it more responsive to the patient's own breathing.  I talked with the RT at our DME company and she said they are using it quite a bit with patients here in Phoenix, so I thought we'd better check it out.  It's a smaller vent, doesn't have external peep like the LTV and has longer internal battery life. The only downside is that Jack has to go inpatient to trial the vent.  I'm not excited about a PICU stay, but I suppose I can tolerate it for one night, especially if Jack is not there because he is sick or has had surgery.  I've definitely come a long way from someone who absolutely hated the vent to someone who is now shopping around for a new one!

That's the recap.  For those of you on Facebook - this is mostly old news.  To my blog followers -thanks for checking in and thanks for caring.   I wish all of you a . . . 

VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR! 

Here's to 2012 - may it be a good year for all of us.