Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Sad

I'm kind of depressed again today, and I don't know if it's just the weight of everything finally crashing down on me or if I need to up my meds again. Or maybe it's just being tired.

We have so many appointments and things to do, people to see and things to just think about, with all of M's health issues that it's kind of overwhelming. And the worst part is that I am quite literally on my own for getting it done, as T needs to be at work after missing all that time. I really want to ask him if he can take the morning off on the day of M's follow-up MRI, but I don't know how I can ask that of him when I really don't need him there AND he did the first one all by himself (as I was at home sleeping or something). Trying to get to the hospital with two kids is just exhausting. I took them both on Monday as a follow-up blood test was required to determine of the blood thinner level needs to be adjusted, and of course they both fell asleep an hour before we were supposed to leave. When I woke up Miss O, she was just a grumpy butt (understandable), and then when we finally got the hospital, she started pitching a fit because I forgot her seat for the stroller at home and she had to walk. I honestly thought that she would WANT to walk, but nope. Mom fail.

Did I mention that my day had started at 350am because M has been a pooping machine and somehow managed to poop in his sleep so he woke up with a diaper full of it?

So last night I went to bed moderately early, and T was nice enough to sleep upstairs with M so that I could get some solid hours in. The downside of T doing this (and he does this about once a week) is that it almost seems like he thinks it's a trade off to get out of doing something. Dishes, for example. Or cleaning of any kind. Yes, I appreciate getting the extra hours of sleep in especially because Miss O is apparently done with napping and doesn't think that M needs them either. But I can't be solely responsible for both kids PLUS all of the housework during the day, right? I'm not out of line to expect some sort of 60/40 split when it comes to household chores?

I don't know, maybe I am out of line. I'm the one on maternity leave whereas he's the one working long hours. But that's just his job. If he didn't take the overnights with M sometimes, he would see him for an hour or two a day tops.

I guess I should probably talk to T about this before it spirals out of control. My meds are doing good at keeping the OCD and anxiety at bay, but I feel this creeping bit of depression that just won't go away. I know that it's linked to my hangups on physical appearance, but I feel like I can't get out and exercise because I'm constantly worried about M. It seemed like he got sick after being outside for long periods of time, and even though we know that's NOT the case (the stage 5 VUR is), it's still in the back of my mind that maybe it is linked somehow. But I can tell that Miss O needs to get outside and play, and I KNOW that I need to get some fresh air and vitamin D... Maybe I'll just suck it up one of these days and go out for a small walk. Not the 5 mile ones that we were going on before, but maybe a nice 2.5.

Sunday, August 23, 2015

I Am Disappoint

Today I've come to the realization that I am disappointed in myself. I'm boring. There's no pussyfooting around that. But I did that to myself. I'm the one who chose to not get involved in anything, or to take up a hobby and stick to it. I have all of these huge goals like writing a novel (can't even get the first page written), finishing a couple baby blankets via crocheting (haven't even finished Miss O's yet... and she's 3.5!), getting into shape (kind of gave up for the entire month of August, but I feel like M being sick is a good enough excuse for that one)... And none of these things are actually interesting.

I just don't have anything interesting to say, or do. I feel like being a mom has taken over my entire life (which is obviously has), but I've left no room for myself. I've shoved all of the concerns about my own well-being to the side, and have focused on my kids. I know this is a normal mom thing, but Jesus it is depressing! Knowing that I identify first as a wife, then as a mother, and then as Paige is just... disheartening. Where did I go?

I'm hoping that once we get into a good routine with both kids at home and pray to fucking God that M stays healthy(ish) I can take some time to discover who I am aside from wife and mother. And hopefully it doesn't cost a lot of money.

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Supportive Spousing

I belong to a couple Canadian mom groups on Facebook, more specifically they are birth clubs for both Miss O and Mr. M. I've known the ones in Miss O's birth club for the last four years or so, and the ones for Mr. M for the last year. We've gotten to know one another, and share things about ourselves and our spouses all the time.

I complain about the little things that T does, like not help with the housework or lose his marbles over money. But one thing I am incredibly, completely, surprisingly grateful for is just how supportive he has been throughout my whole PPD period.

He's the one who forced me (I say forced lightly, seeing as all he did was demand I call my doctor to get the medication rather than me faff about saying that I'm going to book those counselling sessions) to get help for this rather than try to do it unsuccessfully on my own. While Mr. M was sick, he was concerned about M but also about me. He was telling me to go sleep and relax and do things for myself so that I wouldn't get too stressed about everything. He was asking how I was doing with everything and how he could help.

I had a headache one day this week, and he told me that he and Mr. M would sleep upstairs so that I could get an uninterrupted sleep in. We traded me doing the dishes for that.

When I read about this women whose significant others brush off their PPD concerns, or send them articles about women who are "much worse off" than they are, it really hits home just how much T has helped me through this whole thing.

Having a child is stressful in itself, but having two kids is like 3 times the stress. It's not double like people try to tell you. Having a supportive and equal partner to share the load is amazing.

Someone please remind me of this the next time I go off on a tangent about things that piss me off about him.

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Fat - Nope, Not With a Ph

One thing I find myself struggling with internally - and externally, if I'm being honest - is weight. The hardest part about this post-baby thing is the weight loss journey, and the fact that it just isn't all that easy to find time or motivation when you've got two kids running around. Not to mention it has been the least of my worries since M got sick.

It's really tough to feel good about yourself when you know that you look like garbage... but then you have no motivation to change anything about that. I don't know if that's the Zoloft talking, or if I really am sucky at prioritizing, but exersize is kind of the last thing on my mind. I hate how I look, hate the size of the clothes I have to wear, hate that I look so frumpy and dumpy ... and I hate how I feel about hating it.

Step one is more than likely to change our eating habits, which are absolutely deplorable. But I have had zero motivation (there's that word again!) to make real food. Maybe it's because Miss O is such a picky pants that I'd rather serve her an Eggo for supper than deal with her whining and complaining about not liking what I've made. Actually, that's exactly it. So I'll serve her an Eggo, and then I'll eat cereal. Or get takeout. Or eat nothing. And then I'm forcing T to do the same because he gets home later than we typically eat supper.

September 1 is when I turn this fat ship around. I can see you all rolling your eyes and scoffing at me, but for reals! Imma do the thing! Because then I can finally quit bitching about it.

Monday, August 17, 2015

Testing The Ol' Anti-Depressants

Okay. I finally have some time that I can write down what happened that tested how my anti-depressants/anti-anxiety meds were working.

Basically, between July 13 and August 7, we were spending more time at the hospital than any other year combined.

In mid-July, M was diagnosed with a UTI. We had to go back to the emergency room for IV antibiotics until they could determine what strain of bacteria was giving the UTI - later found out it was e.coli - before giving us oral medication. On the third day- July 15 - M's fontanelle puffed up pretty badly, so we did a head ultrasound that showed a bit of swelling but nothing that the doctors were super concerned about, so they sent us home with a script for oral antibiotics for the UTI and we thought we'd be in the clear.

Wrong. So wrong.

July 26, M is fussy and has smelly urine like he did before the intial UTI. As he had just come off of the antibiotics on the previous Wednesday, I wasn't going to fuck around with whether or not I should take him in. So we get to the ER around 8ish, and sure enough he's got another UTI. So he's given a dose of IV antibiotics and we're told to come back again the next day for the next dose around 4pm (as we were being discharged at midnight). We get home, and he's still struggling and fussing. I give him Tylenol and he starts shivering, and his fever has skyrocketed. He won't eat, and he hasn't had a pee diaper. So I get our shit together and head back to the hospital. There was no pediatric emergency doctor on at that time (roughly 3am), so the adult emergency doctor came in and basically said that they'd be keeping him comfortable and giving him some fluids as he wasn't eating. We crashed for a bit, until about 730am when the staff shift change happened and the doctors and nurses for the day started coming on.

The pediatric emergency doctor, Dr. Siemens, took one look at the chart, one look at M, and said that we'd for sure be spending a couple days at the hospital as he didn't want to mess around with this. M's fontanelle had puffed up again, and everyone could tell that he was just miserable. Not to mention his fever wasn't going away with Tylenol, and Advil decreased it very minutely. At this point, I had gotten maybe an hour of sleep overnight so I called T and explained the situation, and asked if he could come sit with M so I could go home and crash out. He got O to a friend's house to be looked after, and came just in time for the CT scan to be done. Once that was complete, I went home and just zonked out for a couple hours.

Once I got back to the hospital, we were admitted into the Acute Care Pediatric wing - as in the isolation wing. The CT scan showed them that M had bacterial meningitis, caused by the e.coli UTI. It's believed that M had built up a tolerance to the first antibiotic and that the UTI was just kind of kept at bay by it, rather than being killed off completely.

We were in the hospital for 12 days.

T and I switched shifts during this time, he did the days and I did the nights. Thinking back, we probably should have switched off seeing as all of the tests were done during the day and I would be the one to take M to all of his follow-up appointments after, but hindsight is 20/20. During the 12 day adventure, M had an MRI which found a clot in his brain. He also had a renal ultrasound that showed that his kidneys were just barely enlarged, but any enlargement was not good. The last test that was done was a VGUC, which basically tests the path of the urine. Normally, it goes kidneys, bladder, ureter, out. M's is backing up into his kidneys, badly enough that on a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being minor, his is a 5. So my precious little man is on antibiotics (to keep the UTI's at bay) for the next 18 - 24 months, until he's big enough to get corrective surgery.

So when we were discharged on August 7, we were still on IV antibiotics for the meningitis (which we were taught to administer at home 3 times a day for 10 days), oral antibiotics for the UTI (twice a day for 3 days, then once a day until surgery happens), blood thinner injections for the clot (twice a day), and then vitamin D and BioGaia (for his poor tummy with the antibiotics). Today, this afternoon, was the last dose of the IV antibiotics. And we're sooooooooooo happy about that. We're keeping up the blood thinners until he has a follow-up MRI to determine what's going on with the clot. Hopefully it's been absorbed and the blood thinners can stop.

What did this experience teach us?
1. That our marriage is strong as fuck.
Sickness in a relationship is tough, but sickness of a kid is just the absolute worst. Through all of this, we stuck by each other and did what we could to make things a little easier. We made notes for what had happened during the day/night, gave updates to one another when we would switch off. We made sure to just be kind to one another even if we really weren't feeling that way, because it was just a given that the other person was feeling just as shitty as we were about this whole situation. It's like there was a whole new level of understanding and growth that we reached during this, and where the situation was a terrible one that I never ever want to repeat, it helped us grow closer as a couple and stronger as a parental unit.
We were concerned about money, too, because there was no way that we could be there for Miss O and be there for M if T was working all day. I would have basically had to live at the hospital by myself, which... I don't even want to think about it. One of my girlfriends set up a GoFundMe on our behalf to raise money for us so that T could be at the hospital too. It raised more money than we could even believe, and we are still incredibly grateful for it. We also had a lot of help from our parents and friends, watching Miss O for us.
2. Kids are resilient.
 Miss O knew that something was not 100% good with M, but she was full of love and kisses for him when we had her come to the hospital to see him. M is also back to his smiley self, full of laughs and kicks and noises. Miss O's resilience showed when she was spending a week with my parents, then back with us for switching shifts, then back at daycare or at a friends house, then back to my parents... she was carted all over and handled it amazingly well.
3. Our family doctor is amazing.
There's always a lag in information getting from the hospital to the family doctor. The reason behind this being that they don't send any notes to the family doctor until the patient is discharged from the hospital. However, the doctor is cc'd on any tests that are done... so imagine the confusion of our doctor receiving ultrasound, CT, MRI, bloodwork, and VCUG results on a 3 month old patient of his without any context whatsoever. We played phone tag for a bit and we finally got in touch with one another about 4 days before we were discharged. I explained the situation to him, and he was so incredibly blown away by the course of illness. After seeing him for a follow-up appointment this past week, he mentioned that he discussed it with some of his colleagues around the office and they couldn't believe what had happened either. He had also dropped an "Oh shit" when we were chatting on the phone, and that just made me laugh because despite the fact that he's only a couple years older than me, he's always very proper with his bedside manner.
4. These anti-anxiety/anti-depressants are doing their motherfucking job, and doing it WELL. 
At some point during our first day as an admitted patient, they were giving M oral painkillers to bring the fever down. M refuses to take any medicine orally, which Miss O did the same thing at this age. Not to mention they use the flavoured shit, which of course is going to be weird as fuck to an infant who has only ever had formula (or breastmilk). So he would spit it all out and we never knew how much he got. So we had administered a failure dose of Tylenol, and he was being super fussy so we asked about Advil. They said you bet, gave us the syringe and peaced out. Mom and I were trying to get him to take it but he kept spitting it out, and then he ended up choking on it. So we ring the buzzer for the nurses because buddy is choking and vomiting up all of the formula he had consumed that day and is having issues breathing... the nurses weren't coming so mom and I were yelling for help and we get like 3 nurses and 2 doctors rushing in. Of course, because we're in isolation, they're rushing to put on gloves and masks and the cape-coat thingie (okay, for the life of me I cannot remember the actual word for it). M is fine, but Mom was traumatized by the situation. I kept my cool because honestly and truly, my mentality during this entire ordeal was "How will it help anyone if I'm bawling my eyes out and a basketcase?". The rational part of my brain that had disappeared while pregnant was back, and my mom said that I was a lot stronger than her in this situation. My doctor said the same thing when we saw him last week, that I was holding it together a lot better than even he would be, given the circumstances. I then jokingly said that we upped the dose of the Zoloft at the right time and he kind of just smiled at me.

We are so incredibly grateful for all of the friends and family that helped us during this horrible time. We have several friends who work in the medical field - most of which at the hospital that we were staying at - and it was a huge relief to be able to bounce the technical jargon off of them for a better understanding of what was going on. It was also nice to have a familiar face around when all was tough.

The worst part of this experience, aside from the fact that our son was sick, was the condition of the hospital room. Dated and falling apart, humid as all get-out, and I got to sleep on a mattress on the floor for 12 days. This old body just can't handle that any more.

Monday, August 10, 2015

I Haven't Forgotten

We've had one hell of a stressful month, or so it seems, so I've somewhat fallen off the face of the earth with blogging. I'll get a big update in sometime soon, but in the mean time... it's good to know that the increase in my meds happened when it did and that they work just fine.

More later.

Edit: August 17, 2015
I'm leaving this post here as an indication of just how messed up our brains were during this time. I had previously posted that shit was hitting the fan, but apparently completely forgot about that as I put this post up that reiterated basically everything in the previous post.

Yaaaaaay brains.