Our summer in a... novel.

Seeing as I'm a few months behind, I think I can sit and write about our crazy, hectic summer.

It all started almost exactly one month after Thomas had his big first birthday! Tommy has just woken up and we were sitting on the couch watching a Disney movie on the computer, when I started feeling stiff and kind of cramped in my left shoulder. I thought nothing of it and just rubbed it a little.

Then it started to get worse.

The pain grew in intensity and moved down from my shoulder into the left side of my chest. After a few deep breaths to see if it would go away, I thought to myself "Oh great, here we go again." My lung was collapsed. As Dale was at work for the day, I got my dad on the phone and asked if he could come pick up me and Thomas. He said he would leave right away so I hung up and tried to get a hold of Dale. That was quite the experience. Luckily, the lady on the other end could sense my distress and urgency so she put me on hold and tried all she could think of to try and find "My husband,Dale Thomson, he works with Ethanol." 

We hung up and Dale called right away and I had him rush home to help get me to the Emergency. My dad and dale got home at the same time so Thomas set off with my dad, and Dale and I headed to the hospital.

We got there, let them know what was going on and that it had all happened before and they got me in a room right away. Now, a little info on a partially collapsed lung. There is pain almost as soon as your lung becomes punctured. But for me, there is always a point where the pain climaxes and gets to be very unbearable. This point just so happened to occur right as I was getting into my emergency room and having a IV entered. 

Now normally, the pain would subside and I would feel better. But this time was different. The pain never went away. The Doctor came to my room after x-rays and blood work and told me that it was, in fact, another spontaneous pneumothorax, and wanted to keep me overnight so I could go for more x-rays in the morning to see if my lung would heal on it's own. I explained to the Doctor that I was a nursing mother and would be more comfortable spending the night in my home and coming back in the morning. Thankfully, he caved, and I went home.

We arranged for Tommy to be picked up in the morning and Dale and I headed back to Emergency. After an x-ray, we discovered that not only had my lung not healed, it had gotten worse. As per the Doctors advise, I was sent into surgery to have a Heimlich tube inserted into my chest to help the trapped air escape so that my lung could refill with air. This procedure was supposed to procure instant results, and did not.

So, back on the table I went. Although they wanted to manually get the air out through this tube. They attached a giant syringe to the tube in my chest and physically pulled the air out a syringe full at a time. After two or three vials of air, the next one hit home. As the surgeon pulled to fill the vial with air, it felt as if my insides were being stabbed over and over. Mr. Surgeon explained that the pain meant the air was gone and the tube was rubbing against my lung. An x-ray showed that my lung was on it's way to recovery.

The tube was left in for a week and I had to keep telling myself that pain equaled good. Although, I was healing, this was one of the hardest weeks for me. With one side of my chest completely bandaged up, I wasn't able to nurse anymore. Thomas was still waking up 2-3 times at night and I would try to nurse on my right side but I couldn't reach into his crib to get him, I could barely hold him on my lap to nurse, and it was only on my one side. 

Sadly, there were quite a few nights where I could feed him once but then I would have to lay there and listen to him cry while I wasn't able to help him. This was much harder for me than for Thomas. It was maybe only 2 nights where he would wake up and cry to sleep before he just started sleeping through the night and not needing mommy anymore. That in itself hurt more than my lung did, but I was extremely blessed that Tommy did so well in the transition from nursing to not.

 Finally, I had my appointment at Mr. Surgeon's office to get my tube removed. After sitting in the waiting room for over two hours (They couldn't reach the surgeon because their communication system was down) we went in the examination room and I got my tube pulled out. Then Mr. Surgeon went on about how I should think about getting the surgery done on my left side that I had had done three years earlier on my right. This surgery is to, hopefully, prevent this from ever happening again. Dale and I were still talking about whether or not we should do the surgery or not when the surgeon came back in the room and said he had an opening in five days (which was a friday). 

So, we booked it.

Friday arrived after a week of anticipation, worry, anxiety, and all that comes between. We arrived by ten a.m. and I got all prepped and ready for surgery. I was finally wheeled down around one p.m. and a few minutes later I was passed out with my procedure well underway. I don't think I know how long it took, or when I woke up but I do know that I really wanted to see Dale. After sitting in the recovery room getting all the pain meds I needed, I was sent into the room I would spend the next three nights and four days in.

Once I was all settled in my room the nurses called Dale for me and when he showed up I was so happy! I was feeling so good (It could have been all the medicine...) I just couldn't help but smile and make jokes. This was a big deal for me! Three years earlier when I had this surgery I was in no mood to talk, smile, eat, move... anything! I had lost about 20 pounds and was not doing so great. But this time, things couldn't have been more opposite. What a relief!

I had some awesome nurses, some not so awesome hospital food, some super fun visits with Thomas and our families and then, I was able to go home! We stayed with our parents for the first two weeks after my surgery because I couldn't handle a busy little boy on my own. And so, I would sit back and let the healing begin! Well, you know what I mean.

 Honestly, it sucked that I had to have all this happen to me. I wouldn't wish it on anyone! But it really did work out. We were blessed to have all our family around for the summer, willing and able to have sleepovers with Tommy while I was recovering in the hospital, or letting us stay in their homes when I got out of the hospital so I wouldn't have to work so hard. Also, Dale's work was amazing throughout this whole ordeal. There were quite a few days where he was only able to come in to work for a few hours but they marked him down as not missing any time at all. For what it's worth, this couldn't have happened at a better time for us. We just had to focus on all the positives to help us through it all.

So while all of this was happening to me, tons was happening with Tommy! When I went into the hospital he had four teeth. When I got out of the hospital, he had seven with two more on the way. Not only was he popping teeth like it was going out of style, but after a few days of being home from the hospital, Tommy was walking all on his own!

After two weeks of being away from our own home, we finally moved back in. It wasn't long after we got back home that Tommy developed a cold and an ear infection on the same day and was trying to cut both of his top molars at the same time. Wowzers. This really through us for a loop. We went from a Tommy who would sleep through the night, to one who wouldn't sleep longer than a half hour.

Thankfully that was diagnosed quickly and we could get him some antibiotics to ease his pain. After a few days he started to be able to control himself a little bit better and we could really tell that he was improving; thank goodness.

Me, on the other hand, not so much.

After thinking that surely our family must have gone through every trial in store for us and that we were in for some smooth sailing, reality hit. After making supper one Sunday evening for my parents and sisters, I got a really bad migraine. I took some medicine for it and figured it would just go away. It didn't. It progressively got worse all day Monday, and all day Tuesday. Finally at 11:00 p.m. on Tuesday night, I could not handle it anymore. I was throwing up, I couldn't see straight, my limbs would go numb, etc. Tommy was up screaming anyways so I took this opportunity to have Dale drive me to the Emergency.

My dad met me there and stayed with me while they tried to figure out what was going on. I met with the Doctor and she seemed concerned at first that it was viral meningitis because the symptoms are very similar to that of a migraine. So I stayed over night while they monitored me and gave me some pain medicine which helped a ton. Come morning time I was allowed to leave so I called Dale and he brought Tommy to take me home. Thankfully, that was over.

Unfortunately, our hard times were not.

Last week, Tommy became very irritable again. He wouldn't eat, wouldn't sleep, wouldn't stop screaming, the whole nine yards.At first I was thinking that his ear infection had come back. Some people say that once a child has an ear infection, it never really goes away. So I was thinking that was the problem. But when I layed Tommy down on my lap to give him some medicine, I noticed some bulging in his gums. The poor boy was cutting both his bottom molars at once. No wonder his mouth hurt. But, that wasn't all. The whole bottom side of his tongue was covered in a cross between a canker sore and pimples, also known as Thrush. Thrush is a yeast infection in a baby's mouth. It's most often found while their nursing but Dale discovered that it can also be caused due to antibiotics given to kids.

No wonder he was having a hard time. Normally his soother would calm him down but the act of wrapping his tongue around the soother just hurt him so bad. So Dale stocked up on pro-biotic yogurt and baby tylenol for Tommy.

The end.

Not.

A few days later, on Sunday, We were at my parents house for dinner. It was getting later in the evening and we had just changed Tommy into some footed pajama's so we could get him home. Well my parents have hard-wood floors in their living room and a step-up to their fireplace. Well, Thomas was walking towards the fireplace, picking up speed when his feet slipped and he fell face first into the step.

Crack.

The bottom of his chin made full on contact with the step. Instant screaming, a mouth full of blood... It was not a pretty sight. I grabbed Tommy and looked in his mouth to assess the damage. His tongue was still attached but had been bitten on the underside from every single tooth (and they got in deep). I just had to stick my finger in his mouth next to make sure that he didn't lose any teeth or that none of them were wiggly (None were, thank goodness.) Then I started shouting commands for a cold, wet washcloth so he could suck/bite on it, a cup of water so he could drink some or even spit some, and finally his soother so he could calm down a bit.

I'm happy to announce that that has been the last misfortune we've encountered up till now. (knock on wood!) As happy as I am that this happened over the summer where we could deal with it all properly and have tons of help, I totally missed out on all the summer weather and now we're being threatened with snow. Boo. I'm hoping the weather (and the accidents of misfortune) will hold off for a while, so that our little family can get back up on our feet and rebuild our happiness, our routines, and our immune systems.