Surviving Christmas

Well it has definitely been an interesting week. Monday morning we were enjoying the fact that we didn't have to get up and out the door for school like we normally do when I got a phone call from Rick's roommate. He has called me before when he knew Rick hadn't called home in a day or two just to say "hey I told you if you don't call your wife I WILL" so I thought that was what was going on again. Turns out he was calling because Rick got hurt. He didn't have a lot of info other than he hit his head and they had to send him somewhere else, he being a friend to Rick wanted to give me a heads up first. So I sat and waited for a call from the Army. Of course that call never came so I went to bed that night praying that no news was good news. The next day I had a message on Yahoo from Rick saying he was in the hospital. A chaplain there had given him a laptop to use to watch movies on and stuff so he was able to get online and talk to me. He had absolutely NO memory of what happened to him. He only knows what other people told him, apparently they were playing football at work. They discharged him from the hospital on Wednesday and he moved into a tent behind the hospital. He had an appointment today and they think he is alright now. For now he is stuck in Balad waiting on someone to send his gear to him so he is allowed to fly back to Taji. Just what we needed around here for the holidays...... EXTRA STRESS! If after 3 deployments this is the worst injury he has I will be thankful.

We had to squeeze in a trip to Children's on Tuesday to have Aidan's elbow checked out, just a routine follow up. Of course I was thinking this would be the final one but no, they want to see him again this summer. Everything is fine but they are extra cautious with growing kids. They did say we could just schedule it for whenever we have to bring Ian back for his appointments which should be every 3 months. Saves me an extra trip to Seattle.

I managed to get all the presents wrapped and Santa was very good to the boys. If only he could have brought me a few extra hours of sleep! We are going to spend the rest of the break just hanging out at home.



I am looking forward to 2010 and hoping for a much less "exciting" year for us. Connor is the only one who has not been hospitalized this year! I hope I didn't just jinx us by saying that but boy have we had our share of doctor visits, surgeries and castings!

trying to keep up

Well I am attempting to not neglect this blog. I'm sure there is enough going on that I could update daily but taking the time to think about what to write doesn't always happen. I really thought today was Tuesday, made it a very slow start to my week when I realized it was Monday.

We had a fairly uneventful weekend. Connor managed to stay in the nursery at church almost the whole mass and Aidan was very good. Ian is always good and always has plenty of volunteers wanting to hold him. Our Christmas tree is up but has yet to be decorated, maybe we will get that done by the weekend.

Sunday night involved Connor having some kind of accident in my bathroom involving a whole lot of poop. Pretty much par for the course in my life for a way to end the week! Now he has come down with some kind of crud that has him coughing a lot and a fever.

I think I'll keep this short for now because I really need to get addresses done for my Christmas cards. If you would like to make a personalized video to your child from Santa check out this link PNP You input your child's info and can even upload a picture to appear in Santa's book. Aidan totally bought into it.

catching up

Well I keep meaning to come update here but there are only so many hours in the day and blogging hasn't been high on the priority list. I want to go back and talk about Ian and his club foot treatment. Maybe someone else out there who is looking for some info that doesn't come from a medical site will be able to gain something from our experiences.

We found out Ian would be born with bilateral club feet when I had my 20 week ultrasound. It was pretty overwhelming news because the doctors were quick to tell us that club foot can be associated with over 200 different syndromes. From what they could see at that ultrasound nothing else was wrong but we would have to have further ultrasounds to keep checking for other defects. For the next month I spent way too much time on Google searching for as much information as possible about club foot and the treatment. After a while I decided to just quit reading until the echocardiogram ultrasound. That was done at about 24 weeks and thankfully his heart looked perfectly normal. I only had to have one more growth scan after that and they decided that it was a pretty good chance that his club foot was isolated and not associated with anything else. From that point on all we could do was wait for him to be born. We unexpectedly became very familiar with Seattle Children's hospital orthopedics when Aidan broke his elbow. We were able to talk to his doctor who also treats club foot about where we would be starting when Ian was born. Children's uses the Ponseti method for treatment of club foot and has doctors that have trained with Dr. Ponseti so that was great news.

Ian was born on September 17th and was totally healthy. His feet were his only issue. Luckily Madigan and Tricare had no problem with referring him immediately to Children's. He had his first visit with Dr. Mosca at 8 days old and was casted for the first time. At the time Dr. Mosca thought that Ian would need 8 weeks of casting before they would see if he would need a tenotomy or not.
He did great with his casts and hardly fussed when they put them on. Everything I had read said to be prepared for a fussy baby at least the first day but he really could care less about them. The first week went quickly, luckily another doctor who works with Dr. Mosca, Dr. Jinguji works out of the Federal Way clinic twice a week. It was great to not have to drive to Seattle once a week. Dr. J was great for his weekly castings he made us feel at ease and Ian hardly made a peep during any of his appointments. We removed his casts ourselves before his appointments and even after a week it was amazing to see how his feet were changing position.






I wish I had taken more pictures through the process. You can kind of see in this picture how his feet were turned out instead of down like the first casts. This was I think the 5th week of casting.

We went back to Dr. Mosca after 5 weeks of casts and he decided Ian was ready for his tenotomy. This was great news since we expected 8 weeks of casts. He went into his 6th set of casts for the week and we got ready for the surgery. They started by putting numbing cream on his heels and let that sit about 30 minutes. The procedure went very well, Dr. Mosca is definitely good at what he does. He was very quick and Ian did cry but mostly because another doctor had to hold his foot still while the incision was made. He was pretty much over it by the time they put his final casts on. He was fussy the first evening but after that it was just like any other casting. We got a little bit of a break from doctor appointments since the casts that go on after surgery have to be on for 3 weeks.

The day before Thanksgiving Ian was finally done with casts. We went to Children's so he could be fitted for his shoes and bar. He was pretty fussy about his feet being touched but after being in casts so long I'm sure he was a little extra sensitive. We had a rough night the first night in the shoes but after that he got used to them.


It is amazing to see what his feet look like now compared to when he was born. For now he wears his braces full time but as time goes on the wear time will reduce down to night time and nap time.




Enjoying a little time out of the braces. This is what his feet look like today, amazing! He gets to take his shoes off 3 times a day to do stretches and he gets very excited that he can freely move. Much different from the casts.

Here it is..........

So I gave up on keeping up on my livejournal and decided to convert to blogspot. My intention was to be blogging through the process of Ian's club foot treatment but that hasn't happened either. I still will go back and write about the whole process. I know when I was doing all my research once we found out he would be born with club feet I really appreciated any information I could find. So now to see if I can keep up with this!