Vegas, Urologists and ANOTHER Round of Illness

It's been awhile.....

I'm becoming one of THOSE bloggers.

The one who always has some reason for not blogging.

Honestly, I don't know how you all do it!

How in the hell do you manage a post a day! Or even a post every other day, or a post a week??

I was doing good there for awhile, but then life just gets busy and I take FOREVER to even write a post.  Well, posts like this one are easy, but the post with a little more depth, those for me take a long time to write. I feel like I gotta get the words just right and sometimes what I'm thinking just doesn't seem to come out on paper quite right.

But I digress......

This is an update post, an easy post.

Let's start with VEGAS BABY!!

Woooo hoooo!

Our first night in Vegas!

Oh, how some days I wish I was still there.

Two week ago tomorrow (already), I met 3 of my closest girlfriends (and 2 ladies whom I had never met) in Calgary! From there we flew to Vegas and spent 4 fantastic days together! We got a little tipsy one night, we dressed up all sexy and went to a show, we went to a fantastic outlet mall and shopped all day, we rented a cabana and spent all day by the pool....the list goes on and on!

One of my BFFs

It was REALLY hard to come back to reality, let me tell you.  I shit you not, I got MORE sleep in Vegas then I get here at home.  Sure, I went to bed almost every night in Vegas at 2/3am, but then I got to sleep...UNINTERRUPTED for 6-7 hours!! Since I have gotten home, the most sleep I have gotten is....3 hours.

I blame the youngest McG.  Her sleeping can be awesome sometimes, but then she goes through weeks where she sleeps like shit. I believe she is affected by the moon's phases.  I have been keeping a sleep journal for her and it's always around a new moon that her sleep starts to go all haywire.

So, the night I got back from Vegas, Stella slept shitty, so I slept shitty.  Then a few days later Sophie decided to get a stuffy nose and guess who then got a stuffy nose?  Yup, Stella.  Stella is on a crap load of vitamins, mineral, probiotics...you name it, yet she still is managing to get sick.  I was hoping that it would just stay a stuffy nose, but nope, it's in her chest, so now she's on a nebulizer again.  I am now considering doing a complete overhaul on her diet.  So far I have cut dairy out of her diet, but I am going to start looking into removing gluten and sugar.  That being said, Stella is not the best eater, so I really don't know what I am going to feed her if I stop giving her bread, crackers, pasta.  If she'd only eat a vegetable (that isn't pureed), that would be awesome.  I know of a few parents whose children are on a sugar/dairy/gluten free diet.  I will have to get some ideas from one of them.

And poor Livi! She is fighting strep throat.  Whenever she gets sick lately, she always seems to get strep throat.  I can tell she has it just by how she is swallowing.  A few days before I left for Vegas she was complaining of a sore throat, and so I took her to a walk-in clinic (it was the weekend so I had no other choice).  The doctor there affirmed my diagnosis and prescribed the usual amoxacillin.  The next day Livi felt better and she continued taking the antibiotics as prescribed.

Well, just yesterday Livi came upstairs in the morning looking like she felt horrible and swallowing "funny".

"My throat hurts"

"What??  How is it possible that you could have strep throat again?? You literally just had strep throat!"

So off we jaunt to the clinic again, as her Ped is on vacation until August 12 (crap!).

Here is my version of the conversation with the quack.....ahem clinic doctor.

Dr.: "So what seems to be the problem?"

Me: "I think she (referring to Livi) has strep throat again.  She just finished a round of antibiotics on Saturday"

Dr.: "Strep throat is going around this year" (he says this right before looking in Livi's mouth)
Dr: (after looking in Livi's mouth) "That's not strep throat.  She has thrush."

Me: "THRUSH?? as in Thrush that babies get?"

Dr.: "Yes, it can happen after being on antibiotics as antibiotics kill both good and bad germs"

Me: "It didn't look like thrush to me? Does thrush cause her throat to hurt?"

Dr: "Yes, it can. It can be very painful"

Me: "Oh, okay. So, you are sure it's not Strep throat?"

Dr: "No, it's thrush"

Quack Doctor!

It's fricken STREP THROAT!!! That stupid antibiotic mouthwash crap has done diddly squat for my poor child.  She won't eat, can hardly talk and is in extreme pain every time she swallows!! Plus I have looked in her mouth practically every hour today and I'm sorry, but those white spots are not thrush! I know what thrush looks like, hell, Olivia, Sophie and Stella all had thrush as newborns!!

THAT'S NOT THRUSH!!!

Whew!!

Sorry, I'm a little pissed off.

Tomorrow I will be going to a different clinic and nicely requesting more antibiotics for my poor child. And this doctor better not tell me it's thrush or so help me God.....

Deep breathe.......inhale.............exhale.............ahhhhh all better.

Sophie's immune system seems to be the strongest.  That kid rarely gets sick, and when she does it's never for long.  Well, as baby and toddler, she tended to get chest infections but now that she's four, her colds never seem to bother her much.

No, her issue is her bladder.  She likes to hold her pee until she can't hold it anymore.  At the beginning of the year she got a bladder infection because of her fierce independence and unwillingness to cooperate when asked to "please for God's sake GO PEE!! I know you have to go!!!!"

This is Sophie back in March.  She had to go pee, but nooooo, she refused to go!  She insisted that she didn't have to go, and instead of going, she decided to lay down and hold her pee.  A few minutes after this picture she finally lamented and went.

After her antibiotics were done, she had an ultra sound and an x-ray of her bladder.  It was discovered that one of the valves in her bladder is not working properly and so when she pees some of the urine goes back up into her kidneys.  This is called urinary reflux.  So on Tuesday, Sophie and I made the 3 hour jaunt to Calgary to meet with the urologist at the Children's Hospital.  Sophie will have day surgery some time in the fall.  They will do what's called a "Sting Procedure".  The surgeon injects a collagen or Teflon through the tube.  It goes into the tissues below the valve.  The substance swells the tissues and sometimes tightens the valve and stops the reflux.

Then her little bladder will be good as new.

Thankfully she is much better at listening to her body and she does not lay on the floor......as often.

Update complete!

Now I must go and calm down Livi as her STREP THROAT is keeping her awake.

Quack doctor...mumble, mumble...thrush my ass....mumble, mumble....

Back To Reality

I'm back!!!!

My last post was right before the Saskatchewan River was expected to swell and do some major damage on the city of Medicine Hat.  We were packing and getting ready to catch a plane to Victoria to see my family.

Well, the river did swell, there was flooding and there was a fair amount of damage.  But the Trans Canada Highway bridge did not close and the river did not get as high as they had originally thought.

We had no problems driving to Calgary and the flight to Victoria was.....fairly uneventful.

I say fairly as I was expecting to be flying on a JET aeroplane, but when I looked out the window at the boarding gate I saw a plane with PROPELLERS???  Seems Mickey bought Air Canada Express tickets and Air Canada Express tickets give you a plane that looks like this:

A PROP PLANE!!

What's the big deal, right?  No big deal really, but for some reason the thought of flying on a plane with propellers was a lot more nerve wracking to me then flying on a jet plane.  Oh, and guess where my seat was?  Yup, right next to the propeller.

I am not a big fan of "take off" while on a plane and this time was no different. Mickey always gets a good giggle watching me close my eyes and "breathe" as the plane bounces up and down in the air as it makes it's way up past the clouds.

Once we levelled off, and the plane stopped bouncing around I was able to relax.  Stella on the other hand... she was not impressed at all.  She never actually cried, but she did not like the sensation of being on the plane.  Poor kid just didn't know where to put herself! She'd sign "mommy" and then once she was in my arms she would fidget, pull away and then sign "daddy".  Then Mickey would take her and she would do the same thing with him.  Sophie and Livi were awesome travellers! They sat together and giggled and sang and were just really cute.

Our week in Victoria was awesome!  We stayed with my sister, her husband and my two nieces.  Sophie and my niece Emily are the same age (6 weeks apart, to be exact).  They got along so well! Every year they see each other they get along better and better! There were a few arguments between Sophie and Emily and there were a few arguments between Olivia and Sophie, but on the whole.....they were all just really well behaved little girls.  They shared, they laughed, they played, they giggled, it was just so lovely.

Playing "Baby".  Emily is the baby, Sophie is the mommy and Livi just decided to jump into the picture....

These two were just so cute. 

Livi and Abby.

Stella and my other niece Abby (she's 15 months old), got along really well too....for toddlers...  Abby enjoyed pushing Stella every now and then, and Stella got in a good scratch here and there.  But on the whole, they did way more hugging and parallel playing then pushing and scratching.

The Toddlers!! They were the  "silent communicators".  Neither of them said much, yet they seemed to know exactly what the other one was saying.

Too adorable!

It was awesome hanging out with my sissy sis.  It was awesome seeing my parents again and having my girls spend time with them.  It was awesome seeing a few of my girlfriends and their kids again.

Stella loved listening to gramma sing her songs!

At the park with Grandpa

LOVE this photo of my dad and Olivia!

I miss living there.

I miss the mass amount of lush, green trees... and bushes!!

I miss the hills.

I miss seeing the mountains.

I miss having my sister nearby.

I miss having my parents nearby.

Yet I feel like where Mickey and I are right now (living in Butt Fuck, Alberta), I feel like this is where we are supposed to be.

The air may not smell as fresh, the trees may be more sparse, but this is our home.

Life is good here.

I will see my family again next year.

And it will be awesome.

And maybe we'll get a picture with ALL of the grandkids with the grandparents......

So this was the best picture we could get of the grandkids with the grandparents....Sophie, during the whole trip, refused to cooperate and smile for a picture....unless it was just her in the picture.  Stella, clearly, was DONE and not the least bit happy. Abby was nowhere to be found, Emily was distracted with Stella crying.  The only child cooperating was Livi.  But wadaya gonna do?

PS. This post was brought to you by the word "awesome"