Babies, Etc.

It has once again been some time since I've posted here, but we have definitely had an eventful time. Our son Liam Alexander was born on July 10, 2009, followed by my wife nearly dying and having to spend five days in Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

When I arrived at the hospital where she was in labor, they were starting my wife's epidural. I had to leave the room during the epidural because it wasn't going well and they had to do it twice. My wife was in a lot of pain, and they told me there were problems with his heart rate being too low, so it was out to the lobby to take a Xanax. (I was hoping to make it through the experience without taking anything, but that didn't last long) There were a couple more scares during labor with his heart rate dropping, but the birth went well. At one point the nurse called in some sort of alarm code and a whole troupe of people burst into the room, which did not raise our confidence. He ended up doing okay and We didn't need a C-section.

After the birth, my wife suffered from a dural headache (brought on by the epidural puncturing the wrong space) but it wasn't too bad and she was able to rest a lot. Liam is a wonderful baby, and is very mellow & quiet even when he's awake. About a week later (Thursday, July 17) she woke up with a migraine that was so severe, she couldn't even sit up. I took her into the walk-in clinic and they gave her a pain shot which helped some. We went back home and put Leigha back to bed. The migraine was eased a bit, but still there. She rested but wasn't able to sleep. When I came to check on her later in the afternoon, she couldn't see much of anything - only light and dark blobs. I called the clinic and, they told me to take her to the emergency room.

Thursday was the day that my dad & step-mom were coming up to visit us & see the baby. We hadn't seen them in over a year, and everyone was looking forward to it. As they were arriving and bringing their things into the house, I was leading my completely blind wife out to the car to go to the ER. It was good & bad timing at the same time. I was able to take off and leave the kids at home with family, but we didn't get much visiting time in over the weekend.

My mom & step-dad came to the ER with us in case my wife needed extra help getting inside, and we brought Liam in so that he would be able to nurse. She was in such great pain, that it brought tears to her eyes just to sit up, let alone walk. After it became apparent that she would be staying at the hospital well into the night, we bought some formula, took the baby back home and my mom went back to stay at the hospital.

Liam took the formula no problem and slept for 5 hours at a time during the night. I was really worried about how that would go, but not in a panic since he's the third child. I felt strongly about staying home with Liam during the night and not letting him be away from both parents at the same time. Some might think babies don't know any better, but I think it's a big deal. The time my wife was in the hospital was very difficult, especially since the kids couldn't visit her. Liam was only a few days old and having to be apart from him was really hard on her. I let him sleep on her side of the bed with me, and he was merciful and only woke up once or twice each night to eat.

My mom stayed at the hospital with my wife, and she was transferred to Harborview Medical Center during the night. She ended up staying there five days, having a whole barrage of tests, and finally being released without us knowing why it had all happened. They did tell us that she had a rare brain condition called Pres (Posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome) and that she should fully recover. She was released home with her vision at about 50%. She couldn't read or watch TV. Fortunately this improved over time, but even now (6 months later) she has trouble driving at night and can't handle the light in certain stores. We have also noticed decreased short term memory and brain function in some areas. For example she enjoys word games on the computer where you have to quickly unscramble letters to make words. On one game she used to achieve level 24 regularly, but now can only get to lever four or six.

Overall things are going well now. I'm glad my wife is alive and life is carrying on mostly as usual. Months after her release, they finally gave us a diagnosis & cause for everything. This did result from the epidural drawing too much fluid from the wrong space and she technically had a stroke, except that they expect full recovery. We also found out later that she would have died had we not gotten her into the emergency room that night, and even so, the doctors at Harborview were surprised to see her walking out the door.

Since this blog was started on the theme of anxiety, I will mention that I had to use Xanax to be able to sleep on most of the nights she was in the hospital. I was in grief over what might happen to her, and also for our newborn not being with mom.

So overall, I rate bad epidurals one out of five stars.

Trouble with a capital 'T' and that rhymes with 'P' and that stands for 'pool'.

OK so that title is meaningless, but you have to write something. My condition has deteriorated a bit lately so I wanted to get a post in for time line purposes again.

In the past few weeks I have noticed increased anxiety, but nothing too serious. There have been a couple days I have gone home early or stayed home due to feeling sick, and it took me a while to recognize what was going on. At first there didn't seem to be any reason for my anxiety issues, but then I finally realized that we are having a baby soon and that's kind of a big deal. I'm not consciously nervous about having another child, I think it's just the whole unknown of delivery timing & circumstances and hoping everything goes well. We are down to the wire here, so it could be time to head in to the hospital any time. Leigha's contractions got as close as three minutes apart for a time last night, but then died down.

A few things happened that led to a full fledged panic attack today unfortunately (Sunday 6-28-09). Friday night I decided to try & sleep without trazodone so that I would be alert enough to drive right away if we have to leave during the night. I have actually been meaning to try sleeping without it for a while anyway but haven't gotten around to doing it. (guaranteed sleep is always much more appealing than probable sleep). I thought that the medicine was only helping me go to sleep, but it turns out that it also keeps me sleeping through the night. Friday night was a terrible night's sleep, and I had the old kind of anxiety in my chest that I haven't felt in months. I woke up several times with frustrating dreams, clenched jaw, and adrenaline in my chest. That feeling stayed with me through much of Saturday as well.

Coinciding with this were two pieces of bad news that sent me over the edge. We found out Friday morning that my dad had accidentally overdosed on his medication and had been taken to the hospital. He was released later that morning, but the issue was that he was getting confused and wasn't able to keep track of when he took the medicine. On Saturday morning I got a call saying that he was being taken into the psychiatric ward because the confusion had gotten to a point that required professional help. This has happened to my dad before and he's come out okay, but mental issues are never easy to diagnose, and there's no guarantee of 'fixing' things.

Last night I took a half xanax to help me sleep (0.25mg - not much) and woke up at 3:30AM with bad things rising in my chest & took the other half. I played keys for two services at church this morning so another .25mb of xanax got me through that. I'm glad I made it through both services okay, but it was close. I had such bad chills at reherasal that I layed on my office floor with a heater blowing on my until service started. (If you know me, you will know that is very out of character - I have my own fan on stage that is always on) Anyway, I made it home, collapsed in bed and got a nap, but the full panic attack did hit by that time. Fortunately after a few hours I started feeling closer to normal and I haven't taken any more xanax since early morning.

This post may be a bit more scattered than some of my other ones, but I don't have the energy to proofread & edit this time.

Things I've Learned From Peeing In A Bottle

[For better or worse, I'm getting back to my old self. In case you don't know me, this post falls into the 'normal' category for my personality, therefore this blog is about to get a lot more awesome.]

1. Turn The Fan On. Urine isn't so bad when you're dispensing it into a bowl of water that is either several feet from your nose or covered by your rump. It doesn't get nicer with proximity.
2. Grip The Bottle More Tightly Than You Need To. You're holding it with one hand, and are about to make it heavier. This has taken me a surprisingly long time to learn, but I haven't dropped one yet.
3. Give Your Bottle A Rinse Once In A While. It gets a bit stanky after a few refills. At least that's what I would guess. I wouldn't know...
4. Clearly Label The Bottle. Peeing into an opaque (or lemonade) bottle without marking it as nasty is just wrong.
5. Jugs Won't Work - Only Bottles. Okay that's not true, but come on. You need a jug? Really?
6. Girls Can Do It Too! www.go-girl.com. (Okay, I didn't actually learn that one from experience - it's more of a public service announcement.)
7. Use The Bottle Capture Method Only When Necessary. I'm using my special bottled liquid to let our pet mole know that I want to eat him, and he believes it. Pour a good amount down the hole and that route won't be taken again.
8. Consider Alternate Uses. Urine in a bottle frightens moles and children alike. Who knows what other amazing things this wonder liquid could accomplish!
9. There is no #9.
10. If you have money to spare on mole-killing products, do that instead. I'm using pee-pee because it's free and I'm man enough to deal with the bottle smell.
    

Abandoned Blog (Wish I could say I'm sorry!)

I may have been premature in saying that this blog would no longer be about anxiety. I've had a few issues since my last posting, serious enough that I've taken Xanax a few times, but mostly I'm doing well. I haven't written in a long time because I just haven't felt like it! Part of my recovery process has been letting go of things and not being ruled by compulsions that I couldn't ignore before. For example, the fact that I have a blog dictates that I should update it regularly, or lose all of my readers. In the beginning, this blog was mostly for myself - a way to organize my thoughts and keep track of timeline. In the past few months I've been busy focusing on other things and haven't felt the need to write, nor have I felt bad about not writing. If anyone is still reading, in future posts I will discuss some of the side effects of the SSRI medication (Celexa) that I'm currently taking. My doctor didn't volunteer a lot info on the subject, so it might be helpful for others. If you have questions about any medication or side effects, you should ask your pharmacist (or any random pharmacist) about it first since they are much more up to date on effects and interactions anyway. Doctors have to keep up with too wide a field of knowlege to constantly remain experts on medications.