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the_Coley_he_seeks
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Name: Nicole
Country: United States
State: Ohio
Metro: Cincinnati
Birthday: 5/28/1978
Gender: Female
Interests: Reading, getting little man down for a nap, Being a Girl Scout Co-Leader, torturing my 2 kitties (and my hubby)
Expertise: Reading. Sleeping. Making a fool of myself. I'm especially good at that one.
Occupation: Accounting/Finance
Industry: Landscaping
Message: message me
AIM:  JuvianNicole
MSN: NikleMiki
Yahoo:  JuvianNicole
Member Since:
12/4/2003
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| For our first time hosting Thanksgiving dinner, I don't think we did all that bad. I had been a little nervous since our 20 lb. turkey was still pretty rock solid the night before, and posted my concerns on facebook. A really sweet friend took time out of his Thanksgiving morning to call to see if it had thawed completely and give us a back up plan if it hadn't. Thankfully, after soaking all night, the bird did thaw in time. Hubby got up around 6:30 in the morning to get it ready and put it in the oven.
We tried to watch the parade, but JB wasn't impressed and kept turning the TV off. So we gave up and just focused on last minute cleaning and starting the cooking. We had an even dozen, although Kaya didn't join us in eating the yummy food. The family started arriving around noon to help set up, the big meal was planned to start at 1:00 pm.
We were almost ready to eat. The turkey was carved and on a serving tray sitting on the stove. Next to the turkey was the mashed potatoes, in a plastic salad bowl that was doing duty as a serving dish. Hubby put the gravy on the stove and turned on the back burner to heat it up a bit. Or so he thought. I was standing right there when I noticed the plastic mashed potato bowl start to smoke. I tried to grab it to pick it up off the burner, but the bottom had already melted. PLOP. All the mashed potatoes fell on to the burner with the melted plastic, and I'm left holding a salad bowl with a big perfect circle hole in the bottom. Ooops.
We were able to salvage some potatoes, and the family was very gracious about the delay. Dinner was only an hour late, which I don't think is quite so bad for a first timer, personally. We're totally inundated with pies, though. Bret felt the need to make an applie pie even though he knew that his mother was bringing some pies. She felt the need to leave them here, so we have 2 pumpkin pies, an apple pie, a cherry pie, AND pecan pie! Anybody local that wants some pie is welcome to come visit!!
Hope everybody had a great thanksgiving!
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| After the last post I spent the evening on Pubmed researching infant sedation & MRI, reading things like Sedation and anesthesia protocols used for magnetic resonance imaging studies in infants: provider and pharmacologic considerations.. I read about half a dozen different studies comparing different types of sedation medicines and the effectiveness of each. I got a good idea of what the procedure entailed and learned a lot about the levels of sedation. At least 3 sources said that the so called "conscious sedation," or lightest level, is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. It was really looking like Kaya would have to go to at least the 3rd level (which I can't think of what it's called at the moment), if not the 4th, which is general anathestic.
I gathered that the risks they are most concerned about are the person going deeper than intended, and aspiration in the event of any vomiting or spit up. For going deeper than intended, there are protocols that say that the person administering the sedation should be prepared to revive the child from one level deeper than the intended level of sedation, and the protocol for general is to have emergency personnel no further than 5 minutes running distance away. As parent, there's nothing you can do about that. You have to trust that the people working with your child know what they're doing and have the skills necessary to save your child (or make the best possible attempt) if something goes wrong.
To avoid aspiration, they recommend that the child have no solids for 6 hours before the procedure, breastmilk for 4, and clear liquids for 2 hours beforehand. Some people I talked to, and even some literature, said that breastmilk counted as a clear liquid. However, when I read the actual guidelines, I have no idea how anyone could interpret them to say that breastmilk could be considered a clear liquid. It's a very long document though, so I hadn't found the part where they indiciated how they came up with those guidelines yet. I did have about half a page of questions for the doc, though. 
So the next day I called the nurse and said that I had a lot of questions about the MRI, first and foremost wondering if there was any reason it couldn't be delayed until she is older? The nurse said she would call the doc and get back to me. We were celebrating my SIL's birthday when she called back and said the doc had agreed to delay the MRI, but hadn't enumerated how long. Yay!!!! So for now, after all that research, it boils down to:
- She gets another ABR on Tuesday, I guess to confirm the results of the previous 2 or to see if her hearing might get worse.
- She has a follow up with the ENT in early Dec, perhaps the results of the DNA test will be complete by then.
Hubby's work had incorrectly reported his earnings, so it looks like he doesn't qualify for unemployment. To prove otherwise, we have to fax the 36 paycheck stubs to cover the last 5 quarters. (That's over a year's worth.) He tried to fax them from Super Jobs, but they officially only fax resumes. He tried to do it secretly, but the fax didn't go through, and since they only do resumes, he couldn't ask for help. So now it looks like we're going to just have to suck it up and pay the 5 cents a page or whatever price to do it from Kinko's or something. I know that only works out to be like $3, but right now that's a lot of money for us. This is such a hassle!!!!
Our foodstamp application is being held up because apparently the Hamilton County Jobs & Family Services (HCJFS- foodstamps) shares some sort of system with the Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA- who we rent our home thru). HCJFS has to verify how much we pay for rent. They're supposed to be able to look in the system and see this information. But the worker couldn't find the info, so she gave us a form for the CMHA office to fill out. The CMHA office flat up refused to fill out the form, saying that we've been here 2 years and are in the system, to talk to a supervisor at HCJFS. When I try to call the number for HCJFS, I get a message saying "We are experiencing an extremely high call volume. Please try your call again later. This call is ended." This is of course only after I've spent 15 minutes trying to guess the right phone tree responses to actually speak to someone. If they don't have all the info by Monday (tomorrow) the application gets cancelled and we have start all over again. I was finally able to get through on Thursday to someone by using a "check on the status of your application" option. She said she would email the case worker, and if we hadn't heard back by Tues to call back again. Yeah, that should only take another 20 tries before actually getting someone on the phone....
FINALLY, after a month of badgering them, hubby's work faxed us a letter confirming his termination. Only for me to discover that they say he was terminated on the 17th, when in fact it wasn't until the 19th. This wouldn't matter except that he worked on the 18th, so now we have to go back and forth to try to figure out if he's missing a day's pay or not. :sigh:
We've been referred to the Legal Aid Society to help with the above issues. I got the consent forms in the mail on Friday, I just have to sign those and send them back.
Hubby went on an interview this week, they said that IF he gets called back, they'll be doing second interviews the first week of December. He didn't sound to hopeful about how the first interview went- the job was not what he had expected and he does not have experience in that specific area.
My boss cut me down to 12 or 13 hours a week because there just aren't any new jobs coming in.
Times may be hard, but the most important update is that Kaya rolled over for the first time yesterday. The most precious parts of life have nothing to do with money and the daily grind.
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| Well, at least we know she won't need surgery to put tubes in her ears. The ENT doc said that Kaya's hearing loss is not related to goop. She has mild congenital hearing loss. They said her right ear is ALMOST normal. The left ear is very mild. He said that cases like this are why they started doing the newborn hearing screenings. Had we not done the tests, most likely we would not have noticed anything wrong until she "started falling behind in second grade." She can hear us speek at normal tones. He said we'll be working together with the ENT and the audiologist. The audiologist will help determine exactly how much she can and can't hear and what we're going to do about it, and the ENT will help to try to figure out the "why" of the hearing loss. Today he said that there are 2 tests to help determine the why. The first we had done already today, a simple swab of her cheeks to check for genetic markers. (She thought it was very funny and tried to eat the swab.) The second, well, they want to do an MRI. WHAT??? YOU WANNA DO AN MRI ON MY 4 MONTH OLD BABY????? YEP. (No, I didn't really yell at him, but I was in my head.) I'm really of 2 minds on this. On the one hand they say they need it and it's no big deal. It would help determine exactly how her inner ear is shaped and help determine exactly what we're dealing with. It's a pretty routine procedure. When I asked about the risks of the procedure the nurse only brought up the radiation factor. Then she mentioned that she would probably have to be sedated for the procedure, and I am well familiar with the risks of sedation. Not to mention that in reading the paperwork they want the child to not eat for 4 hours before the test. Are you kidding me???? So from here: They want me to schedule an MRI as soon as we can get her in. I've already scheduled a 3rd ABR (Audiology Brain Response?) to confirm the findings of the first two and determine exactly how much she can hear for Nov. 24th. A follow up withe the ENT for the results of the MRI & DNA testing on Dec. 8th.
I welcome opinions/advice/personal experience/moral support! | | |
| Kaya failed her second hearing test today. Since she was born at home, she didn't have a newborn hearing test. I finally got her in for a screening in August. She didn't pass. Her eardrums weren't moving as much as they would like, so they recommended to see if it was just a need to grow bigger thing. Well, now she's bigger, and she failed the test again. The pressure test was OK, but she failed the hearing test. However, it was inconclusive as to whether she failed because of actual hearing loss or if she failed because of maybe some goop in her ears. So we were referred to ENT to take a look, and based on whether it's just goop or not would determine whether we do another full ABR. (Audiology Brain Response or something like that. The test is hard to get because she has to be asleep for the duration of the test, and it can take up to an hour.) Or whether we "put her in the booth" which is apparently seeing if she turns her head towards a sound. It was unclear whether she has mild hearing loss or whether there's just goop in her ears. So we're going to go to the ENT, but I'm not sure about beyond that. There was a mention of maybe needing surgery to put tubes in her ears, depending on the results of course. On the one hand my nephew had to have tubes, but on the other I wonder if it's really necessary. There's no question that she failed the test, but only mildly.
If it's not going to affect speech or language, is it worth going through? What has your expeience with this been?
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| Thankfully, I'm to the point I can laugh at this now.
- Kaya woke up just before the alarm went off, so I had some hope that with the extra time I might be able to sneak down and do some yoga. But then JB woke up, so that hope was dashed.
- JB bit me while nursing, so I unlatched him. He of course was upset about this, and hit me, several times, hard. After hubby took JB downstairs this led to a total breakdown, crying on the bed for 20 minutes before I could get ready for work.
- I tried to get it together, but already upset, snapped at hubby about a pop tarts wrapper.
- On the way to work I couldn't find my breakfast, I thought I must have left it in the toaster being so upset when I left.
- Got to work and made a status update about forgetting my breakfast, mentioning my husband's lack of help with the hitting.
- Made my earlier post, totally exasperated and at my wit's end as to what to do to stop JB's hitting behavior and angry at hubby for my (false) interpretation of how he handled the incident.
- Hubby's best friend reads the status update and the post, and makes his own status update directed at me that some people need to filter themselves. I was pissed off, but did immediately delete the status update and the link on facebook to my xanga post. I made a second update telling him to go back to his coffee.
Pause I did a lot of thinking then. I feel like I don't know social norms, and I was trying to figure out the logic of what he was accusing me of. You know, the "if what I'm doing is bad then what the hell am I supposed to do instead?!?:" thing. At first I was saying, so it's OK for me to bitch about my son's bad behavior but not my husband's? But then I realized the difference. With children, most people in our society will automatically attribute a good intention or an innocent motivation to less than perfect behavior. With adults, not so much. Everybody is human and has faults, and it wasn't fair to hubby to be publicly airing his. Nobody likes to be pointed out that they did something wrong though, so I wasn't very gracious about it. He wasn't nice in the way he told me I fucked up, but I wasn't very nice in responding to it, either.
8. Went to put my bowl from lunch back in my bag and found my breakfast that I thought I had forgotten.
9. Was starting to feel better because lots of people had made supportive comments about having a breakdown, started to get ready to leave work, and stepped in dog shit. Yep, the boss' dog had done his business in the basement and I hadn't noticed it.
See, now THAT'S absurd. With everything going wrong and having such a bad day, stepping in dog doo doo right when you were starting to feel better is just the universe laughing at you. I just gave up at that point. The icing on the cake was when I went to the store to get cheese. You can only get the 16 oz. size with WIC, and there was exactly 1 package left in that size. And it was open.
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