MWNews 26

Ok, it has been a week or so and no post from me again. I have had longer spells between each one but I don't really want to go back and find out when so maybe I can just type this and pretend it happens every day.

Juanita is back in the hospital. This time with sciatic nerve pain or something like that. I have no idea what the real name of the condition is but someone said sciatic nerve pain and that was easy for me to remember. It wasn't a doctor who said it so I can only say it is a rumor of the name of the condition and not an actual medical opinion.

The sad part of the whole thing is that she will probably have to remain in the hospital for the duration, which if we are counting at home, is about six weeks. By the way, I will have to jump up and down every once and a while to stir dinner so if I lose my train of thought, pretend I am getting old and forgetful. And yes, there will be more about dinner later in this post.

Back to Juanita, she is scheduled to have the baby on Dec. 5 but they say they will move that up. To when, I have no idea, so once again, we can make no plans for when the baby is coming. Not that it is anything that is not normal as I guess you usually don't know when the baby is going to be born but with the cesarean, we can actually pick a date that is close and have it settled. In this case, we have no idea. It depends on something but the doctors are not telling us what at this point. It seems to be all a big mystery.

Juanita's condition is not unknown as it has a name and there are apparently a lot of women that get it. Normally, there is some drug they can take that reduces the inflammation so the pain is actually bearable and she wouldn't have to stay in hospital. But, the drug messes with the glucose levels in the blood and with her having the diabetes, she cannot take the normal drug to take care of the pain problem. She is just stuck taking pain killers and even then, nothing major because it might effect the baby and we don't want that. So she is stuck taking paracetamol (Panodol) and another drug I forget the name of but is a mild sedative.

I have to go eat now, so I will forget everything I was going to say and start all over when I get back. Normally, I would continue typing while I eat but my favorite show is on and I have to watch it. It is As Time Goes By, a British program if you ever get a chance to see it.

Ok, I have 20 minutes before my next show is on, Scrubs, then its West Wing, so I have to be quick.

Juanita is allowed to come on home on weekends, maybe. She came home this past weekend but when she went back, she was in so much pain, we had to take her up in a wheelchair. I am not sure they are going to let her leave again. There was a lot of confusion at the hospital today. All the nurses seemed to thing she was going home. We said the doctors had said nothing to us about it. They insisted that she was going home as soon as they got her prescription from the pharmacy. Juanita said she was still in pain and the doctors had told her she would be staying until she has the baby. They finally had to go find the doctor and have him or her tell them that no, she was not supposed to be going home.

Ok, apparently, I didn't know what time it was as my show is now on. I have to go watch it but I will be back as soon as it is over and before West Wing starts.

I am back again but I probably won't finish before West Wing starts. I had to take Maeghan to bed. She likes for me to sleep with her until she falls asleep, so I can't just put her in bed and leave her alone.

Now, if I can remember what I was talking about, I can get back to it. I know it was Juanita being in the hospital but I don't remember what I have said and what I haven't. I guess, at this point, we just have to wait and see. She will be in the hospital for a very long time. I hope she can stand it. I think she can but we will see after a couple of weeks or so. I know it will not be fun without her here at home and Maeghan will eventually want her to come home and play. She already asks when are we going to see mommy at the doctors and she will sometimes ask for her at home but so far, she doesn't have a problem when we leave the hospital and have to leave mommy there. The hospital is still a fun place for her, even though she has to try to keep quiet as we are usually visiting during the time when all the new mothers are not supposed to have visitors.

I have tried to go up there in the mornings, but so far, I can never make it before 11. I am working from home for the duration and I have to get some work done before I come up there and by the time I get Maeghan bathed and fed and dressed, it is after 10 and it takes 30 minutes to get there. I then have to fix Maeghan and I lunch to take with us, so we don't have to buy the awful hospital food, so it is usually around 11 or later when we arrive. The 'rest period' is from 12 to 3 and we are not supposed to be in the ward during that time. It depends on which nurses are there as some of them will let us stay if we are quiet and some of then keep coming up and reminding us that visiting hours are over.

We try to go for a walk during that time, after Juanita has her lunch around 12:30. Lately, Juanita is having a lot of trouble going for the walk and we do not stay gone for very long. We might have to cut it out altogether. The problem with that is, usually, I start to fall asleep when we are sitting there. Hospitals always seem to make me sleepy. I have no idea why. It is the same with airplanes. As soon as it is time to take off or land, I seem to want to fall asleep. I think they pump something into the air and that makes everyone sleepy or less alert so that no one panics when the plane is taking off or landing. Kind of like trying to drug everyone into being calm. I think the hospitals do the same thing. They pump something into the air to keep everyone drowsy and keep the patients in bed and it has the same effect on me when I am there.

I will try to keep everyone informed of how Juanita is doing. They want to give her something for blood clots but they said they cannot give it to her when she is having a cesarean as it does not allow the blood to clot after the operation. Some nurses are insisting that she have it but so far we have convinced the doctors she does not want it. That is another reason we have to go for the walks as this helps her circulation. They would have to stop the drug several days before the operation anyway and we and the doctors think that if for some reason she goes into labor or they have to take the baby early, then they will not have had time to take her off the drug before hand. So we keep insisting that they do not give it to her. We will have to see if they will stick to that or not.

I guess that is enough about Juanita for now. I will get back to her if I remember anything else. For now, we have to talk about dinner because I promised. I told Juanita that we were going to live on bologna sandwiches and spaghetti. They don't really have bologna over here, they have basically the same thing but they call it devon. Of course, you can get chicken devon and ham devon and just plain devon devon. It is all the same mystery meat but they add different flavors to it to make you think it is something else. I can't taste the difference between any of it anyway but we usually get the chicken/ham flavored. I say chicken/ham because it is not chicken or ham flavored, it is chicken/ham flavored. Tastes like bologna to me. By the way, do you know how I am remembering to spell bologna. I sing a song every time I write it. I sing the old Oscar Mayer song to myself and it spells out bologna in the song. You know the one. It goes

My bologna has a first name
It's O-s-c-a-r
My bologna has a second name
It's M-a-y-e-r
I love to eat it every day
And if you ask me why I'll say
Cause Oscar Mayer has a way with
b-o-l-o-g-n-a

Now you will be singing that song for the rest of the day. They really love it when I do it over here. It is one of their favorite songs.

Well, West Wing is starting so I will finish later.

It is now the next day. I have completely forgotten what I was talking about so I will just make some stuff up from now on and try to finish this sometime today.

I think I was talking about dinner but now that it is breakfast time, I don't really remember what we had for dinner. It was so long ago that I ate, I am beginning to feel weak. I think what I was telling you was that we were going to have bologna and spaghetti everyday until Juanita returns. So far, we have had neither. I was going to make spaghetti last night but I waited too long and didn't have time to make a proper spaghetti. Plus, I didn't have any lunch so when I got home, I fixed a couple of sandwiches to tide me over until dinner was ready. But the sandwiches filled me up and I wasn't hungry, so I didn't want to make my favorite food, spaghetti, when I wasn't hungry, so I made this sort of mince, vegetable stuff and served it over rice. I figured I could have it for lunch tomorrow and I wouldn't have to eat a lot for dinner.

That plan didn't really work out as by the time it was ready and I was watching television, I was hungry again and we ate it all. Except Maeghan. She decided she didn't like it but as she had had lots of food all day long, sausages, rolls, chips, candy, and noodles, she probably wasn't hungry anyway. I asked her what she wanted for dinner and she said watermelon. But she didn't just say watermelon, she says it with a gleam in her eye and rubs her hands together and says it kind of slow whisper. She says 'watermelon', while rubbing her hands together. And I say 'watermelon, you want watermelon for dinner?' and she says 'yes, its in the fridge, and Michael can have some too'.

So I got her a piece of watermelon. She really loves it. Not that she would always taste it and she still is wary of the first bite and will only lick it until she determines she likes it. She then ate the whole piece of watermelon I had cut for her and myself so I didn't get but a couple of bites. Once, she got a seed in hers and from that point, she had to check each bite I gave her for seeds to make sure there weren't any more and daddy wasn't trying to slip her something yuckky. She does that with everything. At first she licks it to see if she likes it and then she will check every bite to make sure there isn't anything in her dinner that she doesn't like the looks of. Like corn. Last time, or at least I think it was last time, I told you she has started eating corn. But she won't eat it if it is mixed with anything else. Only if it is corn on the cob or corn all by itself will she eat it. She is that way with a lot of things. She won't eat sausages if it is mixed with anything else and she won't eat noodles if they have anything besides noodles in them. I don't know where she gets it from but she likes to make sure you are not trying to slip anything in on her when she is eating.

I had some other stuff I was going to write about last nights dinner, but I cannot remember what it was. It was funny though so you can go ahead and laugh and pretend I said something funny.

In other news, Angela and the kids have all gone to Brisbane. They say it is only for two weeks, but they did not buy return tickets and we have no real idea when they will be returning. The kids haven't seen their father in about a year and he has never seen the baby, Shayla, so the visit may extend until after Christmas but Angela insists she will be back soon. It leaves me with no options to watch Maeghan, so I am working from home until after Christmas. I tell everyone I don't get a lot done when I work from home, too many distractions, but I work longer hours as I work before and after the kids go to bed. Actually, I don't get any work done and I only work for about an hour or two each day when I am at home. Someday, someone is going to notice that and I will get in trouble but I usually make up for it by working all night and day on a project just before it needs to be completed and no one ever catches on that I was not working on it all the time.

For example, right now, I should be building a system I will need in about three weeks and making sure it is ready and working. But instead, I am writing on this other computer and ignoring my work computer. I have a meeting in about and hour and I will probably be asked how things are going and I will say fine, even though I haven't really started. I did just get an email telling me the meeting will be postponed for an hour, which would piss me off if I was going to work as I have to get up at 3:30 in the morning to make it to the office in time for this meeting each week and if I had known it was going to be postponed, I could have slept another hour. But, since I am just dialing in to this meeting and I don't have to be there, it isn't really a problem as I can get up minutes before the meeting and still attend.

Next week, I go for my angiogram. Juanita and I still have not figured out how we are going to do this. As you know, I have to lie still for several hours after the operation and I cannot drive for two days afterwards. Juanita is already in the hospital, so there is no one to watch Maeghan while I am in the recovery room and there is no one to drive me home afterwards. Juanita says she will drive me home but I don't think she is allowed to drive either and I would have to drive her back anyway, so that plan doesn't really work. I am thinking I will have to take the train and a bus home but that means I have to take a train and bus to the hospital and the procedure is at 07:30 and I am not sure there are buses that early. I am sure there are but they probably only run once an hour near my house, so I will have to catch a bus at about 04:30 to get to the train to get to the hospital by 07:30. Then I have to take it all back again to get home. I am sure we will work something out but it does present a problem.

Juanita seems to thing they will put a new stint in while they are doing the angiogram but I am pretty sure that will not be the case. And besides, if they do that, then I will have to stay in the hospital and then we will not have anyone at all to watch Maeghan. She will have to stay in the hospital with us. It just all seems really complicated right now. We will figure something out.

William had another scan last week. They said everything was normal and there were no problems on there. Other than maybe being big, they says Juanita's problems will have no effect on the baby. He might be big because with her high blood sugar, which is under control at this point, the baby will might be overweight because of all the sugar but for now, he is normal and progressing just fine.

I had some stuff about Maeghan, things she has said and done, but I can't really remember them right now. Maybe I will take a break from writing and try to think of a few before I go.

Well, I didn't really think of anything. I have written enough in this blog anyway, so I suppose it can wait until next time. I will try to get back to it this weekend but I never seem to get to things when I should lately, so maybe not. I guess you will not know until it happens, and then it will be too late to do anything about it.

Talk to you soon. By the way, the spell checker in this thing is horrible. It doesn't have a lot of words in it and it doesn't let you see the context of what you have written, so I usually skip the spell checker part. I might type it into Word from now on and then post it from there. It says I can do that but I have not tried it yet.

And, since I cannot easily go back and see what pictures I have posted, I might start to have duplicates soon. The last picture, I didn't really want but it would not let me change it so it got posted. Maybe there is an easy way to keep track but I have not found it yet.

Bye again
By the way again, you might notice that there are a lot of pictures of Maeghan standing near or against this white wall between our kitchen and the computer. That is because, whenever Maeghan sees the camera, she says take my picture and stands against the wall. She won't leave until you take her picture, so there are a lot of her just standing there. You also have to to it a certain way. You have to say 'Say cheese' and then say 'click' so she knows you have taken the picture. She has a little pair of play binoculars she thinks is a camera. She is always looking through them at you, the wrong way I might add, and telling you to say cheese and then she says click so she has taken a picture of you. She also knows that you can look at the pictures as soon as you take them, so when you take a picture of her standing against the wall, she comes over and says let me see and you have to show her the picture.
Once again, bye. This picture was when she was learning to walk and she is walking around the mall with her walking toy.