Loopy Drugs

I just downloaded all the pictures and videos from my camera and found a video of Kaitlyn from Monday. She had been given the loopy drugs and they were taking effect by this point.

Sure she can still count so she must be okay right?! Notice it makes her a bit ADD though. She quickly discovers the mystery of pushing the fingers in.

Ahhh... Starting to relax.

Neal didn't take pictures while I held her the above photos. She was really loose then. I tried to keep her as close to me as possible and support her head in hopes of her not freaking out. Once her head moved a bit to much (aka slight bobble) and she started to panic, but as soon as I pulled her in more she stopped. It seemed if she felt like she's in control of her body it kept the panic mode down. She never did scream and freak out like she did the other two times.

Notice Maddie, her ever faithful doll, was right there in the mix of it all. When she woke up from surgery she had Maddie with her.

One LOL moment was when a nurse and anaesthesiologist were talking about all the things that have gone back in the OR. Mind you we are talking about children having surgery so they encourage you to bring a blanket or toy that comforts the child. One said, "I've seen them go into the OR decked out in pistols, holsters, and cowboy boots." And the other one quickly threw in, "And that was just the doctors." Hahaha...

Third Surgery

Kaitlyn had her third and final surgery yesterday. Dr Brock removed the plate and four screws from her right femur. Afterwards he came out and talked with us saying she's a good bone grower. He said the screw tips had been sticking out the other side of the bone when he put them in, but they were covered (by bone) when he went in to remove them. We asked about pain meds and he said with some children Tylenol will be enough and with others they need prescription drugs. He decide to send us home to try out Tylenol and for us to call if that wasn't working. Seeing how she did so well after her second surgery with just a little Tylenol we decided going that route was fine. I should have said "no, give us the perscription." Right after getting Kaitlyn to my parents house she fell asleep. I took off for Walmart to get some Tylenol. I gave her a dose around 2pm. The poor thing woke up in a lot of pain. Her diaper was wet and had soaked through so Neal took her brace off, but she wouldn't let him touch her beyond that. I told him to leave her alone for a little bit so the Tylenol could do it's magic. She went to sleep shortly there after so I left her in the pee diaper. I figured it wasn't poo so she could stay there a little longer. Two hours later I figured I better see if the pain was gone. It wasn't. She was crying about her leg hurting and not wanting to be touched. I immediately called Dr Brock's office and asked them to call in the pain meds. They told me to give them an hour then call the designated CVS and see if they have the prescription. An hour. When your 2.5 year old is in pain an hour is a long time. It really only took them about 15 minutes to call me back and say it was done. Mind you, when they say an hour, it's not so they can twiddle their thumbs, but Dr Brock was probably in surgery again.

Now the hunt was on. I called the CVS I had picked pain meds up for Kaitlyn before and they said they didn't have it yet, but their prescription line was blinking. They said it would take 15 minutes for them fill it. My parents are almost 15 minutes from the CVS so that was perfect. Of course when I got there they said they didn't have it. I quickly went to the other CVS in the city and they didn't have it. I even checked a Walgreens just in case. I kept calling Dr Brock's office just in case they were all on the phone and not really out of the night. By this point it was just after 5pm; an hour since I had called about getting the meds. I called Neal and he checked for another CVS in the area. Nope. He then searched for Dr Brock's and his assistant's cell numbers. He couldn't find the paperwork which means we took it to San Antonio. Finally he remembered he had Dr Brock's cell in his phone from when he had to call and give verbal consent for her first surgery. He called and got his voice mail. Augh!!! I went into the second CVS and asked if there was anyway to search all stores for the prescription. They did it and they called the one it should have been at. I asked if I could give her something besides Tylenol for the pain. They said no. Augh!!! Neal was able to talk with Dr Brock's aid and she said because of the nature of the drug she had to fax it in. I went back to the first store and asked them to check their RXNT. They were in he middle of printing off several prescriptions when I walked up. They said they just got it and they were filling it now. I said, "Good because my toddler is laying in bed with an overflowing diaper in to much pain for us to change her for FOUR hours." They didn't say another word. They quickly got me the drug and sent me on my way. I would just like to say SHAME ON CVS for not checking your RXNT for two hours. My poor baby was in pain longer then she should have been because your people don't check all means that prescriptions come in. Dr Brock's aid said this IS COMMON with CVS. So if you ever go to your local CVS for a prescription and they are sitting on their thumbs saying they don't have it tell them to check their RXNT just in case it was sent that way.

Oh, sorry, rabbit trail. The Hydrocodone has to be working, but Kaitlyn still cries about the pain. I'm not sure what we are going to do about going home. We are supposed to head back to San Antonio today. Neal has to go back because of work so no matter what he is leaving. If Kaitlyn doesn't start acting better soon then her and I will have to stay behind.

Please pray Kaitlyn's pain goes away. We would really like to get her home to San Antonio.

Pray for Dane

Please remember Dane in your prayers. Every time your little one toddles by or you see a young child playing think of Dane and say a quick prayer for his speedy recovery, his parents sanity (I'm only half joking), that they will all be well rested both in and out of the hospital and that the one surgery is all he needs.

Does this picture look familiar?

Here's the one I posted of Kaitlyn back in January after her surgery. Dane has gone through the same kind of surgery. He actually had the same doctor too.

This little guy has a long road of recover and cast time ahead of him. At times it can be really hard. His parents need God's help getting through it all. If you would like to peak into his life you can do so at the Wittschen's website.

Spica Cast Diapering And Taping

I've read several sites talk about how to diaper a child in a spica cast. I have yet to post anything about because I figured others have covered it even if I do it a bit different. However, I've decided it's time share a bit of what I've learned from personal experience. From what I have read you should us a size 1 or 2 diaper; I would like to strongly disagree. Dr Brock's nurse gave me a paper before leaving the hospital that says use a diaper one to two sizes smaller then the one they wore pre spica. I totally agree! When Kaitlyn poos it can go up the back, front, or even in the sides of the cast. A smaller diaper allows the poo to freely go up. A bigger diaper pulls the poo out of the cast as you remove it.

Another thing I've learned has been about diaper styles. In the hospital we used size 3 Pampers; they worked well. If we didn't put a diaper over the one inserted into her cast it would fall out because of the smaller size. On the way home from the hospital I bought size 3 Huggies; these were a bad purchase. Huggies have a lot of elastic in the back which pulls it all together preventing it from staying nicely tucked into the cast. If you have a smaller opening in your cast then more power to you on using Huggies. I don't suggest them. My suggestion is to save those Huggies until your little one is cast free. Our third package of diapers were size 4 Luvs. Luvs are our normal brand. For someone who hasn't ever used Luvs, they are cut like Pampers. The larger size is working great!!! I have been thankful on more then one occasion we're using the bigger diapers. By the way, before surgery Kaitlyn was in size 5.

For a while we used the shell to her cloth diapers to cover the diaper area and to hold the inserted diaper in place. The more she started getting around the harder the cast was on the cloth diapers. We moved to a simple rotation with disposable diapers that is working well. We insert a size 4 diaper (with a super absorbent pad) and strap a size 4 diaper over top her cast. Did you know those diapers can stretch? If you are using a really cheap diaper that doesn't have stretch... pay a little more. So your child is diapered. At the next diaper change you take off the outer diaper and set it aside. The inner diaper and pad are thrown away. The outer diaper now gets the tabs pulled off (you don't need those scratching your little one), a super absorbent pad placed inside, and the combo inserted into the cast. Now diaper outside her cast with a fresh diaper and you're done. Rotating the diapers keep you from throwing away your money on a larger diaper to cover the cast. The stretched out tabs are going to be pulled off anyway so don't worry about the stretch you put on that diaper.

Diapering at night... Even when they aren't in a cast nightly diapering can be a challenge. Since being in the cast Kaitlyn seems to pee more at night. I have yet to do it, but putting the mattress at an incline (head up) will cause the pee to run down into the diaper rather then up the cast. We had a lot of trial and error at night until we learned what really works for us. I put two pads in Kaitlyn's nighttime diapers and I use a size 5 diaper. The first time or two I tried this it did okay, but I still had a partially dry diaper that leaked. I thought about buying different pads at night that didn't have a plastic back, but then came up with this...

I cut two pads up the back.

I pull the back open a little so there's a nice gap for all the pee to flow through to the diaper.

Here's the diaper with two pads, cut up the back, as close to side-by-side as I can get them. The smaller the diaper you use the more these two will have to be overlapped. Because more pee runs to the back I insert this mega diaper with the pads starting at the back cast edge.

Taping the cast has little to do with the actual diapering process, but it's important. While I had the camera out I thought I would take some shots of her taped cast.

All the white you see is waterproof medical tape. It comes in different sizes, but mine is 1" wide. I tried the slimmer stuff and goodness was that a pain to put on. Under all the white is a Gortex lining that covers the underside of the cast, some foam, and gauze. If you don't tape the Gortex within a day or two of the child coming home from the hospital the lining will rip. You don't want this happening. On her second cast the Gortex ripped on both knees before I could get it taped down. Thankfully I was able to pull it together and tape it down. Once you have waterproof tape all around the cast openings you then need to add Duck tape to hold it on. The waterproof tape sticks well to the Gortex, but not the cast. Duck tape comes in most to all cast colors. As you can see the hospital Kaitlyn had her surgery at uses a darker purple then Duck tape supplies a color for. However, their pink is spot on. As you can see from the front shot the tape between Kaitlyn's legs is damaged. From time to time I have to take off the Duck tape (carefully) and add more waterproof tape, then more Duck tape. Near the end of her being in the last cast I wouldn't take off the old tape, I would just add to it. When she had her cast down to her toes I still put both tapes on the toe area. I also put Duck tape around her ankle/heel and knee areas to protect them from all the crawling she was doing. I found myself almost nightly adding more tape to the knee of her one fully casted leg so I started putting a man's tube sock on that leg. My main reason for taping the knee and heel was to keep more cast from being applied to her existing cast, making her even heavier. Heaven knows I don't want her heavier.

EDIT: Near the end of Kaitlyn's cast time I realized we still had a lot of size 4 diapers. I swapped the size 5 at night for the 4. We never had an issue with leaks with the smaller diapers. I think the pads were the trick not the size of diaper.

We're Home!

I'm glad the hospital stay is over. When we arrived Monday morning I could tell Kaitlyn knew we were there for her. She was anxious and kept saying "poo poo potty" to get out of the room. As soon as I would get her into the bathroom she would cry while saying "noooo". She didn't need to go potty she just wanted to run away.
It helped that I brought a bag of toys. When she wasn't worried about what may be going on she was playing. We learned Makka Pakka and a Tombleboo can fit in the Barney car just fine (see the yellow car by the rail with Makk Pakka standing in it).

The nurses told me I didn't have to take Kaitlyn's sleeper off that they would do it later, but she's my baby so I thought I should have the honor of doing it for the last time presurgery. I waited until they drugged her to make the switch. Even with her limp and loopy she tried to fight me about removing her clothes. However she only gave a brief fight.
It was really odd to see her on this drug. She looked like a special ed child. I don't say that to be rude, but to give you a better understanding on how limp she was and odd her behavior became once the drug was administered. To be honest for a moment I panicked when she looked at me and gave a sluggish half (one side of the mouth) smile. The drug was supposed to take all her anxiety away and wipe the memory of the morning out of her mind. I'm not sure about her memory, but the girl still had fight in her. At one point I was trying to pull the gown down to cover her diaper better and she freaked out, bent her knees up to her chest while screeching "nooo". Also, when the anesthesiologist was carrying her away she started crying and trying to fight her. The lady slowed her pace and started singing and swaying. I had to quickly walk out. I couldn't handle watching my baby cry while someone carried her away.
I was supposed to be taken back to the recovery room while Kaitlyn was waking up. I was told I would be the first person she would see. However, I walked in the room and she was fighting the nurse. She wanted all the wrapping taken off her left hand. She ended up keeping that club-hand until yesterday. She did a bit of yanking on her IV and it started to bleed. I called in the nurse and after taking most of the wrapping off she left the room to get something. Kaitlyn started wiggling her fingers. Suddenly the IV line fell out. My mom was there and she grabbed Kaitlyn's hand, applying pressure to stop the bleeding. I pinched the IV off and called the nurse back in. They had put a spare "just in case" line in Kaitlyn's foot so they moved the IV to her foot.
Here she is resting on Tuesday. As you can see the cast goes all the way down her right leg to her toes. You can only see four of her toes sticking out the end. I'm a bit torn about her having a free leg. We had a hard weekend which left me looking forward to her being immobile. LOL... The tan strip on her left leg was just tape holding down her catheter line. By the way, the catheter fell out yesterday. I discovered her with a wet diaper. The nurse thought it was just sweat, but when she had a wet diaper an hour later we knew it was pee. With the catheter gone the epidural had to be cut way back. The wire coming from her toe in the picture is a heart rate monitor which she got to lose when the epi was gone yesterday afternoon.

I have a couple more pictures of her wagon rides (which she REALLY loved), her sleeping belly to belly with my mom (picture the casted leg in the air) and her here at my parents house.

Big Request!!!

I'm working on what I would like to call Showers of Stickers. Kaitlyn LOVES stickers; small ones, big ones, shiny ones, simple ones, she likes them all. Some of the ladies from a discussion board I have belonged for the passed three years are sending Kaitlyn stickers.

So now I'm turning to my blog readers to ask if any of you would like to "shower" Kaitlyn with stickers. You don't really have to shower her actually. Just get one of those flat sheets of stickers that fit into an envelope.

Kaitlyn is going to have a LONG recovery follow her surgery on Monday and I'm hoping the stickers will give her some joy. After a meltdown at the hospital on Thursday I found some glittery Christmas ornament stickers in the diaper bag that made her HAPPY. I told her they were "shiny" which I knew she would relate to her favorite preschool show, The Shiny Show. She kept saying "shiny" while paying with the sheet of stickers.

So if you would like to be apart of making a little girl happy during her long recovery you can email me at njclark8203(@)aol(.)com for our address. Just take the ( ) out of the email address to reach me. Thanks!!!

Change

Things are happening quickly with Kaitlyn's hip surgery.

Just to catch everyone up... On Monday of last week I faxed our insurance paper off. On Tuesday Kaitlyn was assigned a pediatrician. Wednesday we saw her pedi for the first time and got a new referral for an Orthopedic Surgeon. On Monday I get a call saying the referral was made out for the hospital the clinic is in, not the clinic, so it's bad. I then switched her Tuesday appointment with the ortho surgeon to Thursday. Thursday we spent all day at the clinic/hospital seeing the surgeon, filling out paperwork and waiting. The waiting is a killer. It was driving me nuts. So two weeks from faxing off our insurance forms Kaitlyn will have her surgery. By the way, that two week mark is this Monday. Yep, two days away.

Am I up for her being in a body cast? Am I ready for her to have surgery? Am I ready for the sleepless nights and Kaitlyn being in pain? Well... I'm ready for it all to be behind me. This is going to be the longest three plus months of my life. When I told the dr we are going to Guam in May he was quick to say it can't happen. I told him we should be able to get our tickets changed for a later date. He said we would have to stay here at least a year from the surgery. Today Neal has been trying to cancel the orders for Guam. It's either cancel the orders or spend one to one and a half years apart. I'm not sure how that will work out.

And the "quilt". I'm not sure when I will get to work on it. I've gotten as far as washing the fabric, but haven't had a chance to iron and cut it out. I'm not sure when the opportunity will present itself.

What Surgery?

If you didn't know Sadie had surgery yesterday you wouldn't think anything was wrong with her. Yes she may hesitate before running to the back door to bark at the birds, but she still does it. The dogs, to Sadie's delight, keep our backyard free of birds. She gets more exercise chasing birds through our bushes and eventually out of our yard. Because the dogs are in the birds are out. Sadie has spent a good portion of the day looking out the backdoor at all the birds gathering. Honestly I haven't seen so many birds back there at once since we have lived here. There were five alone within 4 feet of our patio door and I could see more in our bushes and yard. I did get her to roll over earlier so I could check out her incision. I'm honestly impressed it doesn't look more like she was just cut open. I expected it to be more swollen and red. BTW, the pain meds work like a dream. When Neal's alarm first went off this morning (6am) I tan downstairs to give Sadie her first pain pill. The poor thing had peed at the end of her pen getting part of her bedding wet. I gave her a pill and then had to hand feed her some special dog food. Did I say before that she is on a special diet right now??? Well she is. UD I think they call it. It's a prescription canned food (you ever heard of having to have a prescription for food???) that is supposed to work for 4 out of 5 dogs who had stones. Well this morning I had to hold can food in my hand so she would eat it. She has been out several times today and is peeing well.

Well... it looks like she is ready to crash for a while. I'm kind of glad. I've been worried about Kaitlyn hurting Sadie. A couple minutes ago Kaitlyn ran beside Sadie and fell down. She is now back on her bed where Kaitlyn can't get to her. I think Kensey is bored. He is such an inside dog and Sadie likes being outside, but they always want to be together. Guess who compromises??? Kensey of course. I know Neal would think that's about right the guy always doing what the woman wants. Hehe... Well I guess it is kind of true. There has been a couple times today when he will walk to the backdoor. I know he is begging for me to lock him out. If I just put him out he will want back in. If he is out and I put the baby gate across then he is fine with staying out.

BTW, the picture above was from when I was pregnant with Kaitlyn.

Sadie Update

Sadie made it through her surgery with flying colors. Before the surgery they did an x-ray on her and found she had a kidney stone over an inch big. Thank goodness we now know what was causing all her problems and it is taken care of. While they had her out to be spayed they took out the kidney stone, cut her nails, and cleaned her teeth. We didn't request the last two; they threw them in for free. I'm hoping the drugs they gave her are good enough to get her through the night because I'm not supposed to start her oral pain meds until tomorrow. She doesn't feel well enough to get around much. She has gone out to go potty a couple times. The last time we took her out she got cold so we put hot/warm wheat packs in her bed.