Processing

 Well on Sept 15th we drove back into Prince George from our road trip to Vancouver clocking over 1600km. I must say right of the bat that the kidlets did awesome. I think Francis actually squaked a little more just so that she could get fed. However, Alistair to my surprise did amazingly well. The ear plugs I insisted Becca bring didn't even have to be pulled out once. The unfortunate thing was that the day we headed south I started to feel a head cold coming on and by the time we spent one night in Vancouver Alistair and I both had it full on. Fortuately, Becca and Francis were able to keep it at bay. As usual I think oooo this trip will be a breeze from the medical aspect of things. I'll just pop in and out of appointments and then we can all just kick back and truly enjoy being in the big city! Well not quite! Thankfully I didn't go alone...which I of course had been considering until Becca, a good friend of mine, was happy to come for the ride. She use to work at Vancouver General so she had a few places she wanted to get back to and visit along with catching up with some of her buddies. She was fabulous to have along. Not only to be a great hugger of Francis but just to have a friend to chat to in the evenings and attempt to make sense of some of the content!

We only had two days of appointments but of course the half days that I had anticipated both turned into basically 10-12 hour days. By the time we were done all the appointments I had three more appointments that Alistair and I have to come back to Van for before the end of the year. Ya not expecting that. One was for orthopedics. I decided to go see an orthopedic doc down at Childrens as Alistair's feet are continue to turn in due to all his toe pointing. In the long term this can cause permanent foot structure issues and I just felt something more needed to be done. Anyhow, he got both his feet casted which he thankfully went into a deep morning snooze for or we would never have gotten that accomplished. However, because his splints need to be made specifically to his castings

we have to come back for them. We also saw the plastic surgeon for his hands and got new hard and soft hand splints to help pull his thumb back out as he's tucking it under inside his hand. So now he needs that all stretched out. Then on our Thurs appointments we had to go into day surgery as Alistair was to have his MRI that day. Before we got there though, to my surprise, they decided to fit us in for a CT of his ears that we had been told wasn't going to be available to him. But I had to laugh when they said he just has to keep still for 2-3 minutes. I said there was no way it was going to happen. However, the lady said we may as well try as we have time. So fortunately it was in the morning when he likes to snooze. So just like the foot castings, after Alistair got wrapped all up in warm blankets he promptly fell asleep and voila he had his CT done. Then over to where he got sedated so that he could have the MRI completed. Anyhow in day surgery Dr Skaarsgaard, Alistair's surgeon for his diaphragm at 3 days old, came over to check on him and look at an xray we also had done. It was great to hear all went well there and there was no rupture of the diaphragm. I also got to see his xray and his left lung is basically the same size as his right! Beauty! While he was there he checked out his undescended testicle and its no longer retractile....so you guessed it... surgery is being booked before the end of the year. Then last but not least we got in to see Dr Connolly the neurologist. It wasn't at all a suprise to hear that Alistair has "generous space" around his brain. But what did come to a

surprise is that at the base of his brain where the spinal cord meets the brain there seems to be a "beak" as she called it. So yep off for a cervical xray we went. Long story short the spinal specialist was called and it seems that Alistair has a displaced C1 and C2 vertebrae. These are the top two vertebrae of the spine that the skull tends to ride nicely on. So ya....your asking whats this mean? Can they do anything? Is he a candidate for surgery? Would we take this route if offered? Is he at risk? Well the only thing I can say is Dr Riley, the spinal specialist, told Dr Connolly that it was stable. We were given no restrictions for him but needless to say it makes me nauseous just the thought of it. But what can you do but wait. So now we're referred to see Dr Riley. Now my impression is that we'd get in before the end of the year but who knows right!?!?! We didn't actually see him it was just words be transfered from one specialist to another. I'm just thankful that Dr Connolly caught it and got right onto pursuing some answers for us. So...now what? Well we just wait now until Oct 1st when the secreatary returns to Dr Riley's office and then we'll know more. Thankfully Dr Skaarsgaard took us under her wing for no other reason then just reaching out and having a BIG heart...and she said on Oct 1st she'll walk over and try to find some definitive answers for me and then I can start attempting to schedule all of the appointments around about the same week.  This time Jason will come so it'll be a family road trip. But really I just want him to be there when we get to talk to Dr. Riley so he can ask questions incase we are offered surgery or interventions so that we can make an educated decision together. So how did I feel after all that? You know I went into overdrive.

Alistair had snot vomits the whole time we were down so basically Francis, Alistair, and I slept on mats in the living room of this fabulous house called "Victory Hill Residence" provided from the Provinical Services for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. That was thankfully a huge help in coping over this week. We had this 6 bedroom two story house all to ourselves for the whole week! One night I had 3 showers with Alistair just to try and help clear his head which I likely wouldn't have done if there were other people staying there. Plus we wouldn't have crashed in the living room. I'm sure I got 3-4 hours total of sleep a night.

Yahoo caffeine or more like Vanilla Bean Lattes! Anyhow we did get to spend a good part of the day hanging out at Granville one day, I caught up with my buddy Kim and her little man Grady, Becca got to see a bunch of her friends, we did some shopping on fourth and then spent a night in Squamish at a nice hotel en route home. All I can say is thankfully I didn't add more appointments to this trip as I was feeling guilty for not piling in more appointments which I could've easily done but something told me to stick with the main priority appointments and thank goodness I did. It really wasn't until I got home that I crashed BIG TIME. Like my friend said in the UK "I think when we go to those places we go hard because we spend so long trying to be upbeat, that sometimes it catches you like a viper!" I think once I got into the comfort of my own home, with my supportive husband, and really just time to process all that happened down there it seemed to swallow me up. Thankfully today I finally seem to be somewhat sane again. Its all about processing and renormalizing and I think I've found my normal again! Whew heavy stuff, and you know what both kidlets just look at me and smile and just want tickles and hugs. So thankfully once again my little people are happy and not in pain...as some families are not as fortuante....its all relative! Nighty night!