mama knows best

when you are a nurse it is hard to judge when to take your child in to be seen by a doctor. you think to yourself, well it could be this, it could be that... or i could be over reacting. you sit and stew, ask your friends, sit and stew and try to make the best decision for your child.

this was me. carson had been coughing and running temps of around 103. could it be a virus? yes, so i sat and waited until day six to take him in. i had recently dealt with strep throat myself, so i was wondering if that could be his problem also. i worked saturday night, got home sunday and went to bed until about 1 pm. when i woke up he was laying on the couch, coughing and chilling, sitting right at 103.5 degrees. ok, so we are going in. shouldn't be to busy on a sunday early in the day.

wrong!! three and a half hour wait, at least. wow. so i utilize my sources and check to see if our other locations are busy. downtown is not so busy and much closer to where im at, so i load carson back in the car and head there. lets just say downtown is not the same as my lovely little hospital. the place stinks of urine and is filthy. gross. i wanted to load him back up and run, but we had already been triaged.

i waited patiently in the dirty little room with car who was flushed and holding his chest, wincing every time he coughed. the RESIDENT came in to see him (another difference between the downtown location and mine) and did a quick history. he felt it wasn't strep, but even if it was, we didn't need to treat it. "strep will go away on it's own eventually." that is something i had not thought of. maybe we could we treat it just for fun? that is my opinion.
his lungs sound really good, so no need for an xray. ok, i thought he sounded a little coarse and diminished, but who am i to question this fine resident.

then an attending comes in. i recognize him as the brother to a doctor i work with. oh good, he will have some sense. and yes he does, he asks all the right questions, states that he will go talk with another doctor and get right back with me. great!! thank you so much i gush.
45 quick minutes later in comes the nurse with discharge paperwork. but you haven't done anything yet i squeak. she says, the doctor wants you to know that if the fever continues for another 7-10 days you should follow up with your primary. so after 14 days of fever i should get checked?
yep. ok then. its now 5:30pm, i left my house around one and drove all over, waited all day for nothing.

today car woke up 103 again, so i called my primary and nobody was there. not sure why the office would be closed, but this is how my luck is running. well, at noon on a monday my little urgent care should be wide open. i load a crying carson up again and head out.

its packed. on a monday. nobody knows why, just a weird thing. great. so we wait again for two hours. carson hates me now. i begin bribing him with all i know - ice cream, toys, money, you name it. we are friends again.

we are seen, the clever little doctor at my nice sweet hospital takes his history and says "well you should always be seen for a fever after five days." thank you sir, i tried. "based on his history im certain its pneumonia, lets get an xray." i love you, finally.
when he got it back, it was a nice large left sided pneumonia with some patches on the right.

antibiotics. thank you. was that so hard? what if i didn't know any better and listened to the folks at the other location? how many people do that? scary. anyhow, all's well that ends well. we have a diagnosis, we have drugs, so hopefully my little rugged boy will be back in no time.

heartache

so my heart is heavy and very sad tonight. i see that the inevitable has come to pass and barack hussein obama will be the leader of this great nation. along with him, congress will have a commanding majority of democrats. you know the last time that happened? lets see... well i can tell you what happened - the great depression.
that is what i am feeling. im not hiding my head in the sand, or feeling shamed. i feel strongly that if you know what you believe in is right, than that is all that matters. truth prevails.

i will work to find positive things about liberals. i know there is something they believe in that is in line with my beliefs. help me. i can't wake up every morning with this feeling in my heart.
so give me positives.

my husband made a great observation. you can't control what happens in the country, but you can control what happens in your home. focus on your family, love your children, go to church, instill values in your family. teach your children that there are definitely absolutes. there are rights and wrongs. this country is headed in such a direction where nothing is absolute anymore, its just a little bit wrong, or only wrong in certain cases. i don't agree. i will teach my children that is not the right way to think. i will keep morals in my home, even if they are sliding away in the rest of the country.

for tonight, i will allow myself sadness. i will grieve the loss of what could have been...
but tomorrow i will wake up and put on a happy face. i will find positives in what can still be.
it is just four short years, right? i mean, how much harm can one liberal president, congress and supreme court do in four years? don't answer that. every problem has a solution.

halloween

it sure seems like there is a lot of preparation for something that goes by in a blink. after shopping for four costumes, buying four pumpkins, carving four pumpkins, roasting seeds, buying treats, snacks and goodies for three parties, attending three school parties and two trunk or treats we did manage to save up enough energy to dress four children in costumes and go trick or treating in the neighborhood for a little bit.



here we are.


some scary



some tough




some mean




and some just stinkin cute.

lammers

ashton has a beloved lamb he calls appropriately "lammers". it is dirty, flat, holy, stinky and gets worse with each washing. i found one on ebay and ordered a "back up" lammers.
don't you wish every thing you loved came with a back up?
lammers number two made the long trip from chicago and arrived at our house yesterday.

when we opened the package, there was this lovely, fluffy, soft, snowy white lamb like we used to have. funny thing is, ashton snubbed him and went back to old lammers. maybe replacements to those things we love isn't such a good idea after all.





the princess took a quick liking to him and has claimed the clone her own. not a single dollar wasted my friends. this little face doesn't really look like somebody who deserves a new lammers in my opinion.

goose bumps and a little bit of a black eye

i have such goose bumps right now and not the spooky halloween kind, but the holy cow what a miracle kind.
the gal i call cool mama had her baby! this was the little guy that doctors told her long ago was not a viable pregnancy and would not live to delivery.
well go see how he is doing!!
how can any body not believe in miracles?

now, another story.
for those of you who have been anxiously awaiting it, here is the picture of my big fat black eye.
you can giggle now, because i am ok, but it was not funny at the moment of impact.
as you know, i had strep throat last week. i was home alone with the children and starting to feel a little bit better so i got up to do some laundry. jeff was at carson's football game, i was a little woozy, and then i turned around to grab a towel and BAM. this nearly six foot tall girl dropped like a brick into the door frame. whoops. so now i am trying to get to and from schools, grocery stores, church, visiting with neighbors all the while hiding my boo boo.
as if the stress of the election wasn't enough to worry about.

try and look under the crazy large forehead and there you go. like i said, you can giggle now.

it will all be over soon

eight more days and it will all end. after that all of my political posts will be deleted, and the blog will return to a historical account of my daily family life, its true intention... really.

until then, watch this short tiny little video.

http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/video.aspx?v=e46U8zvkuz

pretty eye opening.

so i can't tell you how to vote.

vote for the economy, vote for health care, vote for the war. vote for taxes.

i can tell you im voting for morality. the rest will fall into place.

pumpkin patch and strep throat

so i am down for the count with strep. can you remember how crappy that makes you feel? its a rare occasion that i haul my own self out to the doctor and i did just that yesterday after waking up with stridor due to my ever so swollen and bleeding tonsils. yuck-o. but i am going to give a "shout out" to the little walk in clinic at CVS. the nurse prac. who saw me had been a flight nurse for over ten years and was tired of the excitement of traumas, so shepou started working there. she was fantastic and i was in and out in about 30 minutes. granted, there were some interesting souls waiting with me, but still handy. then you just hop two feet to the pharmacy and get your scripts. ingenious.
so i went home armed with my antibiotics and lidocaine to a restful house where i could just lay around for days... resting and recuperating. ha ha.... well, close enough.
so with nothing really to blog about, i will just throw up some pics from the pumpkin patch. you definitely don't want to see pics of me at this point.