Stuff With Thing

So its been an eventful week.

Monday I had my sigmoidoscopy which really hit me hard afterwards and took until Wednesday morning for me to recover from. Wont go into the icky details, suffice to say it was, icky.

Heidi had her first swimming lesson Friday last week and just loved it, she is a real water baby. So I was thrilled when the swimming school rang and said they could fit in an extra midweek lesson for us on Wednesday morning. It was fantastic and both girls had a ball.

But Heidi didn’t want to finish, whilst trying brush her hair and prevent her escaping the change room I pulled something in my back, end result excruciating pain. Not sure how I managed to finish dressing the girls and get home but we did it. Then I collapsed on the floor and after much stretching, hot packs, cold packs and more stretches, my back is starting to get back to normal two days later.

I’m feeling depressed about being sick, depressed that I’m not getting any stitching done and depressed that my house is looking less like a home and more like a garbage dump.

Been a bad couple of days. Nothing found during the test yesterday but things didn’t go as smoothly as hoped. I’m tired and drained and depressed so will leave the blogging for now and go watch the Wonder Pets with my girls. Thank god for Nick Jnr.

Some of you may remember as far back as July last year when I wrote the Anatomy of Toy Sale, thus revealing in its full glory my OCD planning streak.

The K-Mart toy sale is once again almost upon us.  Starts on 3rd July, catalogue available online from 27th June.  And I’m not one little bit planning to go and buy anything!  Astounding myself and many of my friends and family.

Okay to be honest, I’d love to go and get lots of cool toys but there is no way I can physically do it this year and so I’m saving up my pennies for the ultra cool wooden toys at our local Steiner toy shop.  I’m going to get the girls some furniture to go in their wooden dolls house that I painted.  Perhaps I might even splash out on some wooden dolls to hopefully supplant Barbie :grin:.

In the meantime I’ve got my in hospital tests on Monday the 30th June.  My MRI has now been scheduled and is on 6th of August.  So I’m looking forward to Monday when I get at least 5 hours to have a really nice nap whilst the Doctors sedate me and stick cameras up my rear end (lucky them).  Peace. Quiet. Sleep.  I think a camera up your rear end is a small price to pay for such luxury.

Annie woke up at 2am this morning screaming and has been crying ever since, painkillers been doing nothing.  Turns out she has a nasty case of swimmer’s ear.  We’ve got antibiotic ear drops, antibiotic syrup to drink and permission to increase her dose of painkillers for a couple of days.

Edited to add - and I totally caved around 6am today and rang Foxtel (our cable tv provider) and ordered the childrens tv package because I couldn’t deal anymore. 2 hours sleep and sick kiddies make for insane mummy.

Yesterday (Monday) the girls and I went to the Melbourne Museum with my good friend S. Her partner J had to work which is a shame as we had lots of fun and I missed J being around to laugh with me at the antics of S and the children.

Particularly amusing to me was the horrified reaction of S and Annie to the conception and birth movie. I pulled them out as the baby’s head was emerging. Both had such similar expressions of horror and disgust it kept me giggling for the rest of the day.

Heidi loved the museum and I loved seeing what interested her. We all had fun in the childrens area, Annie latched onto a primary school group and I think would have happily stayed with them for the rest of their tour (if the teacher had let her).

We visited the display on the human mind and all had fun playing with the interactive displays that mess with your sense of perception.  One interactive display showed what your level of alertness was - calm, alert, watchful, worried, stressed.  You put your hand on a metal plate and it played a sound and a graph charted your response to the sounds.  I started of at ‘watchful’ and remained there the whole time, in a constant steady state of watchfulness no matter what sounds popped out.  Thats the way life is when you are out and about with two pre-schoolers.  S remained in a steady state of ‘alert’.  Annie started off as ‘alert’ but when the sound popped out the graph skyrocketed to ’stressed’, then down again.  Interesting stuff.

Both girls were wearing their “Who Am I look inside” tags which was greatly reassuring as Annie had a tendency to wander off out of sight.

Annie wandering off - yet again

I also took the pram which gave Heidi a place to hide when everything got a bit too much and she used her new chewy necklace a couple of times. Which reminds me I must post about her new sensory diet at some point.

All in all a great way to spend the day.

Now my screwup.

Screw Up Tuesday is the brainchild of Bettina. Once a week we can confess our screw ups, good for the soul right :D.

I ordered my groceries through Coles Online last week and got them delivered. This was fantastic, no impulse purchasing, no major dramas taking the girls grocery shopping. All smooth sailing… that is until I realised I’d not purchased anything for my lunches. I remembered to get stuff to make lunch for hubby. I remembered to get stuff for the girls to eat for lunch. But nothing for me and I’m not a great fan of vegemite sandwiches :(.

I also neglected to purchase any convenience meals for days when I’ve just had too much. So we ended up getting McDonalds for dinner last night. 12 days of no-takeout. A record for us. Ah well. Now I just have to try and beat that record.

Quick health update. Monday 30th June I will be going into hospital for the day to have some further tests done for my Crohns. Wooo. So much fun. Not. I need to have an MRI and am waiting on the hospital to call back and tell me when that will be. Very likely things will go quiet for a few days around here over this weekend and the beginning of next week.

On the 11th of Feb 2008 my girls height and weights were:

Heidi 3yo
Height - 102.50cm (= 3.36 feet)
Weight - 17.10kg (= 37.69 lb, lbs)

Annie 4y9mo
Height - 110.20cm (= 3.61 feet)
Weight - 19.60kg (= 43.21 lb, lbs)

Had a check up with the paediatrician today.

Annies blood test results came back with low iron but not too low and low white cell count which we have to get checked again in a couple of months. Her platelets were good and clotting tests came back normal. Negative for gluten intolerance. When we get the white cells checked again we will do more obscure clotting tests. We are now doing a stool test for H.Pylori to see if that is causing the reflux.

Annie 5yrs 1mth
Height - 117cm
Weight - 20.1kg

Heidi 3yrs 4.5mth
Height - 109.5cm
Weight 18kg

Annie is on the 98th percentile for height and weight, Heidi is as usual off the chart

Paed was happy with what we are doing with both girls. Just have to keep an eye on Annie’s bruises in odd places (upper thighs, lower back).

This afternoon I attempted to clean the kitchen. The girls went outside and Annie got into the garage. She dragged out the shovel, rake and broom and cleaned the backyard. All unprompted as ‘a special surprise for you Mummy’.

Raked up the autumn leaves, swept up the sand, used the shovel to attack weeds (which was so funny because it is bigger than her). Then she put the rake, shovel and broom away again. Did an impressively good job. Annie even collected all their outdoor toys into tubs and put them in the garage. Then she cleaned out the inside of the now empty sandpit, got a little container and filled it with the weeds she had dug up and positioned her ‘vase’ in the centre of the sandpit.

She’s only 5! Must be a genetic thing from her Omi who was amazing like that also.

At 3pm I realised I’d forgotten to feed the girls lunch so they had a yogurt and jelly/jello picnic outside while I continued to clean the kitchen.

4pm I put some water on to boil to make pasta for dinner. A bit later I put the pasta on and started mopping the kitchen floor. The water boiled over so I took the lid off the saucepan. Good half hour later I thought I’d better check why the timer hadn’t beeped to say pasta was ready. I forgot to set it.

Also, the kitchen reeked of gas, when the water boiled over it put the flame out but the gas continued to pump through. My first instinct was to relight the stove which I thankfully didn’t follow through on.

Sent the girls out the front door, raced around opening windows - is a very chilly autumn day and the house was closed up with the heating on so no ventilation. Windows open, gas switched off, fans on and we got in the car and left.

Went to SIL L’s place where I promptly spent 10 minutes throwing up. Stayed for an hour then came home to a very cold but thankfully gas free home.

So to sum up my afternoon.

Annie rocks at cleaning.
Mummy is not allowed to play with gas or fire for the next few weeks. All cooking is to be done in the microwave or slow cooker.

Geez I’m an idiot, that could have gone so badly and I was right there in the room and didn’t even notice.

TMI Warning - this entry is about Poop and how to collect it into teeny tiny containers.

One thing about having Crohns Disease is that you are frequently asked to provide various medical professionals with samples of your poop. Over the years I’ve been given a variety of teeny tiny containers with which to collect my poop and an even larger variety of advice on how to do this.

A quick Google shows many sites giving advice on this topic, here is a sample collection:

Stool Tests @ KidsHealth.org

Childrens Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota (.pdf)

Wiki How to Take a Stool Sample

Web MD Stool Cultures

But none that I could find suggest my easy, tried and tested stool collection method.

When I was a mere 17 years old and far away from home living in a university boarding house I started to suffer from bowel problems. This was the first time I was asked to collect a stool sample. With no idea what to do I simple tried to poop straight into the little container the doctor had given me. It was messy, leaked over the sides, my hands. Really unpleasant. And remember University boarding house = communal bathrooms and toilets, so not much privacy, just a tiny half door. I can still vividly remember the horror of having to clean myself up then ask the cleaning staff for bleech to clean out the sink and the toilet.

I took my poo covered container to the doctors office and the nurse who took it from me was horrified at the state of the container. She then took pity on me and we sat down and had a chat about how to collect poo samples. Advice I still follow now I’m 32yo.

1. Purchase some plastic plates (like you use at parties / BBQs etc), oval shaped is best.

2. Invest in some disposable plastic gloves or ask the doctor for some when they are handing over the poo sample container.

3. Boil the kettle and run the hot water over a plastic plate to sterilise it.

4. Hang a rubbish bag on the handle of the bathroom / toilet door.

5. Put the plastic plate in the toilet bowl. Make sure it is sitting flat and well balanced.

6. Get your sample container out and at this point it is a good idea to label it with your name, date, time.

6a - Put your gloves on. Really important step!

7. Poop in the toilet - it will land on the plastic plate (at this point cross your fingers that the weigh of the poop doesn’t tip the plate sideways and it all falls into the toilet water, thus why oval shaped plates work better).

8. Get up, using the scrapper which is usually inside the lid of your sample collection container scrape up some poop and put it in the container.

9. Put lid securely on sample container and place into plastic bag and seal shut.

10. Tip remaining poop into the toilet. Place plate into the rubbish bag hanging on the door.

11. Sit back down and clean yourself up and flush the toilet. (You can not do the toilet paper / cleaning self thing up earlier because you don’t want to contaminate the sample with toilet paper, gross yeah).

12. Flush toilet. Gloves into rubbish bag.

13. Seal up the rubbish bag and dispose into the rubbish bin.

14. Take your poo sample to the collection centre - or if you can’t get their straight away put it in the fridge - preferably in a brown paper bag (whilst also still inside that sealed plastic bag) so no one can see it and make sure it is out of reach of children.

And there you go, quick, easy and very little mess considering the nature of what you are actually trying to achieve (poo in small container).

Smiley Saturday time again. If you want to join in then click on the Smiley Saturday link above and head over to Lightenings to enter your Smiley Saturday link.

With Ralph and both the girls sick with some virus and my Crohns flaring up again I thought I’d struggle to find things to smile about but seems that is not the case.

1. I got some stitching done this week.

2. Because the girls are sick I got to use my jelly / jello hack for the first time.

When my girls are sick they get really dehydrated very quickly, so I like to keep a track of their fluid intake. So being that jelly / jello is a sort of fluid I wanted to track how much they eat because it is one of their fav. foods when ill. I’ve been collecting my empty yogurt cups, washing them out and storing them.

Friday I got out 15 of those cups and filled each one with jelly. One standard packet of jelly fills 5 cups which = 100ml of jelly per cup. Now I can easily track their fluid, plus I can throw the cups out later which means no washing up, thus one less chore when I’m busy looking after sick kids.

I also served their ice-cream in the little yogurt cups, calculating roughly 100ml of ice cream per cup.

3. My Mum sent the girls a “Design Girls Fashion Studio” which arrived in the mail on Thursday.

I will admit my heart sank when I saw it - so many little pieces and for ages 7+, how much of a pain in the rear is this going to be to do with a 5yo and 3yo.

Friday morning the girls were getting pretty bored, they’d been up most of the night and I was rather tired and not feeling so great myself. Annie pulled out the design studio and asked if they could play with it. I distracted Heidi with the TV, figuring that this was going to be easier one child at a time.

Then Annie and I opened the box, she picked the blond paper doll, we chose what she was going to wear from the cardboard pattern sheets. Then Annie picked which fabric we would use and I traced out the pattern and cut the fabric. Annie decorated the skirt and top she had chosen whilst I cut out a pair of clogs and a handbag which she then also decorated. We used the magnets provided to attached the clothing to her paper doll.

My opinion of this Design Studio has changed radically, this is a great little kit, you could use fabrics and bits of crafty stuff you have at home to make the clothing - heck you could even make the doll yourself using a bit of sturdy cardboard and then the kiddies would have all the fun of making hair, eyes etc themselves.

Annie was entranced for almost a full hour which is impressive considering she was sick and very tired.

Here is a picture of our decorated clothing while it is waiting for the glue to dry.

Then while Annie had a rest in the lounge room I tried to make clothing for the other doll with Heidi. She was interested enough to pick out the patterns, jeans and a shirt. But then she discovered the pipe cleaners and buttons and proceeded to make a necklace. Which resulted in some fantastic language / communication from her. I even got a little video of it.

So I’m pleased as punch that Mum sent us this kit, which just goes to show that sometimes things are not as difficult as you think they are going to be.

4. The final reason I’m smiling is that after my humiliation on Tuesday I’ve managed to get on the treadmill for at least 30 minutes each day (except Thursday). I’m not doing much of a diet change due to my current Crohns flare up but after my first two coffees in the morning I’m alternating each cup of coffee with drinking a bottle of water. Thus reducing my caffeine intake and increasing my water intake.

I hope you’ve got your smile on this weekend also.

Introducing me:

We have enrolled Annie in swimming lessons and part of the deal is I have to be dressed to get in the pool ‘just in case’. So on Tuesday morning while Heidi was at Kinder the Annie monster and I went shopping for swim wear. Being the end of autumn the only place stocking swim wear was a large chain sports store. I got everything Annie needed fairly easily. Then I tried to find something for myself.

At which point I was totally and utterly humiliated.

The lady in the shop was very tactful and polite and she was blushing red in the face the whole time she tried to tell me what basically amounts to “you are too large for any swimwear in our store to fit you”.

I was doing well with the dietitian and the exercise last year and then we got Heidi’s diagnosis and I just decided ‘fuckit, enough to deal with in my life the diet, getting fit etc can wait’.

Tuesday I paid the price for that.

So I’m trying to figure out how to fit in the get fit / eat healthier stuff around our regular routine.

Officially I weigh 95kg - which is what I weighed 12 months ago when I quit trying to get fit and healthy, so at least I’ve not put on weight. My fitness has gone down, I know because I used to be able to easily walk up the hill near us and now I get out of breath.

Anyways I will figure it out, because you know… I want to figure it out. Total humiliation is motivational.

In the meantime - no swimming because the girls are both sick, Annie is vomiting left, right and centre and Heidi is head to toe covered in some kind of viral rash thingy. Oh the joy

* Nice to know I can eat McDonalds almost daily, not exercise at all and not gain weight. One of the positive aspects of Crohns disease. :rolleyes:

Crohn’s Disease.

I was home from uni on summer holidays in December 1994 when the results came back. The reason I was always so tired, had constant stomach cramps and diarhoea was given a name. Crohn’s Disease. I was 19.

There were many drugs, temporary treatments of the symptoms, no cure. I took mesalamine an anti inflammatory drug. I took Prednisolone a steroid based drug. I took azathioprine an immuno-suppresant drug. I rattled.

I couldn’t go out in the sun because one of the drugs made me light sensitive. I had to take osteoporosis drugs because the steroids leeched the calcium from my bones. My brain fizzed constantly for the 50mg+ per day of steroids, I had trouble focusing on one task from beginning to end. I got told I would never have children because of the combination of drugs I needed to take to keep my bowels from exploding. I took anti-depressants because I just couldn’t cope. I rattled some more.

I’d get infections because I was immuno-suppressed. I’d have to stop taking my Crohns drugs to give my body a chance to fight the other infections. My body would fight off the infection then the Crohn’s having seen a chance would spiral out of control. I lived on vegemite toast and tea. They were ’safe’ foods, they didn’t cause me to explode or curl up in a fetal position for hours of stomach cramping pain.

I had surgery for Crohns disease related problems. I checked myself at every shower for fissures and abscesses. I didn’t want to have a stoma. I just wanted to be normal.

My life was mostly normal, I met a wonderful man, we got married, we were happy together. There was is a waiting period of 3 years before you can commence adoption procedures, we had to prove that we were a stable family for a baby. So we got married in December 2000 and we got on with our lives. Fastfoward to 2002, we were sharing a house with SIL L and her two pre-teens. Perhaps we don’t really want children after all we decided, having a little first hand experience had put us off. We fostered a Customs Puppy, we invested in fancy home entertainment systems.

Then one day I enrolled in a drug trial for a combination of HIV treatments which it was thought may treat Crohn’s disease. I was told I had to do a pregnancy test, a legal requirement, never mind that I wasn’t able to conceive. They didn’t want the slightest chance of a in utero baby being effected by those drugs. Blood was taken and sent off to the lab. I was sent home with a diary to record my Crohn’s symptoms to see if I qualified as severe enough to participate in the drug trial.

My diary…. I threw up every morning till about 1pm. Odd. My Crohn’s had never shown itself that way before. But I dutifully recorded it in my diary. Odd smells or motions also made me run to the toilet, not with diarrhea but vomiting. The I received a phone call from the drug trail people. Come in asap, we have some abnormal results. I got my period that night.

Hubby took the day off work, I was scared, so was he, although I didn’t know that at the time. Leukemia? Cancer? What was so serious and worrying. While we waited for the doctor to arrive I threw up again and again and again. Sucks to be me, vomiting, diarrhea and my period all at once.

Doctor arrives and is gravely concerned.

You. Are. Pregnant.

I’m sitting there alone, my husband outside the door waiting because he wasn’t allowed in.

But I have my period? How can this be?

We are rushed off to ultrasound. There is a peanut shape fluttering on the screen, that is my baby’s heart beating, she is 6 weeks old. I cried. I hadn’t wanted a baby. It was a miracle but I had my feet set on another life, one that didn’t involve children.

There was still the bleeding. We waited to see what would happen, as the days passed I grew to love that baby growing inside me, I didn’t want her to give up and she didn’t. We had many scares, the bleeding continued for the entire first trimester.

I was still sick, I was still taking many drugs. We had been assured they were safe, they were not causing the bleeding, our baby was okay.

I continued to work. My last day at work 30th of April, 36 weeks pregnant and ready for it to all be over. I was looking forward to a month at home. We had nothing ready apart from a very basic hospital bag incase of emergencies. My baby shower was that weekend, I was getting much of what I needed then. I remember that farewell lunch, I ordered cajun fish, it was delicious.

May 1st, I wake, the bed is wet. Oh crap I pee’d my pants. Or is it something else? I’m not sure. Our day continues as planned. We take our customs puppy back to Melbourne Airport to the Customs training facility there, he is going for a week of intensive training. We stop at McDonalds for breakfast. The liquid continues to slowly leak. Perhaps I should call the Ob&Gyn? I call. He is stern. Come to the hospital ASAP.

We are at the hospital. It appears the baby is arriving a month early. C-section is scheduled for that afternoon. Bad me for eating breakfast or I would have been in surgery then and there. We are dismissed to go shopping for baby essentials. Be sure not to eat. Be sure to return to have your baby.

We go, we shop. A lady in Target asks when the baby is due. This evening I say with a grin of delight. I go home and post at my fav. message board that the baby is on its way.

Then there is a blur of activity. And cramps, dear god the cramps. The epidural was a nightmare of missed hits because I could not control my body spasms during the cramps.

Annie is born, beautiful, amazing, wonderful. I see her for a minute or less. She is taken away. My husband, now a father, leaves to care for his daughter. I lie in my hospital bed, the pain is excruciating, I am sobbing, the morphine pump is not working. 4 nurses, no pain relief. 24 hours pass. Finally I can see my daughter again. No breastfeeding, I am told. The drugs, the immuno suppressants. You can not breast feed. I don’t mind, my baby is beautiful and amazing. I love watching her and her daddy together.

3 months later. My daughter practically lives at her Omi’s home or with one or the other of her Aunts. I am in and out of hospital. My temperature hovers at around 40C most days. There is blood in my urine and my feces. I am sick. Finally surgery, they cut out a section of my bowel in a procedure called a small bowel resection. I had a perforation. I was leaking feces to places it should never be leaked.

Months of recovery follow. I’ve had two major surgeries within the space of 3 months. Family are amazing. My friend S who had never dealt with children before let alone an infant became babysitter and chief photographer.

Then the recovery process was complete. My iron levels built up to normal and stayed there. I stopped taking the drugs and nothing happened, I didn’t need them. I got pregnant again! I had another beautiful, amazing, wonderful baby girl.

I’m waiting, waiting for the beast that lives in my belly to rear its ugly head again. Every time my stomach cramps, everytime the diarrhea explodes, everytime I see the bright red blood that is from my bowel not my period, I hold my breath, I wait, I pray for a few more years of not rattling. Years of feeling strong and full of energy, being able to focus on my children, focus on anything at all that I wish to focus on. Being able to go out in the sun and not get covered in white spots 15 minutes later. I want to live life, I want to enjoy life, I don’t want to let one aspect of me control my life.

And I look at Heidi and I wonder, is this how she will feel one day about her diagnosis?