Steel's Favorite Gift from Santa, it was for Steel and Zach but as much as Zach likes it he prefers his GI Joe Airplanes
Sophie and her favorite toy from Santa, if only she would stop hiding the balls that go in it
I took this photo of Sophie today she is looking so much better than she did a week or so ago
Hanging out on Christmas watching our new movie UP, Thanks Aunt Kristin for Sophie's cute outfit
Christmas PJs the boys have been living in these cool jammies
We had a fun Christmas this year, especially since Sophie was home from the hospital, everything felt special just watching her get better each day. Shay's parents came down with the boys on Wednesday afternoon and stayed with us until Sunday morning. It was nice to have them, our first Christmas guest in 6 years!! I think the kids did well this Christmas and should have enough toys to play with for a very long time, it has been nice hearing them play together more than fight. The big hit was the Batman Cave and accessories for the 2 boys and lots of GI Joe stuff. Sophie loves her Ball Popper but seems to keep losing the balls. I got a Sewing machine and I am looking forward to figuring that all out. All in all things are going good for now.
Yesterday Sophie showed such great strides in her recovery that they gave us the clear to send her home. We didn't get home until last night and as she threw up on the car drive home I began to wonder if they sent us home too soon. However, she was very happy to see her room and sleep in her own bed. So far she is doing well, Shay and I are now her nurses and we will have to still wake her up every so often to change her gauze pads on her side that are still leaking out fluids as well as give her antibiotics every 8 hours. The antibiotics come in a pill form that has to be broken up in food, apparently it is so nasty chocolate pudding doesn't even do the trick. So we will be shoving pudding down her throat 3 times a day for 9 days. In fact we had to wake her up at 6am to do it so I am sure she will never want to see pudding again after all this is done. However, she is loving being able to sleep the rest of the time and not have wires and tubes in her yeah!! So I now have hand sanitizer all over the house and I have already done about 10 loads of laundry trying to keep all her stuff clean and stuff she gets fluid on or on us constantly cleaned and disinfected. Thankfully my Mom and Grandma came up to my house yesterday, before they even knew we would be coming home, and thoroughly cleaned and disinfected everything. Wow I look forward to when the scare is over but feel confident it will all be okay. We have a Christmas Miracle for sure and will never forget this experience, thanks for everyones love and support and prayers it means so much to us we feel so blessed. My heart is very full of gratitude.
Here is a video we took of Sophie on Sunday as she was showing great signs of improvement. I thought it was cute to share. We are so glad she is doing better now we just hope she can continue to stay healthy and not fight me to much on taking all her drugs.
Many of you know that Sophie has been in the hospital since last Wednesday but I figured I would feel you in case you didn’t know the story and update you on her status.
Last Friday Sophie had her immunization shots done, on her upper thighs, on Sunday morning I noticed a red dark pimple looking thing on her labia as I was changing her diaper. I noticed that each time I changed her she seemed more uncomfortable with it and the area around it seemed redder. On Monday night Shay squeezed the zit thinking that was what it was; stuff came out so we thought she would see some relief. However, she didn’t and by Tuesday night she was running higher fevers and coughing, her brothers were also coughing so I figured it was just another cold coming on. After being up with her most of the night I changed her diaper around 1am to discover that her labia area was quite swollen I was very worried but gave her more medicine and figured I would see how it was in the morning. Unfortunately, when I got her up in the morning she was in even more pain and the swelling had double and moved into her leg. I called the pediatrician she got us in around 10. As soon as she saw us she had us go over the to the hospital and be put on antibiotics and hopefully see the general surgeon to see what he though. Unfortunately I feel our care there was very minimal in fact her IV got infiltrated within the first couple of hours, no one really checked on her and the surgeon despite being asked to come 3 times did not show up until 6 hours later. By this time her swelling was even worse and she was getting sicker by the minute. He suggested that we go down to Primary Children’s in SaltLake. It took them another 3 hours to actually get the ambulance ready for us to go and another 1 ½ hour drive down.
Once we got in I felt so much better to around doctors that knew what they were doing. They took her into surgery around 1am to see what was going on and put some drain tubes in down there. Unfortunately they did not know what type of infection she had. We were brought up to the floor again but her vitals were not good. By the next day Thursday at noon, after I got back from lunch, things went bad. They found that the infection was quickly spreading up to her armpit and rushed her into emergency surgery; they thought she might have the flesh eating bacteria that would be life threating. After being told that our daughter might not make it things were very emotional for a about an hour and half an experience I don’t ever want to have again.
Luckily they discovered it was not the crazy infection they thought so they put more drain tubes in her side to help flush out the infection and drain fluid. She was then put in ICU for 2 ½ days. They finally found out what she had on Friday morning, it is called MRSA which is a staff infection that is resistant to antibiotics. Luckily there is one antibiotic that it is not resistant to it is called Vancomycin. She has been on that and is showing great signs of improvement. They moved us back up to the normal floor yesterday afternoon and last night she smiled for the first time and even let out a laugh as she saw a program on TV about cats. Today her swelling is still there and her body is like a balloon all swelled up but it is coming down each day and her color on her skin is no longer a deep purple on her legs etc, but looking much more normal. She got off the drip line yesterday and is starting to drink some fluids on her own, tomorrow they will be putting in a pick line so that she can receive antibiotics easier and will probably have it when we go home, her tubes for drainage in her body will probably stay in a while too but we shall see. In order to go home she has to be eating, drinking, and being her self and have most of the swelling gone so we shall see how many days that takes but today is the first day since this all began that I think I can finally start breathing again.
We are all so thankful for all the prayers on her behalf I know they have helped and I am so thankful that God has blessed us with this wonderful miracle. I am not sure if we will actually be home for Christmas but I bet we will be home shortly afterwards, I hope.
Sophie at Church Chrismtas party, not to sure about Santa
Steel marching in the "Teddy Bear Parade" today
Zachary and Steel with their new Teddy Bears they got at the end of the parade, it was fun they marched down to the courthouse with Santa and other kids, Santa read them a story and everyone got new teddy bears
At the light parade very cold but we got lots of candy
In Idaho at Aunt Jesalees house, Sophie loved this toy.
Cousin fun
We are having lots of fun this December so far. Last week we went to the Light Parade in town, as you can tell from the boys and Sophie it was very cold!! and than last weekend we went up to Idaho to celebrate Aunt Jesalee's birthday. We had a good time hanging out with everyone. Now we are back to extreme cold temps. but we are doing are best to stay warm.
We went to Monterrey/ Carmel California for Thanksgiving. The kids and I went out before Shay but he joined us on Wednesday for a few days. My parents helped me drive out and then Shay drove us home. We had a wonderful time, the weather was Fabulous and the company nice. The kids and I had fun going to the beach, especially Zachary. We also got to go to the Monterrey Aquarium twice it was the highlight of the trip. We also went hiking with my parents and Shay and I managed to sneak out on a couple of dates. The kids surprised me on the drive by doing lots better than I thought. Overall it was nice to get back up that way and see my parents again.
This year Halloween has kind of been a disappointment for our family. It all started on Monday when Steel came down with some sort of crazy flu/cold bug, then passed it on to me who has since passed it on to Sophie and Zach. Thankfully Shay has not gotten sick yet we need someone to be our nurse. But this meant we had to cancel a lot of the fun Halloween Festivities. Bummer for the kids and big bummer for Mom. Yet despite it all they were able to do a few things. Zach had his special Pumpkin Night at school, Shay took him since Steel and I were sick, and Zach got to have a Halloween Parade on Thursday at school. Steel and I were feeling a little better so we were able to at least go and watch and Friday Shay took the kids trick or treating downtown, since it is a big event and I was sick. Zach had not gotten sick yet so we figured they would be okay for a little while. Unfortunately that night Zach and Sophie got sick so today we had to miss the fun party at our Friends house,the Hoopes, and the kids did not get to go to the Ward Trunk or Treat or trick or treating it is very very sad. . Funny because this is the one year I actually spent money on the kids costumes. Go figure. Hope the rest of your Halloweens were better than ours at least I got a couple of pictures to share.
Zach at his school carving a Bat Pumpkin with Dad
Friday afternoon trick or treating yeah at least the costumes got put on once!!
trying to get a good shot of Sophies Ladybug costume
Last weekend we were down in Salt Lake to see my Grandparents and Shay's brothers family. On Saturday we went to Cornbellys to have some Fall Fun. There were so many photo ops I had to add most of our good shots.
The first weekend in October, Conference weekend, we went up to Idaho to see Shay's family. We had a great time visiting them and the kids had a good time with their cousins. Here are some of the highlights.
The boys and cousin Jade watching movies in their car, the boys thought that was pretty fun to have a DVD player attached to the car, we just have portable ones.
We went to an Arcade place with the kids, most of the things were to old for them but they loved this Spider dance one.
Yesterday we got our first snow. The kids were super excited . Steel would be upset whenever the snow didn't stick. But it was fun to just watch it and finally put on our winter clothes and coats. It is supposed to warm up to the 40s today and 50s tomorrow so it will probably be a few more weeks before we get to play in the snow but we look forward to it. It was cute Zach wanted to listen to Christmas music yesterday because of the snow.
Steel's Favorite Gift from Santa, it was for Steel and Zach but as much as Zach likes it he prefers his GI Joe Airplanes
Sophie and her favorite toy from Santa, if only she would stop hiding the balls that go in it
I took this photo of Sophie today she is looking so much better than she did a week or so ago
Hanging out on Christmas watching our new movie UP, Thanks Aunt Kristin for Sophie's cute outfit
Christmas PJs the boys have been living in these cool jammies
