A lot of moving parts later, I was able to sneak away with just Dekker for a couple of hours!
Of course, it was for an appointment, because why wouldn’t it be? 😅 But save for all the fussy worky stuff, we had a nice time together!
Fun fact. When I pulled up my phone camera, we both defaulted to this face 😛
Post appointment, I offered Dekker a treat, and he selected a boston cream donut, and I added an iced tea to the mix. He was a happy man, and I was a happy lady. It was a nice time out in the sun together 💜
I was not as organized today as I hoped to be, but alas, the day went forward anyway. It was FILLED with GOOD things, and I am SO grateful for every bit of it! But goodness I am WIPED! 😅
I spent the afternoon with LDs siblings, and a loving friend who brought them over. It was a really, really nice time!
Once they had gone, we had about a half hour before I packed up the kids to take the Spoonful to a visit.
On our drive to the city, I got a call from the visiting suites, saying that the Peanut had a visit and we were half an hour late to it. GAH!!! I had Peanuts visit noted for tomorrow, not today!!! Aaaaahhh!! It does NOT help that I had to cancel the visit for Peanut last week on account of Brady and I being at the hospital and not making it home in time to get to the visit.
So I got the Peanut dropped off an hour into the two hour visit, and then ran the Spoonful a few blocks over for that two hour visit. The staggered visits are such a pain because no one can really do anything in that time.
Drop off at 4. Drop off at 5. Pick up at 6. Pick up at 7.
Not my favorite evening, thats for sure.
However, I did find water bottles for the kids for summer! That is one luxury we indulge in. Each year, the kids get a new water bottle for camping. This year, I found cuuuuute ones at Michaels, that were neon and had fun little handles so the kids can hang them on stuff in the bush. They’re funny like that. When I said aloud the colors I had, each kid bellowed out their preference (as you’d expect) and they ALL chose a different one! It couldn’t have gone better. They were a happy crew.
And their mom will also be happy that they’re bright and obnoxious and not as easy to lose track of.
Ok. I’m positively exhausted. But today was a really beautiful day. As messy and mixed up as it got towards the end, I am grateful for the beautiful children I gave birth to, as well as those who have joined our family along the way. They are all absolute gems. And I am grateful for their birth families, too. Its not all perfect or easy, but I am glad to be connected to their parents, siblings, and friends.
Today is always a bit uncertain in the way that it is recognized as a holiday in some places but not others. Brady had last Friday off, and last week, I asked Brady if he would consider taking off the Monday. He totally happily asked for the day off, in anticipation of a four day weekend.
So as has been discussed, we spent Thursday trying to sort out Brady’s infection, antibiotics, home care, supplies, etc. It was a positively exhausting day, but it was also nice to spend it together.
We spent the weekend trying to take things easy in an effort to let Bradys body heal. We started to see some improvement slowly, most notably yesterday. Those side-by-sides are great! Even without showing the wounds themselves, it is clear that the redness and swelling are WAY down, and infection is settling down. Thank goodness! I don’t have to give all the gory details on here, but there is more work now to heal up what was done. So home care came this afternoon, and will come and see Brady every day for the next while until the bulk of the healing is done. Which will be challenging to manage so often, but is also a huge gift to us, because he needs it, and we don’t have to fight for it.
So Brady accidentally bought himself a five day weekend, Thursday through Monday, and we spent it focused on wound care and IV treatments, desperately trying to catch him up 😅 Now that Bradys current wound care is being managed and there is a plan in place, we can start trying to find ways to ease the issues coming up alongside radiation! That guy lives in such consistent discomfort these days, it is unbelievable. It takes a good amount to ruffle Brady’s feathers, but he is TIRED of this bizarre, challenging stretch of sickness and struggle.
Thank you for those of you who keeping showing up 💜 Who keep feeding us. Who give us double dessert! Who keep checking in on us. Who give us space to do what we can without asking more from us. Who offer to help us get places, maintain our house, renovate, watch our kids, and make exceptions to bring us ease where they can. We could not be managing the way we are without your help and care.
Time to wrap the day up. I cant stop biting my fingers and my feet are cold. Its time.
It was a really nice weekend. It was not full of all kinds of crazy and busy. We just didn’t have that in us, and no one expected such. We kept a pretty low profile, and our main plan for the weekend was to try to get to church today, and to spend the day with my mom, eating a yummy supper together. Though none of us had it in us to make a turkey, so we stuck with sausage, along with all the other delicious things that tend to go with an Easter meal. And no one was mad at that! YUM!
I have to say, though, that the highlight of this weekend was seeing a friend from church who I have been aching to connect with. Brady and I have a friend who recently went through brain surgery (many of you probably know who I mean) and we had the pleasure of seeing her at church this morning! It was BRAVE of her to come into such a social setting so freshly out of her surgery. Brady knows all about the brain trying to reconnect its pathways, so sometimes sensory processing lags a little, but she was out there with everyone else, connecting with friends and visiting. It was a HUGE relief to see her and hug her. She is still totally herself. A real success story 💜 If you’re reading this, you are positively crushing it 💜
We ate delicious food for supper, and let the kids stay up a bit later. Once the first batch was down for night, the rest of us watched an old Mr. Bean episode and got in a good laugh before bed. It was a lovely letdown.
Its almost time for bed. I’m sleepy, and I also want to finish up a documentary, sooooo its time to wrap this up.
Happy Easter, friends 💜 Salvation is OURS because of Easter!
Did I ever tell you guys about the Instacart guy who stole our shovel?? I though for sure I had, but I cannot find the post about it, so here I am, telling you now. Because there is an ending to the story 🤣 Finally.
So you guys know that I’ve abused discovered grocery delivery this last year or so. Is has been a total game changer for our family. SO much time saved. I love it! But I did learn over winter that, once the evening came and things got darker, a lot more mistakes were made. However, sometimes they were unavoidable, and we ended up hunting down groceries on someone else’s front step. Not our favorite thing, but we managed.
However, a couple of poor saps started taking the alley, which seems like an obvious no-go in a small town during the winter, but in the dark, I suppose all bets are off. We have learned since then that Uber maps takes people down our alley to get to our house, which makes no sense, and I have added to my instructions on my account NOT to take the alley. They still do sometimes 😅 but I don’t feel bad.
Anyway. THIS guy. This one particular driver took the alley. He was late to arrive, and when we started to notice revving in the alley, we put it together. After a while, he texted Brady “I’m stuck in the alley, I need help.” Now. We’re not dicks. I promise you. But it was not a time for this. We were in the midst of feeding all the kids. It was a very loud, challenging scene at that particular time. There was no way I could just bail. And Brady, in case you hadn’t heard, is paralyzed and even if he could get all the way through the backyard full of snow to this guy, he couldn’t drive. So he texted him that he was paralyzed and couldn’t help. Keep in mind that it also isn’t our responsibility to bail him out. Like, we WOULD’VE if we could’ve! But we truly physically could not make it happen. After a bit, the guy came to our door and let us know he was snagging the shovel off of our front door step. Deal. No problem. After another few minutes, he texted again and said he’d do all the pushing if someone just came and drove. But again, Brady with the legs. No dice. Brady apologized and sent him the number for the local tow guy. Grocery guy did not respond. He worked and worked and worked and finally got his vehicle out. He came to our door with our groceries, told us he threw our shovel over the fence, and took off. Felt a little rude, but we understood why he was upset. No harm no foul. We got our groceries, and he got his car out. Though he did really want us to know he broke his bumper in the process. Noted.
Aaaaanyway, we spent the rest of the summer trying to find this stupid shovel 😅 It was not in our yard, nor the yard of our neighbours. We laughed uproariously at this guy who, in the process of delivering us groceries, got so angry that he stole our shovel in the middle of winter. Like. How petty are you?? Lol! What a weird flex! But we giggled about it, replaced our shovel, and moved on.
We joked later in the season, in the midst of a good solid snowfall, how much we wished we had the guys number so we could text him and tell him we wished we had our shovel, and were wondering where it had gone. We went waaaaay back to where he had texted Brady, but sadly, it just directed to uber.
So as of yesterday – mid April – Dekker goes out for a bike ride, but is quickly back in the house announcing his grand find!!
That ridiculous shovel lived in the alley aaaaall winter long!!
I’m not sure which story I like better.
Do you think he left it in the alley and just didn’t want to go back for it?
or
Do you think he tried to throw it over and missed, and then was too angry to go get it?
Let’s talk about yesterday! And a little bit before yesterday. Its a whole thing.
There is a lot of talk of wound care in this post. NO graphic pictures. But talk. Consider yourself warned.
I’m going to aim for a somewhat accurate timeline. It won’t be perfect. Hopefully its close enough.
About four weeks ago, we got a HORRIBLE gastric bug over here. I mean, the worst of the worst. It was WILD. Once the tummy stuff was over, Brady got a really rough cold.
During this same stretch or slightly after, Brady got his first pressure sore. We’ll call it three weeks ago. The sore lives in the middle of his back, along his spine. Bradys back has changed quite a bit since he became paralyzed, and he has a particular vertebrae that sticks out more prominently. And that is where his sore is. We went to our medical supply place and got tips and supplies and I got to treating it right away. It didn’t get worse, but it wasn’t really healing.
A week and a half ago ish, I made Brady go to the doctor for his cough. We had learned already through rehab/physio that he didn’t have the muscles to help clear his cough anymore, but after trying all we could on our end, it was only getting worse. The walk-in doctor diagnosed Brady with strep and gave him antibiotics.
Last weekend, I went to change the dressing on Brady’s pressure sore and it was pouring pus. It was horrifically infected. Plus, off to the side of his back was another clearly infected site. We knew we’d see home care the coming week but it wasn’t supposed to be until Wednesday, and I didn’t have bandages big enough to cover the areas. So I sent him to the ER to get a dressing change and to check the new area of infection.
That day, Bradys antibiotic was increased to a stronger dose, as the one he was currently on was not strong enough to address these skin issues. The new area was deemed to be cellulitis.
On Monday, we spoke to Dr. Guselle about treatment for the skin issues. The ER staff had said to use compresses on the cellulitis and we kind of had to wait and see. The ulcer that was so clearly formed would either start to drain (sorry, guys) or it would stay rock hard and we’d have to take Brady in to have it drained. Dr. Guselle confirmed that the course of treatment is that it needs to drain, so to a degree, I could orchestrate that.
Over the next day or two, we worked at it and it started draining. More than we were ready for, honestly. It was a whole thing. But it was clearly just so so sooooo infected. The pressure sore was maintaining and healing slowly, but the ulcer was worsening quickly. Dr. Guselle mentioned the risk of sepsis and inquired about getting Brady started on IV antibiotics. He really didn’t want to go that route, being that he would see home care the next day. We agreed to wait until the next day and see what the nurse would say.
On Wednesday, home care met Brady at work and she agreed that he had a solid infection brewing. She wrapped him up good and proper, and traced around the red swollen spot. He and I both knew it was growing, but we followed along with the plan. Home care arranged to meet him again at work the next day. He was starting to fever, though.
Which brings us to yesterday. Brady woke up totally lethargic and feverish. He tried to get up and go to work but it just wasn’t going to work. He couldn’t safely drive to work. He went back to bed. Home care came mid-morning, took one look and said YES to IV antibiotics. She said just looking at his body, it was clear it needed help healing. She instructed him to spend the day in bed, watching Netflix.
So, he tried, but radiation was later that morning. So we got in touch with Dr. Guselle and the back and forth began! She began calling around to try to secure Brady IV antibiotics at home. With that, we needed training, and prescriptions, and it needed to happen quickly. Radiation happened at the Cancer Centre off of RUH. The prescriptions had to be picked up from City Hospital. And as you all know, we don’t live in the city. So we kind of needed it all to happen at once. At least Dr. Guselle was determined to make it happen. We didn’t know yet where training would happen, either. So we went in for radiation and were instructed not to leave the Cancer Centre until we knew what was coming next. So we did that.
Dr. Guselle was hoping that someone at the Cancer Centre would be willing to do a little bit of the work, like the IV, or a swab of the cellulitis. No dice. Rather, we were sent to City Hospital, where the Home IV Antibiotics Clinic was located. So we did that. He went to admitting and got registered and everything.
And we waited and waited and waited. We tried to ask people who worked in nearby areas and no one knew anything about the clinic. I called switchboard and asked to be connected to the clinic, but we just heard the phone ringing behind the door. We told Dr. Guselle, and she tried to call around as well. I called switchboard again and was directed somewhere wrong, but that person made calls on our behalf as well, trying to help us sort the mess out. I called the Home Care clinic on Idylwyld, and they basically said something was amiss and they would call us once it was worked out. We just needed to wait.
Cher has been home with the babies all this time, and it was coming to the end of school. My mom joined her, as eight people is a lot of people 😅
Brady called back after that call quite quickly, and asked if we could possibly have our training at home. They said no, unfortunately the first dose HAD to be done in hospital in case there was an anaphylactic reaction. We had to wait.
Moments later, they called and said someone would be there in about a half hour to an hour. So an hour sooner, possibly.
She finally came, and she was uuuuunhappy to be there. She didn’t know the code for the door. Couldn’t reach anyone. Didn’t have the meds. She was quite obviously scattered and not happy to have extended her workday. We thanked her profusely, and she said the right things. All was well. We finally got into the room. Someone came with the meds. We had everything we needed to start.
She informed us that she absolutely didn’t have time to train us, but that she would administer the first dose for us, and home care would teach us the next day. Totally fine with us, we said! We were just grateful to get things going. The infection had long since grown outside the traced lines on Brady’s back, and we needed things to start improving. She told us she would explain as she went, but that the real training was to be the next day.
But as she worked, and we received, she started handing me things and having me do parts of the work. Which I loved! There was a lot of rollover with tube feeding, so it all made very logical sense, and I think the nurse saw that it was familiar.
The IV meds drip slowly, so we had about 15 minutes to sit and wait for the treatment to finish up. In that span of time, our nurse warmed up. We talked about cancer, fostering, dark humour, and her work. She said she has a ton of compassion for people with cancer, as she had encountered many through her job with home care. We had some laughs, and we commiserated on a handful of things.
Once the meds were done, she had me stop the drip and walked me through the disconnecting and finishing of the line. She said we were really natural with it and it would be easy after that. So there is still full teaching on its way, but the crash course provided a lot of confidence.
We finally started heading home. I had cancelled a foster visit, because there was just no way we would make it. We stopped by Brady’s work and I ran in for his laptop, since he had a couple things that had NEEDED doing that day. I updated a couple of the guys from work who inquired about him, and everyone agreed that he needed to take time to heal. It was really nice and homey there. It always is.
On our way home from work, our doctor texted “Please tell me someone swabbed your cellulitis.” No one had. We said home care could likely do it the next day, but she asked if we could come back instead.
So we did that.
We met their nurse out in the parking lot, and she swabbed Bradys infection. This was important because knowing exactly what bacteria is growing will solidify that Brady is on the right antibiotics. If there is something weird in there, we need to know about it. So, the swab was done, and we finally went home.
It was a long day. We were tired.
We whipped up a big batch of scrambled eggs and bacon, and everyone tucked into the living room for a movie. Thats all we were up for.
Naturally, the IV came out that evening. It was much to close to his elbow, being that he wheels his chair all day long. But thats ok. Another nurse will be here in the next hour or so, and she will place a new one, do the final training, and get the next dose going.
One dose per day for five days. And by then, this mess should be rectified. Or at least well on its way.
Prelim results say NO sepsis, which is a HUGE answer to prayer!! Brady is not out of the woods yet, but he’s heading in the right direction at least.
We are tired. But encouraged. We finally have the big guns drawn. Healing should be on its way.
Good thing I never gave back our IV pole from tube feeding days. Who knew we’d need it again?!
Myyyyy goodness. Today wound up to be a VERY taxing, wild, busy day. Brady woke up this morning and was not ok. He was falling asleep while getting dressed. He had the shivers. He was out in the dining room, packing up some lunch before he finally rescinded and went back to bed.
From there, the day went haywire. We saw home care first thing, and then spent the better part of the day at the hospital. And by “the hospital” I actually mean two hospitals. Both Brady and I are completely beat, as you can imagine, so I will delve into all the fun details tomorrow or the next day. But for tonight, we still have some things to do to settle in, plus a snack, and some letdown. Brady has strict instructions to lay lowwwww for a couple of days, so bedtime is highly anticipated.
I will say, as high stress as the day was, and as scattered as we felt, and as scared as I’ve been, we really enjoyed those hours together, just the two of us 💜 Thank you, Cher and mom, for taking care of everyone and everything while we were gone so much longer than expected.
What. A. Day. 😅 Through sickness and more sickness, honey. Hopefully some health stirred in there eventually!
I feel like all I talk about these days is the vast amount of help and support we’re receiving these days, but its SO prominent these days and definitely worth talking about!
This morning, Brady used the new ramp to get out of the house, and it felt like a breeze!
Braden came and enclosed the range hood vent, so its both functional and pretty!
John came and installed a smooth, stained, beautiful transition piece in our floor where we pulled the wall out last year. He insists its temporary, but I’m confident its the kind of “temporary” that will live there for a few years.
I am SO GRATEFUL! For ALL of these lovely people and their efforts and care towards our family! It is overwhelming and I’m at a total loss for words. I cannot even begin to list all the ways we have been supported and all who has participated. You will all just have to take my word for it. Its a wildly difficult time, and we are SO unbelievably cared for. Two extremes, for sure, but one sure shines the light on the other.
Asides.
I met a really wonderful social worker today who I am so glad to be connected to! Yay!
Wavy has moved up to level G in her reading. Woohoo!
Dekker is in home ec and brought me some cake with mini eggs on it. Yum!
Someone brought us a portion of a side of beef as a gift. Probably 100 lbs worth. Amazing!
We purchased a FreeWheel and it has arrived! Yay for some more ease at camp!
Ok. I think that covers it. Whew! Today was definitely a day with less going on than yesterday, but I am still pooped! The grey weather probably plays a role in that also. Feels like a cozy, gloomy wrap up.
The house absolutely buzzed today. It was a good day. A FULL day!
Kids went to school and I sat for a short breather before the work began!
Gerry showed up with a few guys and they got into prepping for concrete.
Braden came to work on the range hood and climb around our attic.
John came to do a little mudding and taping, and to do some measuring for some floor pieces he’s making for us.
My mom came and hung out for a little bit while the whole place was starting to bustle, and she helped with the babies and spent a little time with us.
Bradens mom also came and offered some helping hands.
In the afternoon, I worked on a long running project that gets my feelers all riled up for our Morsel, who I miss terribly, even more so these days. Ugh. So I worked on that all afternoon until the kids came home and babies got up.
Bradens brother-in-law came by after he picked up his kids, and helped Braden heave the huge vent into the ceiling.
Kids came home. Girls went to ballet. Dekker went to a meeting.
And then someone brought us supper. Because we are still being so well supported 💜
Most days, I feel SO undeserving of this much care and support and love. No one deserves this kind of effort from so many people. Yet, God knows what we need, and He shows up in so many incredible ways through so many incredible people.
Tomorrow it another big one. Cher is coming to clean all day! We have another OT visit, as well as an assessment with our favorite accessibility guy. We REALLY need to renovate our bathroom. Not because we faaancy 😎 but because our bathroom is the size of a postage stamp, and now that life is changing, our teeny tiny bathroom is aaaaalmost impossible for Brady to use. So we’ll get that assessed and get a quote started. We’ll see what funding we can apply for, if its possible. We will also hopefully get our new ramp poured! Brady has radiation, as well as an appointment with his radiation oncologist. We are having a generous food gift dropped off in the afternoon. Braden will come back tomorrow and potentially finish the vent! John may or may not come by and secure the flooring pieces. And then possibly a visit for one of the foster babes in the evening.
We’ll have to see how it all shakes out. The days are BIG, but they are important, and the help and support are overflowing.
Praise You, Lord, for never forgetting Your children.
