First off was Max's post-surgery swallow study/follow up doctor appointment on August 12th. Unfortunately for me, his swallow study was scheduled for 12:15 in the afternoon, during my on week. Keep in mind I work graveyards, so this is right smack dab in the middle of my prime sleeping time. It's like this EVERY DARN TIME too. I've had a lot of people ask me why we don't just reschedule for my week off. Answer: We have learned the hard way, there is no rescheduling an appointment at Primary Children's unless you want to wait many more weeks for the next opening....and waiting those extra weeks really delays treatment (or getting an answer to your issue in our case). I suppose I could have stayed home and slept, but I was far too anxious and worried that I would miss something really important by not being there--getting the report of the appointment from Sam is just not the same as being able to ask the doctor himself questions, you know? So now you know why I drag my butt to every last appointment, even though it's in the middle of the night for me lol. Anyway, getting on the the appointment.....Max was kind of a stinker at first during the swallow study. He totally refused to drink from his sippy cup or regular cup and instead just had hysterics. I was getting concerned that we wouldn't get any results from the swallow study if he wouldn't swallow, so I suggested they do the one thing that Max always loves: liquid in a syringe. Thankfully that calmed him down enough and forced him to swallow, so they could do the study. The conclusion they came to is that he still is aspirating on thin liquids, but does pretty well on nectar-consistency thickened liquid. The speech therapist's advice for us was to go back to thickening his liquids and use a straw sippy cup, since that would force him to drink slower and give him more control over each swallow. She also told us we could give him regular water in the sippy cup for practice (but let me tell you, after trying that I have to disagree with the theory, because he just sounds awful as ever after drinking it). Her only theory for why Max sounded poorly when he eats kind of agreed with mine: a combination of excess saliva production and the fact that all foods contain some degree of thin liquids in them. Sam asked how long they thought it would be until Max was better, and the answer was kind of depressing. Based on the fact that he is 18 months old (most kids grow out of dysphasia by a year or so as they mature) and did not make great strides following surgery, they predicted he could be 3 or 4 before things really start to improve. I think part of that would be the fact that if he really needed speech therapy to improve weak muscles--and I actually suspect that he will based on his trouble saying certain letters already--he has to be old enough to have the logic to cooperate with us and say words on a consistent basis. Not much of our conversation really gave me much hope; I actually just wanted to go home and bury my head under my pillows at this point, and skip the whole doctor visit (figured it wouldn't be much happier ya know). Plus poor Max tripped and hit his head super hard on the wall while we were having our post swallow study consult. It was not exactly his most awesome moment ever lol. When we visited with the doctor next, he was kind of baffled by the fact that Max had made some improvement but not nearly the amount the we were expecting. He decided that he wanted to go back in and check out the surgical site, to make sure that everything had healed correctly and that nothing else was amiss. He also wanted to do another bronchial lavage to confirm that Max is not getting food in his lungs. I'm not exactly thrilled about my little baby undergoing his fifth or sixth round of anesthesia (I've seriously lost track by now) but I know it's necessary. And at least this time, it's all on the insurance company's tab :] So tomorrow morning I get to stay up way past my bedtime and go through yet another fun procedure with Max at Primary Children's. Those people must love us (or hate us haha) by now.
On the more uplifting side, I actually did the women's triathalon I signed up for! Back when I signed up in March, I had these super great intentions of training up for it....and then Max got really sick. You can guess what happened to training. I had pretty much dismissed the idea of completing the triathalon until about two days before. This little voice inside of me was like "JUST DO IT!!" so I told Sam I was going to give it a go. I think I wanted to prove to myself that I could do something hard, and wasn't a quitter. My goal was just to cross my butt across the finish line, and I would go however slow it took to do that. Of course I was very nervous on the morning of the race (not having trained one bit will do that to you!), but a bigger part of me was super excited to complete the task ahead: 300 meter swim, 11 mile bike ride, and 5K run. To make a long story short, I became a triathlete on Saturday August 16th at 10 am or so! While there were parts that were difficult, and I pretty much just fast walked the entire run, I overall enjoyed myself and would totally do it again. The only thing I might change (besides training a bit) is getting a softer bike seat....my tush muscles were pretty sore from sitting on the hard seat for 11 miles lol. I may have finished dead last in my age division, but I'm pretty proud of myself for not being a quitter! I am also immensely proud of the fact that after doing that big old race, I went over to my mom's house and we all had lunch and went to the planetarium downtown. The kids ran wild at the planetarium, and I was actually able to keep up with them. No sitting down and taking it easy for me!
Pre-race selfie in my new green top :] You can almost see the arm markings they gave us the day before, that ended up being the biggest pain in my butt to get off the next day!
My official race time (my number was 677 if that helps you find it faster)! I will admit I was a touch disappointed that I missed being under two hours by just a few minutes, but can't complain overall. Maybe next year I can get in under two hours!
The day after my big race we were schedule to take family pictures. Sam and I had to spend a lot of time scrubbing my race number off my arms so they wouldn't show up in our pictures, and we actually both ended up wearing pants instead of shorts because we couldn't get the number off of my leg well enough! Maybe not the best planning on my part, but luckily that was the only issue. Our photo shoot went fantastically well all things considered (nobody threw a giant fit and it was at 3 in the afternoon lol) and the location we shot at was absolutely beautiful (Mueller Park in Bountiful). Plus our photographer was amazing and gave us quite a steal of a deal on the session: 50 dollars for the session and 30 prints. I highly recommend going with Jenny Fowler if you are looking to get pictures done, she was great! We have to wait another week or so to see all of the pictures, but she sent me a sneak peek a few days ago, and seeing as how it has her watermark on it still I think it's probably kosher to post it on here:
I was rather proud of the outfits I ended up throwing together the day before pictures, and am super glad that we don't just blend into the green background (yes I was worried about that). This would pretty much be perfect if Max didn't have that funny sneer on his face, but you can't expect too much out of an 18 month old on picture day right? He was upset that we wouldn't let him eat the dirt and leaves lol.
Unfortunately for the next two days after our family pictures I was really sick with an upset stomach and a cold. Didn't exactly make for the most fun second half of my week off. However, the day before I went back to work, some of the ladies I used to work with/still work with and I did a play date for our kiddos at the Children's Museum in SLC. All of our kids range from almost 1 to almost 4, and boys outnumber girls 5 to 1, so we're kind of in the same boat of life. Plus I love hanging out with all three of them, which helps too! I had never been to the Children's Museum (and neither had my boys) so I didn't really know what to expect. I figured that my kids would be entertained for an hour or so, and then I'd have to figure out what to do with them for the whole rest of the afternoon. I was really pleasantly surprised when my kids played there for a good three hours and I had to drag them away from the place! I think my boys' favorite part was the Bob the Builder exhibit, which unfortunately is leaving the museum in week or so :[ Consequently, I talked Sam into taking them back again on Saturday, and they still loved it just as much as the first time. I'm talking the kind of love where Jayson whacked his head on a toy and started bleeding, but still didn't want to leave to be cleaned up lol. Thank goodness for our free guest passes (I think we have enough to go two more times as well) so we don't have to pay 20 bucks each time we want to go! Although, if the kids continue to stay as occupied with the place, a membership might be well worth it.
There is one other big thing going on in our lives. I applied for a MLS position down in Boise last week, and will hopefully hear back with a job offer on Monday! I don't know for sure if they are going to offer me a job or not, but they did seem to really like me, so I've got high hopes. There are a lot of complicated reasons for us making a big move, and I'm still trying to sort through them all, so I think I will save the long winded explanation for the next blog post I make.
And that's our lives as of late! As always, more fun information to come next time :]
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