Abundant Recompense Copy

First, the most recent update - My recovery has been swift. I ate grilled cheese sandwiches, mashed potatoes, apple sauce, and chocolate pie for dinner (ok, about two bites of each). And they say I'm outta here tomorrow! Best of all, barring any disasters, we'll be flying to St. George Friday night to be at my sister Lindsey's wedding on Saturday. Thought I'd just hit some random highs and lows. Thumbs down NG tube. This is just a synonym for "torture." Because they wanted my intestines to have lots of time to heal, they shoved a hose down my nose into my stomach and pumped out anything that showed up there. I couldn't move my head, felt like I was choking, couldn't swallow, couldn't get up without calling somebody in to unhook me. It would get jammed down there on the stomach wall and choke me, and whenever somebody came to visit, here I was with a tube sticking out my nose, green slime coming out. Sometimes the green slime coming out flowed back ...

Addison and I spend a lot of time together. Every morning he helps me get all gussied up for the day. I think he's getting to where he likes it a little too much.

I feel like I've been a bit of a depressing blogger lately. So to lighten things up a little bit and let you all know that we don't sit around frowning all the time, I present our son. He's shimmying.

Well, Nate came home from the hospital last Sunday. And today I'm writing this from his new hospital room, across the hall from the old one. On the 14th he had surgery to fix the crazy little end-of-small-intestine-to-end-of-colon connection. While they were at it, they found that where the small intestine normally hooks to the colon, it was so inflamed that it was basically blocked off. So they took out about 4 inches of small intestine and 4 of colon and connected the healthy stuff together. And as a bonus, the part of the intestine that they removed included his appendix. So that's a possible crisis averted. He ended up with an impressive scar (I'd guess about 5 inches) and a jp drain to show for it. We came home the following Monday (the 19th) and sweated/cried/rejoiced our way through a tough week of progress. About Tuesday or Wednesday the drainage started looking weird (think mud), so we called the doc who asked us several questions and determined it was fine. Then t...

For the first time in 190 hours, I just slept hard enough that I woke up not knowing where I was, not expecting and not feeling any pain in my abdomen, and not feeling my IV either. Such a good feeling--going back to sleep now. Hopefully more later.

Something really really good must be coming our way, because once again, we're having a bit of a tough time. Nate spent Saturday throwing his guts up and hurting a lot. We called our doctor in the evening and they told us to head to the ER to get some fluids back in him so he could kick whatever was bugging him. One of my visiting teachers came over after we put Addison down and we headed up to McKay-Dee in Ogden. We only had to wait about an hour and a half to be seen, and they were quick about giving Nate a fabulous hospital gown, morphine, anti-nausea stuff, an iv full of saline, and a barf bag. We talked to a doctor shortly thereafter and explained about Nate's Crohn's Disease and they decided to do a CT scan of his intestines. There was a 2 hour prep where he had to drink two giant cups of disgustingness and the x-ray was scheduled for 1:30 a.m. We sat around, read, chatted, and tried to ignore the noise coming through our shower curtain that served as a door. Then at...

Well we've gotten brave around here. Over the break, Nate let me cut his hair! I think I was more scared than he was, but it actually turned out decent-looking. Yes, we're in our jammies. And we're scared. Yikes. A bowl cut. After. Not bad, eh? So this week I bought some clippers from WalMart for thirteen bucks and became the family hairdresser. Before - notice the dried milk in his bangs from breakfast. Also before - mad scientist hair in the back. After. He looks like a big boy that just gained 20 pounds. And no more milk bangs! To add to the big boy-ness, Addison did this during playtime today. He makes the noises and everything!

We're back from an awesome, fabulous, long vacation. We spent Christmas with my family in Georgia and headed to St. George to spend some quality time with Nate's fam starting on the 31st. Addison is finally back on schedule and not getting up at 5:30 anymore. One of the highlights of the Georgia trip was rocket balloons. Several of us got them in our stockings. If you've never heard of them, head to the dollar store. An elf told me they're 88 cents a pack. They're long skinny balloons with stripes on them and you blow them up then let go and watch them fly. We all headed outside on Christmas or the day after and went to town with them. We must've spent an hour at the very least doing it. Dad was determined to hit the power line, but I don't think it ever happened. My favorite part was watching everybody blowing them up. Everyone (except Camden) looked ridiculous when they did it and we probably all ended up with hernias. They're tough little cookies. Bri...