Thursday, July 30, 2009

Dr's appointments

We had 2 Doctor's appointments today, Josh's was scheduled for 8:30am and then I had a 'baby' appointment for 11am.

Josh's appointment = no changes. This is super weird, one week it was 2mm, then next 4mm, then 8mm and now nothing. It's so unpredictable, we thought he'd be ready for a surgery in the next week or 2 but now we're not so sure. Josh was a little bummed because he was already getting his mind ready for another surgery to happen quickly but it doesn't look that way. The Doctor said that he might put external pins into Josh's leg to keep the rod from extending anymore and give his bone a chance to heal, that won't be pretty (two screws coming out of his leg). I think the Dr. is just really concerned to see some bone growth in that break. Josh was told to start taking some prenatal vitamins...he looked concerned and asked the Dr. if there was any weird "women hormones" in that "stuff" everyone laughed and I offered to share my prenatal vitamins with him :o) Oh the things we do for love.

Baby appointment = lots of changes. The baby looks good, grew a lot, moved a bunch and the amniotic fluid levels are great and normal. He's decided for now he's going to be head up. My blood pressure is good at 134/68 (cause I know you all want to know that) and I've gained like 10 pounds!!!! Now that I'm into the 3rd trimester I will have to start going to appointments every 2 weeks. Honestly I don't see how women do this with more than one kid...well I guess if you have daycare that would help...but being a stay at home mom how am I supposed to go to the Dr. every 2 (then eventually every week) with 2 small children? I know I can't take them with me, they would run wild. Oh well I guess we'll get it figured out.

Monday, July 27, 2009

Josh = no work

Well turns out the Workman's Comp wouldn't let Josh go back to work because he is on some narcotics still. Crazy, we thought they would jump at the chance to have him back at work. Josh is trying to step down the types and amount of pills he's taking, but I figure his bone is still stretching so he'll still be in quite a bit of pain and need something for a while. I think once they do the next surgery and stop the bone from stretching (and after the time it takes to recover from the surgery itself) that would be the time it would be easiest to get off the medicine.

Workman's comp is still a little bit of a crappy situation, they still need to reimburse us for a couple hundred dollars worth of shoe lifts, get us a prescription card, and get Josh's TTD checks sent to our house rather than the lawyers office. They sure don't do anything quickly. But I guess on the other side of that, I'd rather have this all be under workman's comp rather than regular insurance!

Friday, July 24, 2009

Luke on spankings

So Lukas wasn't going to bed and I was at the end of my rope so I yelled, "Lukas Joshua Frank Gillette if you don't go to bed right now I'm going to spank your butt!!" (yes I also use Josh's middle name when Luke is in "really big trouble" - I've even told Josh we might as well change his name cause he actually thinks that is his full name!)

To which he replied calmly, "Well.....how hard to you spank?"

I said, "I will spank you really hard"

He replied, "as hard as Daddy?"

I said, "yes."

He said, "OK then I'll go to bed" and climbed up into bed.

I left the room and laughed. I couldn't believe he was contemplating letting me spank him if I didn't spank as hard as daddy! He says the funniest things. On a side note - no I don't spank him often and we've actually discovered he doesn't respond as well to spankings than to being in time out. I guess for Luke his punishment is time out rather than spankings.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Dr's appointment 7/23/2009


This is a picture of Josh's leg! Cool huh :o) He has extracted about 33.3 mm and has about 10 mm to go. This past week he did 8mm so we might be looking at a surgery in about 2 weeks! Not really much else to say. Josh is still in a ton of pain but he's taking medicine. He's going to try to go to work on Monday and I hope that goes well for him. He's worried about being gone too long because the next surgery will put him out for another 6-8 weeks. So hopefully he can get in a couple of weeks at work before that happens.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Thursday from HELL

So this past Thursday was apparently the day everything would go wrong for me. Besides Josh's appointment taking a little longer than expected (I mean really just take an Xray and let us be on our way), we ended up having to drive over to Delve to get my supplies for a diaper study with both kids....not what we planned so it made me run late to pick up a bedroom set I had bought off Craig's list. I got the family back home and then hooked up the trailer and headed over to get Doug and a friend to help me load and unload the bedroom set. Well I'm not all that great at driving on the freeway with the truck and trailer I do ok but it took me everything I had to keep it at 65, it just was so heavy. Anyway I got off on Nall and headed to Doug's - there was a huge hill and the truck just wasn't slowing down any and I got pulled over doing 53 in a 35! I was crying (first time ever for me to cry to a cop) and I gave her all the stuff that was going on and told her I simply couldn't slow down. She didn't care at all and wrote the ticket. I was so upset. Then I drove over to pick up Doug and he wasn't even home!!!! I told him he owed me $145 because I wouldn't have had to go down Nall if I wasn't even going to pick him up. I also had forgotten my cell phone back at the house and now I was 2 hours late picking up the bedroom set and now I don't have any help either! I ended up just driving over there and there were 2 guys that helped me get it loaded. It sprinkled a little on the way home but nothing major thank goodness. Then when I got home it looked like it was going to burst so I hurried and got what I could unloaded, all the while Josh yelling at me because I'm 5 months pregnant and "shouldn't" be lifting. Well what was I supposed to do? Josh finally got a hold of a Brother from church and he helped me get the big dresser and 2 bookshelves (I'm glad because those were HEAVY). Then about 6:30pm I was sitting down trying to finally watch a program I was watching for a study and they were going to call me that evening when I realized, "IT'S THURSDAY! HOLY CRAP I HAVE A FINAL TONIGHT THAT STARTED AT 5:30!!!!!" So I jump up and rush out the door with my rough draft in hand and pray that I can still take the final. I end up showing up right as the teacher is getting her stuff packed into her trunk to leave! I turn in my draft and tell her I'm sorry.

It was just a hectic stupid crazy day.

Thursday's Dr's Appointment 7/16/2009

OK...so I'm sorry it has taken until Sunday to update you all on Josh's Dr's appointment on Thursday a lot has been going on since then.

So Thursday the Dr. was actually out of town so we didn't get to see him and the appointment consisted of just seeing the Dr's assistant and having an X-Ray done. The Dr's assistant called the next day to tell us that it looks like his leg has grown by another 4mm. So I think if I'm adding correctly that makes it just another 16mm to go. So roughly 4-6 weeks for his next surgery. It's looking more and more like Josh won't be able to walk by the time this next baby comes and that is a scary prospect :o(

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Luke in Primary

Today we were told this story by one of the primary teachers:

Lukas got up in front of the primary and was just standing there, so they decided they would let him help, he said, "NO, I got a bigger problem. My hair is spiky and I want it flat." I guess everyone cracked up and before he would sit back down again he was reassured that he looked handsome when his hair is flat or spiky.

OH MY...made Josh and I laugh then just shake our heads. He's such a character.

IT'S A BOY!!!!!!!!

We saw a penis...LOL

We weren't planning on finding out the gender of the baby, I REALLY wanted it to be a surprise, but we have to do sonograms about every 4-6 weeks and on the last sonogram I saw "boy parts" although the lady doing the sonogram didn't confirm it then I just knew I was right. Couple that with the fact that Lukas was SURE it was a boy and you couldn't convince him otherwise, and a dream I had early on of the delivery and holding a baby boy I already knew. I told Josh we might as well just go ahead and get it confirmed. I told the lady before she started I was 95% sure it was a boy anyway and sure enough she quickly told us we could now be 99.999% sure :o)

We're very happy and are busy now trying to figure out bedroom configurations. Now if we could only agree on a name! I'm going to name this baby Zackery Scott, but Josh still wants (and thinks he might have a shot) to name him Jonas Zackery.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Thursday = Dr. Appointment

Today we dropped the kids off with Ashley Beard-Fosnow and her two kiddos at 7:30 and headed over to KUMC for our 8:30am appointment. We got there around 8am and checked in. I saw a 'little person' in the waiting room and thought to myself (and now all of you) if he was getting the same thing Josh was lol :o)

Like I said our appointment was 8:30am but we overheard the staff saying that Dr. Horton was on call last night so they didn't know his ETA...geez folks you would think that if you were on call all night you wouldn't start your appointments until like 10am...duh. Anyway Dr. Horton ended up getting there around 9:30am!!! no joke...and these are the Dr.'s training the new generation of Dr.'s!

Josh's leg only lengthened 2.5mm which was pretty slow (it's average is supposed to be 1mm a day) but since it had been doing about double what it was supposed to in the last 2 weeks the Dr. (and us) were very happy with the amount this week. Josh thought he was pretty sedentary this week so we're thinking that's why his leg didn't lengthen. The Dr. wants him to keep it up...oh great just when I was hoping for MORE help.

The other thing that was great is that the Dr. thought he saw the start of some bone growth in the space between, it was really, really hard to see (you could kind of make what you were looking at seem like bone growth) so I'm hoping he's right.

We'd both felt uncomfortable with the Workman's Comp nurse last week so we asked the staff to please tell her to wait in the waiting room until the appointment was over then she could come in and be briefed and ask her questions. Well she kind of huffed and puffed and made a big deal to me (Josh was already in x-ray) that we were making her wait in the waiting room. Then I think one of the Dr.'s assistants got her too early and she was there in the room during the exam anyway! We were hoping to be able to see the Dr. alone and ask our questions without having to worry about what we said being used against us later. She's so pushy when it comes to Josh being able to get back to work...hello he just had major surgery and he's not driving...he can't handle walking or getting from the front door to his office right now. Even when we go to church he decides to use the wheelchair because it's too much walking (it's not that bad).

I did take pictures of the Dr.'s assistant taking out a stitch that was working it's way out, but our computer is being 'updated' and Josh said it's going to take all night so I'm using his laptop to post this...so pictures later. I'm hoping to take a picture of the x-ray next week to post...it's pretty creepy seeing the break in his leg.

Tomorrow I have a sonogram :o) I'll tell you more about that tomorrow night :o)

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Doctor Appointment Update

Today was the day. My mom came over at 7am to watch the kids so we could get to the Dr's by 8:15, but because of my great driving skills (I used to work at KUMC so I know shortcuts through rush hour) we made it there and checked in at 8am. There were 2 other people already in the lobby! I was a little surprised because we were told the first appointment was 8:30am.

Everyone in the office was in a much better mood, no one yelled or looked pissy. Even the Dr. was nicer today...maybe they all had a horrible day last Thursday (let's hope). We got into the room rather quickly, then X-Ray came and took him out to do their job. The nurse came back and told me they were going to go ahead and take out the staples on the X-ray table, so to come back and get pictures (Josh told them I'm a picture crazy lady) but I forgot the camera!!! I put it right next to the door last night so I wouldn't forget it and there it sat! I ended up taking pictures with Josh's cell phone but they are kind of crappy. I could kick myself for forgetting it, the staples coming out is a pretty freaky sight. The nurse told him he had about 50 staples in the upper and then about 15 in the lower scar.

We got back into the room and the Dr. came in. They had measured the X-Ray but because of magnification it's a little off but the Dr. estimated it to be about 20mm lengthened so far...woohoo. There wasn't any bone growth yet where there needs to be and we did talk about maybe a bone graft when the Dr. pulls out the out the ISKD (the rod that is set too long). Then the Dr. had a nurse do a crude test where Josh stood on a phone book until he felt it was ok and they measured that it said there was another 28mm to go. The Dr. said that could honestly be like anywhere from 25-35, it's just a rough estimate.

Overall just a quick check up to make sure it was still ok. So far so good, not a whole lot to report today.

Workman's Comp is pissing me off (yes that's the nicest way I could say it) - they won't pay for the prescriptions up front they want us to buy them and then send in our receipts but that takes forever and you have to pay full price, so it's like $90 for one of his prescriptions!! We can't afford that. Plus they don't want to pay for a babysitter so I can take Josh to his appointments. I told the WC Nurse they can hire a medical van then, cause I'm not taking him anymore. Our lawyer said he would call their lawyer and get it worked out...cross your fingers!!!!