My mom called me yesterday while I was on my way home from work. She had a CT scan on Tuesday and got the results yesterday. Her current round of chemotherapy was shrinking her cancer but causing her lymph nodes to swell & press on her bronchial tubes. That is why she was having such a hard time breathing and was so short of breath all the time. She was supposed to get another round of chemo yesterday, but in light of the scan results they decided to skip it. She will take a break for a few weeks and she is scheduled to start radiation therapy in September. Hopefully that will work well for her. It will be three weeks of treatment, five days a week.
Eric has been switched over to his new seizure medication, Lamotrigine (a generic form of Lamictal), for a while now & seems to be doing okay with it. There are some side effects, but it is just something we will have to learn to deal with. #1 I think the meds are effecting his concentration. He jokingly calls it CRS syndrome (Can't Remember Sh*t). And #2 I think it is effecting his mood. He doesn't seem to realize it, but he has very little patience anymore & is so quick to lose his temper. He isn't a violent sort of guy, thank goodness, but he gets really frustrated with Tony when he is whiny. And of course Eric's reaction only exacerbates the problem rather than making it better.
June 1st Eric started working later hours. He works from 1:00 - 9:30 P.M. This allows us to save on babysitting costs. But we sacrifice time together. Eric has the kids to himself in the morning from 7:30-12:30, the sitter has them from 12:30-5:30, and I have them to myself from 5:30-10:00. Usually I try to get the kids in bed around 8:00 or 8:30. Well, last night I put Adrienne to bed & left Tony watching cartoons in my bedroom while I locked the doors & stuff downstairs. I wasn't down there for more than 5 minutes & when I opened the door to go back upstairs the entire upstairs was filled with smoke. In that short amount of time, Tony had unplugged my air conditioner, plugged in the space heater, turned it on and tipped it over onto the carpet. The carpet and padding was melted all the way through to the bare floor and the smoke detectors never went off. Thank The Lord I wasn't downstairs any longer than I was or the floor probably would have caught fire. And my babies were both up there! I rushed upstairs to determine the source of the smoke and saw the heater on the floor. I immediately unplugged it and sat it upright. I didn't see flames, but I knew I had to get the kids out of the smoke so I yelled at Tony to get downstairs (which of course made him freeze in his tracks and start to bawl) and I scooped up Adrienne out of her crib. I rushed all of us outside and onto the lawn and called Eric at work. I made him stay on the phone with me while I went back inside to assess the damage. The carpeting and the heater are ruined, but thankfully that is all. The carpet & floor never actually caught fire and the smoke cleared out in a couple of hours by opening windows and turning on fans. But the whole experience was absolutely terrifying! I'm always so careful about that space heater. I never use it when we are asleep. I never leave it running when we leave the house. I'm always right in the room to keep an eye on it if we are using it. Likewise, I always keep our outlets that are not in use covered with those plastic protector things. I just never dreamed that Tony would unplug something else and plug in that space heater! And I definitely urge everyone to check their smoke detectors regularly. That is one mistake I won't make again. I don't know if the batteries are dead or if I don't have it positioned in a good place or what, but I cannot believe it didn't go off with the amount of smoke that had accumulated. I think I'm going to get all new ones & get the ones that are connected together so that if one goes off, they all go off. It really was beyond terrifying. It was right up there with having to call 911 for Eric when he had his first seizure.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Update since it has been a while...
A lot has happened since I last posted. First, the DMV called us in the beginning of February and told us that they had a cancellation for the next week so we could get in right away for Eric's medical review board regarding his CDL. So we took an afternoon off and drove to Madison to present our case. A week later we got a letter stating that they would not change his status and he still had to wait the two years to get his CDL back. In hindsight this was all for the best because on the evening of February 18th Eric had another seizure.
It was just before 10:00 P.M. four days after Valentine's Day and we had turned the lights off and were having some quiet time & chatting a bit before drifting off to sleep. Actually we were discussing what we should name the baby when Eric suddenly started making this strange noise. I flipped on the bedside lamp only to have my fears confirmed. Eric was writhing and convulsing similarly to what he had done the first time back in September. Although we were both thoroughly discouraged by this turn of events, we know we are greatly blessed that Eric was doing nothing other than lying in bed when this occurred because being in my 8th month of pregnancy I would not have been able to help him greatly had he fallen and injured himself. And we also count our blessings that that he was not driving or something when it occurred. In any case, that was another night spent in the emergency room where they started him on an anti-seizure medication called Dilantin.
After our previous experience with the DMV we chose to let them suspend Eric's driver's license rather than surrendering it. At least he would continue to have ID and we wouldn't have to pay to get his license back later. Frustrated with the doctors for not being able to provide us with answers as to what was causing Eric's seizures, I went on a crusade for a second opinion from someone who could help us understand what's going on. Eventually I was able to get him an appointment with the Epilepsy Clinic at UW-Hospital, but not until the middle of April. In the meantime, I went back to driving Eric to and from work every day.
My obstetrician was on vacation the week I was due to have the baby and she thought for certain that I would have the baby while she was gone, but she said to call her on the Monday that she returned if I had not yet gone into labor. A dear family friend, Sue Knight, passed away and we attended her visitation on Friday, March 27th (my due date to have the baby). I was convinced that our little girl was holding out for April to make her appearance. On Monday, the 30th, I called my OB and she squeezed me in for an appointment that afternoon. After being presented with my options, I chosed to set an induction date for Monday, April 6th in the hopes that things would progress naturally on their own prior to that. As it turned out I began having irregular contractions that evening, which turned into regular contractions at about 2:00 A.M. and our sweet baby girl, Adrienne Renee, made her grand debut at 4:17 P.M. on Tuesday, March 31st. So thankfully I didn't need that induction after all. Tony went to stay with Eric's mom until Saturday and Eric took that first week off of work. It was really nice just to have a week to rest. I have to admit that the rest of my maternity leave was not nearly as restful since I had to get up at 6:00 A.M. every day to take Eric to work, spend all day chasing after a toddler while caring for a newborn, and then making the trek into town a second time at 5:30 P.M. to pick Eric up from work again. Quite frankly it was a relief to return to work again.
When Eric was finally able to get in to see a doctor at UW we learned a few things about the medication that he was on. First, it is most suitable for partial complex seizures and from what I described to the doctor she believes that he has generalized seizures. Second, Dilantin is very hard on the liver and Eric could cause severe damage if he combined this with even a small amount of alcohol. (Not that Eric drinks all that often, but he does enjoy a beer on occasion.) Third, the medication binds with calcium which keeps it from being absorbed and basicly renders it ineffective, so you cannot have any dairy products nor antacids containing calcium within 2 hours of taking the medication. In light of these things, the doctor advised that Eric change over to a different anti-seizure medication called Lamictal. The change must be made gradually over a period of weeks, so he is in the process of doing that and should be completely switched over by the middle of June. The other thing that we were told is that 60-80% of people are never able to ascertain what causes their seizures. The only way to see what is happening in the brain is to have an EEG machine hooked up while having a seizure. This is highly improbable in Eric's case since he went 5 months in between having the two seizures. The only way would be to somehow induce a seizure, and that is not advisable. So Eric is slowly coming to terms with the fact that he will have to take medication for the rest of his life, and we are hoping that the medication will prevent him from ever having another episode.
Eric saw his neurologist in Janesville a couple of weeks ago and got the clearance letter to get his driver's license reinstated. As of May 18th his 3 months should have been up. We had mailed the letter in to the DMV, but we never heard anything back from them so on the 19th Eric had his boss drive him down there on his lunch break. Apparently it is not the doctor's responsibility to report the episode to the DMV as we were previously told, but rather our responsiblity to do so. We were supposed to have gone in there within 10 days of when the seizure occured, and because we didn't they could suspend Eric's license for an entire year! Thankfully, they believed Eric that he thought his license had been suspended for the last three months and that he had not been driving all that time and that he did not willfully break the law. So they chose not to suspend his license. Whew!
In other news, my mom had a CT scan last Wednesday to check on her cancer and it appears that it is no longer in remission. After she had her last chemotherapy treatment in December, the doctor has periodically been doing scans to keep tabs on it. Although it was not gone, he believed that it had gone into remission because it was not advancing. Unfortunately this latest scan showed that the mass had doubled in size from the previous scan. So she starts chemotherapy treatments again tomorrow. She will be on different drugs than she was last time, and hopefully this form of treatment will not be as damaging to her immune system. The doctor told her that since they did not diagnose the cancer until after it had spread to her lynph nodes that it is impossible to erradicate it entirely and she will have to deal with it for the rest of her life. Their goal is not to get rid of it, but rather to shrink it down and put it back into remission. I looked back at the research I did in the beginning and it says:
"In general, the prognosis is poor, especially if the lung cancer has spread to areas outside of the chest wall or has involved the lymph nodes of the mediastinum. This cancer can only be cured when surgery or radiation therapy can completely remove the tumor. However, many lung cancers are diagnosed at a stage when this is not possible. About 17% of people with adenocarcinoma survive more than 5 years after diagnosis."
In light of this, I am greatful that it has been almost one year since diagnosis and we still have Mom with us. I remind myself that everyday I have to spend with her is a gift.
My sister Laura called me recently as well. It seems that she had a hysterectomy on March 30th due to some condition similar to endomitriosis. That is not what she called it, but it was some really long name that I had not ever heard of before. In any case, she was laid off from her job one day after returning to work after she had the procedure. Although she is on unemployment, she had finally saved up enough money to move out into her own apartment and she tells me that she is seeing a therapist. I think both of these things are in her best interest, and I hope that she is able to turn her life around for herself and for the sake of her children. Her second oldest daughter, who is 20 years old, was hanging around with the wrong crowd and found out the hard way what "guilty by association" means. Her so-called friends were breaking into cars and stealing stuff. And although she swears she didn't have any involvement in this, she now has 10 different felony convictions on her record by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Aiding and abetting are the legal words they use for that I guess. So she sat in jail for the months of February and March and has 5 years probation along with some fines and community service. But she was able to cut a deal for fessing up to everything and if she minds her P's and Q's for the next 5 years, they will expunge the felony convictions from her record. I just hope for her sake that she can manage to keep her nose clean and stay out of trouble for the next 5 years.
Well I think that brings it up to date for now. Until next time...
It was just before 10:00 P.M. four days after Valentine's Day and we had turned the lights off and were having some quiet time & chatting a bit before drifting off to sleep. Actually we were discussing what we should name the baby when Eric suddenly started making this strange noise. I flipped on the bedside lamp only to have my fears confirmed. Eric was writhing and convulsing similarly to what he had done the first time back in September. Although we were both thoroughly discouraged by this turn of events, we know we are greatly blessed that Eric was doing nothing other than lying in bed when this occurred because being in my 8th month of pregnancy I would not have been able to help him greatly had he fallen and injured himself. And we also count our blessings that that he was not driving or something when it occurred. In any case, that was another night spent in the emergency room where they started him on an anti-seizure medication called Dilantin.
After our previous experience with the DMV we chose to let them suspend Eric's driver's license rather than surrendering it. At least he would continue to have ID and we wouldn't have to pay to get his license back later. Frustrated with the doctors for not being able to provide us with answers as to what was causing Eric's seizures, I went on a crusade for a second opinion from someone who could help us understand what's going on. Eventually I was able to get him an appointment with the Epilepsy Clinic at UW-Hospital, but not until the middle of April. In the meantime, I went back to driving Eric to and from work every day.
My obstetrician was on vacation the week I was due to have the baby and she thought for certain that I would have the baby while she was gone, but she said to call her on the Monday that she returned if I had not yet gone into labor. A dear family friend, Sue Knight, passed away and we attended her visitation on Friday, March 27th (my due date to have the baby). I was convinced that our little girl was holding out for April to make her appearance. On Monday, the 30th, I called my OB and she squeezed me in for an appointment that afternoon. After being presented with my options, I chosed to set an induction date for Monday, April 6th in the hopes that things would progress naturally on their own prior to that. As it turned out I began having irregular contractions that evening, which turned into regular contractions at about 2:00 A.M. and our sweet baby girl, Adrienne Renee, made her grand debut at 4:17 P.M. on Tuesday, March 31st. So thankfully I didn't need that induction after all. Tony went to stay with Eric's mom until Saturday and Eric took that first week off of work. It was really nice just to have a week to rest. I have to admit that the rest of my maternity leave was not nearly as restful since I had to get up at 6:00 A.M. every day to take Eric to work, spend all day chasing after a toddler while caring for a newborn, and then making the trek into town a second time at 5:30 P.M. to pick Eric up from work again. Quite frankly it was a relief to return to work again.
When Eric was finally able to get in to see a doctor at UW we learned a few things about the medication that he was on. First, it is most suitable for partial complex seizures and from what I described to the doctor she believes that he has generalized seizures. Second, Dilantin is very hard on the liver and Eric could cause severe damage if he combined this with even a small amount of alcohol. (Not that Eric drinks all that often, but he does enjoy a beer on occasion.) Third, the medication binds with calcium which keeps it from being absorbed and basicly renders it ineffective, so you cannot have any dairy products nor antacids containing calcium within 2 hours of taking the medication. In light of these things, the doctor advised that Eric change over to a different anti-seizure medication called Lamictal. The change must be made gradually over a period of weeks, so he is in the process of doing that and should be completely switched over by the middle of June. The other thing that we were told is that 60-80% of people are never able to ascertain what causes their seizures. The only way to see what is happening in the brain is to have an EEG machine hooked up while having a seizure. This is highly improbable in Eric's case since he went 5 months in between having the two seizures. The only way would be to somehow induce a seizure, and that is not advisable. So Eric is slowly coming to terms with the fact that he will have to take medication for the rest of his life, and we are hoping that the medication will prevent him from ever having another episode.
Eric saw his neurologist in Janesville a couple of weeks ago and got the clearance letter to get his driver's license reinstated. As of May 18th his 3 months should have been up. We had mailed the letter in to the DMV, but we never heard anything back from them so on the 19th Eric had his boss drive him down there on his lunch break. Apparently it is not the doctor's responsibility to report the episode to the DMV as we were previously told, but rather our responsiblity to do so. We were supposed to have gone in there within 10 days of when the seizure occured, and because we didn't they could suspend Eric's license for an entire year! Thankfully, they believed Eric that he thought his license had been suspended for the last three months and that he had not been driving all that time and that he did not willfully break the law. So they chose not to suspend his license. Whew!
In other news, my mom had a CT scan last Wednesday to check on her cancer and it appears that it is no longer in remission. After she had her last chemotherapy treatment in December, the doctor has periodically been doing scans to keep tabs on it. Although it was not gone, he believed that it had gone into remission because it was not advancing. Unfortunately this latest scan showed that the mass had doubled in size from the previous scan. So she starts chemotherapy treatments again tomorrow. She will be on different drugs than she was last time, and hopefully this form of treatment will not be as damaging to her immune system. The doctor told her that since they did not diagnose the cancer until after it had spread to her lynph nodes that it is impossible to erradicate it entirely and she will have to deal with it for the rest of her life. Their goal is not to get rid of it, but rather to shrink it down and put it back into remission. I looked back at the research I did in the beginning and it says:
"In general, the prognosis is poor, especially if the lung cancer has spread to areas outside of the chest wall or has involved the lymph nodes of the mediastinum. This cancer can only be cured when surgery or radiation therapy can completely remove the tumor. However, many lung cancers are diagnosed at a stage when this is not possible. About 17% of people with adenocarcinoma survive more than 5 years after diagnosis."
In light of this, I am greatful that it has been almost one year since diagnosis and we still have Mom with us. I remind myself that everyday I have to spend with her is a gift.
My sister Laura called me recently as well. It seems that she had a hysterectomy on March 30th due to some condition similar to endomitriosis. That is not what she called it, but it was some really long name that I had not ever heard of before. In any case, she was laid off from her job one day after returning to work after she had the procedure. Although she is on unemployment, she had finally saved up enough money to move out into her own apartment and she tells me that she is seeing a therapist. I think both of these things are in her best interest, and I hope that she is able to turn her life around for herself and for the sake of her children. Her second oldest daughter, who is 20 years old, was hanging around with the wrong crowd and found out the hard way what "guilty by association" means. Her so-called friends were breaking into cars and stealing stuff. And although she swears she didn't have any involvement in this, she now has 10 different felony convictions on her record by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Aiding and abetting are the legal words they use for that I guess. So she sat in jail for the months of February and March and has 5 years probation along with some fines and community service. But she was able to cut a deal for fessing up to everything and if she minds her P's and Q's for the next 5 years, they will expunge the felony convictions from her record. I just hope for her sake that she can manage to keep her nose clean and stay out of trouble for the next 5 years.
Well I think that brings it up to date for now. Until next time...
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