Wishing I Could Make Money Like He Makes Platelets

Well, I got a call from Riley hospital.  I have the results of Luigi’s platelet count from yesterday’s test.

Remember that it was 15k last Wednesday. All I wanted was for the count to be higher than 20k cuz that sort of takes him out of the danger zone. At 30k (double last count) I would’ve been thrilled.

Are you ready for this????  It’s crazy!!!!

258,000

YIPPEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WoooooooooooooooT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY

Today Is The Day

Today, after school, I’ll be taking Luigi to the local hospital to have his blood drawn and his platelets counted again. I’m absolutely positive that it will at least be double what it was last week. And even if it doesn’t double, I’ll be super thrilled with anything above 20,000.

Ya’ll wouldn’t believe how great his school is being about all of this. I should probably tell you that the school is super small. Luigi’s class only has 4 other students in it. I’ve never met a teacher or staff member that I didn’t like. Sure I may gripe about teaching techniques, but that’s an entirely different subject. These people care about the students and I couldn’t ask for a better group of people to teach my kids how to treat other people with respect.

The day after we came back from Riley hospital, I took Luigi to school. I stopped in and talked to the secretary about what we’d found out. I took a little brochure that the doctor had given me. It explained what ITP is, what the dangers are and the treatment that he’d been given. I told the secretary that she could keep the little booklet and pass it around to anyone who might want to read it.

While I was showing her the brochure, the principal showed up. I again explained the situation and the man took over!! He informed me that he’d be making a copy for every single staff member. He’d let everyone know what was going on and basically, my little man would be safe at school.

Later that day, his teacher called me and thanked me for the information on ITP. She told me that she had explained to the class what ITP was and told them about the dangers of horseplay. They were told that they need to watch out for him. No pulling on his arms to lead him places. They were told to protect him from getting hurt.

The teacher told me that she would be keeping Luigi out of gym class (as I had requested) and he’d be given a free period. She then asked if it was okay for Luigi to go out at recess and use sidewalk chalk. I was informed later that the sidewalk he drew on was strictly forbidden territory during recess. LOL

Luigi also told me that he was allowed to pick 3 or 4 people who could sit with him and draw. He referred to them as bodyguards. Apparently they WERE bodyguards and they were taking their jobs very seriously. They were running kids off left and right and from what I hear, there was almost a fight.  (LOL I’m tearing up right now. I’m a pitiful mess.)

That same day, his teacher called me a second time. She said that one of the other students had seen him bang his knee on something. He didn’t remember doing it but the girl was adamant that it DID happen. So his teacher wanted to make sure I knew and told me she’d probably be driving me crazy with phone calls.

Last night, Luigi handed me an envelope. I opened it up and inside I found a note that said “We thought Luigi might like a treat tomorrow after his treatment. There is plenty for the whole family to have a treat.” Along with the note was a gift card for DQ that most definitely covered treats for the family. How awesome are they?!?

A couple of days ago, I was talking with some friends about how I wanted to do something nice for the school as a thank you for taking such great care of Luigi. I thought about having pizza delivered for the entire school but I’m not sure if that’s a good idea.

Maybe I need to call the school and find out how many kids there actually are. 10 kids per class is 80 students. 2 pieces each, $5 per pizza… that’s $100 right?  LOL  I know you guys like math!!! Quit rolling your eyes.

Maybe my super duper readers (and I know some of you are teachers) could come up with an idea or two??  *smiles*  Anyone??

Annie On Twitter

In my hodgepodge post last night, I mentioned that Annie from Celebrity Apprentice tweeted at me. Texan Mama, your comment about Wheel of Fortune totally cracked me up.

Since it WAS as exciting as I thought and more than one of you commented on it, (*giggles* ) it’s getting its own post. And yes I realize that it may just be some 10 year old kid screwing with me… but oh well.

Here’s what happened….

I went to her profile and saw something that made me laugh. So I sent out a tweet about it. It wasn’t directed at her, but had her name in it and she noticed it. The tweet said “LMAO @RealAnnieDuke from Celebrity apprentice calls herself a twat on her profile.“  LOL  Totally worth tweeting, right?

Her response was -  @TextImps I am nothing if not very aware of my bad qualities (or good depending on tour view of twats)

Bahahaaaaaa  - So I tweeted back and said “@RealAnnieDuke At least you’re self-aware. Unlike Mr. “I listen to everyone Black” fyi - I’m rootin’ for you and Jesse.”

Yes, I’m rooting for her. I’m rooting for Jesse more and will stop watching if he gets fired. But Annie’s my 2nd choice.

Then… she moved over to the Celebrity Apprentice account. It’s apparently an account that they all share and switch off on each week.

Here are her 2 tweets that set me off:

“haha Very funny. Clint sucks. That was funny. That being said, I think Jesse is being unfair to Clint.” and then “Jesse never acted like that on Athena. I am surprised. I think Clint is right in being upset with Jesse.”

Me - @CelebApprentice He isn’t being unfair. He’s being truthful. Since when is it a bad idea to listen to the expert?

Annie - @TextImps you should listen to the expert. I agree. But just not answering Clint seems unfair. You have to work with people you don’t like.

Me - @CelebApprentice Agreed - Sometimes you gotta work WITH the boss, no matter how big of a jackass he’s being. Sometimes, tell him off imo.

I like to think that she didn’t answer back cuz I was right.  *smiles*

Hodgepodge

I’m anxious about Luigi’s blood test on Wednesday. I’m pretty sure his platelet count has risen. His bruises are disappearing and it makes me so happy that he doesn’t look like a victim of child abuse anymore. I can’t wait for him to be able to play outside. He hates being cooped up in the house and in the school. Although he says that he much prefers staying inside and playing a Spongebob computer game all alone in the classroom instead of going out for recess.

I’m so excited that it’s finally warm outside. I absolutely hate winter. I hate being cold. Hate shaving for absolutely no reason cuz as soon as I get out of the shower I’ll get goosebumps and the hair grows back at exponential speeds. I hate the cracked, dry skin. I hate that my kids are always stuck in the house cuz mommy has a fear of pneumonia.

I just typed the word exponential for the first time in my life.

I got another of my websites off the ground yesterday. I’m 4 visitors away from 100 unique visitors since midnight. WooT WooT

I’ve recently become addicted to Twitter. Last night, Annie from Celebrity Apprentice messaged me. ME! And not just once, but twice. Am I super duper special or what? *giggles*

That contest I was talking about has been put on hold. There’s a new version of the software coming out and no point on working with software that’ll be non-existent in a couple of weeks. That’s also putting a hold on our community site for parents. Ugh…

I have some super incredible blogging friends. Your comments have kept my spirits bright during this whole thing with Luigi. Thanks so much!!!

Willie Nelson just stopped singing. Time for me to get up and flip the record over.

Marzipan Babies

Thank you everyone for your support through this rough time with Luigi. Your comments mean the world to me!!  And to those of you who made me cry… again… I invoke my right to call you poopheads again… Ginny!!!  =D

I just received an email that had some incredible pictures in it. I’m super busy with work and a competition I’m entering in just a few days.. so I thought I’d share the email with you.

Totally Incredible!!!!!!!!!!!  These babies are made purely of icing.  The details blow me away.

“Marzipan is Almond paste: a sweet paste made of ground almonds and sugar, often with egg whites or yolks, used as a layer in cakes or molded into ornamental shapes.”

 

 

 

 

 

See - I Told You It Was Gonna Be Okay

First, I gotta say that you all are the most awesome of awesome people!!!  Your comments on my last post made me cry… ya bunch of poop heads.

Now, let me fill you in.  Bear with me on the length of this post. I’m sure it’s gonna be long. And it’s not nice to cut a post like this in half. So you’re getting it all at once. If you don’t want to read it, just trust me when I say… everything’s okay.

I’ve been doing lots of writing and freelance work and coding and other crap. But that’s not what’s been taking up my time and 99.9% of my thoughts.

My Luigi…. my 8 year old…. he’s sick.  Really sick!!  And I’ve been worried out of my mind. Scared to the point of making myself physically ill. My baby is sick and we’re working on fixing it.

A couple of weeks ago, he showed me his back and asked “Is there a mark on my back?”  What I saw almost brought me to tears.  Okay, so it DID bring me to tears… just not right then.  Not right there in front of him.

He had the most humongous bruise on his back. It looked like he’d been in a car accident or something. This bruise was bigger than anything I’ve ever seen on my own body and I’m the biggest clutz to ever stumble the face of the planet.  His entire shoulder blade was black and blue.

He then showed me more bruises.  A huge HUGE bruise on the back of his leg. This bruise looked like someone had kicked him, full force, with a steal toed boot.  Then there were more bruises. Everywhere bruises!!  Someone was beating my child and there was no doubt about it! It was probably those punks on the school bus!!! And I had full intentions of showing them what it’s like to fear for their lives!!

I gave him the 3rd degree and got no answers from him. His dad was gone, so I turned to my friend for answers. (Not that I wouldn’t turn to her for answers if The Ol’ Man WAS home…lol)  Long investigation made short… I had no answers for why these bruises were appearing on my baby.

Long Long Long story short, last Friday, he had a bunch of new bruises. Including about 20 small bruises on 1 single arm. These looked like someone had poked him repeatedly with lots of force. He also had these weird red rashes. So… I called the doctor.

The doctor got me into the office within 2 hours.  I’ve never seen our doctor write so many notes in one visit. I’ve also never seen his nurse write so many notes. This scared me more than you could imagine. We ended up at the hospital where they drew Luigi’s blood.

Monday morning I planned on calling the doctor at 8:15. I wanted to give them time to settle into the office after the weekend. Well, after being awake & worried sick all weekend, I managed to pass out at 7:55. At 9am I awoke the phone ringing. It was the doctor and he did NOT have good news.

“Luigi’s platelet count is low. Platelets make the blood clot. If the number’s low, the clotting doesn’t work right.  We’re working on getting him an appointment at The Riley Hospital For Children in Indianapolis. They’ll study the results of the test and figure out what needs to be done from here. ‘Nurse’ or someone from Riley will call you back. Don’t let him run and jump and do anything that can cause injury.”

The conversation wasn’t really this short and it wasn’t so quick and to the point. But I was still asleep and it’s the basics of what he said.

I immediately started researching low platelets and what could cause them and what they mean and OMG What’s wrong with my baby?!?!?

During my research, I found that 150,000-500,000 is the norm for a platelet count. I also found that anything below 20,000 is dangerous. This info obviously did me no good because I had failed to ask what the count was.

Research showed that there were TONS of things that could cause his bruises and low platelets. The simplest being an infection that made his spleen act stupid. The scariest being Leukemia.

I have to tell you that Leukemia is my BIGGEST fear in life for my children. It haunts me. I don’t know why. I have no explanation. All I know is… it scares me!!!

On Tuesday morning, I called the doc’s office again. I spoke directly with the doctor and he explained more about the platelets. He also told me that the platelet count was 16,000. Remember the number that I said was dangerous? 20k…. and Luigi’s was 16k!!!!

I talked with the doc for a few more minutes about Riley Hospital. Then I hung up and called Luigi’s school and told them to not let him do ANYTHING like climbing and running and jumping or anything that might hurt him.

5 minutes later, ‘Nurse’ called me back. She said she had arranged an appointment at the hospital for Wednesday. Good deal!!!  We’ll be there!!!  But I was thinking “OMG. A good hospital and you got an appointment for tomorrow? This isn’t good. He is REALLY sick. They’re not screwing around with this.”

So Wednesday morning The Ol’ Man, Luigi, Frogger and I packed up in the car and drove to Indy. We got to the hospital just fine but managed to get lost INSIDE the hospital. LOL Finally found where we were suppose to be and got registered.

We were taken to the back almost immediately. A very nice nurse asked him questions and did the normal weight, height, bp, temp & oxygen stats. As we left the room, Luigi saw rolls of stickers and mentioned them. She said “Oh!!  Yes!! Go back and get some!! We always have time for stickers.” and she gave him a huge smile. The people there were awesome! So kid oriented and so friendly. I fell in love with everyone we dealt with. By the way, Luigi only took 1 sticker. He kept kicking himself in the butt for not getting 2. Not because he’s greedy, but because he wanted to bring one home for his little sister.

So, we head to “our room” and the doc comes in and checks him out and is SO nice. Then, in comes the nurse who drew his blood. By the way, Stacie from Stacie’s Madness… was that you??? OMG She looked like you!!!

The nurse opted to put in an IV rather than just drawing blood. This way, if they needed more blood or if they needed to give him meds, he wouldn’t have to be poked again. (Thank You)  Somehow or another, she didn’t cap the IV right and blood came out of the tube and went all over Luigi’s arm and on the table. I wasn’t watching and don’t know how it happened, but The Ol’ Man assures me she did nothing wrong. And with the lack of clotting he’s got going on… it made a mess!!

We waited for about 45 minutes while they ran tests on his blood. Then, the doc came in and told us that his platelet count was now 15k. UGH!!! It dropped more???

Then, he gave us his diagnosis. Let me tell you, I’ve never been SO happy to hear 3 letters in my life!! He said ITP and I knew what he meant!! And I sighed. I sucked in all of the air in the room… and I sighed.

ITP is something that can go away. ITP usually goes away within 6 months to a year with no treatment. ITP WAS NOT LEUKEMIA!!!

Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP) -- I will explain this to you the same way I explained it to my son. Not because I think you’re on the same mentality level, but because it’s easier for my brain.

Idio is like idiot.  Then there’s the path. Thrombo means clotting. And purpura is like purple.

His body is being an idiot and killing the clotting agents on their path. That makes little purple spots (the rash - petechiae) on his body.

The I can also mean immune.  Apparently he had been sick with a virus.  His body started attacking the virus, but at the same time, antibodies were accidentally being created for good platelets.  And then… his spleen started killing them off.  (Bad spleen… bad bad bad)

So… what they did was they gave him some meds through his IV. These meds trick his spleen and make it leave his platelets alone so they can build back up and get him out of the dangerously low range.

Next Wednesday, I will take him to our local hospital for more blood work. If his count has gone up, we’ll repeat it the week after. And then a month after. If the count has not gone up (and I’m telling you it WILL GO UP) then we’ll call Riley Hospital again and we’ll take it from there.

Thanks for letting me share my story with you. I’m fully pardoned for ignoring all of you super duper wonderfully amazing bloggers for the past week… right?

I’m Okay

Since I received a couple of worried emails yesterday, just thought I’d say HI and let ya’ll know that I’m okay. There’s tons going on around here. Far too much to attempt to share in a post. I’d have you reading for an hour if I did that.  Plus there’d be lots of crying (on my part) and it’d look like I’m searching for sympathy or something.

- UGH -

aNyWaYs - HI. I’m okay.  SO sorry that I haven’t been to your blogs. I just can’t do it at the moment. But believe me when I say that you are all in my thoughts!!!

Things will be back to normal soon enough I’m sure.

I’M SURE!!!!!!!!!

- UGH -

Madeline Alice Spohr

Papa Johns Vs Pizza Hut

This is going to be a long rant but it may be beneficial to you pizza lovers. So … read on Wayne. Read on Garth.

Last night, The Ol’ Man decided that we’d have pizza for dinner. He’d seen an advertisement for a “Panormous” pizza offered by Pizza Hut. I was all “yeah.. okay.. whatever..” but on the inside I was like “woohoo! I don’t have to cook.”

So I got on the internet and headed over to PizzaHut.com I immediately saw the ads for this Panormous pizza. And I found out that….

Hang on. If you’re gonna read this, you have to do it right. You have to get all excited. You need a goofier look on your face. Your eyeballs have to pop out and your eyebrows need to be raised higher. And your mouth has to be ready for catching flies.

How about?? ….okay!!! …Pretend that your husband just gave you a 10 carat diamond ring for absolutely no reason except that he loves you.

RIGHT THERE!!! Freeze!!! Okay… read!!!

“Holy cow!! 40% bigger than a large and it’s only 10 bucks!!! And it’s actually 2 pizzas and we can have different topping? That’s awesome!! Let’s order 2 sets!!”

Okay… eyebrows down…

So I get all signed in and everything and start filling out my order. The only thing is, the order wouldn’t add up the right way. They were charging me extra for the topping for the 2nd pizza. Stupid newfangled technology.

So I call them up and start placing my order. I finish with the first half of my order and start to order a 2nd set of the Panormous pizzas. The chick on the phone says “Oh, you can only get one.” “Excuse me?” “Yeah. You can only order one. We only have enough dough for one pizza right now. We’re working on making more. It’ll take about an hour.”

Are you freakin kidding me??? Pizza Hut…. does not…. have dough… to make pizzas?!?!? WHA??

“Alright - Just give me the one set of pizzas I ordered and I also want some hot wings. 20 minutes? Okay, thanks.”

So I load up in the hearse (nothin’ like picking up pizza in a hearse) and drive to town. I get there and some snooty little girl rings me up and takes my money. As she’s counting out change slower than a 2nd grader, I decided that the total sounded off a little. So I leaned over a bit to try and read the receipt. She finished with the super hard task of finding 73 cents and handed it to me, ripped my receipt from the register, crumpled it up, threw it in the trash and walked off to get my food.

*puzzled look*

When she returned with my pizza & wings I asked for my receipt and she gave me this snotty look like she’d already given it to me. I very kindly informed her that she’d thrown it away. She printed up another, handed it to me, turned around and left again.

Let me back up for a minute. (Stop rollin’ your eyes. This is important.) I’ve NEVER had good service or good food from this Pizza Hut. I go back every 3 or 4 months hoping that they’ll get someone in there that can actually make a pizza that tastes right.

So, knowing that their food always sucks, I took my pizza to the 2nd counter to inspect it. I wanted to move over out of the way of the 2 elderly people who were standing behind me to pay their bill.

When I moved over and opened the box, I almost laughed out loud. What I had been handed were 2 slabs of dough with about 2 tablespoons of sauce on each and 1/4 cup of cheese. There were about 6 pieces of pepperoni and maybe 20 pieces of sausage. This was NOT what I had in mind when I ordered pizza!!

So… I stood there and waited patiently for the elderly couple to pay their bill. I was then asked what I WANTED. I informed the snob that I wanted my money back and they could keep their food. My reasons being that 1.) They over charged me B.) This was NOT CLOSE to being bigger than a large pizza.

So she goes and gets the manager and I can hear the snottiness in her voice when she tells the woman to come deal with me. The manager comes up, gets a little snarky and starts tinkering with the computer to give me a refund.

While this is going on, another employee is walking around looking for something. If I remember correctly, it was brown sauce or brown mustard. I can’t remember now…

Anyways, what I heard went something like this…
- Where is the brown mustard?
Snooty girl: I don’t know.
- Ugh. I can’t find it.
Snooty girl: What do you need it for?
- For this sandwich!!!
Snooty girl: I don’t know where it is. Just don’t put it on there.
- Okay.

*sigh* Somebody was VERY unhappy with their sandwich last night…

So… I got my refund. Told the manager thank you and headed off to Papa Johns to give dinner another try. I ended up with a 16 inch pizza for $13 and a second 16 inch pizza for $9.

For anyone who has no idea how big a pizza like that is… let me just tell you! My hearse… is a Cadillac. Cadillac’s are built for comfort. Seats are not made for skinny butts. They’re made for big ol’ fat butts like mine. Big butts and extra space on each side. And these pizzas… they barely had any room on each side when I put them in the passenger seat.

The pizzas were cut into either 8 slices or 10. Again, my memory fails me. But, when I put 2 pieces of pizza onto a single plate, they hung over the sides of the plate. Actually, the 3 year old only had ONE piece and hers was hanging over the edge, too.

And they had cheese….. and sauce… and meat….. and oh man were they good! And there are still lots of left overs.

See Pizza Hut. THAT is what you call Panormous!! Call up Papa Johns. Maybe they can give you some tips!

(Just FYI - This post was not endorsed by or paid for by anyone. I just felt the need to rant and to give some Kudos to a good company. We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.)

Magnetic Personality

I was over at Matter of Fact Mommy’s the other day and she was talking about how her husband was outside cutting wood. I shared with her a short story about what happened to The Ol’ Man last year while he was cutting wood. I offered to post some pictures & she proceeded to get down on her hands & knees, kiss my toes and BEGGED me to PLEASE post pictures for her. (Whadda ya mean “full of crap”? You did so!!! My imagination? Yeah… probably. Can we get on with this now? Thank you.) (Any of you who know MOFM know better than to believe what I just said.) (I’m begging for a beating from my readers lately, aint I? And they could all take me… I’m just sayin’)

Back to my story…

On Halloween, around noon, The Ol’ Man and his dad were gone cutting wood in another town. The Ol’ Man was wailing away with a sledge hammer on a metal wedge. On one of his swings, a piece of the sledge hammer broke off and shot him in the chest and made a nice gash. He said he put his hand to his chest immediately and his shirt was already soaked in blood. Scary stuff I tell ya!

He finished up his work and came home and unloaded the wood from the trailer. Then, around 10:30 that night, he said his chest was sore. Well, that’s to be expected. The metal had to hit with some decent impact to make such a gash through his shirt.

I asked him if he ever took a magnet to the cut to make sure there weren’t any little pieces of metal in there. Of course he hadn’t. So… he went to the fridge and got a very powerful magnet. I think it came out of a speaker or something. Anyways, he came walking into the living room with a smile on his face and a magnet stuck to his chest and he said “I think I’m gonna have to go to the doctor” Yes, a magnet stuck to his chest!! The magnet was about 3 inches from the wound. Believe it or not, he let me take a picture of it. But come on. How often do you get a photo opp like this?

He went to the emergency room and I finally heard from him about 2 hours later. He said they’d taken x-rays and found the metal in there. It had gone 3 inches deep and then sort of turned and went sideways. The doctor said that another inch or so and it would’ve hit his lung. The doctor said he was VERY lucky. The Ol’ Man’s take on the situation was, if he was lucky, it would’ve flown a foot to the left and missed him entirely.

Here are two pictures of the metal they dug out of him. You can see just how sharp it is. You could cut your finger on it just by running your flesh over it. So imagine having it shoot at you at a high rate of speed.

- - - - -
Don’t forget, there were 2 links in my post & I encourage you all to visit my friends. (Well, those who don’t appreciate the F word should probably steer clear of MOFM Hehee) But make sure you comment here first.. I’m just sayin’

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