A Decent Day

First of all - new platelet count is 67,000.  Yippee.  Up 17k from last week.  And the mean lady was not there today.  The nice lady was there. I told her what happened last week and she, lied the guy that works there, was all “Omigosh!!” at the size of the needle that woman used.  The more I think about it, the more I want to go to her superiors.  I really should.. shouldn’t I?  The one time they don’t sent out a survey, I would actually like to get one and tell them what a crap job they did.

Anyways……..  I got to see my good friend Becky today. She’s down here from Colorado. Her daughter is pregnant and due tomorrow so she came down for the birth. I can’t wait to show you guys what she brought me. It’s so neat!! And she made it herself.

My plants finally came today. I bought a banana tree, some indoor tomato plants that are suppose to produce all year and some strawberry plants.  I was a little upset when I realized it was going to be 3 years before I might possibly get a banana from the tree. I mean, I can kill a plant by looking at it. LOL Luigi said “That’ll be dead in 3 months.”  I may’ve been offended if it weren’t true.

Do any of you watch Craig Ferguson?  I love that guy!  He’s just hysterical.  Did anyone see Tuesday night’s episode with Denis Leary?  Oh man… just hilarious!!

Let’s see… what else….???

OH!!!  Thank you to all of you who went and voted for my themes.  =D  I really appreciate it.  This is gonna be a long 2 weeks waiting for the results.

I think that’s all for now.  =D  See ya’ll tomorrow when I have pictures of my gift from Becky. Can’t wait Cant wait!  =D

Oh wait… Hahaaa.. I forgot to tell you that I’m feeling better and The Ol’ Man can finally walk again. Yippee

How Was My Weekend?

Wow. Thanks for asking. That’s so nice of you.  =D

Well, to start things off, I had surgery on Thursday. Nothing major. Just had my tubes tied. Five kids is enough I figure.  Right? Tell me I’m right and not going to regret this and will eventually stop crying everytime I see my fat belly and realize it’ll never be fat again because there’s a baby growing in it.  *sigh*

So I spent the weekend trying to recouperate. The Ol’ Man did a great job taking care of the kids and the house on Thursday but come Friday… he was back to work on the roof. Mama was left to pick up the 300 pound 6 month old when she cried. Then mama cried.

THEN!! hubby cried… He pulled his back during a coughing fit while he was on the roof.

Wait… backup… rewind…  Did I tell you guys that hubby ripped the roof off of my house? And then it rained? And then he put some black paper on it? And then it rained? And then he put some shingles on? And then it rained?   Bahahaaa  I have the worst luck ever.  No really!  Check out this screen shot from weather.com  Care to guess where I live based on the fact that I had no roof during this particular time….

So anyways…  Hubby was on the roof and had a severe coughing fit and pulled the muscle across the middle of his back. He can barely move. It’s so bad that last night, he refused to go to the bathroom for fear of getting stuck in there. LOL  That’s bad!!!

So anyways… The ol’ man and I spent the weekend walking around the house at the pace of two 90 year olds. Both moaning and groaning the entire time.  It was pitiful.

The good news is, I can still sit on my butt here at my desk and not be in pain. Yay for that at least.

Also, this weekend, I released my very first free theme for download. Actually, I released 2 of them. Yippee for me!  =D

I submitted them to a contest that’s being held at Free BuddyPress Themes. BuddyPress is a plugin that’s specifically for WordPress Multi-User. It’s actually the plugin that I’m using while creating the social network for parents that I’ve told you all about.  (Yes, I’m still working on it whenever I get a spare moment)

But anyways… I released my themes and submitted them to a contest and it would be super awesome if ya’ll could go vote for one of my themes. If I win, I’ll get a free WPMU Premium membership, valued at $250. Yippee again. That’ll totally rock because they have plugins that I’d love to implement into the new social site.

My themes are the TEB themes.  TEB is The Easy Button, another of my sites.  Personally, I’m kinda partial to the purple theme. Something about it is just kickin. LOL

Ok… so anyways… I’ve jabbered long enough for today.  I’ll be posting again either tomorrow or Wednesday, when we get the results of Luigi’s blood test he’ll have done tomorrow. And don’t worry. I plan on going later in the day so we don’t have to deal with the same bull we dealt with last week.  What a crock that was!!!

Fitty Grand Yo

Luigi’s count this week was 50,000 (up from 43,000)  Yipeee

I had blood drawn this morning also.  And I can tell you right now that I will NOT be taking Luigi to have blood drawn before school ever again.

Last week, I took him really early in the morning.  The woman that drew his blood was one we’d not seen before. Just as she jammed the needle in his arm, I saw how big it was. I was like HOLY CRAP!!  That’s an adult needle.  I asked her about it and she said it was normal size and blah blah blah….

When we went this morning, the same woman was there. She took his blood first and then did mine. Luigi bled and bled and now he’s got a nice bruise on his arm.

I’m very capable of taking pain. Five kids and no pain meds.. I can take a stick in the arm!  When this woman poked my arm, it hurt.  When she sucked blood out with a syringe (I’ve never had anyone do it that way) I felt like my veins were collapsing.  When she removed the needle, I almost vomited from the pain. I think she needs a refresher course!!

I just called up to the hospital to see if they’d finished with his test yet. I talked to the man who normally draws his blood and he told me that the needle she used (I knew the guage of it) was too big to be using on a kid with a low platelet count. He said he’d expect a large bruise and more bleeding with a needle that big.

I let him know that I’ll see HIM next week. He’ll be drawing Luigi’s blood from now on!!!

Sharing Is Caring

Share #1 - I took Luigi for his blood test this morning. They just called back with the results. 30,000 last week. 43,000 today. WooT WooT — I’m so happy!!

Share #2 - A link to the most hilarious thing I’ve read in a long time. This blog post set me off laughing and earned me quite a few puzzled looks from the family. What’s Your Last Name from The (After) Life of the Party (Formerly known as Life In The L O)

Share #3 - A story for you. One much like the one you hopefully just read. Harmony’s story is much funnier that mine. So if you choose to read only one, go read hers.  =D

On the way back from a baby shower, my mom, grandma, aunt and I stopped at a rest area. We’d been in the car for 2 hours and were all ready to stretch our legs.

We all headed into the bathroom to do our thang… The stalls were all full and the 4 of us had to wait our turns. One by one, we all went in and came out. All but my aunt who was taking forever.

Grandma left and went to walk around outside while Mom & I washed our hands and waited on the slow poke. Grandma came in a couple minutes later and was quite irritated at having to wait so long. She proceeded to yell out to my aunt, “Good grief!!!!  What crawled up your butt and died?!?  Hurry up!  We’re all waiting on you. I hope you didn’t die in there. OMG what a smell!!! … We’ll be in the car waiting.”

The three of us headed out to the car and… guess who was outside sittin’ on the curb smoking a ciggarette? No really… guess.

Bahahaaa…….  I miss my grandma. She was a riot!!!

Luigi The Actor

My new friend Putnam Pig asked Luigi to play a part in his newest video.  Go check it out. Luigi posted it on his website.

Feel free to leave comments. Just make no mention of Text Imps. I try to keep it hidden from my family and others who like to pry into my life via my blogs. That’s also why I use nicknames for all of my family. Not because I’m worried about kidnappers & stuff like that. But because I don’t want someone to search for my kids’ names and find me.

Anyways……. please go visit him & check out Batpig and Robin. I’m sure it would thrill him to no end to come home to a bunch of comments from all of my wonderful friends. *hint hint* =D

Luigi Pictures

Texan Mama asked for a picture of Luigi. Who am I to deny such a request? *smiles*

So, here ya go. =D

And this one… this is my favorite picture of him….

Weekly Luigi Update

For anyone who needs caught up on what’s going on with my 8 year old, Luigi…..  basically, long story short, his platelet count is low. Dangerously low. That means he has very little blood clotting abilities. That means that the slightest wound can be life threatening. That means, I’m scared!!!!!

Normal count is between 150k-500k.  Dangerous is anything below 20k.

About a month ago, his count was 16,000. Four days later, it was 15,000 and he was given a transfusion of meds to make his spleen stop killing platelets.

A week later, his count shot up to a whopping 258,000. Yippeee.

Last week, back down to 59,000. Grrrrrr

He has his blood drawn AGAIN yesterday. His new count is only 30,000. We’re going in the wrong direction!!! We now have a standing order that will allow us to take him for a new count on any day we choose. If his bruises started getting worse or he gets a nosebleed or anything like that, we need to take him sooner than next Wednesday.

If next week’s count goes down more, we will have to go back to Riley’s Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis again for another round of meds. If those don’t help this time, they’re going to try a different medicine. If THAT doesn’t work, I don’t know what the next step is. Hopefully we won’t have to find out.

Thank you for all of your kind thoughts and comments these past couple of weeks. You’ve really helped me in dealing with all of this…. whether you realize it or not. =)

No Stopping or Standing

I feel like everything is at a standstill.  Nothing is moving forward. Nothing is getting accomplished. I’m standing in a rut with a shovel and the hole is getting deeper. To make matters worse, there’s some drunk with his 4×4 tires in my rut. He’s slinging mud everywhere. The mud is splattering my face and I don’t have any kitty litter to put in front of him to give him traction.

If you asked me how things are going, I’d tell you they were fine. Same ‘ol stuff. Nothing exciting. Nothing worth mentioning.

But that’s not really how it is. Things are crazy hectic and I’m feeling like life is getting ready to spin out of control. I have no idea what makes me think this. I’ve never had life spinning out of control. I’ve always been very much IN control. But things have changed over the past few months.

In November, we added a new member to our family. 5 kids. 5 kids is a lot no matter what kind of crazy freak of a great mother you are. And me? I’m somewhere along the lines of “good mom”, at least in my opinion.

The biggest change is Luigi being sick. I can’t stand this. I can’t handle the fear of the unknown. And the fear of “what might be” makes me sick to my stomach.

His platelet count dropped again and his bruises are back. Are they going to be down more this next Wednesday? Am I going to have to take him for a bone marrow test? That’s the next step, ya know. A freakin bone marrow test. And they don’t put you to sleep for that. WHY??  Why don’t they put you to sleep? That’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard. A procedure that would make a grown man cry and they don’t put a baby to sleep to do it. Grrrrrr

See. That’s how my thinking processes go. Things just spin and spin and the thoughts just fly in. I could literally sit here for hours and just type. Type everything that comes to mind. My thoughts just race through my head at exponential speeds.

But I won’t do that to you. Mainly because, when you finished reading, you’d be calling the looney bin and telling them where to pick me up.

“Hey??  Does this straight jacket come in black??”

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??

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