Welcome to swine flu Quarantine - Day 2

(Beautiful trees grandpa photographed below the dam)

Well, day two of the swine flu quarantine went well, apparently.


I say apparently because I had to leave to go to work all day, and left the children with my step mom and dad, and Daddy.


Wah. I miss all the good quarantine fun!

Let me tell you, they had a blast. I'm beginning to think we should rename this the swell flu quarantine.

There was a nice long walk along the dam, swimming in the spa, and bar-b-que.

Quite the pah-tee. (Mireya in Grandpa's GB hat)





Below is last week's crib notes, which ran in the Herald - Zeitung, an ironic foretelling of the week ahead...

Oh, and Mireya ended up with salmonella poisoning. I don't know where she got it from, we think a hot dog or pork chop, but in my frenzy/horror I threw out all the cutting boards except for one in the very back of the cabinet we hadn't used in a year.

Because in Comal county we specialize in over reacting. =:o

Share and Share Alike.

I have worked pretty hard to make sure my kids learn one important rule in life – share with others. This week I realized I went overboard. I should have placed some limits on this whole sharing bit, because now we’re all sharing the same cold.

This is despite a sneeze/cough/washing regiment that would put most hospitals to shame. But the air was just seeping with germs and it was just a matter of time before the invisible broke through the elbow sneeze rule and antibacterial soap defenses.

“Oh my God, I feel awful,” Mireya moaned. We concurred.

There is one upside to sharing a cold. It’s the found time.

Found time is that time you get unexpectedly in life, like a weird bonus round or overtime game. Time that normally would be spent trapped in traffic in the parking lot of the Friday night game, but is instead back on the field - where everyone in the stands is biting their nails until the end. It’s the time you never imagined you’d have because you had everything figured out well in advance, for weeks or months at a time.

Then you catch a cold and all bets are off.

The cold we shared gave us several hours of found time. Gone were the ambitious weekend plans, gone was school and work, and in their place, between naps and sniffles, was a little found time.

In one hour of found time we went outside and did chalk outlines. There we discovered our new puppy, Roxie, loves to bite at the chalk, particularly green, which made outlining her more challenging than anticipated.

Then Mireya, tissue in one hand and chalk in the other, grew a chalk garden, complete with sun and four types of flowers.

We tried chalk tinting on the puppy, but she was uncooperative. Roxie doesn’t like chalk THAT much, apparently.

(The best part of having a small dog is the really cool costumes. Grammy made this one)

In another round of found time (after naps and juice) we read every library book we had on hand and go through our unread magazines. We vowed to do at least five of the crafts – when we’re feeling better and can schedule time.

Nothing earth shattering happened in our found time. It had that precious quality of simply being there time, where you don’t save the world, don’t learn new things, don’t achieve greatness. We just got to be.

That was time worth finding – and sharing.

Welcome to swine flu Quarantine!!!!

(Day one of the pandemic: 300 piece puzzle. Done.)

Seriously. They canceled school in both districts in our county until May 11th. That's 14 schools and 50k students. And every day care. And gymnastics. And girl scouts.

Three cases of "highly probably" swine flu have been found in the County with "more pending"

Here's the email the school sent out at 8:30 pm on Tuesday.

Comal ISD closing all schools
immediately through May 11





It is the recommendation of the Comal County Health Department that Comal ISD close all of its schools beginning Wednesday, April 29th until Monday, May 11. The New Braunfels ISD is also closing all of its schools for that time period.

There are at least three highly probable cases of swine flu in Comal County. Other cases are pending.

So, out of an abundance of caution and because our school district needs to do its part to help stop the spread of infection, we are complying with the Comal County Health Department recommendation immediately.

The cancellation of school until May 11 also means there will be no extracurricular activities, such as field trips, and no meetings in our schools. For UIL athletic and academic events, get in touch with your child’s head coach or coordinator.

The Health Department is asking people to stay home if they are sick.

Comal ISD employees are not to report to work unless notified otherwise by their supervisor.

The Health Department and Comal ISD realize the closing of schools may be an inconvenience to your family. The health and safety of our community, our students and staff, is important.

Monitor our Comal ISD website for updates and any other information we can provide. Thank you.

For more information, please visit the Texas Department of State Health Services website at http://www.dshs.state.tx.us/swineflu/default.shtm

I tell you what, the panic is pretty palpable. Since a case of swine flu/HPN1 was found in a nearby town, people started to keep their kids home from school. I didn't keep the girls home, mostly because they've already missed a week out of school for a regular flu and Salmonella (more on that later). I figured they had taken their punches.

It's crazy... Here's a story from our community paper (this is where my column runs, btw). I'm not sure how effective this is, some people think the district is over reacting. I don't know. Three students sick, no one sure about the strain, who wants to risk it? Of course I'm driving to Austin for work, so are thousands more. Hopefully I can run the road blocks.

JUST KIDDING. But I do have to get into the office.

The downside (okay, my personal downside 'cuz it's all about me) is that I still have this frigging cough, which, combined with the fact that I am hispanic (but not from Mexico, for the record) is enough to make people cover their mouths and run screaming from the room. Lord forbid I should sneeze. In fact, everytime anyone around here does sneeze we immediately say "Swine Flu!" instead of "bless you."

So this is our little epicenter blog of the pandemic. I'll let you know how it goes juggling two working parents, kids out of school for two weeks with strict orders from the health department to not gather for play dates or in groups larger than 20 (no kidding).

If the flu doesn't get us, the cabin fever certainly will...

Funky pixs I found when I was cleaning up...

Sierra and me, striking our magazine pose. I like how the slanty lines line up with my wrinkles.




Kissy faces.



Wah.

Sneakers to Stilettos? But she's in 2nd grade!

It happened two years ago. Sierra crossed the aisle.

I was digging out a few more boxes in the shoe store when I heard her say "These are too tight! My toes hurt."

"No way."

They were size four ballet flats. Already up from the threes we bought two months earlier. This meant that we were about to leave the land of mary janes and shoes with cartoon characters and enter - - the stiletto zone.

Most people don't worry about these things, but I have a daughter with an unhealthy interest in shoes with a certain glam factor. Shoes with glitter and rhinestones. Shoes that scream Liberace and Elvis meet Imelda Marcos.

It's something she inherited from her father. Not that he likes his shoes with glitter. He just has no sense that these are not options for 2nd graders. I had sent them off to the mall with these instructions:

"Sierra needs shoes good for running around."

She came back with gold lamé wedge heel mules. With sequins.

Perhaps I needed to provide a better definition of "running around." Perhaps I needed to point out these were supposed to be for running around with her classmates, not one of the Village People.

Needless to say, Daddy is now banned from shoe shopping.

So crossing the aisle in the shoe department is crossing into dangerous territory with my girl. She headed for the red pumps like a woman with a charge card. I quickly steered her to the triple-priced size five shoes suitable for swings and slides, which, thank goodness, are still the main form of outdoor entertainment for her.

Something has happened this year. Someone has hit the accelerator and both my kids have gone from a nice, steady development course to a rocket ship out of clothes that end with the letter T for toddler and are hurtling head first into T for Teen.

Of course it doesn't help that all the clothes for girls in this size range do tend to be better suited to gold lamé wedge heeled mules with sequins than mary janes. By third grade, apparently, I'm supposed to dress my daughters like extras on a Disney music video. (Yes, even Disney has gone bare belly on us.)

With any luck I'll be able to keep Sierra in tennies and cowboy boots a few more years. But they'll have to have sequins.

Drop that marshmallow egg and no one gets hurt

We have a few rules about candy around our house.

Number one: No candy after six pm. Unless you've been really good and let mommy relax for 30 minutes in which case she'll cave on everything.

Number two: No candy if you haven't had dinner. Unless dinner is turning into some sort of epic nightmare of scorched pans and last minute substitutions, in which case mommy will again cave to try and buy time for dinner plan B to come together.

Number three: All individual candy, after a suitable period, becomes community property and is tossed into a "share candy" basket. Of course it has been picked through so much by now, there's hardly anything left worth having.

But my most sacred rule (so sacred it doesn't even have a number) is the Holiday Expiration Rule.

Under the Holiday Expiration Rule, any candy remaining from a previous holiday must be disposed of before the arrival of the next big candy-producing holiday.

Halloween candy has to be eaten or tossed by Christmas. Christmas related candy has to be gone by Valentines. Valentines candy hearts and accompanying cards have to be melted or missing by Easter. While there are a few stragglers (most often the lollipops for some reason), we stick to the rule pretty well.

Which leads me to the problem with Easter. There is no real impetus to get rid of Easter candy for nearly six months, basically until Halloween.

For months I'd come across a random Easter candy and wonder if I should save it for that last desperate sugar request. It was as if I'd become a slave to the Holiday Expiration Rule and without an upcoming holiday to drive disposal, I couldn't bring myself to get rid of the peeps or jellybeans.

Fortunately I won't have this problem this year. I have now figured out exactly what candy gets eaten around here and was successful in conveying this to the Easter Bunny. No lollipops, no hard candies, no miniature boxes of tart circles and squares even if they featured a cute animated character. It was all chocolate, gum and gummies this time out.

As a result, we are already scraping the bottom of the basket. At this rate nothing will be left by Sunday!

This is not good. We've gotten used to the perpetual presence of candy through summer. So if you just happen to have a few lollipops in the shape of bunny head, give me a call. I'm in the market.

The Easter Dress Search

Mireya is great fun to shop with. Sierra would rather chew through a bear trap than try on clothes, but her sister loves nothing better than trying on dozens of clothes. Say dressing room and you've got a friend for life.

Once in the store, it's all I can do to keep her away from sequins and polyester. I'm thinking she's a reincarnation of some broadway diva. Maybe a distant relative of Liberace.

Fortunately she has a thing for tradition too, and here were the finalists in the Easter dress selection.

#1 Judges' Comments: Mommy, I like this one because it spins out really cool.

#2 Judges' Comments: It has sparklies.

#3 Judges' Comments: Nice sweater.

#4 Judges' Comments: I like the slip and the see through. And the pink flowers.

#5 Judges' Comments: It's a little puffy.

After several agonizing minutes we ended up with two (and both were worn for Easter). After all, a girl has to change after church.

The shoes were killer, though.

There's simple nothing better than little girls in Easter dresses.

Here's big sister too...

Now that process was a complete disaster. First of all, she didn't come along to buy her dress, which, given how much she HATES shopping, I thought was a blessing. Not so much. She apparently grew a size since our last shopping outing and so I actually bought a dress one size too small. Ditto with the shoes.

Luckily with a little creative engineering, the whole thing hung together long enough for church, pictures, one Easter egg hunt and dinner. Never to be worn again. Anyone need a size 10 Easter dress with matching 8 mules?


(They are with Roxi, the newest addition to our household, which is a whole other blogpost.)

Rocking with the Bunny

Easter is one of those holidays that takes me by surprise every year. Maybe it’s because it hops around the calendar, maybe it’s the unpredictability of the spring weather. But this year I’m really not ready.

Here’s the problem.

Usually by now we’ve saved up cartons of empty eggs so we can make cascarones. We have zero eggs as of today. Zippo. Nada. See, someone was starting to have … umm…. let’s just say negative bodily reaction to eggs (who knew you could clear a room with sunny side up eggs?!), so we stopped eating them out of self preservation.

This is an Easter disaster. Where will we be without cascarones? They are easily my favorite part of Easter, right up there with chocolate covered marshmallow bunnies. Sure, you can get cascarones by the dozens in the grocery stores these days. They’re like mini Easter ammo, already painted and loaded.

But I’m a traditionalist. We MUST get in our “painting with vinegar and little dissolving pills” fix. There’s the search for suitable dipping bowls. The dropping of the pill dye into the white vinegar with a fizz of colored bubbles. Yes, nothing says Easter like kids scrunching up their nose saying “Yuck” as they hover over the dissolving pills of egg dye.

We’ve absolutely got to bend the little coppery hook to take the eggs out of the dye, and, since the hook is basically useless, dump half of the dye all over the place. What kind of Easter would it be if little fingers and parts of the table aren’t dyed robin’s egg blue and bunny ear pink?

Then there’s the challenge of decorating the fragile eggs with tiny little stickers, laboring over the wax crayon and combining colors until you end up with a perfectly un-Eastery shade of cammo.

We could just hard boil a few eggs for a egg salad (none for me, thanks) but then you realize that the dye leaks right through. Call me weird, but green and pink eggs are just not appetizing.
Hmm.

Of course Grammy found an article on decorating river rocks for Easter. She thoughtfully brought us a copy of the article and provided a bag of rocks for us to work with.

I hope the Easter Bunny has been working out. And that no one tries to break one of those open on my head.

Broken Heart Part 8

This is from a journal I kept 10 years ago when my daughter had surgery. I thought it might be helpful to some who are just starting this journey with tetralogy...

April 10, 1999

6 am

Last night's xray was good enough to convince them to not do a chest tube for her left side, but her fluid output has slowed down and I'm worried she's destined for another one.

She has been out so much. I'm anxious for her to be awake more of the time but I don't want her to be miserable. Our nurse told us not to comfort her when she cries - she needs to cry to loosen all the phlegm in her system. We haven't been put to the test yet, she's pretty quiet and the few times she does cry she stops very quickly all by herself. As if it's too much effort.

We are staying, or rather sleeping, at the Ronald McDonald house since we live 45 minutes away. Walking out into the sunshine is so strange, it's as if I expected the world to stop rotating while all this happened. I got about 3 hours of sleep tonight and 3 earlier when Dad and Christy were watching her and I feel refreshed. Three is about the most I can do because I have to pump out otherwise it starts to be pretty painful. Even with pumping I was having a pretty difficult time. Without her my system just doesn't do as well.

I need her.

.......

9:30 pm

They've taken Sierra off all of her hard core sedation and narcotics and she's doing well on tylenol. I had been getting concerned that she was just too out of it, especially when one of the nurses mentioned the need to let her cry. She isn't going to cry if she's asleep constantly.

For the first time in days I got out of the hospital/medical center. Christy and I went to lunch at a real restaurant and then I grabbed another 3 hours of sleep. I found myself struggling to figure out what day it was. The normal rythm of life has disappeared in the blur of monitors, tubes and wires.

We were talking to some other PICU veterans about their kids, about Sierra, about the whole experience of being here. About the new way we measure days - by medical procedure. Four days ago, heart cath; three days, surgery; two days, removal of the drain tube; yesterday; the chest tube. We all do it. Theo Anderson's family are the real veterans and they give us tips on different things, give us ideas on dealing with being here for our extended stay. We learn what questions to ask, suddenly immersed in this strange world we are learning the language, using the words like incantations to help our little ones. We hear other's more tragic tales and secretly thank God that our road is not as hard. Hell, it's hard enough.

We even get a little competitive - is her baby sitting up? Baby Tovar doesn't have a chest tube and he had the same surgery as Sierra. And what's this about him being moved out of here to the third floor? Then you learn that he isn't moving and now needs a chest tube, or that her baby has had a set back and you feel bad about your silent competitiveness. I want all of us out of here. All of us.

Sierra seems to be swelling on the left side and her breathing looks a little labored. No xray till tomorrow.

Ants. Anything but Ants

(photo from Paul Garland taken of the dreaded El Paso ants of my childhood)

“Ants! Mom! Ants!”

Ever since I was a little, that was the one word I never wanted to hear screamed in my house.

Ants.

Where I’m from we never had fire ants. We didn’t have many sugar ants. I lived in the desert and we had the Clydesdale of ants – Red Harvester ants.

These big red ants are five times the size of the little sugar ants and they built huge mounds all over the place. The mounds were the size of a kiddie pool, and were like an ant ice burg - there were a whole lot more ants underground than the ones you saw above ground. The outside ants were the landscape crew, carefully moving little pebbles back and forth, while inside the mound trillions more were doing serious jobs like moving pieces of paper to and from each others’ tiny desks.

I learned about just how many ants were hanging out underground when my next-door neighbor, a little girl who was not very nice to the rest of us on the block, fell into a new anthill in her yard. While I had wished for just this sort of thing every time she’d teased me and my friends, it was stunning to see it happen.

In seconds she was covered with really mad red ants and was screaming her head off. Her mother came running out, stripped her clothes off right then and there and sprayed her off with the water hose.

She never really teased me much after that, so I guess I should have been grateful to those red ants – or the giant hand of “what goes around, comes around” that gave her a shove.

Still, there is something about ants the size of moths with mega-mounds (that probably each get their own ant zip code) that makes you unsure of who can stomp on whom.

Fortunately for all of us, there were only a few fire ants that attacked our dog’s tennis ball and then hopped on his muzzle for a ride. None, as far as I could see, landed on Sierra, although she was creeped out for an hour. Dyno, the unfortunate dog in question, survived with no mental scarring, probably due to the fact that he’s pretty bone headed.

So I have no doubt he’ll dive right back in another mound for the ball. We’ll keep the hose at the ready.

Broken Heart Part 7

Installment 7 of Sierra's Tetralogy of Fallot surgery...

April 9 , 1999 through the night

Midnight

Adam went to get some sleep. After a bit the doctor showed me her last xray. Sierra has some fluid building around her lungs. This is the kind of thing that can lead to a collapsed lung. They are treating it by giving her something to kick her kidneys into overdrive. So we're back to praying to the patron saint of pee. I couldn't decide if I should call Adam and was just crying a bit as I swabed her lips when the phone rang. It was Adam. We talked a little and I felt a little better. He's going to try to sleep so we can be fresh.

I think we've had 10 hours sleep between us both over the last 2 days.

2 am

Adam couldn't sleep so he came back. Sierra is putting out like a champ. I hope this means it's going to be okay and they won't have to put in a chest tube. Dr. Zuckerman, the intenive care doc, is catching a quick nap while things are quiet. We'll ask him how it looks when he comes back around.

3 am

Dr. Z (which is what they all call him here) says he thinks she sounds better, but we are still playing the waiting game. I convinced Adam to go to sleep, I'm still wired. Just wait till 6 am, I'll hit the wall hard.

She's breathing so hard - 60 to 70 times a minute. My poor little one...

5 am

She's still putting out more than she's taken in, but it's slowed down. Her eyes aren't as puffy. Her temp was up to 100 but they gave her a tylenol and it's back down.

I'm working on her embroidery project, the one I started when I got pregnant. Of course she was a little early so I didn't quite finish. It's a nice focus point for me to work on while I sit there, staring at her, not wanting to wake her up.

I'm getting sleepy. I'll hang another 30 minutes, then get Adam so I can crash for a little while.

1 pm

They ended up putting in a chest tube on Sierra's left side. The fluid had continued to build and build and they decided that she needed the relief. Immediately she seemed to stop breathing so shallowly.

Both Adam and I are exhausted. I got 2 hours sleep last night, he got maybe 2 or 3. I finally got Adam to go to the Ronald McDonald house. He just called. He went for a run and is now going to try to get 3 hours of sleep. Now that Christy is here I'm going to go too - right after I pump out (breastmilk) and have some lunch.

Her xrays are all up in the little viewing area, and seeing the fluid along side her lungs make it all seem so simple. Water in? Suck it out. Broken septem? H-E-B twist ties, the Dr. joked, pointing to the wires which looked like little letter "p"s tied around the bone.

She has seen me and Adam both. Not much crying yet. I know she's going to be scared and I wish I could do something, anything to change this room into a place she would see as safe. I mean stuffed animals will only take you so far.

They may have to add another chest tube to the other side where fluid is building around her lung. But ....

!!

I just got to breastfeed her! She ate great! I know they are still monitoring a million things (her calcium and potassium are a little low and that fluid is still a problem) but for a few minutes it was just me and Sierra.

Together again.

9:30 pm

Sierra is getting her first little sponge bath. She's a little uncomfortable, but not bad.

While Adam and I slept, Christy and Dad took care of her. They had some challenges. The CPT (chest physio therapy - or more apppropriatly chest pounding therapy) was too painful and they had to stop the therapy and get her some pain medication before going on.

And there is only one way to know it's too painful. She was crying.

They also had to contend with some bleeding and struggles with the nursing staff. They were exhausted afterwards. And that was just 4 hours, Christy noted.

We are waiting to get her xray back to see if she'll need another chest tube. But her breathing is so good, nice, deep breaths, not so rapid, I have a feeling it's taking care of itself.

I hope.

It's a roller coaster ride with the first big dip being the surgery but with many more following it. I can't imagine how some of the other parents in here have done it - those that have been here for weeks. I've had about 10 hours of sleep in 3 days and feel like we've done this for a year.

Adam said it will be nice to get back to a normal life like what we had before. I told him it was going to be even better since we don't have this hanging over our heads. It's been like there was a huge 18 wheeler closing in on us and it finally went past. There are still some big trucks on the road, but those will be cake. I mean can you imagine what it'll be like when she breaks an arm or cuts her leg or some other childhood injury? Adam laughed "It'll be like nothing after this."

No kidding.