Ho Ho hahahahahahaha

I have a confession to make. I haven't been a very accurate - nay! truthful - blogger of late. Believe it or not, life has not been all cuddly newborns and Christmas cookies for the last three weeks. Actually, cuddly newborns and Christmas cookies haven't been nearly as prominent in my life as I would like them to be. How shall I explain this? Ah.. there's no way unless I take you back in time a little bit.....


Let's go back to three weeks ago when our darling son Peter was born after nine and a half months of the most miserable pregnancy of my life (and hey I have so many other pregnancies to compare it to - I can say things like that) -- not to mention after three weeks (YES THREE) of very uncomfortable and exhausting prodromal labor. (i.e. painful contractions no more than 10 minutes apart every 10 minutes for three weeks)

As soon as I stood up for the first time in the recovery room I knew something was wrong. Pain immediately shot up my spine to the very top of my head like one of those 'test your strength' meters at the carnival with a bell on top. DING. I chalked it up to exhaustion and went to sleep not long after that. Rest didn't help. As a matter of fact.. it all continued to get worse. By the second day in the hospital my neck was so stiff I couldn't lift my head off of my pillow.. standing up meant the addition of splitting head pain and any sudden movements left my back in spasms. The doctor on call prescribed muscle relaxants and a heating pad... and because the pain in my neck and back was not relieved by merely lying completely prone -- side effects from the epidural were ruled out and it was said that I must have pulled something during delivery since I was no longer a spring-chicken, afterall.

When I got home the following Sunday - the headache became as unbearable as the neck and back pain - despite the steady stream of tylenol 3. By Monday I couldn't function. I was hoping the doctor would prescribe something a little stronger for the pain when I called to make my follow up appointment that afternoon. All I did was mention my headache and the doctor asked if I could come in immediately.

I was at the doctor's office long enough to describe the neck and head pain before he made a few phone calls and sent me across the street to the hospital. I then learned that I had a post-dural puncture and was leaking spinal fluid and this needed some correction. I called Dave who was home with three of our smallest kids and a Jeep Wrangler with no car seats to tell him I would need a ride home from the hospital -- then my cell phone battery died.

After a lot of waiting and paperwork.. I had a fifteen minute procedure called an 'epidural blood patch'. This lovely and uncomfortable procedure involved taking blood from an IV in my arm and then injecting said blood into my spinal column (eep) just above the offending epidural site from three days before in the hopes that my blood would then clot and effectively 'plug' the leak.
All internet sources state that the epidural blood patch procedure is anywhere from 'painless' to 'mildly uncomfortable'. I'm here to tell you that all internet sources lie. The sensation of having blood forced into your epidural space is not at all pleasant... And as the pressure increases the sensation progresses from unpleasant to painful to unbearable. The doctor asked me to tell him when it was uncomfortable so he could either slow down or give me a short break. It took less than 35 seconds for me to go from telling him 'okay that's feeling kinda uncomfortable' to shouting 'okay STOP NOW' and then threatening: "I'm sorry but if you do that again I'm going to cuss.. and then I'm going to get off of this table whether you like it or not."

At that point.. it was over.

In the meantime, Dave had obviously arrived at the hospital as I could hear the sweet sounds of my young girls screaming bloody murder in the waiting room across the hall.

The doctor had me lie prone for 20 minutes before asking me to sit up slowly. It was about that time that I noticed I couldn't hear my family in the waiting room and learned later that Mom had come to our rescue yet again and gotten the girls from Dave. I also noticed that the headache.. the backache.. and the stiff neck were all gone. POOF just like that. I told the doctor it was a miracle. He was very pleased. I was very pleased. We laughed. I smiled. I thanked him. He told me I could wait just a few more minutes and then get dressed and go home. I thanked him again. He left. It was all sunshine and roses....

Until I stood up to get dressed.

Yes they had warned me that the trade-off for getting rid of the headache would be a 'bit of a new backache'. I should have known that it would be something like describing the procedure itself as 'mildly uncomfortable.' When my feet hit the floor I had to stop myself from collapsing like a stringless marionette. Stopping myself from collapsing hurt. Getting dressed hurt. A happy nurse brought me a wheelchair. I smiled a pained smile because I was afraid that if I didn't smile they might keep me in the hospital a little longer... And I took the gruelling four steps to the wheelchair.... With every step it felt like my hips were going to explode.

But the headache was gone.

Life at home was slow for a while as things like bending over, walking, sitting, sleeping, coughing, sneezing and laughing were all excruciating. But I felt so much better than I had during my entire pregnancy that I really didn't complain much.

Now I have to pause my post-natal disaster story to mention that our friendly professional over-charging contractors were still here.. not finishing the house. MDA sent us a certified letter informing us that they were unable to process our application (you know the one that resulted in a grant? that we appealed.. and won... the one that they closed... months ago?) because we had never provided them with an affidavit stating we lived in our house on August 29, 2005. A couple days later we got a letter from the IRS informing us that we owed them more money and penalties after we paid taxes involving the grant which we actually didn't have to pay in the first place... but since our CPA was dumb enough to have us pay something - we might as well pay them more that we don't owe them.. or something. We also got a letter from FEMA letting us know that we were eligible for a grant to help us in relocation. Maybe they were trying to tell us something.

So.. this brings us to last Friday when I discovered after a long homeschooling day with the boys that we were even further behind schedule with classes than I had previously thought. This meant we spent the entire weekend trying to catch up and get back on track once and for all. In retrospect.. we should have slept more.

Monday night was another long one after we realized that we hadn't actually gotten any Christmas shopping done and it would probably not be a good idea to rely on getting everything we needed from the only store in town which happens to be an over-crowded Walmart. Dave and I stayed up until the wee hours ordering a few important items online and praying that the shipping cost wouldn't kill us this year.

Tuesday night sent me out Christmas shopping at said Walmart with George in tow and functioning on a mere two hours of sleep. (We did get to stop by Mom's for a visit which made all the delirium worthwhile.) I got home exhausted and fuzzy and then realized that we had forgotten to go grocery shopping. I was not looking forward to yet another homeschool day with five kids and nothing to eat but bread heels and an old jar of pickles. At that point I had what can only be described as a minor nervous breakdown. Dave talked to me and comforted me until 1 am -- which is when he left for Walmart to grocery shop.

I stayed up grading homeschool papers and feeling really guilty for sending my exhausted husband to the grocery store at one in the morning. We both put the groceries away when he got home and finished just in time for Emily to wake up screaming .... and for Peter to need his middle of the night bottle. Dave took Peter and I went to get Emily who was sweaty with fever.

I forgot to mention that at some point between the epidural blood patch and the nervous breakdown both Emily and Yvonne had come down with unexplained fevers for about 48 hours. There were no other symptoms.. and the fevers disappeared... and I thought everything was better.... But it seemed like Emily had relapsed.

We then stayed up with Emily and Yvonne and Peter for the rest of the morning. Dave left for work and I started laundry around 4 am. It was now Wednesday. It was a long day. Emily just wasn't herself and by mid-morning had developed a nasty cough and was wheezing badly. At 2 pm Dave called to let me know that he had made a doctor's appointment for Peter's checkup at 8:15 am the next morning. At 3pm I called Dave back to say "I know you really don't want to hear this right now.. but Emily is incredibly sick and her breathing is shallow..."

Sooo Dave came home and got Emily and the Suburban and took her to the doctor. In the meantime Mom and I were getting ready to go out Christmas shopping. We never made it.
Dave called at 4:30 pm from the hospital. Emily was admitted at 5:30 pm.

So... there we were. Dave was at the hospital with Emily with no sleep and the only vehicle that can carry all of the children. I was home with four others including a newborn. We didn't even know WHY she was being admitted to the hospital.. but it all seemed very serious. They did bloodwork and samples and xrays.. and food and nutrition called and asked what Emily wanted for breakfast... So it was assumed they'd be spending the night.

Look! Ceiling repairs are in our future! Again!

Thursday morning rolled around and it was pretty obvious that Emily was being treated for pneumonia -- but Dave wasn't getting a whole lot of feedback from doctors or hospital staff. The IV antibiotics and steroids and oxygen tent were a dead-giveaway though. Thanks to Mom - Dave was able to take a little time off from holding Emily to come home and get cleaned up... which is when he noticed that the air conditioning unit upstairs.... which is broken (oh wait.. I didn't mention anything about when the air conditioning unit upstairs broke....) ... was running... poorly.. and therefore... flooding the upstairs. The flood was consequently leaking through the downstairs ceiling.

I gathered every towel in the house and threw them on the mess. I wasn't going to let it get me down. I took a deep breath and started cleaning up the house... finishing with the Christmas decorations.. doing laundry.. and adding more and more to my to-do list. At around 3pm I finally sat down with the boys to go over schoolwork for the day. Just then there was a loud bang.. pop.. crackle.. explosion from somewhere in the center of the kitchen. I looked up just in time to see a miniature wall of water rise up just above where our kitchen sink is.

I should say 'was'.

That is.. where our kitchen sink was.

Where our kitchen sink was.

While we were sitting there reviewing spelling words - the entire kitchen sink and the water and dishes it contained simply fell out of its opening in the countertop and crushed the plumbing beneath. The kitchen seemed to fill up with water rather quickly. The boys spent the next two hours sopping up the floodwater with two dishrags -- since the rest of my towels were upstairs sopping up THAT floodwater. Can anyone say 'deja vu'?

On the bright side... The one year warranty on installation of said sink expires December 14th... We managed to make the warranty period with less than seven hours to spare.

Okay.. so we do still have a kitchen sink... It's just that it happens to be on the garage floor.

And so.. with new water damage, another broken air conditioning unit, a child in an oxygen tent, and no kitchen sink (again)... I bring all my blog-readers up to date for a little while. If I were feeling optimistic I would promise to post again and let everyone know what tomorrow brings.. but I really am not sure that waking up in the morning would be in my best interest -- so maybe not.