Well 2012 hasn't gotten off to a great start for us, but we are hopeful that it really can only go up from here! To save time from 3 individual blog posts I have decided to do one big one to update everything that has happened and that needs to be blogged. From New Years, to Emery turning 3 months, to my hospital stay. So here we go.
New Years was spent like usual at my Grandpa and Grandma Kilmer's house. We always love going there. Especially Emery, she has an endless supply of people to give her all the attention and play time that she could ever want. This was especially helpful to me this time because I was so so sick (more on that to come). I spent the entire weekend in bed. But Jake enjoyed Skeet shooting and rabbit hunting with his new guns. He even got his first rabbit. He skinned it and we have the skin still to prove it. (yay...) My Grandma and Aunt even cooked the meat from his rabbit and my cousins and they all ate it. He really liked it actually and everyone else seemed to as well. Maybe another time when I'm not so sick I'll have to try it. But they had big yummy meals, played lots of games, and had a blast. I was just grateful for the endless supply of babysitters and the ability to rest....
2012 is bringing lots of new things for us that we are really excited about. So here is an update on what is going on with each of us.
Jake: Jake graduated in December with his Bachelors of Civil Engineering. He nor I could not be more excited about this! He also learned in December that he passed his Fundamentals of Engineerin exam that he took in October! This officially makes him an E.I.T (Engineer in Training). Now he needs a job and after working as an Engineer for 4 years he can test to get his PE (Professional Engineer) License and he SE (Structural Engineer) License and during all of this he'll finish his Master's Degree. So he definitely isn't done but this is still a huge milestone and we could not be more proud of him! Right now he is waiting to hear back from a job with a Steel Engineering company in Ogden, has applied to some county engineering jobs in Ogden, and has an interview with a company in Ohio on Thursday. So we are really hopeful. We really don't want to move to Ohio so we are hoping the Utah jobs come through. We should be finding out tomorrow about his Steel job which would make for a crazy week of packing and moving by next Tuesday. But it is the option that we all want so it'd definitely be worth it. Any prayers on our behalf are welcome :)
Emery: Emery is 3 1/2 months now and we cannot believe how fast time flies and how big she is getting! Just the other night Jake and I were looking at her newborn pictures and we can't believe how tiny she was and now she just seems so big! She is still a doll though and is constantly bringing smiles to our faces no matter what is going on. She is so sweet. She had been sleeping through the night (7:30 pm-7:30 am) for about a month until I got put in the hospital...and then any sort of schedule that we had went out the window and she basically does what she wants now! Sometimes we can't get her to bed until 9, and when she was staying at my parents there were nights they couldn't get her to sleep until midnight. She wakes up around 2 just wanting her binki back and around 5 to eat, then up for the day around 8. I'm hoping we'll be able to get her back to sleeping through the night again soon. She has to be the worst nap taker in the history of babies. I cannot get her to take naps about 90% of the time. She gets so tired she can't stand it she rubs her eyes, gets cranky, but will not sleep. We can usually get her to fall asleep but it only will last about 10-20 minutes. Sometimes 45 minutes if we are really lucky. This goes on for a few days and then she gets too tired and she takes a 2-3 hour nap one day then she thinks she is all caught up on sleep for a few days. Let's just say I'm glad she is my only child right now :) I'm hoping future children will nap so I can actually get something done during the day! She smiles so much, it doesn't matter what we do just looking at her she gets her big gummy smile that I love, unless there is a camera around...it is almost impossible to get her to smile for a camera, haha. She has started rolling over. She has done it 3 times now and it seems to scare her less and less every time. So we are having to keep a closer eye on her, and make sure not to leave her on the couch or her changing table ever anymore. We thought she was getting her first tooth about a month ago. She was super cranky, had a low grade temperature, and we thought we could feel it a little. But she must've just not been feeling well because after a day or two she was back to normal and there hasn't been a tooth! I can't say I'm disappointed. I'm hoping for no teeth until 8-9 months at least. But we'll see!
She has also started giggling, which is pretty much the cutest thing in the world. The first time she did it was a couple hours after my surgery right before my mom took her for the weekend. Jake was playing with her and she just let out this huge belly laugh. We all looked at each other and just busted up laughing. It was hilarious. She does it all the time now and I love it. Her favorite person in the world is Grandpa. It doesn't matter who is in the room or how upset she is he can always get her to start laughing. She went and visited him at work a few weeks ago and his secretary wanted to hold her so he gave her up. She immediately started to cry and kept leaning back to him, he took her back and she stopped. He was pretty proud :) She is totally a Grandpa and Daddy's girl. Those two can get the biggest smiles and biggest laughs out of anyone from her. She's gaining better control of her hands and legs. She always has to have something in her mouth...it is usually her hands. We put her binki in and she loves it but sometimes she will try so hard to get her hands in her mouth that the binki falls out and the hands go in...She doesn't suck on them she bites them. But we try to keep the binki in keeping the hands out. Then she'll try to reach her feet. She can only make it to her knees right now though...We are so in love with her and can't imagine life without her. She makes every day special and her smile and giggles light up any room. Love our baby girl!
Kara: After 3 months of excruciating pain, 2 ER visits, 3 different doctor visits, 2 Chiropractors (and an appointment with a 3rd), countless X-rays, and an MRI they finally figured out what was wrong, did surgery, had a 17 day hospital stay and am on the mend. Here's the scoop. About a week after I had Emery one night in the middle of the night I started having this pain in my back. It was really weird, didn't hurt too bad but was pretty painful. I didn't think too much of it and just kind of dealt with it. Well it started coming more and more often, and getting worse and worse. It started at around 2-3 times a week in the middle of the night around 2 am I would wake up in pain and it would get worse and worse through the night I'd be up from about 2-5 in the morning in excruciating pain crying in the living room trying not to wake up Jake and Emery. It went from 2-3 nights a week to 4-5 nights a week and I knew something was really wrong. So I started going to Chiropractors. I got massages, alignments, x-rays, nothing helped. It just showed that my spine was extremely crooked and I needed to be treated for months, which I didn't want to do unless I knew that was the problem. The weirdest thing about the pain was that it was right where I had my epidural, and only happened at night. The doctors had no idea what it could be. In December it started to get unbearable. Instead of 4-5 nights a week it went to every single night and during the day sometimes to by the end of December it was almost constant. I went to more chiropractors to get their opinions, I went to my doctors, I even ended up in the ER one night because it was just too much. I can't even imagine being in more pain than I was those nights. Every doctor would just write me another prescription for strong pain killers and say we'd keeping trying to figure it out. I got tested for kidney stones and everything. The last week of December they decided to take more X-rays and do an MRI. Neither of them showed anything. More painkillers just to be able to function through the day. Then I started to get really sick. It started on New Years Eve. The night before I was up most of the night with my back hurting. It had gotten so bad that pain killers did nothing. I could take 2 Percocet and it wouldn't touch the pain. It would start in my back and radiate through to my stomach and grow and grow. But I woke up that morning super sick. I just kept throwing up and throwing up. I couldn't even think about food without getting sick. So Jake took Emery up to my mom to watch and I just went back to bed for the day. This went on for about 4 days. I tried everything, Pepto-Bismol, Zofran, everything. I could not keep even water down. That Tuesday night I started to not only have my back pain, but the nausea, and excruciating abdominal pain all. night. long. I didn't want to go to the ER again so I suffered through the night so I could just go see my normal doctor in the morning, get something for the nausea and come home. Well it didn't happen. At 9:00 that morning after the worst night ever I called and they were luckily able to get me right in. I went, the doctor came in, saw my throwing up, saw how much pain I was in and that he couldn't even touch my stomach without me wanting to die and sent me straight to the hospital back to the ER. Once I finally got checked in and got something for the pain and nausea and got some blood tests done. They decided that I might have gallstones. Something that no one had ever even considered because I wasn't having abdominal pain, my pain was always in my back until just that night. But after an ultrasound, more x-rays, and blood tests they were sure I had Gallstones and gallstone induced pancreatitis. Which the surgeon informed is the worst kind to have. Great. He also told me that it is actually really common for women to need their gallbladders out after a pregnancy. My problem was I needed it out 3 months ago....therefore causing the pancreatitis. For my fellow nurses my Lipase was at 20,000 when I was admitted to the hospital. The ER doctors called the on-call surgeon who came and talked to me. (By this time I didn't care that I knew and worked with all of these doctors on a daily basis I just wanted to be better) He said that they really needed to do surgery and get my gallbladder out and all of the stones because it was causing the pancreatitis, but the pancreatitis was too bad they couldn't do surgery for a few days. And would probably need an ERCP before the surgery and after in order to get them all out. Well after 2 days of absolutely no eating luckily my pancreas had calmed down enough to not need to the ERCP before surgery and they were able to actually to do the surgery so on the 6th I had my gallbladder taken out. For some reason when they got in there though I had lots of fluid in floating in my abdomen that they had to drain off. The next day I went in for an ERCP, where they put you under again and basically stick a big camera and stuff down your throat go into your common bile duct and get any stones that may have come out of your gall bladder out. In my case, the ones causing my pancreatitis. Originally according to the ultrasound they thought I only had 3 in there. But they were very wrong...once the doctor got in there he said I had so many they had backed up into my stomach and he had to dig some of them out. This was by far the worst day I had. I was in so much pain after this (mostly since the smart endoscopy nurses didn't hook my pain pump back up and never gave me any pain medication) so I laid there for an hour wanting to die until my nurse finally hooked it up for me. I spent the rest of the day trying to get it back under control. After a few more days of no eating, my lipase started to come down. It was down to the 1500-2000s, not normal but better at least. So they let me try to start eating. Not good. My lipase jumped back up and I couldn't keep anything down. But this time it had been about 1 1/2 weeks since I had eaten anything. The dietitian was not happy and the doctors were worried so they placed a PICC line and started me on TPN (IV nutrition) since I had pancreatitis I couldn't have any fats with my TPN, but at least I would be getting some vitamins and essentials like that. I was on the IV nutrition for another week when my numbers finally started to come down enough that they let me try to start eating while I was getting TPN. I started with Clear Liquids, only threw up once, moved to Full Liquids, and eventually to regular food as long as it was low-fat so as not to flare up my pancreas. During all of this my white blood cells were really high (20) and every night I would spike a temperature of about 103. Indicating that there was maybe some kind of infection somewhere. So I had a CT scan which showed that more fluid was collecting in my abdomen. They still aren't sure why, but eventually my white blood cell count came back to normal and the fevers stopped about 4 days before I was released. After 17 days in the hospital they decided that my pancreas had calmed down enough for me to start eating regular food, and that they could watch the fluid outpatient and I was finally able to come home. I'm still not 100%, I have some pain but only when I cough, take deep breaths, sneeze, stuff like that. And it is totally bearable. I am still going to be following up with my doctor to watch this fluid. But I am just so happy to be home I can't stand it. Emery was so tired of the hospital, the first week and half she would start crying as soon as anyone walked in with her. After a while she got used to it and would just come in and lay in bed with me all day. But it is still so hard to entertain a 3 month old in a mini-hospital room. We would take walks and play with toys, but she still hated it. It was so hard with naps because as soon as she would finally fall asleep someone would come in needing to do something to me and she'd wake up. As much as I missed her, we were so so so grateful for the weekends when my parents would come and pick her up Friday afternoons and take her until Monday night. It gave Jake a chance to help me and stay at the hospital with me, and it also gave him a break from constant care of Emery since I could only do so much. They took her for all 3 weekends I was in there and we couldn't be more grateful to them for pretty much donating their entire month of January to helping us! Emery loved being up there and they had a blast with her so I don't think anyone was too upset about the deal. I just missed my little girl sooooo much! But we are finally home as a family and trying to get back into the swing of things. Thank you so much to all of the friends and family who sent cards, balloons, messages, prayers, brought Jake meals, visited me in the hospital, I cannot thank you enough. We are still getting phone calls from people asking when they can bring us food. We are overwhelmed with the amount of love and support that we have been shown through this all. So thank you from the bottom of our hearts. I also had such great nurses through it all that helped make a very hard situation just a little easier. When I was admitted the doctor asked if I wanted to be on my floor or the surgical floor that they usually had patients on. I opted for the surgical floor...I didn't want all the nurses I work with to be taking care of me on top of everything else. But it turned out so good. I had a few friends on the floor that I went to nursing school with so it was nice to have some familiar faces, and the other nurses were all great. As hard as it was to be in there for 17 days, I did have a very good experience. I'm just glad to be home, not be in pain all the time, and to be getting better! Hopefully I will be able to return to work soon. It has kind of been a mess with this happening 2 days before I was supposed to be returning to work from my maternity leave. But I am enjoying the time I get to spend with Emery and Jake. Thank you all again for your love and concern during this hard time for our family. We couldn't have done it without you.
