Kiersten’s Blog

Taylor took the car to work yesterday.  I told him to.  I wanted him to pick up a desk for me that I found on Craigslist and thought would be perfect for keeping Ashton off the computer.  The desk was in Imperial Beach, so I told him to just go surfing after work and then pick it up, which he did.  That left me without a car, which was fine.  It was a nice day.  I was happy to bike to Target after I picked up London from school.  We needed to get a birthday present for a friend’s party she was going to today.  The kids were excited about a ride in the trailer and I was happy to get a bit more exercise.  Plus, Taylor just had his bike tuned up.  I kind of wanted to try it out.

We were almost to Target and the ride had been great.  I was waiting at the final light when a truck with a middle-aged man in it (I know, I’m shocked that it wasn’t an older person too) pulled up next to me.  The man rolled down the window and asked if I had children in my trailer.  I answered in the affirmative, proud that I could pull my kids along.  The man proceeded to lecture me on why I should not ever let my children ride in one of those and that it’s the most dangerous thing he has ever seen.  I am putting my children in jeopardy and he, of course, would never, ever put his children in one of those.  It’s much too dangerous.  Anyway, he went on and on.  I couldn’t hear him very well and I also didn’t really pay much attention because I have had enough people tell me that I’m a bad mom that I didn’t feel the need to hear it one more time.  I politely thanked him for his opinion and finished my ride.  What could have been a very pleasant bike ride and nice afternoon turned into me being angry and upset by something a judgmental person said to me.  I am happy to report that we all made it home safely.  Take that judgemental-middle-aged-man-in-a-truck.  Safe.  Oh, and I have a lovely new desk.

Since it has been five years since London had her surgery, I thought it would be fun to take a look back to that dreadful day.  First of all, we have a photo of what the palate looked like before.

We were lucky enough that her gums, lip, and nose were intact and that all of her teeth came in in the right places.

On the morning of July 10, we checked in early at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles to await the 3 hour surgery.

Hours later (more than 3.  She was so little that it took longer than expected) we were invited into her recovery room where she was screaming.  I could hardly recognize her face and I for sure didn’t recognize her scream.  It broke my heart to see her like that, face swollen and hurting.

We all had some adjusting to do.  She bounced back in just a couple of days and I’m so happy to say that we now have a healthy, happy 5-year-old.  And I’m especially excited today that the tube placed in her ear the day she had her palatoplasty is now finally gone.

Some days I’m in awe of the work that doctors can do to fix my children.  We are so blessed to live in a time where we (I mean doctors) have the knowledge they need to perform these miracles.

I know it's gross, but I had to have proof that the tube was actually out of her ear.

Five years ago this month we had our first overnight stay in the hospital with London.  Today we celebrate the full (I think) recovery of that surgery with the tube FINALLY coming out of her ear!  That pesky tube hung out in there for FIVE YEARS!  I can’t believe it’s finally gone.  Yay for swimming and beach days, at least as soon as the cast comes off.  You know, when we recover from her second surgery and overnight stay in the hospital.

If you knew me more than a year ago, you would probably remember that I was not, in fact not even close to being a runner.  I hated running.  Soon after we moved into our house, I had a friend running a 10k and invited me to run it with her.  I don’t even know why I accepted, but that’s what got me started.  Fast-forward almost a year and a half, and I’m training for a half marathon!  During my 10k training, I sometimes ran a little bit with some ladies in my ward, who just happened to be on the same route/same time as I was running.  After my race, I kept running with them.  And I haven’t stopped!  My 10k was last April and now I’m actually enjoying running!  I never thought that would happen.  And I never would have considered myself a runner, but I guess I am.  Today I ran further than I ever have at one time.  I ran 9 miles.  Without stopping.  In a 9:17 pace.  You might not think that’s amazing, but I do.  So I’m a runner.  I run.

We had an appointment today and things are looking good on the elbow front. London got a purple cast and we have another appointment in 2 1/2 weeks at which point they will remove the pins and likely only give her a removable cast. That way she’ll be able to sleep more comfortably. Doc says in a month she’ll be totally better and we can do swim lessons then. Thanks for all the prayers! She’s doing really well.

Some things were said today that I don’t want to forget:

by the x-ray tech:

I’m really good at this.  I’ve been doing this for a long time and I just did you a big favor because I convinced the Dr. that we don’t need to take 9 pictures.  Only 5.

This one’s really important so don’t forget to smile!  I’ll smile with  you.

by an old man waiting for an x-ray after watching me with London:

I’m no expert, but I think you’re doing a great job as a mother.

(That was especially nice for me to hear as I have heard so often from old people that I’m a bad mom.)

by London:

Don’t take a picture.  I don’t want to remember this!

I wish I was you!

I’m sorry to say that I was being disobedient.

I stepped over a new threshold of parenting today.  I know every parent does this at one point or another, but we made it almost six years without it.  Today it happened.  We made a visit to the ER.  I was sure Ashton would be the first child to take us there since he’s the crazy one, but I was wrong.  It was London.  The short story is, she has a broken elbow.  Big time.  If you want to know more, read on.  I won’t be offended if you don’t want to hear the whole story, though (but at least look at the x-ray picture.  It’s quite impressive).

We had just gotten home from church and I was getting dinner ready (which now reminds me that I still have the chicken in the crock pot.  I better do something about that sometime soon) and the kids were playing in the living room.  They had 3 large food storage cans that they were stacking and playing with in the living room.  I had given them specific directions not to stand on them.  I heard a scream.  I didn’t think anything of it, since I hear screams a lot around here.  London’s a little over dramatic about small owies sometimes.  But the screaming persisted so I decided to take a look.  I was completely shocked as to what I saw.  I can’t say that I reacted the way that I would have hoped I would in this situation.  I just didn’t know what to do.  I covered my mouth because that was just the reaction I had.  Taylor ran to her and helped her a lot more than I did.  We piled in the car and drove to the hospital.  I didn’t think to grab snacks or water or even to call anybody to take Ashton.  We just went to the hospital.  On the way to the hospital, I asked London what happened.  Through her tears she said, “I have to tell you that I was being disobedient.”  She somehow fell off one of the cans that she was told not to stand on.  It wasn’t until we were in x-ray that I heard the whole story.  She was jumping from a can to the couch and she missed the couch.  Anyway, once we got to the ER and checked in at the front window, they took her right back.  At least we didn’t have to wait for hours in the waiting room.  We did enough waiting elsewhere.

Once in a bed, the nurse came and checked her out.  Then the doctor came in.  Without touching it or hardly even looking at it he said, “Oh, it’s definitely broken.  I’ve been doing this for a long time and it’s broken.”  He mentioned later that whenever you see swelling in the elbow, it’s broken.  Then, of course, they sent us back to x-ray.  That’s where we found out how broken it really was.  It had dislocated and broken off fragments of bone along the way.

It needed to be re-set (obviously) and also needed a couple of pins to keep it in place.  They told us that surgery would happen between 4 and 5.  It was about 2:30 or 3.  So we waited.  The surgeon came down and talked to us.  We talked to the doctor.  We talked to more nurses.  We signed paperwork.  We waited some more.  Finally they wheeled her bed up to surgery.  When she was finally prepped and ready to go in, it was almost 6:00.  We had been there since 12:45 or so.  We hadn’t eaten and Ashton was tired.

While London was in surgery, the rest of us came home, scarfed down some hot dogs (since I never was able to get dinner made) and packed up a few necessities and drove back to the hospital.  We got there just after she came out of surgery and was waking up.  Things went well.  They were able to place everything right and stick in the pins without having to make an incision.  In fact, they told us it would be a couple of hours but it didn’t take more than an hour.  Now she’s in recovery (hopefully sleeping) in pediatrics.  Taylor’s there with her and they will both spend the night.

She got a singing Ariel from the nurses. Who needs stickers? We got about 20 of them too.

So much for swimming lessons and beach days . . .

Part of me wants to be more healthy.  Part of me does not.  The part of me that wants to eat more healthy usually gets thrown out the window in the moment.  You know, that moment that I want a bowl of ice cream, or another cookie.  But the other part of me wants to be able to overcome those cravings and temptations, and just suck it up and eat more healthy.  Why would I not?  Healthy food is yummy.  But it’s not as yummy as that bowl of ice cream.  And when I’m bored, it’s fun to just make up a little treat.  I’ve been working on that.  Somehow lately, I’ve stumbled upon materials and classes about eating proper nutrients.  I don’t think I’m searching these things out, so it must be something I need.

I consider myself a pretty healthy person.  I try to eat a balanced diet and I run 6 miles (or more), three times a week.  I just know that I could be doing better.  Don’t we all?  I have a few obstacles to overcome, though.  First of all, I get a lot of griping when I make healthy meals.  I’m pretty sure London doesn’t really like anything.  Except Taylor packed her lunch a couple of times this week and she seems to eat more of it when he packs it.  Maybe I should make him cook the dinners!  Ashton has stopped eating too.  He used to eat everything.  Now, not so much.  At least both kids still love frozen peas (as long as they’re frozen).  They eat them like candy.  I’ll keep buying them.  Another obstacle is my sweet tooth.  It seems as though healthy is just not as yummy, although I do eat many yummy, healthy things.  I also know that as I eat less junk, I will crave less junk.

In that light, I have set a few goals.  I plan on eating less junk food.  That doesn’t mean I have to cut it out completely, just have one cookie instead of 3.  I’m also going to start going to bed earlier.  I’m usually up quite early (at least on the days I go running) so if I’m not going to be early, I’m definitely not getting enough sleep.  I’m going to start using my water app again and drink at least 64 ounces of water a day.  I’m going to eat more protein (mostly plant based).  I’m going to continue my half marathon training.  I know that my goals aren’t super concrete, but I have to at least put in writing that I’m going to do something instead of me sitting around doing nothing.  So here’s to a healthier family!

I had a conversation with London’s speech pathologist today.  She showed the video of London’s naso-endoscopy to a couple of different surgeons and they both said that her nasality is not severe enough that they will operate.  They’ll keep an eye on it and I’m sure we’ll have to go back in the future for another naso-endoscopy, but for now, she’s okay.  Hopefully everything will continue to grow with her and she will never need another surgery, but we won’t know that until she’s fully grown.  For now, she can keep going to speech therapy and we don’t have to worry about another surgery any time soon!

For a number of years now, London has received speech therapy.  Most people who listen to her wouldn’t hear the slight nasality in her speech.  She was a little slow to speak in the beginning, not really making sounds besides “un” until she was around 18 months old, when she started speech therapy for the first time.  She quickly caught up with her peers and didn’t need it for a while.  After we moved to San Diego and started seeing the cleft palate team we are seeing now, she started speech again.  The speech therapist, in a team meeting, discovered some bubbling and nasality in her speech.  This was two years ago.  We have been seeing her pretty regularly since then.  We have seen improvement, then we have seen decline.  We are never sure if she can quite control this issue, as sometimes it doesn’t seem like an issue at all.  We went in for an appointment in December and without much listening at all, her therapist said, “It’s time.”  We had talked about this being a possibility before, so I wasn’t surprised when she mentioned that we would need to schedule a naso-endoscopy.  We prepped her for the appointment.  Chrissy (her therapist) made her a coloring book all about how London’s insides would be on TV and how she would be a star and how “Oscar the Worm” was going to go inside her and take pictures.  She was excited.  Today was the day of her big television debut and she missed most of it because she was crying the whole time.  Oscar took a look right up her nose and down into her throat.  He is a small camera and light inside a tube that feeds through her nose and checks her out down in her throat to see if everything is functioning properly.  It was a quick procedure, where she had to say a few simple sentences while “Oscar” showed us what was happening.  When we say certain sounds (the K sound or the G sound) the back of our palate closes off our nose so that air doesn’t escape.  As we learned today, London’s does not do that.  It somewhat closes, but it doesn’t close all the way.  We re-watched the video once everything was over and done with.  It was quite fascinating to me to see the inside of her throat.  Apparently the side walls of her larynx are also supposed to move inward and help close the gap, but they were hardly moving at all.  I was able to watch that, and even see her vocal cords.

We knew from the day after she was born that London would for sure need one surgery.  We didn’t know anything past that.  We hoped that it would only be one.  We counted our blessings as we met others with similar birth defects (but much more severe than hers) who had many, many surgeries.  From the results we saw today, it’s a high possibility that another surgery will be in her future.  We still have yet to meet with the surgeon, so we’ll see what they have to say.  For now, the nasoendoscopy is over.  It wasn’t a pleasant experience for her, but she came out of it with a book from Chrissy.  I don’t know how she did it, but Chrissy found London the most perfect book.  I don’t think I as her mother could have found a book that she would have been so excited about.  So at least she’s happy.  And she’s well.