A Day Worthy of A Blog

You may have seen my facebook posts, but I figure yesterdays excitement is worthy of a blog post too!!  We spent the weekend in Dubuque Iowa for Tom’s Grammy’s 90th birthday –SUCH a fun weekend….more on that in another post when all the babies are healthy! 

Friday night/early Saturday morning (like 3 am early), I was up nursing Gracyn and I could hear Micah making this awful wheezing sound when he breathed.  I knew I didn’t dare stop nursing Gracyn or she would scream her little head off and wake everyone else, so I nudged Tom to go check on Micah.  He picked him up and took him into the bathroom and the poor little guy had spiked a fever and started in on this awful cough.  It was seriously a cough I’ve never heard before – I don’t even know how to describe it.  Definitely not the dry, hacky cough you sometimes get with a winter cold….this sounded deep and rattly and sometimes almost like the barking that seals do. 

He continued off and on with the cough and fever all weekend…..but also had periods where he had no tylenol, no fever and seemed fine.  He played at the park, swam in the motel pool and was his usual ornery self…..then he’d start fevering and coughing and snuggle into my lap for a while.  When he was still coughing all the way home Monday, I decided I was taking him into the clinic first thing Tuesday morning.

And on our way to the clinic I had a friendly encounter with a very generous State Trooper –who reminded me that I was driving too fast and needed to slow down….thankfully with just a warning.  My children on the other hand – not quite so generous!  Makenzie reminded me all day yesterday –“mom it’s not good to speed…why were you speeding…did you know you were speeding….you know if you speed you’ll have to give the cop all your money…and on and on and on she went ALL DAY.  Micah man so kindly told EVERYONE at the doctors office, “my mommy speeded and the cop made us stop.”  Love them! 

We made it to the clinic….5 minutes late! And then waited for 30 more minutes in the waiting room….guess I didn’t need to hurry quite so much to get there!  The doctor gave Micah man an antiobiotic…..and then he got worse.  The poor guy just faded as the day went on.  He woke up from his nap coughing around 3:00 yesterday and NEVER stopped.  By 5 I was giving him phenergan with codine that we had in the closet from his last episode of coughing – then I dropped him off at Grandma’s so we could go to Makenzie’s preschool open house.  When we picked him back up at 7 he looked worse than he had looked all day and was still coughing –the cough medicine didn’t do a thing.  I called the ER and talked to the PA on call who recommended more cough medicine and tylenol…..gave him that and he coughed so bad he puked it right back up, so we headed to the ER.  

And in case that wasn’t enough excitement for 1 day – Tom called me as I was driving to the ER (keep in mind it’s literally 3 blocks from our house!) to say that Makenzie was throwing up.  (Thankfully that was all over and she was sleeping soundly by the time I got home with Micah!)  Gracyn went along with me to the ER so I could feed her when necessary – and thankfully my wonderful mama met us there a short time later and helped me care for both kiddos.  Seriously I don’t know what we’d do without grandparents around!!

At the ER, they drew his blood to test for pertussis (whooping cough), gave him 2 breathing treatments (the albuterol one didn’t phase the coughing but turned him into his naughty self for a few minutes and he was swatting at me and trying to escape our little ER room….thankfully that wore off pretty quickly!), gave him a rocephin shot in the leg (OUCH!!), took 2 chest x-rays to make sure he hadn’t swallowed something that was irritating his airway and 4 hours later sent us home with steroids to take for the next 4 days.  He did sleep pretty well after we got home, so I’m hopeful he’s on the mend! 

Makenzie has a bit of a cough today (she’d like to think it’s MUCH worse than it is ) and Gracyn seems to be healthy! 

Feelin a little stressed

I discovered last night that I'm completely out of checks (the box I thought I had left were checks for our health savings account)....not a huge deal (thanks to online bill pay).  I don't write very many checks except that now I have to get cash to pay daycare this week. 

And then today I got an email from my credit card company saying there were fraudulent charges to my credit card, so after spending 30 minutes on the phone confirming that they were indeed fraudlent charges (no, I did not make 2- $2094.42 charges to some place called M Elle yesterday thank you very much), my credit card has been shut down and they are sending me a new one that should be here in 5 to 7 days. 

And my husband leaves tomorrow morning at 5 am....for a month.

And the kids and I leave Friday for Dubuque....with no checks and no credit card....thinking I better get some cash before we hit the road so I'm not totally dependent on my debit card! 

And Micah has some strange rash on the bottom of his right foot that the doctor suspects might be foot and mouth (watch his mouth for spots and if he develops any sores in his mouth or more spots on his feet keep him out of daycare for the rest of the week). 

In an effort to avoid a major meltown, I'm blogging and eating chocolate, and thinking of picking up a diet mountain dew (thank you $1 Runza drinks!) when I pick up Makenzie from VBS.  :) 

Answered Prayers....

Now that the dust has settled from Friday's trial, I have to share with you the BEST part of the story.....God answered prayers!!  Over and over again God answered prayers!  When this case first started and I was appointed, I was nothing less than a nervous wreck.  I knew from day 1 this case was going to be difficult (something better suited for someone who has been in practice a whole lot more than 3 years).  I felt totally inadequate and worried that I wasn't going to be able to do a good enough job for my clients --simply because I didn't know what I was doing!  But I'm here to tell you, God is faithful!

Early on in this case, I prayed and prayed for help--I was at a loss, not even knowing how to help this family and frustrated that DHHS wasn't providing the help I thought they needed--but it was a wierd enough situation that I didn't even know where to turn or who might be able to offer the kind of help they need.  In comes answered prayer #1 -- after praying and stressing and stewing about where to turn for help, I remembered (I'm convinced it was more like God reminded me!) of a psychologist in Scottsbluff whom I had heard speak on infant mental health.  On a whim I called his office, explained the situation and asked for advice.  His office recommended I get in touch with a certain therapist in Kearney....so the next day I started trying to get in touch with her.  After literally almost 2 weeks of phone tag, I finally got to talk to her....in the mean time, her voicemail message had told me on numerous occasions that she wasn't taking new medicaid clients.  Umm...that's a problem because the only way I have to pay for her services is through the child's medicaid....and even that is only with HHS's approval.  If HHS referred the child to another therapist, the most I could do would be to get a 2nd opinion from her....and that would require court and county approval all of which could take several weeks.  Time was something that I didn't have - it could take several weeks to get an appointment once I knew I had funding for the appointment, and the 1st hearing was only DAYS away. 

When I finally got to talk to this particular therapist, she told me, "Unfortunately I don't think I can visit with you much about this case, because I actually just received a referral from [HHS worker] to see this child.  Coincidence??  I think not....more like answered prayer #2....although at the time I was busy being frustrated by the fact that she couldn't talk me me....I didn't know just how HUGE this answer would be!  This therapist who I was told was one of the best in the area, who wasn't taking new medicaid clients is now seeing my kiddo (a new medicaid client). 

Fast forward to the beginning of last week.....I was still freaking out (and praying, but probably should have been praying and trusting more, freaking out less).  HHS was being less than cooperative and had refused to release any evaluations to me.  They also wouldn't sign authorizations for me to speak to any of the therapists involved....so I had no idea what evidence was/wasn't out there....not a good way to head to trial.  In comes answered prayer #3....the child's attorney gets frustrated with HHS and starts essentially leaking me information (not illegally....he's authorized to talk to whoever he wants, but HHS certainly didn't want him talking to me) and through a number of conversations I find out that this same therapist (see answered prayer #1 and 2) is very supportive of my clients and exactly the person I need to have testify at the hearing on Friday.  There are only 2 problems...(1) I still can't talk to the therapist so I really don't know what she's going to say and (2) its too late to get a subpoena to compel her to be there and I can't talk to her to ask her to be there.  So, I leave her voice mail messages, send messages with my clients, and ask the child's attorney to beg her to appear....and answered prayer #4...she's there friday!  With less than 2 days notice, she clears her schedule and appears in court totally voluntarily! (UNHEARD of in the world of mental health experts!) 

So maybe a better title to my last post is "Prayer pays off" because truly I think the result on Friday had a whole lot more to do with God than with my preparation!  I LOVE when I can sit back and see God's hand in my life and in my activities.  It's something I need to spend more time thinking about and focusing on.  I know He is involved in every aspect of my life, everything I do--and yet, days can go by where I don't stop to see him working.  I get so caught up in the little details, the little annoyances, the busyness of life that I don't see the big picture - God working everything together for His purposes.  What a joy to get to play a role in His story!

Preparation Pays Off....

Just a quick note to say all the hard week and long hour working over the last several weeks totally paid off today!  Trial is over.....it turned into 4 hours of negotation via email, 2 hours of negotiation at the courthouse, then a major blow up and nearly 2 hours of trial.....only to enter into the exact same plea agreement we had started at 8 am this morning.   I firmly believe we wouldn't have gotten there without all the time I had put in (for instance, all my witnesses were there and ready for trial and the state didn't have a SINGLE witness there)....the county attorney ended up calling "my" therapist as his own witness because she was the only expert witness. (Not "my" as in mine personally, but the therapist I had subpoenaed to be there because I knew she was going to testify very favorably for my clients). 

I'm not gonna lie, it was a little hard not to sit at the counsel table with a smug smile on my face....I definitely haven't mastered a "poker face" in the courtroom.  The end result was great - I truly don't think my clients could have gotten a better result out of the whole deal.   And the best part of this coming to an end.....the 3 day weekend is here! :)  After spending all afternoon fighting for somebody else's babies, I'm looking forward to lots of time with my own babes this weekend!!