My mother got released from the hospital a week ago, and came home to her and my brother’s house, the one with no heat or hot water.  I have been encouraging my brother to apply for heating assistance for several months now, while he has been out of work and would qualify for help.  Since he is the homeowner and the gas bill is in his name, he has to be the one to apply and supply most of the documents.  They will need to see my mother’s bank statements and proof if identity and residence, but they need more documentation from him.  The HEAP (heating program) season doesn’t begin until November so if he did get emergency help through Social Services he would have to pay it back. 

Yesterday though, he finally started a job, driving a truck for an asphalt paving company.  He worked 26 hours straight through and rested today.  He will begin work again at 7 am tomorrow.  They started him at $25/hr which is not bad considering he had the CDL license but no paving experience.  I don’t know if there are any benefits or not but right now it is a job and that is the main thing he needs if he is going to have any chance of keeping his house out of foreclosure.

My mom is recovering slowly but surely.  She has good days and days when she is really tired.  The physical therapist came today and did his evaluation.  He was impressed with how well she is doing and said he will not need to come back again.  She is walking far enough already, he gave her some exercises to do and told her the cardiologist will eventually do another stress test before he has her do any further cardiac rehab i.e. treadmill or stationary bike, etc.  She will see the cardiologist on October 4 and the cardiac surgeon around the 18^th I think.  We need to have one of the doctors fill out a handicapped parking permit application so she can get one of those for when I drive her around.  Most of the time she is okay walking short distances and she would prefer to do that, but when we have to park too far away she gets really tired, so that is when the permit would come in handy.

I had to take my older daughter to the ER again Tuesday evening.  Her left calf had been bothering her for about 10 days.  She didn’t remember injuring it and the pain was steadily getting worse.  She had difficulty bearing weight on that leg and the whole calf was swollen and hard so that it measured an inch more than the other leg.  The pain kept her awake at night.  I called her pediatrician about it last Saturday afternoon.  I had to call his emergency number because it was after office hours.  He called me right back and said to have her take ibuprofen to reduce the swelling, have her elevate the leg and use warm moist compresses.  He said it could be a DVT (deep vein thrombosis).  He wanted to see her first thing Monday morning.

When the pediatrician saw her Monday morning he thought he saw some yellow discoloration (which I could not see at all).  That encouraged him because he thought she might have thrashed about in her sleep and injured it without realizing it, and that maybe it had been bruised and that the bruise was healing… you know how bruises usually turn black and blue and then to purple and eventually to yellow.  I suppose that is possible but she didn’t remember seeing any bruising and I couldn’t see the yellow.  He also flexed her foot and that made her calf hurt, so that also made him feel that it was a muscular injury of some sort.  He said he wasn’t sure HOW she did it, but he felt it was definitely a muscular hematoma of some kind and not a DVT, so he wasn’t going to send her for the blood work to check for that.  He said she should keep taking the ibuprofen, elevate and use the moist heat, no gym for a week, and don’t do anything that aggravates it.  He said the pain should be much better in about a week but the hematoma may take several weeks or even months to completely heal.  He said I could get her a compression stocking to give her support for the leg.  He said if she does not feel much better in a week that we should come back to see him, and if it gets much worse that we should go to the ER.

She returned to school Tuesday and had to go from one end of the building to the other, limping all the way.  Then she ended up having to run to catch her bus, which really had her crying by the time she got home.  She should not have been going from one side of the building to the other since she is normally in a self-contained class, but she had gotten in trouble and had to go to a detention room.  The administrator who took her there could see she was limping and my daughter told her that her leg hurt.  I had also sent her in to school with a note from her doctor saying she had been seen and that she was to be excused from gym, so they should have known she was not lying about being in pain.  Having to ambulate like that really aggravated her condition and that pisses me off.  They will be hearing from me and it won’t be in a nice way.

Well, by Tuesday night she was pretty much crying that it was really hurting, and the bruising had changed.  There was no yellow anymore, now there were several blue marks that were easily seen.  Before, she had begged me NOT to take her to the hospital.  This time she didn’t even try to fight me about it.  We got lucky that it was not a busy night in the ER either, and the attending doctor was superb.  He ran blood work and had a Doppler done to check for a DVT, and conferred with our pediatrician by phone, letting me speak with him also so we could all brainstorm to try to figure out what was going on.  When the Doppler first came back negative, he had the radiologist read it again, and then a third time, to make sure that they read it from the knee to the foot and not just the hip to the knee – this guy was very thorough and went over everything. 

He told us that even though the Doppler came back negative now, if her symptoms persist for another week the test would have to be performed again.  Our pediatrician asked them to give her crutches to help her ambulate better, and told us that if a week went by with symptoms he would also order an MRI.  The attending restated no gym, and he advised me to keep her home for a day or two with the leg elevated and moist heat compresses.  They gave her Tylenol #3 to help her sleep, and told her to take 600mg of ibuprofen every 6 hrs to reduce swelling.  They gave her crutches and discharged her. 

Most kids I’ve ever known get a kick out of crutches, at least for the first 15 minutes.  Not my daughter.  She has no patience for things she doesn’t know how to use.  She had no clue how to use these and doesn’t exactly have a natural grace about her.  She had a hard time picking up the rhythm of how to glide through.  One of the nurses tried to give her a lesson but my daughter was too impatient.  She was ready to leave the crutches right there.  I’d say the odds are 50/50 that she ends up leaving them at school when she returns there tomorrow.

I plan to drive her to school tomorrow so I can speak to that particular administrator, or her boss, and make it clear that I do not want her to be dragged around the school like that.  I have no problem with her serving punishment for whatever wrongs she does; I just don’t think they need to drag her around the school to serve it.

Now that I think of it, I have complained a lot here in this journal about my daughter’s behavior, and I’ve reported about all of her problems and misdeeds in school.  Now I would like to share with you some really positive news about her that I received last weekend, from her teacher and her treatment coordinator, about her first two weeks of school.  Her school sends out weekly behavior reports, that give marks in 15 minute increments for their behavior.  They can earn A, B or C grades and of course the teachers are free to write in comments as they desire.  I have to tell you that if I had not gotten these in the mail I would not believe they were my own daughter’s.  I had to blink back the tears, I was so choked up.  Every day was ALL A’s.  Her teacher wrote, “Perfect Day!” every day.  She had comments on behavior bonus pages written like, “Read aloud in Literature,” and “Behaved well in Assembly.” My kid did that?!   

I feel like that mom in the Sylvan Learning Center commercials!!!  Okay maybe it is corny but I called my daughter over and read them to her and I just hugged her and told her how proud I am of her.  I showed the reports to her case manager and she is bringing Kohl’s gift card to her tomorrow.  It will be our last meeting with her as we will have a new case manager next week.  I showed the reports to my mom and she wrote a nice note to my daughter telling her how proud she was too.

I think I’ll end on that positive note.  I’m sorry if I have been lax in visiting my friends… I have been so busy running everyone around to doctors… but I will try to catch up a little tonight.   Love you all!

Laura