My Lithotripsy Procedure

I had my lithotripsy procedure done two days ago (the kidney stone blaster thing).  The procedure itself wasn't so bad, well, I can't remember any of it.  The doctors claim I was awake and talking, but I have no recollection of that due to the sedatives I was on.

Day one:  I was only in the surgical center a little over 3 hours start to finish before they sent me home, so it really wasn't bad at all.  I was in some pain when I got home, but mostly I was just out of it and needed to sleep it off, so I went to bed while Malcolm napped, and Echo eventually came and napped in my bed with me, and Ivy watched a movie.  I slept the afternoon away.  When Echo and Malcolm got up, I got up too, but felt pretty crappy.  I was kind of like a zombie for the rest of the day.  I made sure the kids stayed alive as they mostly watched tv and ate fruit snacks while I sat dazed on the couch in and out of consciousness.  Scott cooked up a frozen lasagna for dinner and I barely had to move. I went to bed at 10pm, which almost never happens around here. We made it through day 1 with little to no problems.

Day two:  Started out fine, it just didn't stay that way.  I was still in pain around my left kidney, but Ivy had preschool at 10am so I was determined to not take any pain meds so I could drive.  I showered, did my hair, even put on make-up.  I got the kids all ready to go, all while being tough with no medication to numb my kidney pain.  I drove Ivy to school, but I was hurting so when I got home I took a Norco and told Scott he'd have to drive to pick her up at noon.  He agreed.  I actually cleaned the kitchen and living room, but as soon as I held still for 5 seconds I was once again in and out of consciousness on the couch until it was time to pick Ivy up.  Scott drove and I felt nauseous. When we got home Scott got to work making the kids and himself some lunch while I fell into a deep sleep on the couch.  I didn't wake up for almost 2 hours.  When I did, the kids were all downstairs, fed and happy watching Despicable Me.  I was grateful for Scott and his patience.  I felt awful for pretty much the rest of the day.  I finally felt a little better after we ate some dinner (which I could barely eat), and the kids were in bed.  I was able to stay up until 10:30, but then gave in and went to bed.  We made it through day two, but it was rough!

Day three:  I'm sick of feeling crappy.  I'm not taking any more pain meds, since they just make me feel so out of it.  I still have some pain around my kidney, especially if I lean back on it, or it gets bumped, but for the most part I think its getting better.  I went shopping for Gecko's birthday today with minimal regrets for leaving the house, and I actually made my kids their lunch.  We are still spending a lot of time on the couch since I'm still really tired, and not ready to head out to the park or anything, but today has been a huge improvement on yesterday.  I think I should ready to get back to my regular life by the weekend, maybe even sooner.  Yay!

Ps, Maybe this is too much information, but just for those who are curious. I had 2000 shots of energy (or whatever that lithotripsy machine does) blasted at my kidney stone for about 45 minutes to break it up. I have been urinating into a strainer thing, and catching the little pieces of kidney stone about the size of a grain of sand, which aren't painful at all, and saving them for the doctor (although, I might not give them to the Dr because they are so small I don't see how they could run any tests on them).  I wonder how long they'll keep coming out?

Well, its been a while...

I don't know whats happening to me.  I guess I'm just getting too lazy to blog anymore.  I keep thinking I need to, but I just never get around to it.  Well here goes....

Not a whole lot has happened since I last blogged, but here are a few things.

~We went to Bear Lake twice, once in March, and once in April, and had a blast both times.  We just love it there.  Even when there isn't running water and everybody is dirtier and stinkier, its still fun and WAY better than camping!!  And its so nice to only be 2 hours away!  Can't wait to go again for Memorial day!

~ Corbin did his second Pinewood derby.  He didn't win any races (we were just happy his slow car actually finished each race), but he won the Judges choice award for his car and walked away a happy kid! (For some reason I can't find my picture of the car.  I have it somewhere, but you'll just have to take my word for its cuteness)

 ~As far as the plumbing problems go...there are still problems, but I think the number of times the basement has flooded in the last month has dramatically decreased from where it was before.  Our walkway is fixed, and we are now just working to get the grass looking nice again.  We're hoping the plumbing situation just keeps getting better, but kind of live in fear of the next flood.

~I "ran" a 5k with Marde and my friend Lisa.  It wasn't really running, it was mostly walking with a teeny bit of jogging thrown in throughout the route but still an accomplishment for this chubby girl.  Marde and Lisa were super nice and patiently stayed with me even though they could have ditched me and got a much better time.  I'm glad we did it, and am actually thinking of doing the one in July too, but we'll see....

~I got kidney stones.  Well ONE kidney stone.  One GIANT kidney stone.  It reared its ugly head early Tuesday morning and rocked my world.  I thought I was going to die, it was so awful. This isn't my first kidney stone, so that amount of pain caught me off guard because it was way worse than the first time. After a CT scan they told me that its too big to pass myself.  Its 5 x 8 mm which I guess is like a really big pea or lima bean.....It's still there.  I'm having it zapped into teeny bits on Monday morning.  I'm not looking forward to it.  I haven't heard good things about this procedure, but I don't really have many options at this point.  At least I get to have a nap while they zap it.  Its always good to look at the positives in life, right?

Well, that's it for now.  Hopefully I can get back on top of this blog thing...

My thoughts 9 1/2 months later...

Did you know we moved into our house 9 1/2 months ago.  Man, time flies when you're having fun.

This new life in Sandy has been an adventure. I can't even tell you how happy it makes me to be closer to the family and friends that I missed so dearly while we were in Boise.  We missed so many baptisms and baby blessings and bbq's that it still makes me sad to think about.  I feel like we are home again.

I didn't miss the traffic or inversion, but it is still nice to be home.

On the other hand, our home kinda sucks.  It looks so beautiful.  Nice flooring, granite countertops, newly finished basement, enormous yard.  Lovely.  But inside those pretty walls and under the giant yard lie the problems.

Let me ask you.....

Do you ever run and check to make sure your bathroom isn't flooding before you run the dishwasher?  I do.

Do you ever spend your evenings cleaning up your shower because its covered in food and crap from a previous flood?  I do.

Do you ever wake up on a Sunday morning to find that the bathroom flooded while someone showered and now no one else can shower and get ready?  I do.

When you leave your home on a Saturday afternoon do you wonder if the basement will be filled with water when you return? I do.

Do you know what its like to watch a backhoe rip up your cement walkway and grass, dig down 9 ft and discover that the pipe they thought was there wasn't even in the near vicinity? I do.


I am SICK of this.  I don't want to do it anymore.  I want to be able to shower without worrying that the basement will flood.  I need to do the dishes and laundry everyday.  I want all three of my bathrooms to work! I want this to be over.


Yesterday morning Scott was on the roof with our newly purchased rooter machine rooting our house because of another flood.  We actually had a good laugh over it all and chanted "burn it down!" with Malcolm for a bit (trying to make light of a really unfunny situation, and yes, we imagined burning the house down).

I kinda feel like this is my fault.

I wanted to move back to Utah, and I fought to get this house.

I wanted to be in Sandy, close to everything.

We should have bought a brand new house out in Eagle Mountain.  Because even though its farther away than we want to be, I'm pretty sure the basement wouldn't flood every other day.

Here are some fun (or not so fun depending on how you look at it) pictures of our yard being destroyed by a backhoe....twice!

The digging begins where they believe a broken pipe lies 8 feet beneath the walkway.

Goodbye walkway!

Work stops when they reach 9 feet down and discover there isn't a pipe there.

They killed the walkway (and most likely the grass) for no reason.

Day 2 digging begins in a completely different spot after 2 different companies located the pipe.

Home, Crap, Home! Love the accessories of dirt piles and backhoe.

Malcolm thinks our former walkway is a playground.

Deepest fears revealed through dreams

Scott and I recently realized that we both have recurring nightmares.  Nightmares that reveal the things we are most afraid of.  Do you want to know what they are?

Scott~
           1. That he is in college and missing too many classes and is about to fail.
            2. That I have been cheating on him and I'm about to leave him for another man.

Rochelle~
           1.  The kids keep missing the bus.
           2.  There is a zombie apocalypse and we are stealing minivans and trying to survive.

The differences in our fears are so vastly different it just makes me laugh. 

 It also makes me laugh because the one that is the most likely to occur is the zombie apocalypse. 

Living a CRAPPY nightmare

I'm sorry if the title offends you. Believe me, it took all of my self control to describe this nightmare as "crappy" rather than its less attractive synonym.

SUNDAY NIGHT:
 Our basement bathroom flooded.  Water and, you guessed it, crap came out of the shower drain.  This isn't the first time.  It happened within weeks of moving in.  A rooter dude came out, did his job and it worked again, with occasional slow draining problems persisting, but was okay.  After it flooded this time Scott got down on his hands and knees with my dad's toilet snake, which we just happened to still have, and tried to get the clog dislodged.  It didn't work, so we marked the bathroom off limits, but soon realized it would flood if we used our kitchen sink, the dishwasher, the clothes washer, and the master bathroom's toilet, sink or shower.  So we could only use water from the hallway bathroom, and only use that toilet as well.  Not the worst case scenario, but close.

MONDAY:
 I woke up with a horrible case of food poisoning.  I couldn't get off the couch except to use the bathroom, which, lets be honest, wasn't helping our already horrible plumbing situation.  I was unable to preform my normal motherly duties that day, so the kids pretty much ran wild while I felt like I wanted to die.  Scott called our home warranty people about sending another rooter dude.  They gave us a lot of run around and nobody would be able to come until after 6 pm. Sometime around 5 Scott discovered that one of the kids had turned on the bathroom sink, and left it on, so the whole bathroom had flooded once again.  He was really mad (as anyone would be), and I felt responsible since I wasn't watching the kids very well. Scott cleaned up the entire mess by himself. Marde picked up the kids to keep them out of the way when the rooter guy finally showed up. Well, the rooter guy wasn't here 5 minutes before he left and said the home warranty company denied  coverage because of the way our pipes are.  We were very frustrated.  Scott went to Home Depot and rented one of their rooter machines and rooted it himself.  It sort of worked, for a very short time.

TUESDAY:
A plumber came over to stick a camera down the pipes (Yeah, our house had a colonoscopy!), and see what the problem was and try to fix it.  They rooted it (I don't know if that is the right term), power washed it,  found a lot of dirt in the line indicating a break somewhere and called another company to come over and locate exactly where the break is. Turns out there is a broken pipe under our walkway which would cost $3100 to fix, but that isn't even why the plumbing isn't working, which no one can really pinpoint.  Anyway, when they left our house they said, "Well, you can start using the stuff again, it works now."  So I did dishes after dinner.  The bathroom flooded a little, but Scott thought it was just because he hadn't put the toilet back in yet.

Wednesday.

I took a shower.  The bathroom flooded again. Scott had to leave to take a test for school, but when he got back I cleaned the whole bathroom on my hands and knees, scrubbing grout, steaming the tile and shower and spraying multitudes of disinfectant (all while I gagged), then Scott put the toilet back on.  He flushed it.  Instead of water going down, it went up.  I am thanking my lucky stars it didn't overflow after all our hard work, but obviously, the plumbing still isn't working.  We are frustrated.

We can't:
Do the dishes,
Do any laundry,
Let water go down the drain from the kitchen sink or master bathroom sink,
Use the master toilet or shower,
Use the basement bathroom at all, in fact we locked the door to it so no one can even get in.

I'm one more flood away from digging a hole in the yard and making everybody poop in there, and spraying everyone with the hose in the yard instead of baths or showers.  We are already using as few dishes as possible.  We are in paper plate mode until further notice.

If I could give anyone buying a house advice it would be this.  Don't be fooled by an old remodeled home.  Just because it looks nice, doesn't mean it doesn't have 50 year plumbing with ridiculous amounts of problems. I kind of want to burn it down right now.

Valentine's Day is CHD Awareness Day

We try to make Valentines Day special just because its also Congenital Heart Defect Awareness day.  We want all the kids to know that Ivy is a survivor, and that we are blessed to have her here.  But this year we didn't have to make any special plans for it because Ivy raises awareness everyday.

"Did you even know I have a special heart?"

That is something that Ivy asks people.  Seriously. She has asked both Scott and I that question before as well as anyone she has regular contact with.  We're like, "Uh, yeah, we definitely know."

I guess it's good that she likes to tell people.  She's not ashamed, she's proud.  She knows she's special.  Since moving to Utah, it's not something we announced to our ward.  We just started going to church and never said anything, but next thing I knew, they knew and started asking me questions.  Ivy told them.

We planned on doing something special, but honestly, we forgot.  That's right.  It's been 5 years since Ivy came into this world and rocked it.  It's been 1 1/2 years since her last surgery.  It's been a few months since her last Echo-cardiogram.  Ivy's special heart isn't something we think about everyday anymore.  We just try to live life and be normal.  It's not that we forget how blessed we are, or that we forget that her heart is special.  We just don't have to think about it every day because she is so normal.    We are trying not to take this normal part of her life for granted, because we remember how hard it was for the first year, but its hard because we just have normal stuff going on.  We aren't overwhelmed by doctors appointments, physical therapy, feeding tubes, oxygen, or oral aversions.  We are overwhelmed by having so many kids, making them eat vegetables, getting to school on time, keeping fighting to a minimum, and keeping the house clean.  The same things everybody else gets overwhelmed by.

I consider this a victory.  It feels fantastic to be normal. 

 So instead of celebrating Ivy's victory over her special heart, we did what everyone else does on February 14th, celebrated Valentines day (we remembered CHD awareness day a few days before, but by the time it came around, it slipped our minds).  We made homemade Valentine's for the kids classmates, and for the first time made Valentine Boxes (their school in Boise didn't do Valentine boxes).  It ended up being a whole lot of work, but everything turned out so cute and fun, and the kids loved it all.

The boys' "Have a SUPER Valentine's Day!" Valentines.

And Ivy's "I'm buggy over you!" valentines.

Ivy's Hello Kitty Box

Corbin's Finn box, and Dexter's B-MO box.

I also put hearts on all of the kids bedroom doors that said nice things about them, and gave them each a little bit of chocolate.  And Scott and I were able to go out for the first time in years while Grandma Marde babysat the kids.  It was a nice day!  It really is nice to be normal.

Random stuff

We had some sunny days this week.  So I got up on the roof and took down the remaining christmas lights. I took this picture of the kids while I was up there.

The Boys finished their first season of wrestling.  I don't think they loved it, but they stuck with it.  We'll have to see how they feel about doing it when it comes around again next year.

Their favorite parts of wrestling were the t-shirts and medals of course.

Dexter's Math Day at school.  Showing off his mad patterning skills.

Scott and I just celebrated our 14th year as a couple. Holy cow, I feel old!

 Echo's braided hair, just because its such an accomplishment at her age to have this level of braided hair.