Happy Day – Sad Day

The good news is that we have an official date: July 28th!
We have to check in to the hospital at 5:30am for procedures to be done at 7:30am. It is a bronchoscopy with removal of granulation, upper GI scope, and an intestinal biopsy.
He will get his trach removed after he is fully recovered from anesthesia and then he will sleep the night in the hospital. If all goes well, he will come home on the 29th with no trach!
We are excited and nervous!

The other good news is that Brendan’s motility study results came in “totally normal”.

The bad news has a couple layers. Brendan seems to have succumbed just tonight to the cold that Bill has been fighting. His symptoms are minor but he is definitely sick.
Even worse, it looks like we are not done with the MRSA.
Brendan’s nose is flaring up again and Trevor has another spot on his rear.
We visited the pediatrician this afternoon and both boys are on another longer and stronger round of the antibiotic and the whole family is doing the nasal swabs.
We absolutely must get rid of this bug before the 28th!

We went to Walgreens to fill all of the prescriptions and ran in to Iron Man. 😉 😀 🙂

Friday: Best attempts at blowing bubbles!

Saturday: We had been waiting all month for the “Owl Walk and Talk” hosted by the Desert Audubon society. There is a park in Gilbert that has a large artificial habitat set up for burrowing owls, and each month a volunteer guides tours at sunset to talk about the habitat and see the birds returning to their nests.

Nature had other plans for us. We rolled in to the parking lot just in time to see the wall of dirt coming from the east.

We even had bought a new wagon to use for this trip. We thought we had a few moments to check out the park with the guide.

Maybe not!

The gust front hit so fast! Bill sprinted the boys back to the car!! Good thing the wagon had seatbelts. On its first run, it did a great job.

Made it to safety!

We waited for the dirt to clear and thought we could still go see the owls, but a second wave was already approaching with some rain behind it. Time to go!

Sunset in the dirt.

Swirls of dust blow down the street.

Sunday:

In order to beat the heat today, we took the boys on a short road trip to higher elevation. We checked out the Tonto Basin Fish Hatchery where they raise fish to stock ponds and streams for sport fishing.

The “incubators” in the back are tumbling thousands of eggs each.

Giving the fish their “fish chow”

We continued up to the Mogollon Rim to stand on the edge and watch the storms roll by.

What to do in the forest on a hot day? Ice cream sandwiches!

And running

As we drove back in to town, we could see another dust wall moving across the city. Monsoon season has definitely arrived!

Brendan had a test in Nuclear Medicine today at the hospital. They are testing motility in his gut, all as part of the big picture to get him eating real food.
They filled his tummy with his formula mixed with a small amount of radioactive medicine, and then they watched it move through his system.

The problem is that it meant being trapped in this machine for an hour and twenty minutes.

The camera stayed at that angle the whole time, and Brendan was strapped in with three really wide velcro pads.

He really did not like it. He kept saying, “I am stuck.” and “Let’s get out of here!”

With enough Youtube videos and playing with his Iron Man guy he brought, he did relax some. It was a long wait.

Trevor stayed home and played Legos with Daddy.

Now we wait for results.

Bill and I are both tired. He is still fighting the cold. The boys are bursting with energy though, so we have to have exercise time. Today was the ninja hour. (Plus, we got a soft new area rug! Wooo!)