Suzy Q Homemaker

What would you do if you saw this in your baby’s diaper?

Would you panic?  I did.  Monday morning, I jokingly tweeted about Timothy making a present in his diaper for me.  When I changed him a few minutes later, what I found made my heart stop.  Time slowed down.  I had no idea what to do.  I texted Jamie and immediately went online to see what I should do.  After a quick search, I located the numbers for Poison Control and got on the phone with them, my doctor, and the National Button Battery Ingestion Hotline.

Timothy’s doctor asked us to come in immediately in order to give him a thorough examination and then we were sent to get a chest x-ray to make sure all of the battery had passed.

But were we in the clear?

Button batteries pose a huge health risk and can carry potentially life-threatening complications.  I’ve been in close contact with the parents of Hazel, a sweet little girl who nearly lost her life when it was discovered that a button battery had lodged in her esophagus.  They are now strong advocates for button battery safety and encouraged me to have further tests done on Timothy to make sure that there was no damage done if the battery he swallowed was stuck in his throat for any amount of time.  According to research, even discharged button batteries can cause tissue damage after two hours.  Complications may not present immediately and there have been cases where children were sent home after the battery was removed, only to hemorrhage after several days of home care.

Where did Timothy’s battery come from?  I don’t know.  He has three older brothers who have numerous toys that contain batteries.  I know for a fact that there are a couple of those stupid talking greeting cards floating around the house.  You can bet I’ve been making thorough sweeps of my home to make sure there aren’t any more of those batteries hanging out where little hands can get them.  To a baby, that little battery looks like a nice, shiny Cheerio!  And Timothy loves Cheerios.

Coincidentally, The CBS Early Show had a segment this morning about the dangers of button batteries:

Watch CBS News Videos Online

It’s hard not to beat myself up about this, but I am so thankful that Timothy’s tests came back clear. Other families haven’t been so lucky. Sure, as mothers, we have so much to worry about, but I urge you to take a few minutes to double check those toys and electronic devices to make sure the batteries are secure. Keep remotes and things of that sort out of reach of your toddlers. It could save their lives.

If you believe your child has ingested a button battery, call the National Button Battery Ingestion Hotline immediately.  They are available 24 hours a day.  202-625-3333

{x-posted on BlogHer}

Health has also been the theme of late around here as I have been dragging myself to the gym more these past two weeks than in the past four months.  It has been hard, over the holidays and throughout bouts of illness in the family, to eat well.  Add to that colder-than-usual weather for this part of Georgia, shorter days, and it’s a recipe for disaster–especially since I haven’t lost any of my pregnancy weight.  No, the weight has just redistributed itself into my thighs and face to the point where when I look in the mirror, I see this:

I feel like I should apologize to the internet for my rather graphic and colorful descriptions of the most recent events.  I reread my entry about the appendectomy and was like, WOAH.  In all the haze of anesthesia and Demerol, my language got rather graphic and I forgot how many friends from my church read my blog…WOOPS!  Oh, and my dad, too.  Sorry dad!

It’s not like I don’t occasionally drop an f-bomb now and then on my blog.  After all, it is my blog.  I paid for it, right?  Though I am squatting on my sister’s server.  Thryn, if you want me to stop using such foul language, let me know.  Ha!

But really, if I offended anyone’s sensibilities, I’m sorry.  Forgive me?

Good.

Now I shall tell you about what’s going on today.  And if you don’t want to read about my bodily functions, check out my sidebar and read something from the archives. 

I am so, so grateful to be home.  Not only is the internet better here, but Timothy has full access to my breasts, I can pee in the toilet and not in a measuring cup, and I can eat real food!  Don’t get me wrong: I loved having some peace and quiet.  My main concern was Timothy, though.  He flat-out refused to eat for anyone while I was in the hospital Sunday night.  While he was at my mom’s, he maybe drank two ounces of a magical concoction of lactose-free milk & water.  The formula was refused altogether.  When Jamie brought him to me Monday morning, I wish I had taken a picture of the way Timothy’s eyes rolled back in his head when he latched on.  Although it hurt to have him in my lap, those feel-good prolactin hormones took over and we quickly settled in to a much-needed nursing.

Unfortunately, my supply was rather low and by 9:30 last night, Timothy was so not happy with the amount of milk he was getting.  He normally doesn’t cry at home unless something was wrong, so my heart was breaking as he cried at my breast.  Jamie took him when he got too upset, calmed him down, and put him back in bed with me.  Throughout the night, Timothy nursed at least every three hours for 20-30 minutes at a time.  He’s never been a lingerer, but he made exceptions last night.  And that’s fo’ sho’.

One last word about my body.  A fantastic side-effect of laparoscopic surgery is GAS! Oh good God, I just wikipedia-ed laparoscopic surgery and there are PICTURES.  So, don’t do that if you are easily grossed out.  Anywayyy, since they pumped my abdomen full of carbon dioxide, I now have to eliminate some of that gas.  While we were in bed watching “Hoarders” last night, Jamie turned to me because he was wondering what in the world was vibrating the bed.  I was just like, “Sorry.”

Ladylike, I know.

So, now I have to essentially start over with my post-baby workouts once I get all healed from my first ever surgery.  I was really starting to feel great, too.  My diastasis was gone, and I was able to fit into one more pair of pre-pregnancy jeans.  Now, I look like I just had another baby!  Gah!  Oh well.

What!  I know!

I had to get my appendix taken out.  How fucked up is that?  I’ve never had surgery before in my life so it was so surreal.  What to hear how it all got started?  Of course you do!

Yesterday, we all drove out to the Chancey Family Reunion (Jamie’s Gramma’s side of the family).  I actually really like this side of the family because they’re all gun-totin’, huntin’ motherfuckers and generally fun to be around.  It was this side of the family that really pulled through when Jamie’s dad passed three years ago.  They had tons of crazy stories about Jamie’s dad when they were all growing up, like the one about when they painted Granddad’s mule as a practical joke.  At the house where we partied yesterday, there were several animal heads on the walls and I was so scared they were going to start singing at us like they do at that restaurant we went to in Atlanta.

Anyway, as is always the case at these family reunions, there was much eating to be done, mostly on BBQ and fixin’s.  I didn’t eat anything that was strange, but about two hours after we got home, I was convinced that I had a really bad case of food poisoning.  I didn’t barf at that point or get the Hershey squirts, my stomach just hurt really bad like I had to fart the loudest of all the farts known to woman kind.  But I couldn’t fart!

I researched home remedies for stomach ache, subjected myself to a concoction of baking soda and warm water (GROSS BY THE WAY), and even tried lying down with a heating pad on my belly to try to ease the pain.  It kept getting worse, though, and I got to thinking that it might be a ruptured ovarian cyst again.  Remember when that happened right after I got pregnant with Timothy?  A lot of things went through my mind at that point:

-Oh shit, there’s no way I’m pregnant
-If I am pregnant, what the hell am I gonna do?
-Maybe this isn’t a cyst but I have appendicitis?
-If it’s a cyst then I will get better

For the next eight hours, I convinced myself that I had a cyst and that it had exploded all its disgusting scary fluids all over my vital organs–but that I was going to feel better soon just like I did last year.  This would have explained all the searing pain that I felt in my gut, right?  On top of that pain, I couldn’t lie down on my right side because of a serious ache in my right lower abdomen.  Surely, I thought this was the offending ovary and tried to ward it off with vicodin and percocet.  Please don’t get all up in arms.  We do co-sleep, and I do breastfeed.  I did not take unhealthy amounts of these medicines.  Jamie took over baby duty and made it his mission to get Timothy to sleep in the cradle most of the night.

The heavy pain killers did nothing to ease the pain, though.  Sure, once they kicked in, I was no longer able to writhe around in agony for an hour.  After a quick sleep of maybe fifteen minutes, though, the burning started again and I was moaning and groaning again for the next three hours until I could take another something.  Not even Percocet could touch this pain.  Thing is, I am the last person who wants to inconvenience anyone, so I was afraid to wake Jamie, let alone call someone at 3:00 in the morning because I had a belly ache.  The way I figured it, if I called anyone and it turned out to be some bad pork, I would be so embarrassed.

The good news was that I did not eat bad pork.  I had plenty of family to ask in order to rule out this theory: my own family, Jamie’s mom, uncle, gramma, brother, nephew.  None of them were sick, so I was like shit.  BAD NEWS.  I was convinced that it was, indeed, an ovarian cyst.

At 6:00 a.m., after hurling a few times from the pain and no longer being able to describe my agony without weeping tears of grief, Jamie packed all the kids in the van and drove me to the ER.  The first pain killers and nausea medicine worked for an hour max, after which I puked green bile into a tiny plastic tub.  Great visual, I know.  So they gave me something different which finally knocked me out.  Note that I had not slept at all for more than 15 minutes at a time before this.  Sleep was such a relief!  In between bouts of blessed drug-induced dreamland, nurses came in, CAT scans were done, doctors poked around at me, and it was finally determined that I had a “suspicious” appendix.

We didn’t have to wait for long for surgery, which was surprising and scary because I thought for sure I’d have a few hours to digest the fact that I was going to be put to sleep with tubes down my throat and scopes in my abdomen.  In all the excitement, I did make sure that I talked to the anesthesiologist directly and tell him to be extra careful of my vocal chords.  I didn’t want to end up all Julie Andrews.  My throat is irritated, but I was told that it would be just from the tube being there and would feel better soon.

While I’m grateful that there was something seriously wrong with me, I’m sad that I can’t be with my family right now.  Yes, I enjoy the peace and quiet, but my heart goes out to Timothy.  In these short four months, I never built up a freezer stash, or even considered it.  No, I’ve only pumped out of necessity for choir rehearsals and the occasional night out with Jamie.  Jamie had to pick up some of the F-word and Timothy decided he’d rather suck his thumb than hav any of that shit.  The hospital won’t give me a breast pump unless I have doctor’s orders, so I have to just wait myself.  I’ll express into a cup or something so my supply won’t go down too much.  One of the anesthesia medicines has a 10-hour window for  excretion into my milk, so if I can tough it out until then, we’ll be golden.

My mom has Timothy tonight.  She told Jamie that Timothy will either be pissed off at home or at her house, but he’s got three other people to worry about.  What a saint.

So here I sit, sipping on clear fluids and eating jello while looking all sexy in my fancy anti-blood clot sox.  At least that pesky little appendix won’t bother me anymore, right?

August is bittersweet in our family.  I’ll post more on this later in the month.  Today, though, I want to share with all my fellow crafters the opportunity to help a family in need of support.  I heard of this cause through a blog I read, who read it on Dude Craft.

From the mother:

“Killian is facing the reality of the end of his journey in this body. He continues to fight, HARD, but his body is failing. We are making plans…preparing to celebrate his extraordinary life. We have no details or additional information (Killian is LIVING each day), but would like your help in this process.

We are asking Killian’s friends, family, community…anyone who is willing and able to make origami cranes (any and all sizes, colors, materials.) We are going to need 1,000…2,000…3,000 cranes… as many as can be made, to include in his celebration. Read the legend of the 1,000 cranes at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadako_Sasaki. Killian loves this story. Here is a website with clear crane folding instructions: monkey.org/~aidan/origami/crane/index.html.

I ask that you spread the word far and wide…let him feel the power of the cranes, of the collective paper folding…. Also, I ask for discretion and to please have these delivered only to my attention (not the family) to:

Cat Cooke
c/o The Mansfield’s
PO Box 10
West Shokan, NY 12494 “

I can’t promise to make any cranes myself, but if you can, please do this for Killian’s family.  Or at least spread the word to other crafters you know.  This would make a great family project, too.  Just look at all the cranes made so far.

(Japanese school children dedicate their contribution of origami cranes at the Sadako memorial in Hiroshima.)