Fall School Pictures

OMG! I have to admit...these are THE BEST school pictures my kids have EVER taken! And, of course, I ONLY ordered ONE 8X10 of each! Oh well, here on the blog, they will last forever! Courtney is in Kindergarten, Callahan in 3rd grade, and Mackenzie in 5th grade.

Tanner's Hospital Stay - Short Video clip

Here's a short video clip of our stay at UCSF. Just practicing for more movies to come!

Thursday, September 3

Happy Birthday to by Wonderful Mackenzie! My "baby" is 10 today! Kind of eerie...I was in a hospital (Alta Bates) 10 years ago!!! What a journey. We are so glad we are going to see her today. Not sure about timing yet...Tanner had another fever last night and his white blood count only went down one point this morning. But, he's eating and drinking, asking for more bacon! We did take a short visit to the "playroom" last night. I was very proud of him...he's usually so shy, but he wanted to go check it out! He really liked the car garage! Later, Joan from Child Life brought in some playdough and Mark and Tanner have been having lots of fun.

SURGERY CANCELLED!

Would you believe it? Actually, it's similar to what happened the last time! At the 4 months old Glenn surgery, they forgot to tell me to stop Tanner's aspirin so we had to reschedule! I'm not surprised...nothing's ever easy! Thank you to all our friends and family that have been helping us...sorry to keeping dragging this on! But I will be keeping up the blog...it's been very therapeutic for me!

Tanner's Cath Results

Good morning everyone! Well, it wasn't a bad night. Bells and whistles went off, but I would just re-arrange Tanner and we'd go back to sleep. He developed a little fever...and here's why:

The photo on the dual pix shows the line of dye going straight up the middle. The top photo shows a curvy line snaking back down thick to thin. This is NOT supposed to be there. Because Tanner is "blue" (but not for long!) this was the way the heart was trying to get more oxygenated blood to the body by developing little "collaterals". But then, the extra blood was pooling in the lungs as shown by the dark lines on the bottom dual photo. So, Dr. Tietel, Tanner's cardiologist, put "coils" as seen in the single photo to close them off. This is very normal for "blue" babies and won't happen again, because TOMORROW TANNER WILL BE PINK! These coils are platinum and won't set off any metal detectors, we've been reassured! Dr. Tietel said he gave Tanner some very expensive jewelry!

Things have been very up beat here. Tanner gets up to pee...naps a bit...and watches Lightening McQueen over and over again. Today is a rest day...this afternoon the surgeon is come to talk to us about tomorrows procedure. He's still a bit warm, but everyone says it's very normal due to the coils. Amazing, huh?

P.S. (as if I'm writing a letter! HAHA!) Anyway, the photos show the right side of the heart. Tanner now has "jewelry"on both sides. Cool little kid!

!st Night at UCSF

We are very tired. And I am very frustrated that everything electronic I pick up DOESN"T WORK! My FLIP video library is "lost" on the laptop...I wanted to post pix of Tanner's room. We'll try tomorrow after coffee (I"d say "after a good night sleep" but we all know that's not going to happen!) Only one parent is allowed to sleep bedside so Mark is going to try to sleep in the waiting room. The plan is to take turns. It already seems like we've been away from home too long. Tanner is running a fever, but they're not that worried because it's common after a cath procedure. It's just been a nightmare getting him to take any meds by mouth. We were sharing a room with 2 other patients, we had about 1/7th of the room, and just now (9:30pm) got moved to a different room all by ourselves until tomorrow. Much quieter! Time to settle in with some McQueen Video and head rubbing!

Tuesday AM

WOW we're actually here again~somethings are different, but LOTS are the same! We left Discovery Bay at 5:15am, and while Tanner still slept we zoomed through the morning commute. We arrived here at UCSF at 6:30am, checked in, and came up to 7th floor, North. Tanner was SUPER! He carried his new Lightening McQueen book (thanks Sepie!) and did very well. We were met with a nurse who said we looked familiar...she did to us too! Made us feel good. Joan from Child Life came and "role-played" with a doll and Tanner. He was shy at first...but as everyone "marched" through (nurses, doctors, child life, nursing students...) there was a point where it was just us three, and Tanner turned to me and said, "Where is everybody?" SO CUTE! He took his sleepy medicine, but couldn't chew the benedyl...they're going to give it through the IV during the Cath procedure. Everyone was impressed at how well he did as they poked him again and again trying to get the IV started (first they put cream on his hands to numb them) Mark and I left him loopy...he was counting fish on the ceiling...walked to Starbucks across the street and are now waiting for the procedure to be done. Should be a few hours ... the cardiologist already let us know things are going great!