I agree......I want Ryan to write more!!

Man, Ryan is so much better at this than I am! We need to motivate him to be the "blogger"!

Life has been a little crazy of course. Mallory and Dawson both have been a little under the weather with temps of about 102.6. Poor babies! Dawson seems to be doing better that way for now, but Mallory's is still hanging in there. It is so sad. She looks at me with her little sick eyes, sticks out her bottom lip and says, "Ma Ma" in her most dramatic (and flattering) way. Poor baby!

As for Dawson. Yeah, speaking of poor babies! I am still cuddling him from this event!

On Tuesday we ran down to Twin for a Neurology appt. We got through that without a problem. The day before I had been on the phone with Dr. Meyers office at PCMC. They had redone Dawson's Circ because they didn't do it right the first time. When they re-did it they put a thing called a plastibell on the tip. It holds the skin back until it can heal. That is supposed to fall off on it's own within 5-8 days. It didn't. Then if it hasn't you are supposed to call them if it doesn't within 10-12 days. Well, we did. They said we can either run it to their office (as if I wanted to make the 6 hour trip again), or I can go to my own doctor or an ER.

Well, while we were in Twin I ran up to the Urologist since my doc was out of town. When the doctor saw Dawson he said, "this is why I have never used one of these (plasibell) and why no one really does anymore".

Sparing you the gruesome details I will tell you that Mal and I ended up in the hall with me crying. I couldn't do anything for my little boy, but just listen to him scream harder than I have ever heard him scream. His insision from the 2nd circ was not clamped right and instead of the bell falling off, his skin healed by growing onto the plastic bell. They had to pull and then eventually cut (with scissors) his skin away from the bell. Then they had to squeeze scissors between his already tender skin and the bell to cut it off of him. THEN, because there are a lot of blood vessels and he had bled a lot they had to give him 6 stitches. All of this lasting about 30 or more min. and all without any sort of numbing or anesthesia!

They put him under a general anesthetic for the revision because it is not possible to numb him, now that he is older, without causing more pain than the procedure. Now, he has had his 3rd circ. and it was completely without being numbed.

Needless to say, it took a long time for me to calm down, I was a bit mad, OK livid, with the surgeon that had done it in the first place!

More than anything, my heart was so broken for my little man! With 28 surgeries under his belt, having had spinal menengitis 3 times, seizures, neuro headaches that are said to be 10 times worse than your worst migraine, all of that and this was by far his hardest and most painful procedure yet! It was the most heartbreaking thing to hear him scream like that. It bothered all of us to have to put him throught that. The Urologist and the 2 nurses that helped were very upset about it, they just kept shaking their heads and apologizing that this had to happen.

Anyway, I have to stop dwelling on it, because it makes me sad again.

Today Dawson is doing better. We are now watching him, hoping that he does not get an infection. If he does it will be spinal menengitis again, another external shunt and basically back to the shunt surgeries again. We will pray for him!

This morning we actually had a little bit of a scare with it. When I was changing his diaper I was a little alarmed because first he is totally black and blue and very swollen, but he also has a spot where it looks like there is a lot of puss or infection. I called the doctor. Since they are an hour away we usually take pictures and email them so they can tell us if they need to see him or not. (Don't worry, I will spare you the pics) They said that they think it is just the beginning or some scare tissue. However, we are putting him on antibiotics just to be safe. We are also watching his temp like a hawk. If he gets to 100-101 we have to run him to Twin quickly.

Anyway, that is our couple of days. Dawson doesn't seem to remember it, but we have to keep the Tylenol in him. He is just as cute and playful as he always is. He loves to talk & to play with all of us! He is such a sweet heart!

I have taken a few pics of the house and will get them posted today so you can see our new pad! We love it here!

Jake is loving school. I will also get some pictures posted of him and his school experience.

Well, better get back to it! Love you all! Ryan--write more dang it!!