A Year Later...

I can't believe it's been an entire year since I posted. Time just goes by and by. Well, I figured that now that I have all this unwanted time, I could try to get caught up on the blog. I am actually pregnant with our 4th child right now. This pregnancy has been full of unexpectedness. Surprisingly with all my other kids I had all the yucky "normal" stuff, but no complications. Even my pregnancy with Evan was completely "normal". I had no indication that anything was wrong, until he failed his hearing test at the hospital as a newborn. Anyway, this pregnancy has me in the hospital on bed rest until I deliver. I've made it to 27 weeks, and plan to have a c-section at 34 weeks. I ruptured early on (before my 20 week ultrasound), so the lack of amniotic fluid could mean that the baby could be born with lung issues and other complications. I started a blog about my bed rest adventures at www.liftupourhands.blogspot.com.

Evan is in 2nd grade now. He is doing good in school, I mean considering all the challenges he has had to face and that he is still mainstreamed with peers of the same age for most of the day. If you ask the teacher, they seem to just focus on all he "can't" do or the areas where he struggles more than all the "normal" kids. I'm so tired of explaining everything to everyone and have them still not "get" it. I'm actually very impressed and proud that he has come so far and has been able to keep up as much as he has. I know it can't be easy for him.

He is having some hearing issues, so we will have to check into that and see if he will need additional ear surgeries to widen the ear canals again. The Dr. did mention that he would probably have to have other surgeries to refine things a bit. It should be a quicker surgery this time, instead of the hour surgery that ended up being 3+ hours.

We also need to get him in to get his eyes re-checked. They have been checking every year without issue, but the school noted in the vision screen that he needed a follow-up.

Our biggest issues right now are ADHD and Autism related behaviors. For ADHD, until December we had him on Guanfacine (1/2 of a 5 mg tablet, once a day) for the 7+ months. Before that we had tried Methelyn (1/2 of a 5 mg tablet in morning and one at lunch). The Methelyn seemed to have helped him focus better at school, but then it would wear off right after school and we were having a ton of behavior issues with him as soon as he would get home. The Guanfacine seemed to work better, although the "focus" that helped him in the classroom, would not be so great at home. We have had to deal with a lot of behaviors that seem like tantrums again. I was so relieved to be finally done with them after years and years, It's so frustrating to see them happening again.

He still does his little happy dance when he gets excited over the silliest little things. I want him to fit in and have friends and not get made fun of, but I can't seem to get him to stop doing this. I wish I had more answers. I try to research therapies for autism behaviors and I read a lot, but don't find exactly what I'm looking for.

He is also having a problem with dealing with his emotions lately. When he is angry or upset about anything, he tenses up and has this look (almost as if he's going to hurt you or do something). It's scary, but I can tell it's scary for him too. We need to continue to work with him on understanding his emotions and in appropriate ways of expressing his emotions.

That's all for now, my thoughts are kind of a jumble anyway...

Surgery on Right Ear

Evan's surgery went good. Well it was very interesting too.

As you probably know from previous posts, Evan has always had extreemly narrow ear canals and failed the hearing tests in the hospital when he was born. The doctors could never even see his ear drum.

When the doctor did the surgery on his left ear last year, it turned out that a bone was covering 2/3 of the canal. We just got home from his surgery on his right ear and he didn't have an ear drum (at least it wasn't at al as expected). We once again left the doctor stumped. Leave it to Evan to do that, lol.

I don't really know or understand all of this, just that the doctor said that the ear canal didn't lead to the ear drum, it was just closed in. It was a lengthy procedure, in which he had to graft some skin from behind Evan's ear to construct the ear drum (? not sure if I'm explaining this right) and then graft some skin from Evan's leg to cover the rest of the ear. He's home and doing better now, but it's been a long day. We had to be there to register at 7:30 this morning. We were the first there and the last to leave, lol.

It's truly amaizing what the medical world can do. The doctor is confidant that Evan will be able to hear in 2 weeks when the gauze comes out.

So, we are home now and doing well. After lots of nasea, vomiting, and grogginess, Evan sat up in bed and said "I'm not sick anymore", then he was instantly ready to leave the hospital. A cute note: after the surgery, when the nurse asked him about the pain, he pointed to the happy face and said "I'm happy" although he was grimacing and we could tell he was in pain. Lol, my high-tolerance kid who doesn't want pain meds.

A new adventure

I am now an Independant Sales Representative for AVON. I love their products. And so much has changed now. They now have kids gift items, clothing, accessories, hair care products, mineral make-up, MARK products, Curves products and so much more. I'm looking forward to learning more and having a booth at fairs or other events. I'm also planning on doing some AVON Fund-Raisers. A Fund-Raiser can earn 30-40% for an organization, kids sports team, school, etc...

My personal webpage for avon is http://www.youravon.com/danalarkin.
And my email address is avonladydana@ymail.com. You can shop online and
have orders delivered directly to your home, or contact me to sponsor a Fund-Raiser, party, product consultation, or if you want a book delivered to your home. Happy Shopping! :)

Update

It's been a long time and a crazy spring and summer. After combining 2 families in December, we decided that we needed to move to a bigger place (A two bedroom apartment didn't really work too well for 5 kids and 2 adults). Evan's little sister turned 1 in April and we moved to Hawley, MN at the end of May. We are renting a home here. It's not a huge house, but we have more space and a backyard for the kids to play in. I've heard that the school district here is great. The kids are excited to start school in September. We had a busy summer with baseball and soccer here in town.

Everything seems to be healed from Evan's surgery. Not quite sure if this is the end though, as the Dr. seemed to think that the ear canal had narrowed a little again during healing. He seemed to he hearing much better, but sometimes he seems to not be hearing so good. Don't know if that's just him acting out behaviorally, or if he really isn't hearing us. I'll try to keep everyone updated.

2nd Surgery

Evan had his second surgery on his left ear on January 22. All went well. Surgery only lasted an hour. The gauze was stitched in this time, so it wouldn't fall out early like it did the last time. And he didn't get sick from the anesthesia. I was quite surprised. We went to the hospital at 10 am and we were home by 3 pm. It went very smoothly. Evan was already back to his usual self and his usual energy level before supper. So far the healing process is goin well. We just saw the Dr. again a couple of days ago and he took most of the qauze out. There was still some in there and we are to continue putting drops in his ears twice a day and have an appointment to go back in two weeks. I'll try to do a better job of keeping everyone posted this time.

Wedding pictures

Here is a picture of our family from the wedding.

If you would like to view the online Wedding albums, we had two photographers (Carrie used Walgreens and Janelle used CVS), just send me a message with your email address and I can send you a link. I was going to post the link on the blog, but figured I probably shouldn't do it that way. You could also join me on Facebook. I only add family and friends (or people that I know), so please also send me a message with the request.

I'm adding, a picture of Evan as ring bearer, one with Evan and Jordan, one with Evan and Joe, and one with Evan and me. He was so cute! He always is. He can be quite mischevious at times, though.

Evan's Ear

Evan's ear has healed tremendously since surgery, at least on the outside. I guess the inside is still an open sore according to the dr. and still no swimming. He has to have surgery done a second time in January to complete the reconstruction of his ear canal. He might not have had to have a second surgery, but all the gauze had fallen out a couple of weeks ago.

He still needs 5 drops in his ear 2 times a day, and in all the chaos of the wedding and packing for our honeymoon trip I misplaced the drops and we went through this horrible hassle between the dr, the pharmacy, and insurance to try to get a prescription filled early because I guess it hadn't been 20 days yet and insurance was refusing to refill. The dr. gave us a new prescription and I had already left for the airport, so my sister hammered it out with the pharmacies and got them to make it a 10 day supply instead of a 20 day supply so he could have his drops. In the meantime, he was out of drops for 2 days... geez. Then I was talking to my mom yesterday and she said that the old bottle of drops were on the shelf in the bathroom. Ok. That is exactly where I kept them. And I swore up and down that I had looked there a million times before and they weren't there. Hmmm. It's like they got up and walked away and then were put back there again. How odd.

It sucks that he won't be able to go swimming anytime soon, because we are getting a YMCA membership when I return home from my honeymoon and I will have to be creative for a while yet about swimming. He absolutely LOVES swimming!! Oh well, anyway, we will deal with it. He can play the games in the Exceroom at least. He thought it looked so fun when we did our tour.

Joe and I are on our honeymoon in sunny Florida. Our cruise leaves tomorrow out of Tampa. We are so excited! I can't even sleep!!

Our wedding was so beautiful. Evan was so cute, well, of course, all the kiddos were super cute. Nate was going to walk down the aisle holding Evan's hand and carrying little Alli, but he had a bad knee from a car accident he had been in the week before and the dr advised him not to walk on it much... so we had Nate stand up front with Joe and Evan was to walk in slowly in front of me and then go sit with grandma and grandpa. Well, he had done so well practicing, but when the time came... he ran down the isle as fast as he could. I had just assumed he had sat with grandma, but when my dad walked me down the isle... there was Evan, standing up there with Jordan. He stood up there the whole time. But he was very good. When he got a little fidgety, he just sat down for a little while. Jordan and Evan were so cute up there. And Emma looked like such a beautiful young lady, and she's only 9... she's definately going to be a heartbreaker when she gets older. Janelle caught a couple of pictures of Nate with a smile on his face as he watched the ceremony. That's so neat!

I LOVE my new family! It's crazy, I went from being a single mom and a family of 3 to a family of 7 in one day. How crazy is that?