So Long 2013

Well, time to say goodbye to a VERY stressful year.  Any of you feel differently?  Anyway, let me tell you about our last couple of weeks.  Cassidy has been doing better (finally) and for the moment her asthma is under control.  HOORAY!!!  She has been approved for the new medication, but we are still figuring out all the details.  We will probably start in the next couple of weeks.  I hope it will make the difference that her doctor is expecting.

Our Christmas was fantastic.  Most of my brothers and sisters were home.  My kids went to their grandparent's house the Saturday before Christmas.  They had a great time.  Apparently they had a gingerbread house building contest.  I thought their houses looked great.

We had our normal extended family over for Christmas day.  Everyone ate way more than we needed to, but it was SO good.  :)  It was fun to see everyone.

Now to my favorite part.  My family is very large and loud.  We all went to Nick and Krista's house for Christmas and pirogi.  (We can it something else, but I have no idea how to spell it.)  We had seven kids from 4 months old to 14 years old, 10 adults and lots of fun in a little house.  Nick was smart and took the munchkins to the park to get them out of the house while the baby slept.  The adults undertook the task of making the pirogi.  We make them from scratch and it is a long process, but worth it I assure you.  My mother also makes borscht.  My kids really like pirogi and look forward to it every year.  We opened gifts, lots and lots of gifts.  The kids were beyond excited.  Cassidy wrapped a gift for Chris with the help of my neighbor that took him FOREVER to open.  They wrapped it with lots of paper, tape, and ribbon.  (Chris has decided this year that he did not want ribbons on anything.)  She got a kick out of making things difficult for him.

On the Saturday after Christmas, we hung out with my brother and his wife and kids and my sister and her husband.  We explored Albanese Candy Factory.  Never a good place to go when you are hungry.  For those who do not know, they actually have a chocolate fountain.  Candy, candy everywhere.  My sister-in-law decided that we had to go get lunch right after we left there.  :)  We went bowling.  I am not very good at bowling, but it sure can be fun when you are playing with family.  We got two lanes, one for kids with the bumpers and a ramp for the little ones and one for the adults with the gutters wide open.  :)  The kids had lots of fun and my brother-in-law can really bowl.  :)  I think my favorite part of the day was dinner. We had chicken tacos with all sorts of veggies.  (Avocado, cucumber, peppers, lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, fried mushrooms and onions, and cheese.  Sounds good right.)  My mother thought we were crazy to add cucumber and carrot, but my kids love it and so did my sis and bro-in-law.  Once dinner was over, we played hand and foot.  If you have never played, you are really missing out.  My boys got to play for the first time and Christopher is a card shark.  He and my mother were partners and they kicked butt.  However my brother and his wife beat everyone.  Everyone kept asking Barry which cards to pick.  Apparently he really helped them all, but not so much himself.  I think they both had a good time.

Over all we had a good holiday and so far a healthy one.  :)

Asthma Strikes Again!

Well, how was your Thanksgiving?  Mine was great!!  I had a great time with family and friends.  I taught a new friend and a cousin how to make a fleece tie blanket, refreshed another cousin on the technique, made lots of fruit salad and desserts, and talked a lot.  We had 35 people at my mother's house so it was a little full, but I sometimes think that is the best time.  Everyone hung out and had fun.

Everyone knows that a lot of stores were opening on Thanksgiving evening and I said, "Nope, no way.  I am NOT going to shop on Thanksgiving!"  Well, little did I know, but my cousin decided that while she was in Indiana, she would take advantage of our lower sales tax.  (For those interested, she lives in Chicago and Chicago has the highest sales tax in the country, so you can see why she would want to do this.)  She has not know where ANYTHING is in Indiana.  So guess what that meant?  Yep, you guessed it.  I went shopping on Thanksgiving!  We had a good time.  It gave us time to talk and catch up with each other's busy lives.  We got home at almost 2:30 am.  Talk about tired!!  My daughter made it through Thanksgiving with no visit to the hospital!  (Remember last year we spent Thanksgiving day in the PICU.)

Friday, all three kids went to visit their grandparents.  They have been going over there every other weekend.  I enjoy the break and they have been getting to know their grandparents better.  I think it is a win win situation.  On Saturday morning, I got a call asking if Cassidy could take some allergy meds.  Sure why not?  (Her nose was running.)  I got another call  that afternoon.  She took some Tylenol for a headache. (No fever.)   That is fine.  I was totally not worried.  I knew she had a new inhaler (194 puffs left) so she should be fine with her breathing, right?  Apparently not.  At 8:30 Cassidy called me and asked me to pick her up because the inhaler was not working.  (For those of you with asthmatics you know that sometimes using the nebulizer works better because it allows the medicine to work over a slower period of time.)  So I went and picked her up.  I ended up with all three kids coming home, but that was fine.  While I was in the car a found out that the inhaler only had 52 puffs left.  WAIT JUST A MINUTE!!!!  I know Chris also uses the inhaler, but he and Cassidy agreed that he only used the inhaler four times while they were there.  (Each use is 2 puffs, even if he messed up and had to do three or four puffs each time, he only used it 16 puffs at most.)  Let's do the math:  194-20 (benefit of the doubt, maybe he forgot a use or two.) = 174, 174-52= 122 puffs!  I dropped the boys off at my mother's and headed to the ER.

Now most of you know that most ERs are always busy, but here we have a hidden gem.  It is a new facility and still fairly unknown.  Every time I have been there, we are taken straight into the triage room and then straight back.  No different Saturday.  We went straight back.  Cassidy's pulse ox was 88.  She was given 2 breathing treatments right a way and an oral steroid dose.  Pulse ox stayed the same.  Added oxygen, still the same.  So she got admitted.  The ER we go to is only and ER, not a full in patient hospital, so they transferred her by ambulance to our local hospital.  I had the ER doctor call her asthma specialist and we were able to avoid an IV!  Cassidy was VERY happy about that one.

She was in the hospital from Saturday night (the only kid on the peds unit) through Tuesday afternoon.  She actually goes back to school in the morning.  When will my child catch a break in this whole thing!

Forgotten Memories

What is it about broken, lonely places that strike such a cord in our hearts?

Today my neighbor and I were talking about our dream homes.  He wants to renovate an old dairy barn into the house of his dreams.  I would love to get an old church or school and make it into my dream home.  In the process of our talking, we started looking at old abandoned buildings of any kind ~ schools, churches, barns, etc.
1.
2.
A church in France.

It got me thinking.  We found some eerily beautiful and haunting buildings.   What would it take to rebuild or refurbish some of these places?  I decided to see what else we have left behind.  Empty, lost looking cars or moss covered train tracks.
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Then I found the saddest abandoned places of all, amusement parks.  Have you ever looked at pictures of these forgotten places?  Knowing that they were probably lived with laughter and joy makes the pictures of broken carousals and vine covered Ferris wheels that much harder to look at.  These pictures were gut wrenching.  Some of the pictures I looked at came with the story behind the reason the park was closed.  Others I actually looked up.  Here are a couple of pictures from the abandoned parks.
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This picture is of an amusement park that never had its chance at laughter and fun.  It is in Chernobyl.  It was supposed to open 5 days after the nuclear meltdown.
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A roller coaster in Germany.

Beautiful aren't they?

I looked for pictures of my home town's abandoned places.  I grew up in Gary, Indiana.  I went to school at Nobel Elementary (now closed) and Emerson Visual and Performing Arts (again, now closed.)  Emerson was one of the very first high schools built in Gary.  It showcased the fight for equal rights in schools and became an actual Fame type school in its waning days.  I remember where my classrooms were and what they looked like.  I remember friends I made then and all the fun we had.  It was built in 1908 and was open until 1981.  It reopened in 1982 as a visual and performing arts magnet school.  It stayed open at the original building until 2008.  Now you would never know that it was open as recently as 2008.  It is kind of sad.
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I also found incredible pictures of the Methodist Church that has been featured in many movies including Transformers 3.
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These places and spaces would have such stories to tell if only they could.  Can you imagine the history most of these buildings have seen?  Emerson was 100 years old when it was finally closed in 2008.  Both World Wars, the Great Depression, 9/11, the building was around for all of that history.  These events were discussed and survived in this building.  Most of the other buildings are as old, some even older.  You can find much older buildings in Europe that have been around of centuries.  What could we learn from these buildings?  They show us the architecture and style of time period they were built.  They mirror the tastes of the people that lived then.  Even as buildings, they have so much they could teach us.  That brings me back to my original question.  What is it about broken, lonely places that strike such a cord in our hearts?  I do not know that I will ever be able to answer that, but I do know that I have found a new interest.  I want to see what these builds and places can teach me.  I never would have thought about an amusement park in Chernobyl, not that it particularly matters, but I never really thought about the lives that were interrupted.  I learned about the accident, but only that it happened and everyone had to leave, but as a child I did not think about the actual cost.  Can you think to what it would be like if you were a child in Chernobyl and you knew the park was opening soon?  I would have been so excited and then to have that gone, man it would have been very hard leaving everything behind.

Anyway enough rambling, I just had to get my thoughts down.  They may not make a lot of sense to everyone else, but they do to me.  :)

By the way, old forgotten cemeteries are just as interesting.

Here are the sights I found the pictures:

1.  http://www.flickriver.com/photos/genbug/tags/barn/
2.  http://photorator.com/photo/15346/a-famous-spot-in-france-st-etienne-abandoned-church-
3.  http://blogof.francescomugnai.com/2013/03/33-more-breathtaking-and-incredible-photos-of-abandoned-places/
4.  http://500px.com/photo/17857761
5.  http://www.pixellica.com/inspiration/urban-decay-derelict-amusemen-park
6.  http://sometimes-interesting.com/2013/06/12/emerson-school-of-gary-indiana/
7.  http://www.flickr.com/photos/slworking/5914990794/in/photostream/lightbox/

Asthma Sucks! It Really, Really Does!!

WOW!!  I know most everyone knows that asthma is super common and more and more people are diagnosed with it all the time, but what most people do not know (unless they have asthma or a loved one with asthma) is that it sucks big time!  I grew up with a brother who had asthma, so I thought it was no big deal.  We dealt with it and he is a wonderful brother.  He still has asthma, but he knows his triggers and how to deal with them.  Then I had kids.  What a difference that makes!  Christopher was diagnosed with asthma and severe allergies when he was about a year old.  Never fun and hard to watch your child struggle to breathe.  However, we started to figure out what his triggers were and now he does pretty well.  My child is much like my brother, allergic to everything under the sun.  Chris is allergic to dogs and cats, Christmas trees, tree nuts, peanuts, the list goes on.  Again, now that we know, we can avoid or prepare for any issues.

Then along came Cassidy and Barry.  Neither one of my youngest kids had any breathing issues until Cassidy got pneumonia in second grade.  (She is in sixth grade now.)  She was diagnosed with asthma that May.  I have Christopher.  I know how to deal with asthma in a kid.  Boy was I wrong!  Cassidy is so different than Chris.  I still do not know what her triggers are.  She has been in the hospital eleven times since third grade.  She misses lots of school and hates that she does.  She cries and apologizes to me because she is always sick.  How do you help your child with that one?

This school year has been rough.  We are in the last week of the first quarter and she has missed about 20 days of school.  She has been to our primary care doctor repeatedly and to her asthma specialist at least once a week.  She ended up in the hospital last week because of her asthma.  She is finally back in school, but she is not allowed to go out for recess or participate in gym because of her wheezing.  She is still on oral steroids.  She has been on the steroids for pretty much the whole months of September and October (at least what we have gotten through.)

Here is a list of what we have done the past month to try to help Cassidy:

1.   Urgent Care with her primary care doctor on a Monday.
2.   Appointment with her asthma specialist on Thursday.
3.   Follow up with her primary care doctor on Tuesday.  He put her on an antibiotic.
4.   Appointment with her asthma specialist on Thursday.  He has me call him that afternoon so he could check up on her.
5.   Appointment with her asthma specialist on Friday. (The following day to see how she was.)
6.   A bad weekend.  She started coughing so badly, she was throwing up.
7.   Back to her asthma specialist on Monday.  He put her in the hospital.
8.   Hospital visit from Monday through Wednesday.  On O2, but no IV much to Cassidy's delight.
9.   Appointment with asthma specialist on Thursday.
10. Back to school on Monday.
11. Appointment with her primary care doctor on Tuesday.
12. Appointment with her asthma specialist Thursday (today).

Nine doctor's appointments in 3 weeks.  No child should have to do that!  During her hospital stay, her asthma specialist decided that she would have to be put on a different medication.  A shot, twice a month that costs $800 a shot.  He is going to fight with our insurance to make sure she gets approved.

Here is the way he let me know she needed this medication:  "We need this medication.  It will change her life.  She will not need oral steroids as much and will feel better.  We want her to survive her childhood."

Never something a parent wants to hear!  Wait, you mean my daughter's asthma is so bad it might kill her with out this medicine!!  You better get it approved, the quicker the better.  I want her around for a long time.

I have always known that asthma can be deadly, but in my experience it is treatable and the people I love will be okay.  I call Cassidy a brittle asthmatic.  Just like with brittle diabetics, her asthma is very hard to control and we have no idea what really triggers it.  Now I am praying this medicine is approved quickly and she really does improve!

Family Tree Update

Guess what??  I am finding more family members I have not seen in years!!  I have remembered things about some of these relatives that I did not know I knew.  With most of them, I still do not know exactly how we are related, ie. cousins, niece, etc., I just know we are related.  I have been figuring this out as I update our family directory.  I am having a great time working on it, however I am kind of at a point where I need help.  Because I am not sure who is related to who and how, I cannot fill everything in the way I would like to.  Here is to hoping my newly reacquired family members will help me out.  :) 

School Is In Session!

I cannot tell a lie:  I AM SO GLAD SCHOOL HAS STARTED.  You know I love my kids, but even moms need a couple of hours once in a while to recharge.  During the summer those hours are few and far between.  Like teachers who need their summer breaks, I need my school time.  I also enjoy helping my kids with homework.  It reminds me of how much I do not remember (anyone want to explain direct objects {DO} and indirect objects {IO} to me.)  It also helps me keep my mind sharp.  (Math is my favorite!)  This year it also has told me (in eight days) how quickly things are taught now.  I do not remember learning DO and IO until high school and my oldest is only in 7th grade!  This year is also the first year that all three of my kids are excited to go to school in the morning!  Homework gets done every night.  This is a big deal because for the past two years Chris has been on a "homework strike."

Here is a quick health update:

Cassidy's asthma is at it again!  She had a major attack last Saturday in Chicago.  It was bad enough that I almost called the paramedics.  Since then she has had decent days and horrible nights.  She is up most of the night  and day, so she is extremely tired.  This week has also been very hot.  Ninety plus temps everyday with the humidity close to 90 percent.  It has made things uncomfortable for everyone.  (Some schools in the area closed early due to the heat.  They did not have AC.)  Hopefully now that the weather is cooling off she will start to feel better.

Family Tree

I have found that searching for family members you know almost nothing about is an interesting experience.  I did not realize how many Stinebaughs there have been in the United States.  From my perspective Stinebaugh is an uncommon name.  The only Stinebaughs I have ever heard of are from our family.  And now I have figured out where some of our family names have come from ~ Daniel, Samuel, etc.  These names have been around for a very long time.  And do you know how many Marys we have had in our family!!!   Even with all of that, I am enjoying every minute of of my search.

On another note, when it rains like crazy in a very short period of time DO NOT go shopping!  Parking lots flood in minutes!

Family Genealogy

Why is it that family reunions can make a person really think about where their family came from?  I think I know.  I just returned home from Oklahoma where I attended my family reunion with 45 other crazy family members.  I say crazy because most of us drove for quite a while for a one day event.  (Fyi ~ there is talk that it will be a 2 day event in 2 years! )  As always everyone asks how we are all related and it gets a little confusing.  I enjoy every bit of the confusion, but sometimes it is hard to keep track of everyone.  We have a very big family, even if only a small portion comes to the reunion.

Because no one, not even me, can keep everyone straight I decided to start a family tree.  Now mind you I have done a family directory every couple of years just to try to keep everyone current.  Although the last one I did was apparently in 2008 and so it is VERY outdated.  (Lots of new babies and marriages, etc.)  I love doing it and will continue to do it as long as I am able to, but this year I came home and went to work on a family tree.  I have only been home since Monday afternoon (I got home after 1 am Sunday night and I spent the night at my mother's house.)  There are so many different ancestry websites on the internet that will help you find people and research connections.  I have looked at lots of them and kind of got discouraged with the cost.  However while I was in OK, my cousin's sister told my about a website that allows you to go up to 250 members of your family for free.  Great!  I can get started and see how I like the program.  (Most sites I have looked at don't let you do much for free.)

Here became the problem:  Our family is just too big.  I got one branch of our Stinebaugh family into the system and was already almost out of room.  When I added the two other branches I had already written out I ran out of room.  Mind you, my great grandmother's parents had NINE kids.  I had only put in 3!  Well, the site allows you to invite family members to look at your tree and add to it, comment on it, add pictures, etc.  Now here is why my family is so terrific ~ one of my cousins asked if he could pay the fee because he thought the site was so cool and we would use it a lot.  I love my family!

As of right now we have 400 people on our tree and that is just the start.  I have been working on it a little every day and keep finding new members of our family.  So much fun!  I have a feeling that when the next reunion rolls around our tree will be gigantic!!  I cannot wait to see.

Reflections

Cassidy turned 12 today.   12!!!!!  I cannot believe how fast time is going.  The storms tonight made me remember the storms when she was born. Twelve years ago I was in the hospital in the middle of a huge storm and Cassidy decided to come.  What a stinker!  The power went out in the hospital for about 30 seconds and life got really interesting.   Cassidy has made my life wonderful in so many ways.  I would not trade one crazy day for anything. All of the hospital stays, the Girl Scout meetings,  and complaints about being the only girl have made life so enjoyable.

Cassidy has been so excited today. "Guess what?  It's my golden birthday, mom!"  That puts things into a 12 year old's perspective.  They get excited about the little things.

WOW

WOW!!  It is amazing how quickly time flies!

As of my last post we have had a hospitalization, 4-H (county fair), Boy Scouts, and school starting very quickly!

First:  About a month after I last updated everything, you guessed it ~ Cassidy was in the hospital.  We went to the ER on Saturday night, mainly to get a refill of nebulizer meds.  (I did not want to risk a problem with running out.)  When we left the ER at 12:30 am, Cassidy's pulse ox was 98.  I thought we had managed to catch whatever was going on early enough. Boy was I wrong!  By 8:30 am (eight hours later), I knew things were not so good.  We went back to the ER and Cassidy's pulse ox was 79!  The biggest problem was that even with breathing treatments, it would NOT go up.  I knew then that we would be going into the hospital, but I did not know which one.  I was given a choice ~ Riley Children's Hospital in Indianapolis or Memorial Children's Hospital in South Bend.

Restart of this post:

Somehow I did not actually finish or publish this update.  (Today is June 8, 2013.)

So let's try again.

To be honest, I do not remember the exact date I started this post to begin with.  So I will try to update everything.

The hospitalization was in May.  We ended up going to South Bend Memorial Children's hospital (May 2012.)  Cassidy was there for a week.  I cannot imagine a better hospital.  It is so much closer than Riley's and the doctors and nurses were fabulous!  (Rileys is a great hospital also, but Memorial is so much closer, so I like it better.)  Cassidy hated being in the PICU, but things could have been so much worse.  I saw so many kids much sicker than her and I am so grateful that she is not worse.

The 4-H fair was a lot of fun.  Cassidy was there everyday, because she had to take care of her horse.She did really well and made a lot of new friends.   Chris and Barry had one project in the fair ~ Legos.  Cassidy also had a scrapbook in the fair.  It was a nice slow introduction to 4-H and fair craziness.  They all got A awards in their projects.

Chris is now an official Boy Scout.  He really likes his troop and they do activities every month.  He has gone white water rafting, backpacking, and helped at winter fest.  He also went to a survival "training" weekend, where he did not sleep in a tent and learned to start a fire without matches (kind of a scary thought.)  Barry will join him as a Boy Scout next March.

We have made it through another school year.  Barry was in his last year at Yost (fourth grade).  Kind of a sad thought.  I no longer have a child in elementary school.  I was the PTO president at the school this year.  Very crazy!  I loved every minute, however I now know how much volunteers make all the difference.  Cassidy was a fifth grader at Westchester Intermediate.  She had some trouble with teacher's understanding her IEP and following it.  Because I come from a family full of teachers I am totally on the teacher's side when my children do something wrong, but when it comes to their ability to learn I have to fight for my kids.  Cassidy did fine until she was in the hospital again in November.  Because she was sick, her teacher gave her  an F in a project she was unable to finish.  I was angry!  I was able to get Cassidy in the class she needed to be in and she did really well through the rest of the year.  Chris decided that as a sixth grader, he was on a home work strike.  His grades definitely reflected that.  He still managed to pass his classes, but his grades were lower than they should have been.

Now we are at the end of this crazy update, well, no not yet.  :)

Chris was diagnosed with Asperger's.  This has helped explain a lot of what goes on in his head to me, his teachers, and people who know him.  It has also made it easier to figure out what kind of help he needs.  He now gets group counseling and individual counseling.  He really enjoys group counseling.  He reminds me that we have to go.  :)  Makes my life a little easier.  He seems to be more willing to think before he acts which is a great thing.  Still have a long way to go, but we are on our way!

Cassidy now sees an asthma specialist and because of this she only was in the hospital one time this school year, although she spent Thanksgiving in the PICU.   She still has flare ups, but now we are starting to get a handle on things.  She has gone through one part of her allergy testing and she has two more to go.  So far, no allergies yet.  :)

Barry is my calm, healthy child.  I think God knew that I needed a break after everything I have gone through with Chris and Cassidy.  Hopefully Barry will continue to stay healthy.  :)  All three kids have projects for this year's fair.  We have a lot to do!