Nola is 9 Months Old!

and she started crawling on Saturday night (7/23/11)!!! Of course, I wasn't here either! I had been really encouraging her to crawl the day before because she was soooo close. She'd get on all 4's and then pull both knees forward under her tummy, then fall onto her stomach and start over. She was actually going places with that method, but it looked like an awful lot of work! Then I went with My friends Sarah and Anna (Hi Anna!) to a cabin on Mt. Lemmon from Sat-Sun and Nola started crawling Sat night. Go figure. She was really really slow at first, but now she's stepped it up a notch and gets into all sorts of things. So far, she immensely enjoys ripping magazines and shoving the pieces into her mouth. It reminds us of when Embry would shove sand in her mouth at the beach so fast we couldn't keep up with her little fists of fury! I took some 9 month pics of Nola today, here are a few of them...


This last one is Nola on the left and Embry on the right in the same pose at about the same age.

Our night at the cabin on Mt. Lemmon was a lot of fun. We played lots of games (Qwitch, Ruckus, Nab-It, and Skipbo), enjoyed the weather, tried to go to 2 restaurants at the top of the mountain which didn't work out, and did a lot of cutting with the cricut. I had a nightmare where I was moaning out loud and luckily Anna woke up and in turn woke me up to save me from my dream. I also had a dream where Anna's cell phone was ringing, but her ring tone was Anna saying, 'Annaaaaa! Annaaaaaaa?!' L to R: Me, Sarah, Anna

Our Mercury Tracer won't start so we bought a new car, well new to us anyway. It's a 97 Honda Accord that Tony's friend at work was selling. We're still trying to figure out what we want to do with the non-functioning Tracer in our garage. I got the title switched over on the Honda today and I was so very tempted to get Tony a personalized license plate that said 'IBMer' but he didn't seem thrilled when I mentioned the idea to him. Also, we noticed that the floor in our hallway was wet on Sunday night. After calling the home warranty people, we had some plumbers come out and they discovered our AC unit in the garage was gushing water. Turns out there was about 1/2" of water all under our stairs, so now we have our baseboards and some drywall ripped out and a bunch of air movers and a huge dehumidifier in our living room/bathroom. Now we're waiting for the actual AC company to come out and fix the problem. They said they'd be here at 5pm or after and it's now 8:30pm and I've called the home warranty place twice and still haven't gotten an ETA from the AC people.

In other news, I'm doing much better, which I'm quite hesitant to say in case I jinx myself or something. Seriously though, my back is a LOT better since starting physical therapy at the spine center and I think the extra time it's had to heal has helped as well. My INR was in range when I was checked last week, so that means I get to wait 2 weeks between appointments. Oh, and another thing that made me feel oh so good was that CULVERS OPENED IN TUCSON! Unfortunately Tony wasn't able to join us for dinner there last night (opening day) because he had to be here when the guy was out setting up the fans for our wet floor, but I brought him back a butterburger and some cheese curds. I did get some pictures though...

I also performed a sneak attack on Embry while we were in the bath last week and I cut her hair. I was so tired of it looking all scraggly and thin, so I trimmed the top part that was longer than all the undergrowth. Now it lays, curls, and looks a lot better and thicker. :D

Healing?

It always kind of throws me off when a doctor uses the word 'healed'. I mean, they're not supposed to do that right? I feel like it's taboo in the scientific medical world where all things must have a logical explanation to chalk something up to healing, but that's what the new rheumatologist just said to me.

First of all, he called me himself, at 7:30pm no less to discuss the results of my follow-up hip xray. That's pretty awesome. He said that he looked it over and the bone infarcts in the femoral shaft were gone and furthermore, the deterioration (or avascular necrosis) of the femoral heads (my hip joints) was completely healed. I mean holy cow, I'm having a hard time not sitting here smiling like a dorkus all alone at my computer screen!

On top of this (which I'm so trying to not get my hopes up about) is the fact that he said the ANA -antinuclear antibody- test the hematologist did in March (which is the main test for Lupus) came back negative. He said it could mean a number of things but the main thing he referred to was the fact that labs have recently switched to a much cheaper and not nearly as reliable method to test for ANA which gives false negatives for about 10% of patients. Ever since being diagnosed in 2003, my ANA has consistently been positive up until this test in March, so he's going back to look at my old lab reports. You can imagine that immediately my mind starts thinking 'oh gosh, what if it's gone? What if I'm all better? What if my life can be normal again?' Great and now I'm getting all emotional about it...lame! So, like I said, I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but what if...???

On the not so great side he said that once you have compression fractures they don't really go away ever...which is not what the neurosurgeon said, so I'm a little confused. And he said my level of vitamin D is good at 36 which I'm about to look up what exactly '36' means. He'll also continue to be my rheumatologist so I'll see him every 6 months for check ups, woohoo!

New Teeth, Holiday, and Physical Therapy

Nola's top two front teeth finally broke through in the past week. First it was her left, and then her right came through a few days later. We thought she had a runny nose/fever from teething, then it turned into a cold, then it got slightly better, then she had a fever of 102.5 and kept waking up at night crying. So I took her to the dr the next day and voila, she has an ear infection in her left ear. We started her on amoxicillan that night and so far she seems to be getting slightly better. At least no more waking up in the middle of the night crying, so that helps everyone out! * Edit * I forgot to add that she says 'mama' all the time now! It's so great, it's mostly when she's frustrated, but I totally eat it up and respond with a lot of, 'yes darling?' and 'mama's here!' Also, she was weighed at the dr and she's 19lbs 4oz at a little over 8 months old. Mmmm, I love her!

We had a lovely 4th of July except we kinda missed the big fireworks. There was a super monsoon that started around 4pm which happened to be when we were supposed to be over at our friend Herb's house for some festivities. We waited out the bad part of the storm (ie horizontal rain) and then trekked out for the party. It was pretty low key which was nice and the kiddos had a great time playing together while the adults got to play a few games. Tony managed a huge come from behind victory in Farkle and then us stragglers (me, Tony, and Herb) played a game of Qwirkle. It was really fun and I think I might have to buy it. ;) Of course, I lost as usual. So since I didn't want to end the game early, we left around 9:20 while the fireworks which I thought started at 9:15 had actually started at 9pm. Basically we saw them while we were driving trying to find a good spot to park and then right when we found one (at the eastside PCC campus) they were doing the grand finale. :/ We came home to set a few off in the backyard, but Embry was not too pleased when Tony handed her a lit sparkler and then did a nice freak out when he set off a firework fountain by the pool. That was the end to our fireworks for the night and we called it quits and went to bed.
I had my first Physical Therapy appt for my back/hips. It was basically just an evaluation and he said we're gonna work on strengthening my core muscles. I'll be going in twice a week for 4 weeks, which is good, but kinda difficult to get someone to watch the kiddos that often especially when my sis and her family are moving down here soon. Oh that reminds me, I got a call from the rheumatology office saying that my levels of vitamin D are normal. I guess that means I just keep taking the same Calcium+D that I've been taking since 2003, but that doesn't really make sense to me since if it hasn't worked very well so far then why not switch it up? Anyhow, I'll wait to get the hip xray done and see the results of that before I get all huffy about anything.

New Rheumatologist

The guy's name is Michael Mericic and he's supposed to be a rheumatologist who specializes in diseases of the bone in rheumatology...he even had a lovely book displayed in his exam room which he wrote. Overall I liked him. He's nice and he seems to know what he's talking about. He actually kinda reminds me of the hematologist, which is a good thing. Here's a breakdown of what he said:

• There doesn't seem to be any clear reason why my bones aren't as strong as normal. He asked about my past steroid use and besides being the hospital I've never taken more than 20 mg at a time for about 3 weeks at a time...so that would not cause it. Also, the steroids used in the hospital wouldn't show any damage for years to come, if at all.
  
• The CT of my hips shows white (bone is supposed to be gray) on both femoral heads and about a 4 inch section at the top of both femurs. That could either mean there's fluid in the bone, the bone is dead, or it was damaged at that point but has repaired itself.
• The CT of my hips (which was done prior to being bucked off the horse) also showed that my L4 vertebrae had a compression fracture. Weird seeing as the scans of my entire spine while I was in the hospital in Dec were completely normal except for a vertebrae in my neck. So what happened between Dec and April to my back?
  
• He ordered blood work to see how my body is absorbing vitamin D and a repeat hip xray.
  
• They don't give bone medications (like fosomax or boniva etc) to women who are pre-menopausal. I didn't catch why, but seemed like some hormonal thing.
• He didn't want to check my estrogen levels (even though I mentioned it about 3 times) because it fluctuates throughout the month and since my body doesn't show any signs of a hormonal imbalance, there's no reason to think my estrogen level isn't normal.
  
• He also does not like Benlysta. Or rather says there's no reason to like it yet. Basically, he said the studies showed that most of the time there is no or minimal improvement and since they don't know the long term effects, it wouldn't be worth it to risk taking it. Also he said it's about $35,000/year.
  
• He doesn't like the idea of kyphoplasty. Basically that was because the blind studies showed the same improvement with the procedure and the sham procedure. That just goes to show how much power your mind has over your body.
  
• He'll let me know about the blood work and xray and figure out what step to take next.
  

The Neurosurgeon Follow-Up

Well, I went to see him yesterday and overall it was a good visit. I told him I was still in a whole lot pain and he said, 'well, you broke your back.' Makes sense, although I thought it would have been feeling much better by now. He told me that he could do kyphoplasty for L2, L4, and L5 (L3 is not too bad). Basically they blow up a little balloon inside each fractured vertebrae which creates a hole which they fill with bone cement. Problem though is that you're much more likely to fracture adjacent vertebrae in the long term because the cement doesn't have any 'give' where a bone would normally be a bit smushier than cement. Also since I'm so young, I'd obviously have more time to develop said fractures. I asked how old the youngest person he did the procedure on was and he said 'like 50's'. Ok, so yes, I'm the exception.

I basically told him I was having conflicting feelings about what to do because since I have 2 small kids, I don't want this amount of pain to be the 'norm' for me. I mean, I don't think it's fair to my children and it's certainly not going to fly with me for very long. However, he said he could still do the surgery if it's not better in 2 months after trying to strengthen the muscles surrounding the fractures (and core muscles to straighten my spine) through physical therapy, so that's the option I'm going with. I'm hoping it will all get better before my next visit with him, but if not, I'm prepared to go ahead and get it fixed. I guess sometimes you just have to give it your best shot and if things don't work out, then go with the flow and see where it takes you.

Almost 8 Months Old!

In 2 days Nola will be 8 months old! Time sure does fly! She's cutting her front left tooth. Tony says he can see it poking through and feel it, but I still haven't confirmed that. She was super fussy on Wed and then started getting a runny nose on Thurs (which I figured was from teething) and now she's got a full blown cold. Poor baby. I'm listening to her cough on the baby monitor right now. :/ She still isn't crawling, but she scoots around on the floor well enough and she can stay sitting up without falling over for a LONG time. She also now loves to go swimming and splash in the water when I take her out of her floatie. Pulling hair is one of her favorite hobbies and she especially likes to pull Embry's because Embry will cuddle her and give Nola the perfect opportunity to grab a fistful (or 2) of hair. She also enjoys pulling the cat's fur, but they usually don't stick around long enough for her to get much.

Father's day was this past Sunday and I think Tony enjoyed himself. Embry gave him the airplane she painted for him at Color Me Mine the pottery place and I gave him a card and a photo collage of him and the girls. We went to church that morning and then came home to eat KFC with my parents and go for a dip in the pool. Then we had cake that my mom made and some ice cream and that's about it.

Tony with the girls on Father's Day

We finally met our nephew, baby Micah James, on Sunday (6/19/11) when tony's mom and sister came down from Phoenix to visit. He's so cute! I've always had a thing for Asian babies and he's half Philipino, so needless to say, he's adorable. Embry totally loved him, as she does all babies, but she kept going up to us, pointing, and saying, 'That's Micah! He's my cousin!' Nola obviously didn't know who he was, but she seemed to enjoy being around another baby. It made me a little sad to think that she'll never get to be a big sister...

Me and Micah

Embry, Nola, and Micah

Photo of Micah in the backyard

Anyhow, I hosted my first playdate for the year yesterday. It was so fun! I didn't realize how much I missed having my mom friends over and their kiddos. I used to really stress about being judged for the state of my house, or the grease splattered behind my stove, or the ring around the toilet bowl, but I've come to realize two things:

1) these are not the things that really matter in life, and,
2) we're all just trying to do our best to make it through infant, toddler, and mommyhood. So even if we did have a second to check out our friend's glass tabletop for fingerprints and jelly smudges in between wrangling a spazzing 2 year old and comforting a teething baby, we wouldn't care because we're all just doing our best and that's all we can do.

Back to the playdate- we went swimming! It's been getting super hot here (like 110) and there's not much to do except stay inside or SWIM! It was lots of fun getting all the kiddos in the water and splashing around. Embry had a good time dumping cupfuls of water in her crocs over and over again and we all enjoyed some popsicles in the sun afterward. I'm going to attempt to host one every 2 weeks or so and see how it goes.

Nola and Ryan before swimming

Embry with her popsicle after swimming

We'd like to plan a weekend trip to Phoenix sometime soon as well. We have a thing from livingsocial for a night's stay at a resort up there that also has a waterpark, so Tony and I were going to drop the kiddos off with Dorothea and have some fun on our own. Of course I feel guilty not letting Embry join in on the fun, but she's too small for any of the slides anyway so what would be the point?

My back and hips still hurt like coo-coo-ca-choo-coo (one of our favorite phrases in this house), but I go to see the neurosurgeon on Monday and hopefully he can help me somehow. My back is also doing some weird popping kind of thing when I twist or turn in certain ways. I have super news though! The new rheumatologist's office called and said that they were going to go through my insurance even though they're not contracted with them, so woohoo! I got myself a new (and hopefully good/knowledgeable/caring) rheumy! I go see him on July 1, exactly 1 week from today. :)

Oh also, the white car is like messed up. It's something with the fuel pressure being too low so it's having trouble starting. It'd cost like $700 to fix it and the stupid car is only worth about that much money, believe me, I checked KBB...so we're kind of wavering between trying to see if Tony's dad can fix it (although that would only save us the labor costs and the parts alone are like $400), driving it like it is until it really goes kaput, or searching craigslist for a small (and hopefully not too expensive) Toyota or Honda. I'm sooo done with American cars. Sorry, but they just suck like hard core. Also, the 'maintenance required' light came on in the van. Hoping that just needs like an oil change, that's considered 'maintenance' right?!

Huh?

I got a call from the neurosurgeon's office today to say that the Dr looked over my x-ray and that there is 'no change' in my vertebrae since my accident. So naturally I go, 'uh, what does that mean?' and she (the assistant) says, 'I'm not really sure. Did he talk to you about any follow up treatment or anything?' Uh, no. I have an appt to see him again on the 27, so I guess we'll figure out what all that means then.

I never really thought about what it would mean if my back actually didn't get better. I just trusted it'd go back to normal in 6-8 weeks and I'd be back at it...going to playdates, taking the girls places, going swimming, etc.

The new rheumatologist said he'd see me once and the office manager won't allow him to set up a payment through my insurance. So I guess that means he'll see me once and that's it. I'm not sure exactly what I'm supposed to achieve by seeing him once, but I'll give it a shot.

Nola seems to be really close to crawling, but I thought the same thing about rolling over and that took FOREVER! So obviously I'll post if anything develops on the crawling front, but as of now she's just up on all 4's and rocking back and forth. She can also stay sitting up for a while by herself if I put her there but she can't get up to sitting on her own yet.

Care Package Etc

After getting home from the long awaited appt with the neurosurgeon, what to my wondering eyes should appear? But a priority mail box from a friend not so near. It was filled with lots and lots of fun stuff from my friend Missy and her family and it made me feel so loved! Here are its contents:*not pictured: a wonderful card with messages from Missy, her husband, her brother, her sister, her mom, and her dad! Oh and Lindor Truffles!

• Neurosurgeon Visit: It went well in the regard that he was very informative and showed me my mri and ct scan from the hospital. He showed me the part where he saw bleeding around L3 vertebrae and pointed out that it was actually a clot (go figure, I can't get away from those suckers!) and it was right in the vertebrae fracture line so he was worried that if it continued, a chunk of that vertebrae would have actually broken off. Let me say I'm glad he caught that one because that sounds pretty painful. When he was scrolling through the testing I had done from the hospital and radiology ltd, he was like 'oh you got a dexa scan?' Which is the bone density scan I had just done 2 days earlier and I asked if he could look through the results of that since none of my drs had called me about it yet. So after he showed me the other stuff, he read through the dexa scan and kept saying 'Ooh. Oh. Oooh.' Like not in a good way. Then he said that I have Osteopenia. Specifically the 'socket' part of the left hip was like -1.8 and the 'ball' of that hip was around -2.4. Normal is 0, anything between -1.1 and -2.4 is Osteopenia, and anything lower than -2.5 is osteoporosis. He agreed that the bone loss could be part of the reason that my vertebrae got fractured from my fall into the soft sand. He said since I'm so young (I seem to be hearing that a lot lately) I could probably reverse the bone loss with tons of supplements and I need to have my level of vitamin D3 checked. He said it would be a good idea to do strength training to improve my bone strength and that I could start trying out yoga and really low impact things like a recumbent bike in about a week. Oh and big news is, I get to try to take care of the girls by myself starting Tuesday! Nola is about the heaviest thing I should try lifting at this point at about 16 lbs, wish me luck! Silver lining in all this is that the rheumatologist that my hematologist wanted me to see is willing to see my now even though he's not contracted with my insurance. So yay for getting away from the sucky rheumatologist I have now!
• Rheumatology Visit: eh well, you know, it sucked as usual. I don't like this guy. Basically he just checked my head for lesions because my hair has been falling out in masses since I was in the hospital the first time. No lesions. I told him I wanted to get on Benlysta (the first lupus drug to be approved in over 40 years with some amazing testimonies to it's effectiveness) as soon as humanly possible. He said that he doesn't know exactly what the point of their trials were and he's seen no reason it should be used over the other treatments they have like using cellcept or other extremely harsh meds. Hello!? Benlysta actually stops your B cells from attacking like maniacs and allows your body time to heal itself! Just the thought that at some point in my life I might be able to feel 'normal' again makes me giddy. Other than that, it's dang expensive, like 2k/month and I'm not sure my insurance would cover it.

Today was our 6 year wedding anniversary! We took the kiddos out to my parent's house at around 11am and left them there to spend the night. They're so adorable! I just want to love on them all day long! Embry says the cutest things and I laugh all the time at the crazy stuff that comes out of her mouth. Recently as a response to her doing something good, she says, 'You will be so happy for me!' The other day Tony was wearing his pajama shorts and she goes to Tony, E: 'are these your shorts?'

T: 'yes those are my pajama shorts.'

E: 'that's your butt in there!' while pointing

The cutest part though is how much she accentuates the 't's on butt. Argh, so cute!

And Nola, well, she's just adorable. I love her big cheekies and her little rosebud lips. She's got her two little bottom teeth now too which makes for even cuter baby smiles. She's doing 360 rolls all over the place and she's kinda started to figure out how to scoot herself backwards. She laughs at things Embry does all the time, it's so cute!

Anyway, I got on a tangent there. The anniversary was good! We had lunch at the Olive Garden and then did some shopping where we found great deals on workout clothes for both me and Tony. I also got a few new tank tops because not only did I need some in general but with this back brace all of my tops are super tight to pull over it and try to hide it. The shopping was hard for me, hard to stand and walk that long, but we took many breaks to sit and rest. Then we went to see 'Thor' which, surprisingly, I really enjoyed. Then we came home and our wonderful friend Katie made us a delicious pot roast (seriously, one of my favorite meals) and we watched 'Beyond Borders' from Netflix which was quite depressing, but I got an anniversary foot massage, so it was worth it.

I've been thinking a lot about life lately. Why certain things happen...I guess I won't know for a long time. In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy every second I have with those who I love, especially my kids. Recently a girl that I knew from school in Wisconsin lost one of her 6 month old triplet boys. They don't even know what happened, he just stopped breathing, I mean how terrifying must that have been for her? I can't even imagine, I don't want to, but I know it's been weighing heavy on my heart ever since I read her blog. I don't know why these things happen, but I've been making sure to love on my babies so much more because of them. Please stop by Melissa's Blog and pray for her and her family or leave a word of encouragement. Life is precious, please don't waste a moment of it.

The other night, Nola was uncharacteristically whining in her crib long after she had gone to sleep. I decided that maybe something was wrong, so I went into the nursery and checked on her. Besides having a wet diaper, she was fine, so I changed her and then sat and rocked her for as long as my back could stand. I hadn't gotten the chance to do that with her yet. I went into the hospital when she was 6 weeks old and when I got out, I could barely hold her. Then she started sleeping through the night so she never needed me. Then this horse accident happened and once again I wasn't allowed to lift her. Things happen, people get busy, but I'm determined to remember what is important in this life and make time for long snuggles and saying 'I love you' and really meaning it.

Here is a print out of my CT scan. You can see the 4 vertebrae above the tailbone are not square, they're squished. I've lowed my dose of pain meds, but quickly found out that if I try to lower them too much it becomes quite unbearable. I'm having mixed emotions about all of this. I'm upset that I was only 'normal' for like a month and then got sent right back to not being able to function again because of some stupid horse. I'm sad that I don't get to watch my kids or play with them when they are home, but also happy that I have so many friends and family that are willing to watch them during the day when tony is working. I really appreciate all the help and we definitely couldn't make it without the help, I just wish I didn't need it in the first place. Every morning when I wake up, I think, this will be the day where I am all better! Then I try to get out of bed and realize, nope, not today.

Anyhow, I saw the hematologist today and he said my blood tests came back normal. He wants me to see this certain rheumatologist that is also a bone specialist. Of course he's not contracted with my insurance, but the hematologist talked to him and he said he'd see me for free if I have an abnormal bone density. That means I'll be going in for a bone density scan sometime.



Nola is babbling a lot more. She's making ga, da, ra sounds and just being cute overall. She loves playing in her jumperoo (she's fallen asleep in there a few times recently) and scoots herself backwards in her walker. We've been giving her baby food before giving her formula and she seems to like most of it pretty well and is actually swallowing it. She hates the meat ones, although they're only in the level 1 baby foods so we're thinking they don't taste too appealing. Tony took her to her 6 month dr appt last Tues (5/10) and she said we could stop the acid reflux meds since she was spitting up less (although I don't really understand that) and she prescribed some nystatin cream for her diaper rash. I obviously didn't get to go since I was in the hospital, but Tony brought home a paper with her stats:
Height: 27" (>75%)
Weight: 16lbs 3oz (50%)
Head: 40.5 cm (5%)

Embry has been doing pretty well going on the potty with all of this shuffling around from house to house. I was hoping it wouldn't derail our progress. She's had a few 'accidents' here and there, but we figured out that if we send along her potty chair, she tends to do better. She sure is getting a lot of time to play with her friends through all of this!

Horse back riding = pain

Here's the deal: I got bucked off a horse on Saturday and the only picture I got was of Tony's backside while he was trying to get on his horse. Really this is quite ridiculous.

The Story: We bought some tickets through living social a while back for a 90 minute horseback trail ride at Pantano Stables. I wanted to go for my birthday last year, but I was 8 months pregnant and in a bit of pain, so I decided not to. The tickets expired on May 13, so we needed to use them last weekend. We dropped the kiddos off with Danielle at 7:30am on Saturday and drove over to the stables. We were riding with about 7 other clients (4 little girls and 3 adult women) and 2 'wranglers' that work at the stables. We were the last 2 to get on our horses. While one of the women was mounting her horse, she said she was an experienced rider and wanted a horse with a little bit of spunk. Naturally I say, 'I'd like a horse that's exactly the opposite of that, like if he was any slower, he'd be going backwards!' They gave Tony and I what they deemed as tame horses and we were on our way.

There was a wrangler leading the pack and a wrangler behind me bringing up the rear. We went down into the wash to start the ride and I asked the wrangler if he'd seen many rattlesnakes out there on the trail rides and he said, 'well, me personally, no. -pause- but this is my first time doing this.' Turns out he normally drives the stage coach out at Old Tucson but the stables were busy that day so he came over to help out. A girl that was riding about 4 horses in front of me had one of those horses where they just mosey along and try to eat any tree or bush in site, so the wrangler rode up next to her to make sure her horse didn't get too far behind.

All was well, we zig zagged from the left side of the wash, to the middle, the left again. I noticed that when my horse went downhill, he would sorta trot for a few steps, which was fine with me, whatever. Then we crossed over to the right side of the wash, went uphill a bit, and made our u-turn to start the ride back. Before we started going downhill again, my horse started to poo. Earlier in the ride, the wranglers said to stop if the horse needed to pee, but to make them keep walking if they were pooping. I let him stop for a few seconds to figure out what he was doing, then made him keep walking. Then we got to the hill down into the wash and after he took the first couple steps, he bucked and I went flying. It was uphill on our left, and downhill on our right. I flew out of the saddle towards the right side while yelling 'aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh.' I did a sort of sommersault/roll mid-air and hung onto the reigns while I was in the air. I could hear Tony calling my name as I was flying. I closed my eyes and landed on the back of my right hip and rolled onto my left side. Somewhere in there I let go of the reigns. As I was on the ground I could hear the horses hooves beating on the ground and I just kept thing 'oh God don't let him step on me!' Luckily he didn't.

The wrangler that was supposed to be behind me got off his horse and came over. There was blood mixed with a clear fluid (I'm guessing maybe snot) dripping out of my nose and I had those prickers all over my clothes. Luckily I landed in the 'soft' wash sand. If I had landed further down there were a lot of rocks and if I had gone off the other side it would have been closer to the ground, but also on very hard ground. The wrangler asked if I could move and if I wanted to try to stand up. I didn't really think I should move in case my back was hurt, so I was getting a little agitated and said (in a not so friendly way) 'call 911, doesn't anyone have a cell phone?!' Tony said something about my hips and kept asking if he could get off his horse. I told the guy I have bad hips and he wanted to to roll onto my back, so eventually I did, which hurt SO bad. Then I went back to my side, then to my knees, and I stood up with the help of a wrangler and Tony. An employee drove his truck down through the wash to pick me up. That truck ride was a bit bumpy and really painful and when we got back to the stables, the fire truck with emt's arrived right away. They put me on a flat board, put on a neck brace, and taped me down the the board (including a huge chunk of my hair). My bp was quite high, like 190/130 and eventually the ambulance got there and took me to the hospital.

I was in so much pain on that flat board, I can't even tell you. It was definitely worse than giving birth without an epidural! I asked everyone (the emt's, the ambulance guy, the nurses in er) if I could have pain meds. The first 2 didn't even have any and then some guy (I'm not sure if he was a nurse or what) in the ER said, 'well first we're going to get your IV in, then we're going to do some x-rays, then maybe we'll talk about pain meds'. I swear I almost slugged him, jerk. Then my actual nurse came over (super nice) and I asked her and she said, 'oh I'm giving those to you right away!' and had them in her hand.

Once I went to CT, they got me off the flat board (yay) and saw that my L2-5 vertebrae (lower back) have compression fractures from the impact of the fall. Later they did an MRI which showed that there was bleeding around L3 so they needed to stop my blood thinners. Doing so would mean they'd have to do surgery to put in a temporary clot filter in my groin area. I did that under conscious sedation and I'm happy to say I don't remember a thing. Then they gave me 2 bags of plasma to help clotting and another 2 the next night.

I have a back brace to wear while sitting or standing for the next 6-8 weeks. I'm supposed to keep as much pressure off of my back as possible which means to picking up the kids or cookware or doing any housework or anything that could make me twist. It's supposed to heal on it's own in about 6 weeks, but I have an appt with the neurosurgeon to see how it's progressing in 2 weeks. The hematologist also said that one of my clotting factor blood tests came back funky, so he repeated it and I have an appt to discuss that with him next week. I get to inject myself with low dose blood thinners for 14 days and then they'll decide if they're going to take out the clot filter and start me back on the pill blood thinners again.

I got out of the hospital yesterday and I'm feeling better today. I just have to make sure to stay on top of my pain meds. I was getting quite nauseous in the hospital with the pain killers (they started with diloted, then morphine, and now I'm on oxycodone) so I'm taking some anti nausea meds too.

Nola is 5 Weeks Old!

5 Weeks old
Taken 12/1/10

Oy, this week has been one for the books. There is something wrong with me. First it was just my back, then it was only the right side of my back and right shoulder with something weird going all spazzy when I ate. Then since I could only sleep on my left side, that whole side ended up getting very sore from arthritis. The dr sent me in for an ultrasound of my gallbladder which looked totally normal and now is trying to get me in for a HIDA scan which checks the functionality of the gallbladder instead of just looking for stones and infection. Problem is, we have to wait for the insurance to authorize it and in the meantime, I'm in pain. Lots of pain. I've tried ice, I've tried heat, I've tried stretching, I've tried massage...anything is just a temporary fix, if a fix at all. Yesterday out of desperation, I went to the ER. The dr there pretty much sucked. He said he didn't think it was my gallbladder so he wouldn't do the HIDA scan and he thought it was muscular. Basically they did blood work and a urinalysis (which just showed my potassium and sodium are low) and sent me home. It was rather infuriating.

I can't believe Nola is over a month old already. I swear, I feel like I just got home from the hospital with her. Nola seems to be sleeping slightly better and we're trying out a new plan. Tony gets up with her once during the night to feed her formula because I'm thinking she might sleep longer that way. Last night was the first night trying it out and it went fine, so we'll see if my plan has any merit. Either way, I'll be getting more sleep because I'll be skipping a feeding during the night and that alone is a huge blessing. Weird thing is that since having Nola, Embry has been waking up screaming at night, like she's having a nightmare. She probably gets that from me because I have nightmares all the time...poor thing.

The first month or so that Nola was home, she was pretty easy going. She hardly ever cried and just kinda whimpered when she needed something. I thought maybe she'd be the laid-back baby that Embry wasn't...I was wrong. She's started crying a TON over the last week or so. It seems that the only way to keep her calm (and sometimes that doesn't even work) is to either feed her or hold her. Oh, but a good thing is that she enjoys riding in the car most of the time. So the crying thing has not helped my daytime sleeping ability. Today was the first time in a week that I've gotten a nap, and boy was it heavenly!

Ha, I almost forgot, Nola had her first Thanksgiving! It was lots of fun besides the fact that I was upstairs half the time trying to fix my back. Anyhow, Tony's mom, Allison, Alex, and his dad came over as well as my parents, Donny, Oasis, and Maisie. The food was delicious (thanks to Tony, his mom, and my mom...cuz all I made was the monkey bread) and we got some really cute pictures of the family outside. I also got a picture that I have envisioned for a while...our girls with both sets of grandparents! :) Then that night Tony's mom, Allison, and I went over to our friend's house to play games which was hysterically fun, I love games and friends. The day after Thanksgiving Allison and I went to do a bit of shopping and then Saturday Allison got the flu that Embry had and so did my mom. Then Donny and Oasis also got it as well as tony's mom. Apparently it's a very strong strain. Saturday before Tony's family left we took the girls with Alex and Doro to the desert museum which was really fun and I can't wait to go back!