Last day of vacation.

I'm just coming to the end of a 12 day vacation. It's been nice despite the fact that I went in for a 4 hour shift on Sunday night. My job is working with adults with disabilities. At the particular house I work at, 3/4 of the people have fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Those 3, share space. It's a normal house. 1 person spends most of the time in the apartment in the basement. I have worked with the individual in the basement for 14.5 years. We have a great relationship.
As for the 3 upstairs, it's difficult. If you aren't familiar with FASD, look it up. It's basically brain injury. Before birth. Due to a pregnant mother drinking alcohol. We have 3 individuals who are all affected by the same thing. (The only disability that is 100% preventable btw.) They are all very similar but oh so very different. Add in a little paranoia, some sever thought pattern and social disorder and oppositional defiance disorder and the fact that no one can see and or understand their own disabilities and refuse any and all assistance by the staff working, and it makes for a long and mentally draining day. Factor in too, that most homes have minimum two staff working at a time due to high physical needs or dangerous acting out behaviour, but since we have neither, we have only one staff on at a time.
Ok, we have no "office" or private space to do our documentation or paperwork, and no private space to communicate to the staff arriving on shift what has been going in all day. (Remember paranoia? Yep it's part of our job to talk to oncoming staff about the individual's day.) Often times we find ourselves out on the front porch doing our exchange of information.
Needless to say, it can be stressful and not a job for just anyone.
For a while it was exceptionally stressful due to a staffing shortage.
Myself and the other full time staff in the house ended up doing enough overtime to be able to have a whole extra week of vacation time. We had hired some new people and that staffing crisis was over. Things were starting to lighten up in the stress department. Well.... While I've been on vacation two people quit. Due to stress.
Hence why I worked 4 hours while I was on vacation!
I almost had to work 8 more but another person ended up taking that shift. I'm glad that I've already been scheduled for my next vacation or it might not have been approved.
We're going camping that week. We're using my brother's pop up and spending 5 nights at Killbear provincial park. I'm looking very forward to it.
This vacation has been spent pretty much at home. In our yard. It's been nice.

Maizey is doing well. She's been having trouble with the potty and began wetting herself. And then bm accidents. We've discovered that she is holding her bm and becoming constipated. With the introduction of some more fibre and strict poo poo potty time each day, we've seemingly solved that problem.
She misses school and keeps asking if there's school tomorrow.
She is also enjoying the time home in the yard and can swim on her own without floaties. Because our pool is too deep for her, we still have her wear her floaties when we aren't in the pool with her as we're afraid she'll get tired half way across and panic. She can swim the length of the pool on her own but not every time.
It's been a great summer so far.
Maizey and Angela just spent the past weekend at ang's sisters cottage at sherkston shore resort. I opted not to go because I had just got my period and I'm like a 12 year old girl when it comes to my period. It is usually rather heavy and I didn't want to have to keep going from the beach to the cottage for the washroom. Not to mention getting up once every two hrs through the night to go to the washroom to change. It was just more comfortable for me to be home for that.
Update on ttc- we haven't been. We are 90% sure Maizey is going to be an only child. We are just feeling comfortable with our family the way it is. Every now and then though we get that baby fever and consider another. My body hasn't been too co-operative with no really strong signs of ovulation, so we don't bother trying to coordinate with our doner in Toronto.


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Mental Health

I've been struggling a lot with my mental health lately. There has been a lot of stress. It's been tough to keep it in any way together.
I think the nicer weather has been helping. My body aches less, I'm more motivated to do stuff. I feel more alive.

Living with a mental illness is tough. It's even harder when you try so hard to hide it.

I'm hoping to get back to writing here more regularly. I really like to have things to look back on.




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2 days

Only 2'days until we go to Cuba for the week! Yay! I'm so ready for this vacation. I'm excited! It'll be a different experience than I've had. I've been without my family only being responsible for myself. I've been with work, so not really that relaxing. This time I'll have my family with me! Hoping we all just love the time together! I love all inclusive because you don't have to worry about anything. It's all just taken care of.
Maizey is pretty excited but keeps telling people we're going to Florida.








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We're going!

It's official, we've booked a trip to Cuba for March break!
We are really excited. My good friend and two of her kids are going to come too! Maizey's papa (donor's husband) is coming to. Her dad can't make it this time because he is in nursing school and has some clinical stuff he can't miss. We'll miss him.












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Where'd we all go?

It seems I'm not the only one failing to keep up with the blog these days. I'm missing the blogs I read on a regular basis. 70% of them are not updating.
I know I can't complain because I'm just as bad.
Life just seems to be droning on for me. Not much new and exciting stuff going on.
Work has been particularly stressful the last 6 or 7 months. I mean, we have brand new staff who have only worked here for a couple months complaining of burnout, never mind that they are part timers. It's been a stressful go for those of us who are full time. There was a period of about 6 weeks that we were short staffed. I earned an extra 10 days of vacation time during that time because of working over time hours. I just need a break from it. The stress I mean.
We're hoping to use the extra vacation time to go away somewhere over March break. Not sure where, but hoping tropical. We'll have to see how money is. No solid plans at this time. Also will see how taxes go, hoping not to owe anything this year but not likely.
I'm starting to wish I had got a hot tub instead of a pool, because I would love to just soak in a hot tub after work each evening.
Maybe we'll work towards adding a hot tub to our back yard oasis. It's a huge expense though as we'd have to expand our electrical panel in order to support a tub.
Maybe in the distant future.




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4 years!

It's so hard to believe that it was 4 years ago tonight I went to bed with "gas" and 7 hours later, I had a beautiful baby girl in my arms.

We had a wonderful family birthday party yesterday. I love that Maizey's dad and his family all make the effort to come out to celebrate. I love that she has so many people who love her.

Still no luck on the baby-making front. It's ok though. It'd be nice to have just one more baby, but we're just thrilled to have Maizey. I can't even believe how amazing she is.



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All clear

Mom's biopsy came back negative. For now she's cancer free.



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Moving forward.

My mom's doctor confirmed that the spot in her lung wasn't and isn't cancer, as it had shrunk in size in a matter of a week, and cancer just simply doesn't get smaller without treatment of some kind. They've suggested that she just had a really bad case of pneumonia.
On the other hand, she needs to go for a biopsy of a spot they've found on her left breast. A similar thing happened last year and it turned out to be nothing, but they want to be sure. It could simply be a scar from when she had a benign lump removed years and years ago. Keeping the fingers crossed.

We have officially switched back to Maizey's father to be the donor for all future attempts at getting pregnant. We did have 11 attempts With his husband with no luck. It is going to be a little more tricky this go around because of the traveling we will have to do.
We have also contemplated the pros and cons of using an anonymous donor. We haven't completely ruled it out, but are sticking to the known donor for now.


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Shhh...

I'm enjoying a fun little app.
Whisper.


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School

Maizey started school last week. I can't believe we're already two weeks in. Wow! She was pretty psyched when we woke her up the first day...
(I've tried to put in a video of Mai waking up on the first day here, along with some pictures of the first day but the blog press won't let me)
By the third day, not so excited. In fact she she came home and declared she was "never going back there again".
Four days into the second week, although she does not like getting up that early in the morning, she has decided that she likes school and wants to "go back after she's done sleeping."
I just can't believe how big and old she is now!
The wetting accidents stopped with the start of school too. I had a feeling.
I'm so proud of our baby girl!



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The scoop.

Turns out that allergic reactions can cause low blood pressure. That was likely the culprit.
Other than some residual itch and a couple stitches and a black eye, mom's pretty good.
Some great news!
Mom's blood work came back showing elevated white blood cells, so the ER doc called the radiologist to ask him to read the CT scan from Thursday right away, thinking there could still be some pneumonia.
The radiologist said that her lungs looked a lot better than the last CT... And, get this, he also said that he didn't see any evidence of cancer in the lungs at all. There was some normal post radiation scars etc, but no indications of cancer at all.
We've had our mini celebration, but are going to wait for confirmation from the MRI today and further conversation from the cancer doctor until we are completely at ease.


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Here I am...

Here I am again, in the emergency department of the hospital with my mom.
What better to do than blog it at 3:50 am?
She had another CT scan this morning. The last one she had, they never had her drink the drinks and didn't inject the dye because at one point while she was in the hospital and had a CT scan she had an allergic reaction to something. They suspected it was the dye, but it was never confirmed. This morning they prepped her by having her take prednisone and Benadryl. They went ahead with the dye to get a clearer picture. She was fine most of the day.
At around 2:30pm she began a reaction. She took some more OTC Benadryl as per her doctor and managed the rest of the day with some itch.
I called her a few times through the evening to make sure she was alright. (I was working the afternoon shift). She sounded fine, and said she was ok except for a little itch here and there. I reinforced how important it was for her to call me if she felt off at all.
At 1am my phone rang.
It was mom. She had become dizzy and fallen on her face in the kitchen and couldn't get up. I quickly raced to her house. I found her sitting on a kitchen chair, blood all over her face, and kitchen floor.
She said she felt a little better and wanted to go lie down on the couch. I tried to assist her but she just went down again.
I didn't mess around, I called an ambulance.
She has low blood pressure, and might need stitches.
They are going to do yet another CT scan, no dye this time just to make sure she's not broken any of her facial bones.
That's where we're at now, at 4:06am.



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