Catching up, part 4

Jason & I finally made it to the hometown and we spent the evening doing what else?

Eating and drinking.

What can I say? We're a little predictable at times. :)

Anyway, the next morning was my friend Katlyn's baby shower. It was held just one town over from me......I had to trek all of 10 miles from my parent's house. Here's Katlyn with her mum that I helped Stacy put together. I had never heard of making mums for baby showers, but I think it turned out cute.


Her cake was made by Lucy's in San Antonio.


Stacy, myself and our friend Misty got together to make a diaper cake. None of us had made one before and I think it turned out cute as well.


While Kat opened her presents,


This little cutie, Cymber, stole the show:


Cymber decided that she needed to help unwrap gifts. She was so cute walking around with leftover tissue paper and bows!

After the shower, I headed home to celebrate Thanksgiving early with my brother. I forgot to get the camera out for it, but we had turkey, cranberry sauce (my fave!), yummy stuffing, veggies, pecan pie and pumpkin pie. Let's put it this way........we were stuffed!

Later that night, my brother started a fire and we all brought out lawn chairs.


Jason decided he needed to add his special touch to the fire as well. Notice the beer in hand? Anyone catching a theme here?


We sat out for a long time talking, petting the family dogs and just watching the flames.


It was a perfect end to a great night.

Read more...

Dad is finally coming home!

After over a week in the hospital, Dad is finally coming home today. His blood oxygen level is back to normal and his lungs sound much better. His blood sugar is still a little elevated from the steroids, but it should still continue its downward trend as weans off of them. Dad still has quite a cough, but it's 500% better than when he came into the hospital. I think he will be home for at least the rest of this week before he attempts to go back to work. Luckily, his boss had some major lung issues many years ago and understands how hard recovery can be. When Dad does come back to work, he'll be taking it slow.

I can't tell you how happy Dad is right now. We thought he was going to come home yesterday and let's just say that Dad was less than happy when he found out he had to stay another night. Right now, he just wants some more peace and quiet. Thank you all for your fervent thoughts and prayers. They are much appreciated!

Read more...

More Dad

Yesterday Dad was looking much better after his bronchoscopy the day before. He was a little more lively and he was able to get out of bed and take a shower. His blood sugar was running high because of the steroids, so he was given insulin to bring it down. His blood pressure has also run high since he's been in, so he was given extra medication to bring it down. Other than that, things went pretty well all day until dinner. For some reason, he didn't get his. By the time we realized that dinner probably wasn't coming, I went into the hall to find a nurse. I spoke with our nurse and she said there wasn't a tray for him and after making sure that he wasn't having any procedures done that would require him to have an empty stomach, raced to the downstairs cafeteria. The kitchen was closed, so he couldn't get his regular hospital dinner. But the nurse was nice enough to find him a sandwich, chips and iced tea.

Today, Dad was able to get out of the bed and sit in a chair! The blood sugar was still elevated, so he is still on some insulin. His blood pressure is slowly getting back to normal. His blood oxygen level is still lower than normal, so he's still on the oxygen to supplement it. He got a little bit of a yeast infection in his lungs from all the antibiotics, but he was given medication to get that under control. I had no idea you could even get a yeast infection in your lungs.

We got some really good news tonight......Dad doesn't have the swine flu! The results finally came back from the state and he was negative. This means that he will be taken out of isolation by sometime tomorrow. No more masks and gowns!!! The sample that was taken from his lungs isn't growing anything so far which is also good news. That means that the antibiotics that he is on are working. The doctor won't give final results on that for another day or two. It's going to be a long road to full recovery, but Dad seems to be on the right track. I'm staying here in Woodsboro until he comes back home. Thank you all again for your thoughts and prayers!

Read more...

Dad

Yesterday I arrived in Corpus to visit Dad in the hospital. My mom wasn't sure if I would be allowed in, but they let me in because I was immediate family. They won't even allow flowers to be delivered to his room! He's currently in isolation because he has flu-like symptoms. They had a woman die of pneumonia a couple days ago (a complication from swine flu) so they are taking extra precautions. I had to gown up and wear a mask the entire time I was in the room and they told me that if I wanted to touch Dad, then I had to wear gloves. How scary is that? Dad looked extremely tired and was coughing horribly. He's on oxygen full-time because his lungs are too full of gunk for him to breathe fully. For whatever reason, he's on a liquid diet. The pulmonologist said that he could go back to regular food, but the orders didn't go through in time so poor Dad got liquids for dinner again. He was so tired of eating it, that he only ate half of a popsicle before we left. He wasn't allowed to eat anything after midnight because he was getting a bronchoscopy in the morning. Mom and I stayed until about 7 o'clock. He got all his meds and then rested. We went to go eat at Chili's before making the hour drive home.

This morning, we headed back to the hospital. Dad was supposed to get a bronchoscopy so that they could look into his lungs and get a sample of the infection. That way, they can culture the sample and figure out what's causing the pneumonia. The pulmonologist told us that is was very unusual for someone Dad's age to get double pneumonia. It will be 2 to 4 days before they will get results from it, so it will be a hard wait. If nothing grows, then that means the treatment he's on (heavy antibiotics) are working. If something grows, then they will know the cause and an adjust treatment accordingly. While he was getting scoped, they also flushed out his bronchi with fluid. Dad said he was awake the entire time and it was weird, but not too freaky. When he got back in the room, the coughing had subsided tremendously (because of the flushing) and he looked okay. He seems to be feeling better today and he looked more alert. His flu test came out negative, which was no surprise. He had already been swabbed last Friday and that had been negative, too. He was tested for swine flu but that has to be sent somewhere else in the state and it takes several days to get the results. Even if it came out positive, I'm sure he's past the contagious stage anyway. His blood pressure was elevated, so he was given some medicine in addition to his regular blood pressure medicine. The best part of today was seeing Dad's face when they finally brought him some "real" food at 7pm. He was so excited to eat something other than soup or popsicles! Mom and I stayed with him until about 7:30 and then we headed out to get some food. We had only eaten breakfast this morning so we were starving.

We went to Olive Garden because that sounded good for some reason. Today is my Mom's birthday so I bought her dinner and then I got each of us a pint of ice cream to eat at home. We finished the night eating Rocky Road out of the container while watching the news.

Thanks for all the thoughts and prayers. I really appreciate it! I'll update again when I can.

Read more...

More virus

Dad is being transferred to a hospital in Corpus today so that he can be near a pulmonologist. Yesterday he had pneumonia in one lung, but today it has developed in the other lung. He is still on full-time oxygen until he can breathe a little better. Please say a little prayer for him for a speedy recovery. Thanks.

Read more...

The virus that just won't end

Remember that my sister and Mom both had some weird virus that put my mom in the hospital for 8 hours because of dehydration? Well, yesterday my mom called to say that she took Dad to the hospital because he was still running fever after 7 days. They found that he had developed pneumonia and was also dehydrated so he was started on antibiotics and an IV drip. If all goes well, he should be home sometime this morning. Can you believe this virus?

I'm so thankful that neither myself, Jason or the girls caught it.

Read more...

Weekend in Boro

We had a very eventful - and scary - weekend. Jason & I were supposed to take our nieces, Hailey and Hannah, back with us on Sunday. However, things didn't go as planned. When we arrived on Friday, we found out that my sister (their mom) was very, very sick. Her entire office staff was out and one was in the hospital. We thought it was the flu, but it ended up being an awful virus. My sis couldn't get out of bed and hallucinated on Thursday night from such a high fever. She talked to grandparents that aren't around anymore. My parents kept the girls at their house while we were there so she could rest.

Friday night was fun! My parents, Jason & I sat on the back porch and watched the girls ride their bikes and play while we drank wine. And we drank lots of wine! Wine tastes so much better when you have good company, a good back porch, and a good breeze. We stayed up really late and all went to bed a little buzzed.

Saturday was Hannah's 7th birthday, so my sister dragged herself out of bed to throw a small family party. We forgot to take pictures...sorry! At some point toward the end of the party, my mom disappeared. We found her asleep in the back bedroom. She caught the bug. Hailey (the older niece) was also sick, so I took her in to have her cough looked at. When we got home, Mom was still not moving well. By Sunday, she stayed in bed and planned to make a doctor's appointment for Monday.

Monday morning came and she was able to make an appointment at 2:45. Jason & I had already planned to take the girls to get their shots for school that same day at 1:30 (it's an hour from my parent's house), but I had Jason stay home so he could drive mom to the doctor. Thank goodness he was there because she passed out in the office and they rushed her to the hospital. She was there for about 8 hours and was treated for dehydration. They ran a lot of different tests on her including at least a CT scan (they thought it might have been a seizure) and a flu test. She was negative for flu and she didn't have anything abnormal with her brain. My Dad sent us back home before she got out so that we wouldn't catch anything.

I felt so guilty for leaving Mom in the hospital even though Dad was there. However, I'm glad none of us caught the bug. Dad caught it and is still running a fever off and on today. Mom is still not up to par, but is better. My sis went back to the doctor today and got a steroid and an inhaler. She was originally diagnosed with bronchitis, but I think she had the bug, too. We came back fairly healthy with the girls just having a little runny nose and cough. Thank goodness we came back that healthy!

Read more...

Gone to visit the parents

Well, we're off to visit my parents in the old hometown. We haven't been down there in so long because my parents have come up here a lot recently. I'll be MIA on the blog until Sunday or Monday most likely. We're coming back Sunday with these two monkeys in tow. That's right, Aunt Stephanie and Uncle Jason are braving the kiddos for a week! Will we survive? Stay tuned to find out! Have a great weekend everyone!

Read more...

By the way,

GMA punked out on Woodsboro. They officially suck. They only put the 'Boro couple on the air live the very first day but they were only seen waving to the camera.

See? I told you there wasn't much to see there. Apparently, GMA thought so too.

Jerks.

Read more...

My Hometown's On TV!

Want to see the little podunk town I grew up in? Tune in to Good Morning America tomorrow and Friday. I'm not sure which day it will be on, but look for the Sanchez family (not my family) in Woodsboro, TX. Woodsboro is such a small town that they never even get on our local news!

Watch for the GMA at Your House part. It's on fairly early in the show! I'm excited!!

Read more...

Podunktown, USA

On Friday, I went down to my hometown of Woodsboro to help judge an elementary UIL contest. What? You've never heard of it? I can't imagine why.

Woodsboro is a tiny little podunk town in South Texas. We had just 1,571 people as of July 2007. Our school has moved down to 1A (we were 2A while I attended). There may not be much to do in town, but there's always someone you know. People in the closest large city have never even heard of us. As funny as that sounds, I kind of like that.

My mother has been teaching at Woodsboro Elementary School for over 30 years. I spent a lot of time waiting for her in the hallway. She taught tutorials after school every day so we couldn't go home until 4pm. I would watch our janitors sweep the hallways every day. They would always speak to each other in Spanish and I remember wishing I could figure out what they were saying. Believe it or not, one of them still works at the school. I didn't have the pleasure of running into her, but every time I see her, she reminds me of how I would sit on a little step and count to 100. I'd tell them that I'd already counted to 100 and that my mom STILL wasn't done yet. Obviously, I had issues entertaining myself. On to the original subject.

This year, the elementary school agreed to host the UIL meet finals. My mom, being the wonderful person she is, agreed to plan this entire event. In case some of you forget what some of the UIL events may be, I'll provide a list from memory:

• Storytelling
• Oral Reading
• Number Sense
• Art Smart (the one where you have to memorize paintings and painters)
• Readywriting
• Maps & Charts
• Spelling
  

Those are the ones that I can actually remember. Obviously, scheduling is pretty tough. Also, there must be people that can judge the events and grade tests. Finding judges proved to be the hardest part for mom. Somehow she suckered me into it......I mean, asked if I would help her out. Hey, it's $40. I can listen to some kids for that.

They were so darn cute! I judged Storytelling for 2nd and 3rd graders. They are read a story by one person, then each enters our judging room separately and has to retell the story. We grade them based on details remembered/created, hand gestures and animation. Some stuttered and couldn't remember a thing, others were hilarious and incredibly talented. It was so refreshing to listen to the kids tell stories.

After Storytelling was finished, I helped grade Maps & Charts. This was definitely an event that I would have never entered. Blah. The grading was tedious, making your eyes cross continuously. Each exam has to be graded twice, with the top 6 graded three times. We had to regrade several because scores weren't matching. Talk about getting a headache. After these were graded, the UIL meet came to a close. Everyone went home and drank lots of wine and slept. What? You wouldn't do that?

In case you're wondering, the only UIL event I remember competing in while in elementary was Number Sense. It's a timed test where you have to do all the math in your head. I received 2nd in our district meet in 4th grade. Yup, I was a smart kid. That's my bragging rights for the day.

Read more...