Oekaki Centralized
Going to revisit this Oekaki thing today. Have never tried it with a tablet before, but I remember finding it interesting. Looks like they purged my old account. It was several years ago. I guess they require pretty active memberships. Too bad. I had one in progress that I was really looking forward to going back to.
One of Those Days
Mahogany had BOTOX scheduled for her ankles yesterday. We do this because there’s a bit too much tension in her feet and they don’t stay in neutral position on their own. So the BOTOX an area on the leg and cast her feet for a few days or weeks. She’s had this a half dozen times already, and even though no actually cutting is involved, it still counts as outpatient surgery due to the anesthesia administered.
Only thing is, there’s this rare, low percentage of a chance that she, or anyone, will have an adverse reaction to anesthesia. Either your chest will become rigid, and therefore you won’t breath well, or your throat can tighten up, again, not allowing you to breath well. Well, one of those happened to Mahogany yesterday.
Happened on the initial dose. Her breathing got bad, and her heart rate started to drop, so they started doing chest compressions for under a minute. Ended up having to take her across the street to Brenners’ PIC Unit. Scary thing seeing your kid loaded into an ambulance on a stretcher with a breathing tube down her throat. Especially as sudden as it all happened. But, once we got across the street, we saw that she had awoke in the ambulance and was expressing her displeasure at her breathing tube. The EMTs had a time trying to roll her through Brenners’ labyrinthine corridors and keep her hands away from her assorted attachments. Once we got to her room in PICU, they had a ten-man team waiting for her.
They were going to need it.
We waited in the Waiting Room while Mahogany tossed the staff around room and she finally settled in. Once they got the tube out, she went to sleep and seemed stable. She was already stable pretty much before they even called the ambulance, but they needed to be sure, and they wanted to see her temperature go up. She seemed a little cold, which isn’t the norm for her. After a few hours she woke up, eat some apple sauce and jello, drank and was ready to go home before 6 PM.
The reaction to the anesthesia is something that happens rarely, but is unexplained. It’s a side effect, and doesn’t have anything to do with allergies or age or environment. You could have taken the same thing a dozen time before or since, and only that one time will be the result. Ironically, they had another boy in PICU that week who’d had the same reaction, and also went home that day. Those two times were the only time Mahogany’s doctor had ever even seen a case of it happen. Even so, from now on, any future BOTOX injections will be done at Brenners, rather than at her Orthopedist, just to be on the safe side.
Windows Has Detected Your Blog is Old as Crap
So since my last update, which was back when elderly white people weren’t completely insane (read: pre-Obama), a lot has happened here. I’ve moved to Winston-Salem, my wife has a new and better job and the general stress of our life has toned down somewhat, though not completely. Mahogany is still nutty, and this is only exacerbated by the fact she can crawl around on our now carpeted apartment floor and break, hide and steal things in a way you wouldn’t have thought a disabled child can do. I’m still pretty sure she put my technical pens up for sale on eBay.
Our anniversary rolled around and I got to take my wife to one of them fancy eatin’ places in Greensboro. You know, the kind with table cloths and where they frown on you crushing peanuts on the floor? We dressed ourselves up, pulled the ticks out of the baby’s hair and I was able to present my wife with a nice gift, which I caught on video.
Miranda is working in the school system, and I’m still at home with the baby. But in the coming months, I’ll be setting up a new website where I’ll be selling my custom vBulletin styles. Don’t know how well that’s going to go, but I’m invested in it. Considering a couple of other forum softwares that I might develop for, such as XenForo and IPB, but we’ll have to see what the workload for one software is like before I even consider looking at a third or fourth. (Third and forth, in that I’ll be designing for two different versions of vBulletin.)
Other than that, not much is up. There’s much left to do, and we still have to settle into our new life. There’s decisions to be made, and bills to be ignored. Thankfully, I have a smart phone now, so I can answer the phone and hang up on people automatically. Who knew there was an app for THAT? The bugs in Winston are larger than I’m comfortable with, so they’re going to have to go. You think I’m kidding.
Testing Ping Blogging Functionality
Just testing some HTML formatting. Nothing to see here. Move along.
I thought I said move along. Don’t you listen? Do I got to go get my pepper spray?
Okay, it’s actually a bottle of paprika and I just blow on open lid, but you get the idea. Now move along!
Disabled or Otherwise
From my point of view, the key to a disabled child’s happiness is simply treating the child the same way you would treat any child. If you treat her like a bother, like a burden, it won’t matter how much YOU think she doesn’t understand, she’ll pick up on that. Any child will feel and act in the same manner in which they are treated. And if it takes that much more effort to convey your feelings to them, make the effort.
It takes no effort to make a child feel like a burden. So work that much harder to make them feel special. If she could walk, talk, do everything on her own, you would have happily made that effort anyway.
Disabled or Otherwise
From my point of view, the key to a disabled child’s happiness is simply treating the child the same way you would treat any child. If you treat her like a bother, like a burden, it won’t matter how much YOU think she doesn’t understand, she’ll pick up on that. Any child will feel and act in same manner in which they are treated. And if it takes that much more effort to convey your feelings to them, make the effort. It takes no effort to make a child feel like a burden. So work that much harder to make them feel special. If she could walk, talk, do everything on her own, you would have happily made that effort anyway.
Disabled or Not
From my point of view, the key to a disabled child’s happiness is simply treating the child the same way you would treat any child. If you treat her like a bother, like a burden, it won’t matter how much YOU think she doesn’t understand, she’ll pick up on that. Any child will feel and act in same manner in which they are treated. And if it takes that much more effort to convey your feelings to them, make the effort. It takes no effort to make a child feel like a burden. So work that much harder to make them feel special. If she could walk, talk, do everything on her own, you would have happily made that effort anyway.
Hang Tight – Indefinitely
So the way I understand it, thanks to the internet, demand for these went up. So the SOLE builder of hangs pulled them from the distributors, closed his website and requires you to go to Switzerland to meet with him to have one built.
The Beatitudes for Friends of Exceptional Children
Blessed are you who take time to listen to difficult speech,
For you help us to know that if we persevere, we can be understood.
Blessed are you who walk with us in public places, and ignore the stares of strangers,
For in your companionship, we find havens of peace.
Blessed are you who never bid us to “hurry up”,
And more blessed are you who do not snatch tasks from our hands to do them for us,
For often we need time rather than help.
Blessed are you who stand beside us as we enter new and untried ventures,
For our failures will be outweighed by the times we surprise ourselves and you.
Blessed are you who ask for our help,
For our greatest need is to be needed.
Blessed are you when you assure us,
That the one thing that makes us individuals is not in our peculiar muscles,
Nor in our wounded nervous systems,
Nor in our difficulties in learning,
Nor any exterior difference.
But is in our inner, personal, individual self which no affirmity can diminish or erase.
Author Unknown
Just a Thought
You know, if by some conceivable stretch of the imagination at some point in my life I’m stuck in grocery store and there are hordes of blood-thirsty bugs/dinosaurs/zombies/gerbils/bunnies clawing at the doors who whose intentions will result in my untimely and grisly demise, I hope and pray that I’m trapped with people who have seen multiple monster, horror and sci fi movies and NOT with every moron within a 100 mile radius:
Yeah, dinosaurs and giant killer cicadas flying around the room and I’m going to go look for my dad. Even at ten, I wasn’t that stupid.
