Pain!

For the past several days I have been experiencing severe tooth pain. Before I continue though, I must point out that I realize there are some people who live with almost constant pain daily. I do not mean to diminish their experiences, but this pain is something I am just not used to.

It began last Friday night when I was getting ready to go to bed in my hotel room while on my business trip to San Antonio, Texas. Fortunately the hotel was next to a 24-hour grocery store, so I went there and bought some Advil. That did the trick, and my pain went away allowing me to sleep. On Saturday I again experienced some discomfort while on my flight home, so I took some more ibuprofen. At this point the pain was not intolerable.

Things changed on Sunday. The pain in my mouth was getting progressively worse to the point where the Advil was having very little effect. I began alternating the Advil with Motrin, which did not seem to help much either. The pain was so bad that I only slept about three hours Sunday night.

Monday I went to the dentist and discovered that I had an abscess and was told that the root canal that I had done in October 2008 was failing and would need to be redone. Because it would have to be done through an existing crown, I was referred to an endodontist to have the procedure done.

The earliest I could get in to be seen by the endodontist was Wednesday at noon, so I had to deal with the pain until then. The dentist I saw Monday did prescribe me an antibiotic as well as Vicodin. On Tuesday when the Vicodin did not control the pain for more than an hour at a time, she prescribed me Percocet. I ended up alternating between them as neither seemed to do the trick. I did sleep better Tuesday than I did on either Sunday or Monday nights, but still did not get a good, restful sleep.

Yesterday I made it into the endodontist. After viewing the X-ray of my tooth, I was told that a root canal would be difficult to do, although he was confident he could do it. My other option was to just have the tooth extracted. While the endodontist would have preferred for me to keep the tooth, he said that given the difficulty in fixing it, he would not blame me if I wanted to just have it removed. After giving me an injection of Novocaine, so I could make my decision without being influenced by immediate pain, I ended up deciding to just have the tooth extracted. I really wanted to get it done that day, it was significantly less costly to have it extracted than to have a root canal, and I did not want to have to worry about future issues with the tooth.

I ended up in the dental surgeon's office at 3:00 yesterday afternoon, and by 4:00 I was walking out without any pain. I am very happy this is done. I think this was the worst pain I had ever experienced. The pain from when I had my gallbladder attacks last year may have been worse, but that pain did not persist like this pain did.

My Big Boy

[caption id="attachment_198" align="alignright" width="225" caption="Maximus waits for the nurse to return to give him a shot."][/caption]

Maximus is one big kid. At just eighteen months of age he is already wearing size 3T shirts and 2T pants. And in just this past week, I have received multiple comments from strangers about how big a kid he is. Max, Emma, and I were shopping at Super Target on Saturday morning. While we were looking at the Jell-O, a boy who appeared to me to be between two and three years of age drew his mother's attention to the "baby" in the shopping cart. His mom responded to him that he was closer to being a baby than Max was. I then mentioned to her that Max was only eighteen months old. She then had to retract her statement to her son.

Then yesterday when I was picking Max up from daycare, I reminded his daycare provider that he would be leaving early Wednesday for his eighteen-month doctor visit. Another parent was surprised that he was only eighteen months old as he is larger than her older child. I got a similar comment form a customer behind me in line at SuperAmerica this morning when I was talking to the employee about Max.

So as I just mentioned, Maximus had his eighteen-month doctor visit this afternoon. This was probably the best Max has done for any doctor appointment. He did struggle a bit when the doctor tried to look in his ears, but there was no screaming this time. And he barely cried when he got his vaccination today. Max is doing just fine. His vocabulary and behavior are typical of a toddler of his age. The only aspects that were atypical were his height and weight. Max weighed in at 29 pounds 12 ounces, putting him at the 92nd percentile for weight. This seems like it could be a problem until you know that Max is 36.75 inches tall, which is over the 97th percentile for height. As his percentile rank for weight is lower than that for his height, it is just fine. I really wish I had a picture of his growth chart that I could share here. His height has always been above the top curve on the chart, but until today's measurement his growth has followed a nice curve. His height today was 2.75 inches greater than it was at his fifteen-month visit. So he grew almost three inches in three months! On the other hand, his weight did not increase very much over that time period. I guess we will see how his growth progresses when we go back to the doctor in January for his two-year visit.

Finished

As of this morning, Maximus is done with the helmet to correct his plagiocephaly. He has mad a lot of progress since he started wearing it back in August. At that time, the difference between the measurements from the back left to the front right of his head and the back right to the front left of his head was 1.7 centimeters. Now the difference is just 0.4 centimeters. It will be nice not having to wash the helmet daily, and Max's head will smell a lot better now that he is not wearing the helmet twenty-three hours a day. I am glad that we decided to do this for Max though, and I think we would do it again if we needed to. Now we just need to work on getting him discharged from physical therapy.

Wrap-up of the Past Week

We've had a pretty busy week this past week. Last Saturday we all went to the Mall of America where Emma finally got to ride on the carousel. She rode on it three whole times! I thought that since she was tall enough to ride on her own, but I wanted to go with her, I would have to pay as well, so I paid enough for two rides, one for her and one for me. However, when we got on, they only charged us for her, so we had enough points left for her to ride a second time. Somehow though, the points were not deducted from our ticket for on of her first two rides, so she was able to ride a third time. She had a great time on the carousel.

On Sunday we went to the Minnesota Zoo. Emma wanted to play in the splash pad, but we told her we would do that before leaving instead of right when we got there. As a consequence, Emma did not want to spend much time looking at any particular animal. She kept saying that she wanted to see the next animal. I am pretty sure this was so we could finish with looking at animals so she could play in the water. When it was finally time to go home, Emma was not happy about it. She screamed all the way to the car that she didn't want to go home yet. She fell asleep in the car, but when she woke up when we got home, she began whining again. She ended up spending a bit of time in her room alone until she managed to calm down.

On Monday, Max rolled over from his back to his tummy! He had begin rolling the other way regularly last month, but now he can roll both ways!

Max's physical therapy appointment for his torticollis was Wednesday. He is doing really well, although he still tilting his head to his left. This appointment was also a lot more pleasant than the previous two as Max refrained from screaming for most of the appointment. He did complain some during one of the exercises he did though. It was nice to not have him screaming for the entire appointment though.

I had a follow-up appointment from my gallbladder surgery yesterday. Everything looks just fine.

I have had quite a bit of work lately, especially since Wednesday this week. All of these other appointments haven't helped with getting it done, and we have another appointment this afternoon. However, working at night, I have been able to get things done. Well, I've gotten most of it done anyway.

Surgery and Recovery

On Thursday I had my gallbladder removed. And as I was not going to be able to eat from between midnight prior to my surgery until after the procedure was completed, I decided that I wanted to have a large dinner Wednesday. So Mel, Emma, Maximus, my mother, including my mother, who came to visit to watch Maximus, my sister, and I went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner. I thought that was a good place to go since their portions are notoriously large. However, I ordered an item off of their specials menu. Those entrées are not as large. Nevertheless, I still had plenty to eat. Around nine o'clock that night, I had my last food prior to my surgery, half of the cheesecake that I had brought home from the restaurant.

Thursday morning, after taking Emma to daycare, and doing some shopping at the grocery store and Target, Mel and I headed to the surgery center. I was a little nervous. Prior to this surgery, the only surgery I had had was having my wisdom teeth removed. However, the fact that this surgery was routine did help to ease my nerves a bit. I figured that the chances of something going wrong were very remote.

Upon arriving at the surgery center, the nurse prepped me for surgery, putting an IV in my hand. I really hate needles, so I wasn't looking forward to that, but it wasn't too bad. The anesthesiologist came in to ask me a few questions, and then the surgeon stopped by to tell me that he had another laparoscopic cholecystectomy to perform before mine, so he would be in good practice when it came to mine. After waiting for an hour or so, I was wheeled into the surgery room. I seem to remember them saying something about the operating table not being long enough, but that is the last thing I recall before waking up in the recovery room. When I came to, I apparently was trying to sit up, because I seem to remember the nurses yelling at me to not sit up. After being observed for an hour and a half or so, Mel and I went back home.

I actually felt pretty good initially after my surgery, although I did take some generic Vicodin upon returning home to ensure I continued to feel all right. I also had some crackers and Jell-O to eat once I got home since I was so hungry, but didn't think a full meal would be advisable. I didn't have much pain at all until I laid down to go to bed. That hurt quite a bit, but taking ibuprofen and more Vicodin helped. I ended up going to sleep fairly quickly.

Yesterday I felt fairly good and ended up eating a good lunch and dinner. Staying medicated helped to keep pain away, although my right shoulder felt stiff most of the day. In fact, I felt well enough out that Mel, Maximus, and I even went out for a little bit. I didn't feel much pain at all yesterday until I tried to feed Max and ended up stretching in an uncomfortable way. The next real pain I had last night was when a joke on truTV's World's Dumbest made me laugh. It was very painful when I laughed, but I couldn't stop! I had to get up and leave the room, because just watching the clip on the show kept me wanting to laugh.

I seem to be recovering just fine from my surgery. Later this morning I will be able to remove the dressings from the four incision sites. Then I will get my first look at where the surgeon inserted his tools.

A Date with a Surgeon

Perhaps I should have written this blog entry before the previous one, but yesterday I went to see a surgeon about my gallbladder issues. Even though I haven't had any pain from it in over two weeks, the fact that I had two occurrences of pain that week, the other being two days before, the surgeon recommended that I have my gallbladder removed before it causes any more issues. So next Thursday, a week from today, I will be having a cholecystectomy done. This week has been, and next week will be busy weeks in the medical area for the Mathman family.

The Craniofacial Clinic

Back in June I blogged about how Maximus has torticollis, a condition which causes him to tilt his head to the left and look to the right. He has been going to physical therapy since then to work on that. We have also been doing exercises with him at home to stretch out his neck muscles to prevent this. However, despite this intervention, he still prefers to turn his head to the right when he is lying down, and as a result of this, he has developed plagiocephaly, or a flat spot on his head.

The hope was that his physical therapy would help in rounding his head out, but this has not happened. So today we went to the craniofacial clinic at a local hospital to have him evaluated. After taking some measurements, the nurse practicioner and orthotists decided that a helmet would help to correct Maximus's plagiocephaly. Maximus was fitted for a helmet. To do this, the orthotist put a cap on his head that contained reflective dots. She then scanned around his head with a laser which took information from the position of the dots. A computer then created a three-dimensional image of Maximus's head from the data it received. Maximus also needed to have a CT scan done to make sure that two of the bones of his skull had not yet fused. He actually did very well for that, especially considering how bundled up he was. Maximus hates being bundled up.

This afternoon, after we got home, we got a call from the nurse practitioner letting us know that the CT scan showed that everything was normal, and that we can proceed to order Maximus's helmet. I will call the orthotist tomorrow to set that up. She was supposed to email us a file showing the different color and pattern options, but she apparently did not get around to that yet. Hopefully she can do that when I call tomorrow so they can get to work on Maximus's helmet.

The Fourth of July

Our Fourth of July holiday began with us taking Maximus to the urgent care clinic to be checked out. That morning, when he woke up at 3:00, he was very warm. Taking his temperature, we learned that he had a fever of 101.4°F. That, along with the rash he had on his chect and back, prompted me to call the hospital to speak with a triage nurse to see if we needed to take him to the emergency room right away. After hearing all of Maximus's symptoms, the nurse said that we chould take him to be seen by a doctor some time within the next twenty-four hours. At the urgent care clinic, we discovered that Maximus has an inner ear infection.

While we spent most of our morning at the urgent care clinic and running a few other errands, we ended our day by going to Woodbury to see fireworks. Mel considered staying at home with Maximus since he had not been feeling well, but we ultimately decided that we would all go to the show. We were not sure how Maximus would deal with the loud noises, but he did great! He loved watching them and only cried a little bit toward the end. Emma, on the other hand, reall hates loud noises, so I was anticipating that she might not like the fireworks. She did cover her ears the whole time, and asked several times if we could go home or if she could sit in the car, but she did fine otherwise. After the fireworks were over, she said that she enjoyed them but that she closed her ears because they were loud. As we were in line to leave the parking lot, Emma kept counting the number of cars there were. She counted from one to eight before declaring that there were one hundred cars there. She ended up falling asleep before we got out of the parking lot. Unfortunately, she woke up this morning at the time she usually does, so I am afraid that she may end up being a little crabby this afternoon.

Trip to the ER

Yesterday afternoon, while I was working, I suddenly got an intense pain in my stomach. At first I thought I was just hungry, so I grabbed something to eat, a hot dog. About the same time I was eating the hot dog, I noticed that my back was hurting as well. Something just did not seem right, so I went to the computer and searched Bing to see what having back pain and stomach pain at the same time could possibly mean for me. While I was doing this I started to get a headache as well. Meanwhile, the results from my search of the Internet led me to think that I should probably go to the emergency room, or at the very least, I should call my doctor's office to see what they though.

I tried calling my doctor's office but no one answered, so I proceeded to call a hospital where I explained my symptoms to the triage nurse. She suggested that I either come to the emergency room or call my doctor for a recommendation. I called my doctor's office back and the nurse there also suggested that I go to the ER. I then called my aunt to come get Maximus. She also insisted that I should not drive myself to the hospital, so she and my cousin took me there as well.

Mel showed up after I had been admitted, but before I had been seen. She had been at a doctor's appointment of her own when I called her to let her know I was going to the hospital. I had an ultrasound done on my abdomen. About an hour and a half after the ultrasound, I learned that I either have stones or sludge in my gallbladder. Removing it wasn't an emergency, so they sent me home with instructions to see my doctor to see about having surgery done. They also sent me home with a prescription for Vicodin. I haven't used any of that though as I have yet to experience any pain since returning home.

Torticollis

Last Wednesday, under the recommendation of his pediatrician, I took Maximus to see a physical therapist to treat him for torticollis. Torticollis is a condition in which the head is tilted to one side while the chin is elevated and turned to the opposite side. In Maximus's case, his head is tilted to the left and he tends to look to the right. One side effect of his condition is that the right side of his head is a little flattened because he turns his head to the right and spends a lot of time lying on the floor.

The physical therapist gave me a couple of exercises that we are supposed to do with Maximus several times a day. These exercises should help to stretch his neck muscles, correcting the condition. We are also supposed to do whatever we can to encourage him to look to the left more than to the right. This includes feeding him so he looks to the left while he eats. I have found this to be difficult for me, but it is something I need to learn to do for him.

Today I took Maximus back to the physical therapist for a second appointment. He seems to be doing fairly well, and he is getting beginning to tolerate the exercises and being on his stomach even more. Since we are comfortable with doing his stretching exercises, we just have to go to see the physical therapist every other week now instead of once per week. I feel very encouraged that Maximus will benefit from his exercises and from seeing the physical therapist.

Catching Up

I do not know why, but I haven't been blogging much lately. In fact, my last blog posting was at the end of last month. Since then I have been pretty busy. At the beginning of this month, Mel and I took a trip to Canton, Ohio, for the wedding of a good friend of hers. We had a good time there. This was the first wedding I had been to in a very long time, if ever, that had an open bar. Most of the weddings that I go to have free beer and soda, which is fine, but this one had free mixed drinks as well. While in Canton, I didn't do much sightseeing. Canton is the home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but I did not go. I do not care enough about football to pay the admission to see whatever they had.

I took this past week off from work for family leave. I get two weeks off that I needed to use in the first six months after Maximus was born and he turns six months old next month, so I needed to get to it. I had a good week with Max. We did go to see a physical therapist on Wednesday because Max has torticollis. He has to return to the physical therapist weekly for a while. In the meantime, we have to get him to look to the left more and tilt his head to the right. He doesn't like it very much when we force him to do this.

Happy Birthday

Today was Mel's birthday. Before doing anything for her birthday this evening though, we took Emma to the doctor for her three-year check-up. Emma is growing just fine. She is 39.5 inches tall, which places her at the 95th percentile for height. She is definitely going to be tall!

After the doctor appointment, we all went to El Loro in Eagan for dinner. Mel was going to have a large margarita and I was going to have a smaller one. Thinking that she may end up buying a second margarita later, I thought we should order a pitcher of margaritas. As I was driving, I didn't get to drink to much of it, and not wanting to waste a drop of margarita, Mel ended up drinking the vast majority of the pitcher's contents. We had a really good dinner, but Emma did not seem to interested in the food which she had ordered. She did like eating my rice, so maybe next time we go to El Loro, we should just get a side dish of rice for Emma. Sure, it's not a well balanced meal, but she gets plenty of nutrients throughout the day.

When we returned home from dinner, Mel opened her birthday presents which included a Minnesota Twins T-shirt, the DVD of New Moon, and Buckyballs which I had purchased with the gift certificate I had won from ThinkGeek.com.  We then rounded out the evening with some cake, which I baked, and ice cream.

A Visit to the Doctor

We took Max to his two-month doctor appointment today. There we learned that he weighs 12 pounds 14 ounces and is 24.25 inches long. These measurements place him at the 75th percentile for both weight and length. Max is going to be one big boy. The doctor told us that he is quite healthy. We did mention to her that Max seems to have a problem digesting his formula as evidenced by the consistency of his dirty diapers. She suggested that we switch his formula from Similac Advance to Similar Sensitive RS. It will take us a few days before we know if this formula is working better for him, but just this afternoon, he appeared to have an easier time consuming it. He drank more before stopping to burp. This was all really good especially since he was very unhappy this afternoon, probably because of the three vaccination shots he received. By this evening though, Max calmed down quite a bit.

Too Busy to Blog

I have been meaning to blog all week, but I have just been so busy. I returned to work on Monday after a week off. Of course, I work from home, so I haven't had to go anywhere for work, but it still takes up a lot of my time nonetheless. Mel has been staying home with Maximus. So occasionally I take a short break while working to watch him if Mel has something she needs to get done. Of course I keep track of how long I do that so I make sure I work enough and get my assigned tasks completed.

Also taking up my time this week had been getting the taxes done. I have to say I am pleased how that ended up. Besides that, I have been going to bed early all week. Since Mel and I have each been getting up in the middle of the night to feed Max, we need to get our sleep when we can.

While I have been busy, I have had time for some fun. On Sunday, I took Emma to the zoo. With all of the attention we have been giving to the new baby, we need to remember that Emma still needs attention as well. It was pretty damn cold on Sunday, so we spent most of our time there looking at the indoor animals. We did venture outside to check out the brown bears which were sleeping in their den. I also wanted to get a photo of Flat David with the bears. It took me several attempts to get a decent photo on my cell phone. By the time I did get an acceptable photo, my hands were freezing, so Emma and I quickly returned to the indoors. Emma and I had a lot of fun at the zoo, although she was happy to get back home to see Mommy and her brother.

Sunday evening, all four of us went to Green Mill for dinner. We treated my aunt and uncle to dinner since they were so helpful in watching Emma on such short notice two Fridays ago when Mel and I went to the hospital. They really enjoyed seeing Max, and they both had a good time holding him. Max did really well with both of them. It seems that the only person who can not hold Max without him getting fussy is me myself.

Emma continues to do well with having an additional family member in the house. She likes to help out as much as she can. Of course, as she isn't even three years old yet, there is not a whole lot she can help with at this point. She does like putting the lids on Max's bottles when I make them, she takes Max his bottles, and she likes putting his dirty diapers in the Diaper Genie. She also likes to help me do all the shopping.

Yesterday morning we took Max to the doctor for his newborn appointment. He is doing great. His weight is up to 8 pounds 1 ounce, which places him at the 50th percentile for weight. And his height is now 21.25 inches, which is the 95th percentile for height. He didn't get any shots at this appointment. Those will wait until March.