Bridget and I are at Paoli Hospital right now and she is having contractions. The baby should be here later today, very exciting! I’ll post any updates, so check back on the blog for any news.
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News
So sorry, I know I have been posting here on the blog very often. I am going to get caught up today with a bunch of posts and pictures that I’ve just uploaded.
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We had some unusual visitors stop by and hang out on our deck. Take a look at these 2 huge turkey vultures that decided to call our place home for a few days!
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As some of you already know, Finn was very sick a couple of weeks ago. He was running a high fever of 103-104, not eating much, and was pretty cranky especially at night. He had times when he would be crying inconsolably and there would be nothing we could do that would make him feel better.
We thought he might have another ear infection, since he has had a few of those, but he had an appointment with the ENT that checked his ears and they were fine. So Bridget took him to the pediatrician, but they weren’t concerned since his temperature was under control at the time because of some infant Tylenol. Since Bridget knew something was wrong and insisted that he did really have a very high fever, they send him for a chest x-ray and some blood work.
That night his temp shot way back up again and we both knew something just wasn’t right. So we took him to Chester County ER, where he threw up all over me as we were walking through the door. At least we didn’t have to wait for them to take him back! His temp was so high that the triage nurse had another nurse take it again and verify… it was 106.5.
They put an IV on him to give him some fluids, although it took a while for the nurse to be able to get one in because he was so small and already a bit dehydrated. The on call doctor from CHOP examined him, and reviewed the chest x-ray and blood work he had done a few hours earlier. She was just as confused as the pediatrician was, and also questioned if he really had a temperature that high.
He also had a bag put on in order to capture a urine sample. We noticed that he hadn’t gone in a while. Then after a crying fit we noticed he had gone, so that was the first time we suspected a UTI or something similar. A quick read did show the doctor some numbers which indicated a possible UTI, so a culture was ordered and Finn was admitted and put on some IV antibiotics.
He starting responding after a day or so, with his temperature slowing going down a bit each day, and he was more himself. After 3 days the diagnosis was officially made as bladder infection from the culture results. He was discharged and given a 10 day course of antibiotics to continue at home, which he completed over the weekend.
On Friday, he had a voiding cystourethrogram (VCUG) test in order to see if urine was passing back into the kidneys, which could be a cause for the infection. It was immediately shown that this did happen on the right side, so he was diagnosed with vesicoureteral reflux (VUR) grade 2.
Last night he had a very rough night again, sleeping for only 4 hours total and crying as if he was in pain. Bridget and I took him back to the pediatrician again this morning. The pediatrician did a urine test in the office and said the initial results appeared negative to her, but they are going to send out a culture to confirm if he has another infection again.
They did start him on a course of prophylaxis antibiotics, which he will be on until he is 5 years old, when he should naturally outgrow this condition. We are going to take him to a urologist with this new information so they can do more testing & examinations and determine what the best course of treatment is going to be for him.
Finn is just such a happy, wonderful easy going baby, so it is very difficult to see him going through this. Hopefully we’ll be able to find a treatment that works quickly so he won’t have to go through this anymore.
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I read this over on 350.org and wanted to share:
Caution: It is vitally important not to make connections. When you see pictures of rubble like this week’s shots from Joplin, Missouri, you should not ask yourself: I wonder if this is somehow related to the huge tornado outbreak three weeks ago in Tuscaloosa, or the enormous outbreak a couple of weeks before that—together they comprised the most active April for tornadoes in our history. But that doesn’t mean a thing.
It is far better to think of these as isolated, unpredictable, discrete events. It is not advised to try and connect them in your mind with, say, the fires now burning across Texas—fires that have burned more of America by this date than any year in our history. Texas, and adjoining parts of Oklahoma and New Mexico, are drier than they’ve ever been—the drought is worse than the Dust Bowl. But do not wonder if it’s somehow connected.
If you did wonder, you’d have to also wonder about whether this year’s record snowfalls and rainfalls across the Midwest—resulting in record flooding across the Mississippi—could somehow be related. And if you did that, then you might find your thoughts wandering to, oh, global warming. To the fact that climatologists have been predicting for years that as we flood the atmosphere with carbon we will also start both drying and flooding the planet, since warm air holds more water vapor than cold.
[click to continue…]
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West Chester got not one but two snowstorms over the last day. The first one started Wednesday morning, and started earlier in the morning dumping more snow than anyone had expected. We got about 4 inches of snow before it turned over into sleet and freezing rain for a bit.
Then after the sun set the second storm moved in, at a rate of about 2 inches an hour. We even got some “thunder snow”. My wife said that this was made up when we heard them report this on the news, but then they showed some video footage of the snow with the sounds of thunder clearly in the background.
When it was all over, Chester County was the hardest hit area with the most snowfall. The news said that we were in the “bull’s eye” for this storm! I would say we got at least 16 inches, but probably closer to 2 feet.
Siobhan loved the snow of course, we let her out to play on the deck last night while the snow was still coming down. She had a blast as you can see.
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Now this is just too much to believe here. I used to enjoy Sun Chips (before going on my all vegan diet), and was very pleasantly surprised when I saw them using 100% compostable packaging. The bag is made out of mostly renewable plant-based materials which will break down completely in an active compost pile. The only downside is that the bag feels a bit different and has a louder “crinkle” sound to it.
Well, it turns out that people complained so “loudly” about the “noisy” bags, that Frito-Lay has decided to go back to the old bags. The ones made out of plastic and petroleum products, and will stay in tact in a landfill somewhere for centuries to come, which is obviously worse for the environment
It is up to us, the consumer, to demand environmentally sensitive products from companies that care about the world we live in. Every time we buy something, we are voting with our money, and we need to think about that impact much more than we currently do.
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Fionn has been drooling heavily for a while now, so we knew it was coming. Today the little bottom right tooth came through.
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More bad news about global warming, each decade we are continuing to see every higher temperatures and more ice melting. Even if we complete stopped burning fossil fuels today, this is going to continue for decades to come.
WASHINGTON — Not only was the past decade the warmest on record, but climate indicators being tracked globally are worsening, scientists reported Wednesday in their annual “State of the Climate.”
“A comprehensive review of key climate indicators confirms the world is warming and the past decade was the warmest” since record keeping began in 1870, declares the report, which was released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Compiled by more than 300 scientists from 48 countries, the report said its analysis of 10 indicators that are “clearly and directly related to surface temperatures, all tell the same story: Global warming is undeniable.”
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