Archive for the ‘General’ Category

every morning is a battle to get out of the house for me and my 181 kids.

So some of you might know by now about the last week in February and my son Mason having to be hospitalized for “failure to thrive.” What started out back in the early part of February (which I will now call FuckMebruary) as a repeatedly hush-hushed case of “babies will puke”, went all out frightening towards the end of the month.

On February 6th we took Mason into our primary care office to see the doctor on duty, since our doctor doesn’t have Saturday hours. We explained that every other bottle ends in projectile-like regurgitating of the stomach contents. No crying, no hurling sounds, just a quietly approaching FOUNTAIN OF FOOD.

Because our 2 year old son had pyloric stenosis, this doctor was under the impression that Mason was a prime candidate for that lovely piece of shit, so he ordered an ultrasound for that day. We wheeled over to the hospital a few blocks away and sat amidst the people hacking, holding limp limbs or actually decaying in front of us who were waiting for an ultrasound or x-ray.

This was the first ultrasound, and it was negative for pyloric stenosis.

The doctor we saw at our primary care facility had no suggestions for keeping food down other than to slow down the intake of food. Mason’s sister Leah has had no problems eating, and was at this point, taking 3oz every 3 hours like clockwork. So we decided to try 2.5oz every 3 hours and see how that went.

The puking intensified. Not only was this shit flying out during and immediately after a bottle feed, this milky stream was shooting out sometimes 1 to 2 hours after a feed. We aren’t even sure where the hell this shit was coming from because he seemed to be getting rid of everything immediately following a feeding.

Calling the doctor, again gave us nothing. So this was on us apparently, we needed to start trying things or pretty soon this kid was going to start losing weight.

Here is a short list of what we tried to help Mason keep food down.

• *Shortening the time in between burps to every half ounce vs. every ounce, then when that didn’t work, down to every quarter ounce, then when that didn’t work, down to every 15 sucks on the nipple.
• *Cutting the breast milk with formula.
• *Adding a half ounce more water to the formula.
• *Adding a half ounce less water to the formula.
• *Keeping him in an elevated position, about 45 degrees or so, at all times.
• *Feeding him one fucking ounce every fucking hour.
• *Feeding him a fucking half ounce every fucking half hour.
• *Feeding him on a speeding train, upside down.
• *Squirting the contents up his ass like an enema.
• *Mixing the formula bottle, then squirting out a spoonful, putting a lighter under that, cooking it like crack and mainlining it.

Nothing was working, and after another visit to our primary care doctor who actually had an open time slot, we were still getting nowhere, Mason was still pukey mcpukesalot and we weren’t getting anywhere with our doctor besides “babies spit up, let’s wait a week.”

Fuck that. If my kid was born 8lbs and he had currently grown to 15lbs I can see waiting to see if this was a bug or something of that nature, but we’re talking a premature baby, a wimpy white male, as they say. Waiting a week, or even two days, is unacceptable in our opinion and I don’t give a fuck who I offend, someone better fucking listen to me or I’m going to get fucking loud and cussy. And I’m a fucking asshole when I’m loud and cussy.

After Jules talked me down from threatening violence and using the gang signs I grew up on in Aurora, Illinois, I decided to let her do the talking with her eyes, her managerial skill of suggestion and some tears.

So at our third visit to the primary care doctor we were drawn a diagram of the stomach and the pyloris for the fifth time since becoming parents.

It was pretty.

I fucking framed it.

Along with that our doctor, with both palms facing towards us as he spoke, wrote us a prescription for Zantac and drew another pretty picture of what GERD is and how that might be a possibility. Another ultrasound so close to the first wouldn’t prove anything, so here is a drug, a hand drawn picture and the door, use them. Goodbye.

Julie, tears in her eyes said “The first doctor we saw at THIS office told us it sounded like pyloric stenosis, which we know a drug won’t help. If an ultrasound is the only way to see it, who cares what it costs or if it’s negative again, won’t we at least know?”

Then our doctor did something I see doctors do all the time, he did what the patient or the parents wanted to avoid a confrontation, but not a confrontation with us. He was avoiding a confrontation with other patients waiting for him. If he spent another 5 minutes in that room with us he would run the risk of putting his entire day’s worth of patient appointments at risk. In what I referred to as ‘pacifying the patient’ he relented to another ultrasound order and left the room.

Now we can get an ultrasound anytime we want by taking our son to the ER, but with a doctor’s orders you’re lowering the amount billed to your insurance by about five fold, and as weird as it sounds, walking in with a note from the doctor bears a shitload more influence than just a pair of crazy parents.

So we had our order for the second ultrasound and during the procedure Mason evacuated his stomach yet again, narrowly missing the pretty ultrasound wand. Results? Negative for pyloris stenosis.

But hey, we’ll wait a week huh?

No, from that Thursday appointment we went to Walgreens, got the drugs, gave him his first dose and treated him like a porcelain doll. For whatever reason, the first dose of Zantac seemed to allow Mason to keep down an entire ounce for an hour or so. We thought we were on the mend and that weight gain was right around the corner.

An hour to two hours later he was right back to his old tricks. I did some looking online and there is a good chance the peppermint flavor of the Zantac actually calmed his stomach more than the actual drug, but who am I to make assumptions? I should be waiting a week!

We knew our doctor thought we were crazy but who gives a fuck what some doctor thinks of you when your kid is visibly shrinking?

We tried to be patient through a pukey Friday and a spitty Saturday, but come Sunday we both knew we had to act fast. Mason’s eyes were sinking into his skull, his eyelids were a veiny red and he wasn’t waking up to eat.

We decided to head over to Urgent Care (Rush Copley in Yorkville, IL) and the doctor we saw within 15 minutes of walking in, who happened to be a mother of twins herself immediately said: “You should go to the emergency room. I’ll call ahead so they’ll be expecting you. Good luck.”

In a kind of relieved state, we both looked at each other, then to her and asked “Really?” None of the other doctors we saw gave us more than 5 seconds of explaining anything before telling us that either babies spit up or to wait a week. Now we’re being told, almost immediately, to go to a hospital emergency room?

“There is nothing I can do here besides tell you, from a mother of twins to parents of twins, if his sister is steadily gaining weight and he looks like this? Yes, as a mother and a doctor I am recommending you go get him a complete work up: blood, urine, whatever they need to do to find out why he’s not keeping food down. Go. Good luck.”

So we left.

Fast forwarding through the 6 longest days of our lives, we experienced the following in our search to find out what was kinking Mason’s yumyum gobbler.

• Two x-rays of Mason’s stomach
• Urine draw
• Blood draw
• 1 DO and 1 pediatric nurse practitioner visit each
• 1 conversation saying if this isn’t GERD or pyloric, to maybe consider seeing a geneticist (WTF?)
• 1 conversation saying we’re being transferred to Central Dupage hospital
• 1 ambulance trip in a lights on/siren on ambulance for Julie and Mason, with him in an isolet that looked like an oven on wheels
• And then the 6 days of hospital food, uncertainty and dread begin
• 1 new ultrasound for pyloric stenosis, again negative, bringing the total up to 3
• 1 upper GI
• 2 iv drugs: reglan & the zantac
• 3 doctors in the first 24 hours, each asking the same questions but with different accents
• 5 different nurses, all very cool but all giving us the head tilt to the right and the “awww” look every time we ask about seeing a doctor or when something is going to happen
• When the drugs didn’t work, they tried hypo-allergenic formula
• When the hypo-allergenic formula didn’t work, they tried thickening with rice
• When the rice thickened, hypo-allergenic formula didn’t work, they tried more drugs
• When more drugs didn’t work on top of the rice thickened, hypo-allergenic formula they ordered yet another fucking ultrasound to check for pyloric stenosis, yet this time they assured me it was using a ninja tech and a ninja pediatric radiologist.
• “Ninja Tech” turned out to be just one with a thicker accent. No radiologist showed up this time.
• The ninja-ultrasound was, indeed, fucking negative, that’s fucking FOUR ULTRASOUNDS
• Since nothing seems to be making sense to the 5 doctors entering and leaving our room, a Speech and Swallow therapist enters the situation asking all of the same questions each doctor asks as they introduce themselves to Mason’s chart
• Speech and Swallow lady has an in with the Pediatric GI specialist from Children’s Memorial in Chicago, she puts in a call to him. Meanwhile she teaches Julie how to feed Mason while being completely upright
• Peds GI specialist actually “wrote the book on Pediatric GERD” so our hope is lifted for the 8th time
• Peds GI specialist comes in and scratches out every instruction we’ve gotten from any doctor or nurse since this whole debacle began
• Peds GI specialist earns Ninja title by doing the following immediately:

1. Takes Mason off all medications
2. Gives new formula mixing instructions for our REGULAR formula, increasing his caloric intake to get him gaining weight
3. Recommends the use of Simply Thick, a thickening agent for us to use in his bottles
4. Encourages the use of a Tucker Sling
5. Says to keep the boy off of his back and preferably on his right side or stomach as much as possible
6. Apologizes for every other doctor we’ve seen not paying attention to addressing the weight gain first and the cause second

What was badass about this last doctor was the fact that he was extremely matter of fact. What he was telling us wasn’t conversation, it was what it was. There was no discussion. What he said was da troof.

Flat out “This is GERD. As severe a case as I’ve ever seen, but drugs won’t do anything for your son. Keep him off of his back, thicker, higher calorie formula, keep him upright for 45 minutes after he’s done eating. He’s what we call a ‘Happy Spitter’ in that he isn’t in pain or crying from this constant vomiting, so we just have to do a better job of helping his body hold the food down.”

Seriously?

You mean all of this scary shit, not knowing what’s going on, losing a half pound when only weighting 7 pounds…

Why couldn’t the first doctor we saw, our PRIMARY care physician, have taken the time to either a. discuss options for helping him keep food down or b. sent us to a fucking specialist to talk about this?

No, we had to deal with being ignored, being told to wait another week, and being run through the gamut of tests on a boy not even old enough to grab his own dick and common motherfucking sense was the answer?

I am completely thankful for this last doctor’s frankness, and we’ve slept a hell of a lot better since leaving the hospital, but I am completely miffed as to why it had to go this far.

But we learned something, or rather reinforced what we were pretty sure we already knew:

No one is going to look out for you unless you stand up and demand what you think is best for your kids.

A few weeks ago I had a difficult time not becoming emotional whenever anyone asked about our twins because of how worried I was about Mason, but we’ll get through the pukes. I just hope the American health care system gets the fucking enema it needs, cause it is completely full of shit.

We did have one more ultrasound before we were allowed to leave the hospital I must add. A nurse noticed dilated pupils and told a doctor, so Mason got a brain ultrasound through his soft spot to check for water or blood around the brain. Some think this could’ve been related to a potential side effect of the Reglan.

When it comes to eating that is…

Leah is a champ. Takes to the bottle immediately, complains when you interrupt her to burp, burps like a trucker, then finishes the bottle and conks out for a few hours. In between she drops some of the nastiest smelling bombs I have ever had the displeasure of feeling on my hands, stomach and lap. *Like mommy like daughter huh?*

Mason on the other hand, is a Nancy when it comes to food. You have to tease him with the nipple to get him to pay attention to it, and when he does you have to interrupt him a good dozen times to burp him throughout. Otherwise, dude is a puke machine. And not just tiny urps, I’m talking half and full bottles worth of puke, but not puke-puke, more like whatever we just put in just came out.

We are currently under the impression that he might be dealing with a pyloric stenosis situation, but the first ultrasound at the hospital showed, while the pyloris was a bit large, it wasn’t completely cutting off his food from digesting. Dylan, our oldest, had pyloric stenosis and Jules discovered it at day 21. He had surgery to correct it on day 22. Julie will never let me forget that she rules at mother’s intuition, and I’m okay with that. Just put the laundry away once in a while. BURN!

So why is it one twin is a monster, devouring anything in sight, be it nipple of rubber or flesh; while the other is more interested in daydreaming and breakdancing? (I’m not kidding about the breakdancing, will upload video soon, dude has an uprock many would envy)

What tha gwan?

I remember when I was a kid getting smacked up-side the dome for dropping a “shit” or a “damn” when I screwed something up. It wasn’t that my dad didn’t use that kind of language around me, it was that those words were reserved for only certain situations away from the public ear. I started to pick up on each cuss word’s place throughout the course of daily life and I started to understand when and were to use them. I got better and better at holding my tongue around my parents and teachers and bosses, but as soon as I was free of all formal restraints, I went fuckin’ crazy with that shit, bitches.

I also remember around 5th or 6th grade, playing football at recess and every other word you heard or used was a cuss word. Because it was a Catholic school there was this large pent up aggression towards following rules that just seemed dumb to us kids, cussing being one of them.

You didn’t say “HIKE!” You said “Fuckin’ HIIIIKE!”

It was this powerful sense of doing something wrong that brought most of us kids together as rule breakers, rebels and shitkickers.

When I got to high school, again a Catholic school, I can recall conversations flowing out of our mouths dropping well placed cuss words as verbs rather than just exclamations. Shittin’ me. Fuckin’ with me. Quitcherbitchin’. Various types of action were placed within the context of the swear, and cussing became an art form. It was a way to let off steam without punching someone, and if you shared it appropriately away from the nagging ears of teachers and parents, it was akin to drinking in public.

Then college turned me on to a whole new way of feeling people out, utilizing cuss words as a barometer for how down to earth someone was. Say you’re on an interview and the guy asking you questions and looking at you over the desk asks you about something on your resume. You describe the event or whatever without delay and he responds back like a guy you’re drinking with “You have to be shittin’ on me, you serious?”.

Boom. Open door to not only become a friend with this person, but you’ve just allowed yourself into his little club. He likes you. He just said shit in front of you on an interview. You have this in the fuckin’ bag! Soon I started noticing that if people older than myself allowed themselves to relax and drop a few swear words in front of me, I was pretty sure I could act more myself. Not that swearing was a major part of who I was, but shit, I fuckin’ cuss like a trucker when I’m comfortable, and I’m okay with that not being okay to a large number of fuckin’ people.

Now as a parent, I understand and practice restraint when talking around my kids, nephews and nieces, and other people’s kids. I don’t want my 2 year old son walking into daycare sayin’ “Holla bitches!”. (Not that I wouldn’t laugh my ass off.) Nor do I want my son to be looked down upon because his parents (or parent, Julie is half cuss queen, half nun) have dirty mouths. I want my son to learn as I did about the amazing power of using words that were once completely off-limits as a way of venting anger, frustration and letting off steam that would normally build up because of a cork in my ass that’s limiting my word usage.

I find the nicest people on the planet know how to drop a good “well, fuck” once in a while. Whether they do it alone or around a few friends is up to them, but I know that the release of stress via saying “OH SUGARPLUMS!” is probably half of what a well timed “Shit Bitch!” can allow you to feel.

In parenting I find a lot of things that piss me off that are completely dumb: Avent bottles leak all over the fucking place. Getting pooped on. Getting puked on down the back of my shirt and I don’t realize until I see the white chunks on the couch, etc. All of these things are fucking annoying. Dumb and inconsequential in the long run, but still, fucking annoying.

If I were a deadbeat, I’d drink a ton, yell at my wife and kids or take out my frustrations physically. I’m not that guy. No, I’m the guy who can relax and feel oh so much better by dropping a few f-bombs out of earshot of my 3,876 kids.

But why do you fucking cuss so much with your fingers Joel?

Simply put? It makes me feel like I’m being more honest with myself and other people if I type like how I would talk if me and you were at a bar shooting darts, taking back jaeger bombs and chatting about the fucking Cubs and Bears. If you are my friend, which you may or may not be, I hope I would feel comfortable enough to fucking cuss in front of you. If I wasn’t, well, we might not be destined to be that good of friends.

Bang your bible, throw up your nose, talk shit behind my back that I’m a caveman or a dicknose, whatever. When my kid asks why it’s okay for me to cuss and not okay for him to, I will tell him honestly:

Society deems it inappropriate that children use words like shit, damn, fuck and bitch. Why? Well, it’s language specially reserved for maturity, when you have so many responsibilities that you wouldn’t dare dream of not taking life seriously everywhere else besides talking a little shit with your buddies. When you go to work everyday, take care of your kids everyday, pay your bills on time, put food on the table and clothes on everyone’s back, you can cuss your fucking heart out.

Until then little man, cuss your ass off. Just don’t let me, your mom, your grandparents, your teachers, or other adults you don’t know hear you. You never know, those people might be shiteating bitches who don’t know the goddamn beauty that a fucking cuss word brings to the soul of those man enough to admit that there is enjoyment in saying such words.

I promise not to intentionally offend you if I meet you in public, but you got here somehow you dumb shit! Fuckin’ cheers.

I am a father that cusses. Because cuss words fucking rule.

Every waking minute we’re either feeding, burping, changing, rocking, bouncing, wrestling dylan, working, doing household bullshit or dreaming about sleeping.

Excuse my absence from actual posts. In a few weeks I’m sure my body will adapt to these weird hours.

The purple painted room is a “while you were out” that myself and a few friends arranged as a surprise to Julie when she returned from the hospital. I’d show you the reveal video, but Jules would kick my ass.