It's a Crazy, Insane, Mixed Up, Unexplainable World... And other ramblings by Jason

Apparently I have taken over blogging duties from Becca...  as such, you now will have to put up with my brain droppings about once a week....

So James is home from the hospital and the slow recovery continues... it's easy to exhaust him but he is acting completely normal.  Our little brush with mortality has taught us a few things and we are relaxing and enjoying life a little more...  Gabby is great, our little princess...   The kids are growing fast...

I just finished a huge project at work and am preparing for my own vacation... I bought a new ultra wide angle lens and am going to do photography while the kids are in Oregon with Becca...

For those of you reading this who want to see Becca and the kids, you'll have to schedule it with her as I have no clue what their schedule is...

Now as for Becca - and congrats are in order to Mary and Nate for the birth of their child... wow....

It was really hard for Becca to be so far away... she wanted to be there for Mary and the baby.  She really misses Mary (sorry she doesn't miss the rest of you :-p ) and has been hyper emotional about it...  she misses her family...  So we have come up with a compromise....  Becca and the kids will live in Oregon, I will live in a cardboard box in Salida CA and send all my money up to make it possible for her to be near family...  it seems the logical solution...  But in all seriousness, one of the decisions we made after James brush with mortality is that we need to budget for more frequent visits... 4-6 times a year. expect to see us more in the second half of 2009 and beyond. 

James got accepted to Salida Elementary School on the other side of town for Kindergarten.  They run a modified traditional schedule so we have a shorter summer, 4 weeks off at Christmas, and 2 weeks at Easter.  It will make holiday travel much easier.

On the national front, Harold was Sulu in the new Star Trek Movie, Kumar works for Obama.  And based on the functioning of Democrats and Obama, the actor Kal Penn (kumar) may be the only qualified person in that administration.  I haven't figured out where Neal Patrick Harris figures into it all yet....  perhaps the next supreme court justice?

Anyway, brain droppings concluded for the moment....

jason 

An overdue blog post - post hospital... in a swirling abyss of exhaustion

Jason Here - this post will be rather incoherent but then again, so are both Becca and I right now...

After a lovely 14 day stay at the Modesto Sutter Home Memorial Hospital Spa and Retreat, our 5 year old trooper without the helmet came home.  His ruptured appendix has been cut away and patched, new spackle, some calking, some bailing twine, and a little duct tape and he is as good as new.  Problem is, his parents aged about 50 years in the ordeal...  

James is home, we are checking his temperature 3-5 times per day and no fever yet.  If he has a fever we will go back to the hospital for another lovely stay of undetermined length.  You see, he has an unknown fluid pocket left in his belly.  They believe that it is either Pus from an infection or fluid left from the flushing of the site where his fluid drain was.  They took 2 CT scans and radiology just couldn't tell.  He has an appetite and was acting energetic and normal.  The regular course of action would be to take him off all the antibiotics and see if he develops a fever.  Why stay at the hospital for that?  

James has a CT scan monday and a follow up appointment with the surgeon on tuesday.  No fevers yet and he is still acting normal... all good signs... probably just saline in his belly.... but we still are not quite "off guard".

This experience has taught us amazing lessons:

• Everyone thinks that bad things happen to someone else's child or family... never to your own... it's a sense of false security that took us by surprise.
• We have a great family, great friends, and a great church who loves us... a great reminder.
• We must continue to act on our desire to serve others.  We were blessed with a large group of people serving us.  Betty came down to  help with Gabby for a few days, we had a 2 weeks of solid meals from our church friends and family.  My boss gave me great flexibility in scheduling to be able to accomodate both the hospital and work.  Both of our cell phones regularly went dead from phone calls from family and friends calling to check on us, let us vent, cry, and otherwise bloviate.  Nobody had to do any of those things and yet they did.  It would be wrong not to return the favor to others.
• We have learned to re-invest in our nuclear family.  We have been living on a shoe-string budget trying to get out of debt.  Time to take a break from that for a few months, build up some savings, and re-prioritize our spending... more family outings and fun, more investment in good times, less shoestring by choice.  I have been blessed with a good paying job... we are going to have some fun even if it means putting of the paying of our debt a few months... we might even buy matching furniture or something...

I am also blessed with great insurance.  We have 100% coverage for everything, no copays, nothing out of pocket for anything after a $3600 deductible.  My company supplies the $3600 in an HSA account for us... so for the rest of the year, we have no medical expenses.

Even if the company didn't provide the deductible, for about $550 per month (pd by employer), the $3600 is a reasonable deductible for a high deductible insurance plan.  The tradeoff would be worth it and we would have paid the deductible and been fine...  what a blessing...

So we are home, no complications yet other than me going blind and rebecca sleeping all the time...  will update again soon...  zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

So remember boys and girls....  "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy"