The Strasser's

Well to start off. The past couple of days I had been dealing with migraine's. I can't remember which day it was but I was given a drug and I had a reaction to it. I felt like I was going to jump out of my skin, it was just not a good feeling.  I am not even going to try and spell it. So yesterday I was having yet another migraine, and tylenol was tried and some oxycodon (sp?) and those two did not work really for me. So from what I was told the drug that was given to me the other day I thought they put it on the did not give list, but the doctor that was on, and she was on the same night I was actually given the drug, was trying to give it to me a again but with benadryl at the sametime. I didn't feel good about even trying it again so I told them no.  The nurse said if I had the same reaction I wouldnt take it again either. So they tried something else but I got it in my hip. But they still  gave me benadryl just in case. Which I was glad in case something didn't work...

Well today is going good so far. Test results looked good. Still on the waiting game. I really want to go home! I have thought about and I haven't changed a diaper in a week. Kind of miss it but kind of not, because of poopie diapers. I kind of hope to have the baby soon because I am getting tired of the hospital but I want to wait a little longer because than it will be better for the baby each day. It's going to be whole lot different when I am out of the hospital and get back on a schedule. And I had actually been talking about wanting to go a on a vacation before this hospital stay and this is not the vacation I was wanting. :)  Well that is it so far for an update!

Well I am so overwhelmed right now, lots to say. Hmmm.....to start with the good news or bad. I will start off with the good news. Evan did really with his echo and also with ekg. All the nurses and his doctor think he is adorable, as usual they commented on his eyelashes. :) But who wouldn't because they are amazing. Well I guess it's not really bad news. She did here that the duct is still open and his left ventricle is mildly enlarged. So he will be having the procedure to close the duct. She also said that closing the duct will help him grow better because with the duct being open can make his heart work a little harder to work than it should. The sooner they get this done the better. It's good that they are on top of making sure that his heart sounds good. Because if it doesn't get taken care of, than he could have heart problems when he is older. One of the procedure's that I remember talking about last time was going through a vein in his leg and going up...

Last night Heather's BP started rising.  She had a head ache and was a little queasy.  They gave her normal dose early then gave her another dose shortly after.  She is only on 100 mg  every 8 hrs and I know they can go as high as 600mg doses.  This morning her pb was high and morning should be the lowest point in the day.  They changed her dose to 200 every 6 hrs.  Heather has to wait until her bp goes down to have breakfast.  They are real cautious about giving her food in case she has to have a cesarean some time.  I was supposed to go home this morning and do some work and see the children.  The doctor said I should wait an hour to make sure her bp goes down first and her headache goes away.  They still have a lot more they can do to control her pb.

Tomorrow Evan and I are making a trip to Doernbecher's for a check-up with his cardiologist. He will have an echo before his appointment so they can have a look at his heart. Last time when we were in, they listened to his heart but they couldn't hear the PDA . The doctor said well we can't say if it's gone or not. So we will see tomorrow. 

Well I have been working on solid food's with Evan and he only likes certain foods. He has had a taste of the kids Popsicle and liked them both for the flavor and because he his teething. His favorite food's right now are: oatmeal  (sometimes with applesauce)       carrots        sweet potatoes         applesauce a new food he tried today, banana with mixed berry. He basically ate the whole thing expect for what is on his onesie. Food's he dislikes: green beans      peas I couldn't find a clean bib so I figured I would just swing it without one thinking he would be just fine. And here is the result of that. getting ready for a bath

Well here is another entry from my hospital blog. I wanted to add them to this blog as mentioned before. But as also a count down to having Evan what we had been going through. Well just playing the waiting game now. I am taking blood pressure meds and just taking it easy. Than so often I put the baby monitor on for like an hour or two. But they always have some trouble getting it where we can keep tabs on him, because he is such a wiggly baby.  Nothing really much is going on. I know not much of an update. So yes for sure it is a boy! A name hasn't been decided yet.

Well I guess I need to start thinking about Evan's birthday to do something or not to do something. Any suggestions? I think we need to celebrate some how but not sure fully how. 

That is all the entries that were blogged on one day. More to come this week.   I wanted to add all of the  hospital entries to this blog now that it is not a public blog.

All of Heather's test have been improving.  Thanks for the prayers, love and support.  While my Mom, Dad, and Aleta were here the doctor told us that the protein test came out normal.  The doctor was so suprised that she had them double check the calculations. (Aparently their is more then one way to calculate this and she wanted to confirm the test was calculated using the method she desired).  A nurse told us it was possible that with that test improving so much heather might be able to go home on bed rest.   Unfortunetely, when the test was recalculated the protein was just above what is considered very high.  Still, this was lower then before and her other test, liver... also improved.  The doctor reaffirmed that heather will not be leaving until the baby is born.  She says you can be doing fine and four hours later have huge problems and need the baby to be delivered.  She says you just can't tell, it's very unpredictable, thus hea...

So for a little update they took me off the magnesium sulfate for now and the liquids in the iv, for now. Test results are looking right now. I feeling less groggy and all the other side effects are wearing off.  They also took me off the baby monitor .

So the doctor came and talked to us this morning.  She said that the steroids they gave Heather often temprarily improve the preclaptia.  While she is glad to see heather is doing good she believes that this is partly due to the steroids and within a day or two the steroids will start to wear off and then Heather's condition will continue to deteriorate.  The doctor said that Heather has severe precamptia and that typically women in her condition don't last more then 3-5 days before they need to deliver the baby.  She said sometimes women last a week or a few weeks but that is more rare.  I was hoping that since Heather was improving this would mean that she would last for a few weeks or more but I guess that probably won't happen. The baby is in the 23 percentile for weight.  The doctor said this is part of the preclampia.  It restricts blood flow to the organs.  The restricted blood flow effects all organs and the babies growth.  Hea...

Alyssa and Owen are staying with Heather's mom Cindy.  Alyssa was quite upset to hear the baby is a boy.  She has been expecting a girl and has had now doubts about he baby's sex.  Alyssa got over the bad news and now insist that we name the baby spiderman.  We started video chating with the children yesterday and did it again this morning.  Owen was really excited to see us.  We used skype.  The internet here is really slow and so the webcam was running at the poorest quality setting.  Aleta is going to bring our clear internet which will be much faster and then we should have a high quality video feed.  We are going to have the children visist for a few minutes in person today.   Heather needs to avoid excitement so it will be a short visit. We really aren't supposed to have visitors but people have been coming for short visits.  When heather's condition worsens we will not allow any ...

Heather started some sort of magnesium drug.  It suppresses her nervous system which relaxes her, it also has been shown to help the baby's brain when given shortly before delivery.  Due to the drug the last post that heather wrote was quite unreadable before I edited it.  She has a hard time concentrating enough to get through writing a post.   The magnesium also makes her hot and her face is a little red and flushed.  Last night her face was really red and I thought she had a fever.  The nurse took her temp and it was fine.  She looks better now.      This drug has a tendency to create fluid in th lungs.  They are monitoring heather's oxyigen in her blood to ensure that she is getting enough o2.  They said given the amount of oxygen in her blood they can tell that there is no flood in her lungs.  They are counting every ml of fluid she drinks.  She gets to drink very little.  If they ...

So a year ago our hospital adventures started. It has been interesting  to re-read all of these entries and all the things we have been through. To start off  so everyone know's I was admitted to the hospital late Thursday night around 7:30. (Which would have been May 20th) A urinne test came back with high protein on tuesday.  They should have admitted me a couple of days ago. So I started dealing with high blood pressure, and I ended up doing a urine test towards the end of last week. The results came back for that test Monday but the doctor didn't come in until Tuesday and then finally, I got a call Thursday night around 5:00. So back to the results, which was high protein in the urine. Thursday night I was started on medication for High blood pressure and than I was given a shot of steriods for the baby. this helps develop the baby's lunds for a premature delivery.  My blood pressure has dropped and they are glad....

Wood n Stitches is having a giveaway. She has some really cute stuff.

Well no real updates really. We are loving the sunshine and nice weather right now. Yesterday we went to the park and a spot right above my knee got sunburned pretty good. Tomorrow is the iris festival parade. Alyssa and I will be helping Aleta and Joe, we will be passing out flyers and candy. Cory will have Evan and Owen. I maybe will pass off the camera to him. Cory has been still pretty busy. He actually has a paper due today and another due on Tuesday. Some of you ask why is he still having paper's to write, well the education program at Willamette still has classes on Monday and Tuesday night's, it should end very quickly but they go longer than the rest of the school. But they all walk on the same day.

I can't believe Evan is almost a year old. What a year it has been so far. I have went through the post's of the hospital blog. It was quite interesting to read a lot of those entry's. Maybe I will post them here leading up to Evan's birthday, So than I will have them on this blog. I haven't had much to blog about. But our washing machine is broken at the time. I am going to pick up a part today and Cory is going to see if that will help fix it. Definitely hard not having a washing machine. Evan got measured for a helmet yesterday, I took all 3 kids with me and they did very well. Alyssa did pick out the pattern for his new helmet. She is very excited that she did. He get's his helmet the day before his birthday. Not sure what to do for his birthday, not sure if we should do anything at all. His surgery has been scheduled for September 16th, for his hypospadias. He is going to see his cardiologist next Thursday, they just want to make sure his heart is doin...

Yesterday it had been 14 years since my parents motorcycle wreck.  I can't believe it has been that long. I was 12 when it happened. The night of the accident I saw the life flights come over the mountain's in Cache Valley, and than go right back over to Salt Lake with my parents.  I moved around a lot staying with family and friends. I am grateful for those family and friends that helped when all this was going on. I don't really talk about it. But I am really glad to have my parents alive.

Cory graduated/walked yesterday. I am so excited that he is almost done. Yes he still has  some classes, and they should be done very quickly. But he still student teaches until the end of the school year. All the other programs are done for the school year expect the school of education. While sitting and waiting for everything the graduation to start I was looking through the commencement program for all the programs that had graduation. One of the speaker's for the liberal arts was Bill Nye the science guy. After graduation we had dinner at our house to celebrate. I didn't get a picture of the decorations, expect for the sign I made for him. Add caption Here is Cory's sign I made for him. The gold blob was a cap. I hung it up to soon and it ran. Since Alyssa and Owen were not with us at graduation we wanted a picture of all us.

* Well Evan's surgery finally got rescheduled, they said the first available date is Aug 19th. But that is the Friday before Shawn comes home. So now he will have his surgery mid September.  * Evan hasn't been wearing a helmet for sometime now, But he has out grown his helmet and is going to get a new one. Yep we have to pay another $350. so now we are up to $700 in helmet's. Not sure what pattern we are  going to get this time. * Alyssa is fully registered for school. I need to get her in district transfer done because we want her to go to a different school. The school she would technically go to is in Felony Flats. It is definitely not in a nice neighborhood. * Owen is learning lots of words, and loves to tease his sister. 

Owen had finished his lunch, he was so tired that he fell asleep. Poor kid! I was in the other room and I heard snoring and came in and found him like this.

These three adorable girls ran this morning, and they did a very good job. Cory ran with Alyssa, Mike ran with Siosi Alyssa after the race Siosi after the race

Well I can't believe it already it May. Next Sunday, May 15th, is graduation. Cory has been working so hard. He is not finished with his final project yet. It is actually due on Monday. So hopefully he can get it done before Mother's Day. If he doesn't get it done he won't be able to graduate. He is going to walk because this will be the last so hopefully we will have lots of pictures of him in his cap and gown. But the downer is he will still have some classes and he is student teaching all the way until the beginning of June. Me, well I have been trying to get back on the bandwagon of exercising. I went running last week twice. It's easier to run without the kids because it's hard to push the stroller. I have been doing lots of stuff everything from trying to keep up on housework, to running/ exercising, doing lots of fun things with the kids, and running the business so we have money coming in. Alyssa has been registered for Kindergarten for the fall. She...

Yesterday we went to the tulip festival, because it was really nice. I ended getting sunburned on my arms. I didn't get a whole lot of pictures of Evan because he slept in the stroller. But we did have fun.  Taking a ride on the cow train Evan hanging out in the stroller Owen wasn't to sure about the slide at first going down with his cousin's  Kenize & Siosi One place I couldn't get Owen away from Three little tulips Owen, Alyssa, Siosi