The Vallecillo’s

It has been one of those years, the kind that simply passes by in the blink of an eye. Time was not on my side this year and blogging was simply not in the cards. I barely had time to take a fraction of the photos I’ve been wanting to take, but at least the photos I did manage to capture made it to our flickr account for everyone to see. That, in a sense, became the method by which we would let everyone know what we had been up to, alongside my twitter updates (and subsequently my Facebook account since my twitter messages get automatically posted there).

To make up for the lack of blog content I’ve decided the best thing to do is try and recap the year in an attempt to bring everyone up to speed. This coming year I fully intend (just like I did on 2008) on paying more attention to our blog instead of letting it sit on a corner and rot like I have. Landri is now 1 year old and that hopefully means less worrying about every little thing she does, leaving just a sliver of extra time for ourselves.

But before I get any further, I should let everyone know that Mandi is doing fine. My last blog entry left things up in the air, but there really wasn’t that much to report since none of the test results shed much light on what may had been causing her to be ill in the first place. There were more tests done in the following months, but still the results didn’t offer much of an explanation.

We did find out Mandi had a prescription wrongfully filled twice prior, and during, her illness. Since this was the wrongdoing of the pharmacy, we are currently trying to figure out how to best handle the situation. Legal advise? Anyone?

So without further ado, here is a brief recap of what has been happening since my last blog entry:

Other than that, Landri is growing fast and getting cuter by the day, Larsen dresses the part for biker theme day at school, we spend a day in the country at Amy and Chris’ land in Val Alstyne - TX, we attend our neighbor’s daughter Gracie’s 5th birthday party, and Mandi finally gets her cast removed.

——–

——–

——–

——–

——–

——–

——–

——–

After Mandi’s last visit to the ER we decided the smart thing to do would be to schedule an appointment with a gastroenterologist. Mandi is no stranger to stomach problems, so in my opinion this should have happened a long time ago.

The doctor saw Mandi on April 23rd and immediately ordered a battery of tests in hopes to find some indication as to what might be going on. One of those tests was an upper GI test, which she had done on the 24th. I don’ t know much at all about what all is involved for this test, but I do know it involves drinking some “nasty stuff” (medical term) and taking some “pictures” of it making its way down to the stomach and into the bowels. There, I just explained an upper GI test in one sentence. Can someone please submit that to Wikipedia for me?

For me one of the most interesting things was how much Mandi dreaded this test. We are talking about a person who wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep over surgery, but gets all wigged-out about having to drink “nasty stuff”. Yes, that girl is very particular about what she puts in her mouth. You know, that explains… nah, that’s way too easy.

And there we were, all excited about the possibility of finally finding out something after all these years. We get the results the very next day and find out the upper GI came back negative. What? Excuse me? What do you mean “negative”? Inconceivable!

We are still in the dark about what might be going on. I’m sure more tests will be ordered after Mandi’s next appointment with the gastroenterologist, I just hope at least one of them comes back positive! Wait, that didn’t come out right…I mean, I hope one of them reveals the root of these problems. Yeah, that sounded much better.

Yes, again!

Mandi was in sad shape after she had been “praying to the porcelain god” since about 3 AM on April 12. All through the morning she kept insisting she would be OK every time I mentioned the ER, but at about 10 AM she finally broke down and wanted to go. She wanted to go so bad she was demanding an ambulance, but I had already packed Landri a bag and had her and Larsen ready to go, so I just shoved everyone into the car and headed to the ER.

This being the 2nd time she ends up in the ER for the same thing (the first time was back in December, 2007) I knew this time we need to take a more aggressive approach in trying to find out what the root cause of this might be. I was certain they weren’t going to find anything terribly telling in the ER (they never do), so I knew we would need to follow up with a specialist that could.

We finally left the ER at about 7 PM that evening, and as expected left knowing nothing about what might have caused this. For that we are going to be making an appointment with a gastroenterologist in hopes he’ll be able to figure out this mystery for us.

Today we fed Landri peas for the first time and she loved them! The funniest thing about it were the sounds she was making as she was eating them, much like the sounds we all make we we eat something that is unexpectedly delicious.

It makes perfect sense if you think about it. If all you ever had was baby formula (I’m not sure what it tastes like, but if it is anywhere close to how it smells then I rather never find out) you’d also think pureed canned peas were delicious as well. Seriously!

I’m so not looking forward to that diaper!

Today we met the Dallas orthopedic surgeon for the first time. The good news is that Mandi is not going to need surgery after all. Whew!

The doctor examined the X-Rays, took a closer look at Mandi’s wrist out of the sling, and told her he wanted to wait for the swelling to go down further before replacing the sling with a cast. I could tell from Mandi’s expression that wasn’t what she wanted to hear. It wasn’t until Mandi asked the doctor if there was anything he could do to fix a specific area of the sling that was really hurting her that made him change his mind. She now has a nice purple cast that she will wear for the next 6.5 weeks.

Unfortunately that means that for a while I’ll need to continue picking up some of the slack since there are things Mandi simply isn’t able to do right now. Lifting babies (or anything over 10 lbs. for that matter), changing diapers, and giving baths are all at the top of that list. Yes, it has been very interesting around here for the last week and I can hardly wait for the next 6.5.

My niece is a radiologist, and her husband an orthopedic surgeon, down in Stephenville, TX. Being only a 2.5 hour drive from our home in Lewisville, Mandi decided it would be worth the trip down there so that they could take a good look at her broken wrist. This was on a Thursday so Mandi’s parents rose to the occasion and drove her, and Landri, there.

It was a good thing she made the trip because Bill (my niece’s husband) took a whole new set of X-Rays and found out that not only was her wrist broken, but it was broken in 3 places! Unable to cast it still because of the swelling, Bill redid her original splint doing his best to immobilize the broken wrist. He was concerned that with a break like hers surgery might be needed for proper healing, so he made sure everything was properly placed and aligned before sending her home.

Bill referred Mandi to a Dallas orthopedic surgeon for her follow-up, which she will schedule as soon as possible. He will take another set of X-Rays at that time and, depending how the healing is coming along, decide whether she gets a cast or gets scheduled for surgery.

Unfortunately we just can’t seem to be able to stay away from the ER for long. Last month it was a seizure, this month was… well, I’m getting ahead of myself.

The good news is that Mandi is feeling much better now. The problem is that when Mandi feels better, Mandi thinks she is 20 years-old once again. So on Sunday, March 9, towards late in the afternoon, we see our neighbors on their front yard and decide to go outside and be neighborly. We say hello and strike a conversation, when along comes their 9 year-old son Andrew and his friend Matthew on their rollerblades. I continue our conversation, but Mandi starts a new conversation with Andrew (hmmm, was she bored with all the “adult talk”?). I’m not sure exactly how that conversation went, but from what I’ve been told Andrew challenged Mandi to a rollerblade race. Knowing Mandi as well as I do, or think I do, something tells me the challenger and challengee were reversed in the version of the story, but I digress.

Next thing I know I’m holding Landri, and Mandi is off to our house for whatever reason (I don’t even ask anymore). She returns after a few short minutes carrying her rollerblades, and this is when my mind starts trying to figure out what crazy thing my wife might be up to. This process basically starts with: “WWLD” (what would Lucy do?) But by the time my brain was able to calculate all the different combinations (it is a humdinger of an equation!) Mandi was already in her rollerblades. I made only two comments at that point, wrongfully treating Mandi like an adult. Those comments were:

1. “I have already met the ER quota for this year, so I do not want to go there again today”
2. Directed towards our neighbor, but loud enough for Mandi to hear: “You know those times you see something and you instantly know how bad of an idea it is, but yet there is little you can do about it? This is one of those times.”

With that said, Mandi takes off towards one side of the street where she is about to “kick some 9 year-old butt” in a rollerblade race. Not 30-seconds later someone yells “car!!!”, Mandi panics, and in an attempt to move out of the road she falls squarely on her butt. As I shook my head in disbelief the car dives past them (surely making some comments to her passenger(s) about the the grown-woman on the rollerblades) and Mandi resumes her rollerblade race. Not only does she lose the race, but when she comes back to where we were (you know, the adults) she is bleeding from a scrape on her wrist caused by her attempt to break her fall.

I guess at this time I should point out Mandi failed to grab her elbow/knee pads or wristguard when she got her inline skates. I’m guessing the “I need to be cool” factor played a small roll in this decision, but that is just a guess. Anyway, this means her wrist took the brunt of the fall and now it was hurting quite a bit. We argued about it for a little bit because now she had moved on from the “Lucy” mode and into the “tough-guy” mode (also known as the “Ken-mode”, her dad), and she wanted to tough it out. I finally put my foot down, which I should have done much earlier, and told her I was taking her to the ER.

After all the ER hoopla was over with Mandi went home with a broken wrist and a splint (wrist was too swollen for a cast). By now she was now in a lot of pain, and quickly left “Ken-mode” and slipped back into normal (whatever that is) girly-mode. We are supposed to wait a week before going to see a doctor about getting her into a real cast. I presume that is going to be one very long week for all.