Brain Doctor today

Later today, we have our visit with the neurologist.



Say, have any of you ever experienced a flash fever? Not sure if i mentioned this earlier, but the other day, I was in the garage for a while working on a broken washing machine. It was cold, but I was dressed warmly - even had a knit cap on my head (and over my ears).

Came inside for bed, and BAM - forehead was on fire, and my body was shaking. I was freezing, even to the point of teeth chattering. Slept for about 3 hours , with fever dreams. (Repetitive tasked dreams that wont let you actually get any rest), like filling and refilling a glass of water.

When I got up the next morning, I was fine. Appetite didnt come back till the following day, but no more fever.

Weird

More about the baby

We had our visit to the cardiologist. They were only going to repeat the ekg, but I was a pain in the ass enough that they conceded to also doing an echocardiogram. I may have been a pain in the ass, but it's MY baby.

It made no sense to simply repeat the ekg - if the results had been the same, it still could have been a false abnormal reading to to the placement of the leads. The prior ekg read a let axis deviation. Simply put, his heart was tilted to the left. Most infants, if anything, have a right tilt.

Anyways, the ekg showed a slight abnormality, and the echocardiogram showed that he has PDA ( Patent Ductus Arteriosus) . There is a small channel (tube) in the heart, that passes blood from one side to the other. In the case of most infants, this passageway will close itself within the first weeks of birth. Darth Landon's hasn't closed yet, but it's still within a realistic time frame to not freak out or expect surgery. They want to check him at 1 yr old, and double check that the tube has indeed closed

The symptoms of PDA are lack of appetite, shortness of breath - none of which the baby has been showing. If anything, since the New Years Eve incident, his appetite has increased.

So - it's highly unlikely that this PDa thingy caused the problems - and we have an appt with the neurologist next week.

Still lookin for answers..

Oh - one more thing for you watch out for - the newest SCAM

Poor people have a new scam. no more of that boring 'standing on the street corner' mess. The new scam is to drive their car to a parking lot (Walmart, KMart, Grocery Store, Wendy's, etc), and approach people for money. The boohoo story is that they have run out of gas, and desperately need to get back home, or to their job, or whatever. I got taken twice but f*kers like this, and finaly today, caught one in the act. The wife went into Walmart, and I stayed in the car. This trailer park reject rolls up in a pick up truck, scopes out his prey, and starts approaching people with a "I ran out of gas" story. Mind you, he had enough gas to pull into the spot next to me - AND it was the 2nd time he repositioned his truck.

He finally gets some money from a woman - walks back to his truck, and sits in the back seat. He watched her until she left, and as soon as she did - BOOM - his ass was right outta that seat and back to begging.

He made a mistake when he decided to roll up on my wife and son as they returned. I was out of our truck like a Swat team - cut him off on his approach after he initiated verbal contact, ordering him back to his vehicle, and told the wife to get the boy loaded. Then I stood guard until they the family and 'stuff' was secured.

Con artists piss me off - but when they approach my family....

What is with these crazy bastards?!

Is it justme? Or are some of you out there (people with blogs) that have been having weirdos post some crazy shit recently?

The other day, we went out to eat, and 'ran into' the owners of that horrible McDojo I used to go to. Didn't say anything - never knew if they saw me - but later that SAME night, someone posts a comment to my blog. It was posted to an entry WAAAAY back to 1995 or so, was that specific dojo related, and sounded like some 15 year old punk on Red Bull. The comment stated how I was a wimp and such, cause I hung out with the kids at the dojo, and was a scared to train with the real adults at night. This rant went on for a few paragraphs. But it didn't add up. I only trained at night, never met the guy they said taught there (who could apparently kick my ass) . It was as if a complete stranger came across that entry , and felt compelled to type shit .

ANDs

Just last night, some pick from CA visits my blog around 2am, and posts this little gem.

It also was from 1995. What the f*ck?? The coment made it sound very personal, and factually incorrect. Who the hell are these fruit loops with too much time on their hands??

ps. Info on the second guy:

Host Name	pool-71-104-206-242.lsanca.dsl-w.verizon.net
IP Address	71.104.206.242 Disease [Edit Label]
Country	United States
Region	California
City	Yucaipa
ISP	Verizon Internet Services Inc
Returning Visits	0
Visit Length	7 hours 26 mins 27 secs

That's right - 7 friggin hours this asshole was on my site. I don't get it

Visit to the cardiologist

Thanks to all who have commented their support and concern over Landon. Much appreciated.

We had our visit to the cardiologist today. They performed another EKG on him, which yielded slightly different results, but still indicated a left axis deviation of the heart. He said that in most cases, if any axis deviation is present, it's to the right in infants.


They followed up with an ultrasound. End result was that they discovered Landon has something called a PDA.
They said that it is small, nothing to be concerned about, and will probably resolve itself by the time he reaches 1 year old. THey want us to return when he is one to be rechecked.

Bad thing is that this PDA thing (according to the Dr) could not have been the cause of Landon's episode. So we're still in the dark there.

We have an appt with a neurologist next week.

So far , so good

Another eventless day with the baby. But the whole reality of what happened starts to kick in again when it's time to feed him. Today, he let out a loud burp, then gurgled a little, and my heart bout stopped.

Call me uberfreaked, BUT...until he find out what happened...

1. We go NOWHERE without my cell phone. I charged it with $10, and it's good till April 1st.
2. No more Old Country Buffet
3. No feeding the baby without the phone close by
4. The wife is NOT to use the canister of formula that she used that day
5. No more dipping the pacifier in the macaroni and cheese
6. And if we EVER have to go back to that same hospital again, I'm going to jail. We waited entirely too damn long in chairs. I wonder how embarrassed the hospital staff would be if you asked to use their phone, and called an ambulance to take your kid to a different hospital.

*(Something I wanted to note) - Logan got an mp3 player to Christmas. I loaded it up with 80's songs he asked for, and one of them was "You're the best" from the Karate Kid sountrack. In the ER waiting room, Logan climbed up in the seat next to me, started callign Landons name, and then started to sing to him...
"You're the best around, nothings gonna ever keep you down..."

That's when the tears started (mine, not his). It was such a touching moment. My 5 year old had picked such a powerful line to sing.

THE WEATHER:
It's turned bitter cold in the last few days. Even snowed for a few minutes the other day.


Other stuff:

If anyone happens to have QUICKSITE 2.5, or Web Page Construction kit 4.0 - can you please send me the registration code?? I've been using this program for years, and it recently UNregistered itself. I remember when I bought the program, that the code wasn't included. I had to call the company, and they said "Oh yeah - we forgot". I can't find the install disk, where I wrote the code on.

Follow up visit with the pediatricians

Well, he's still alive and kickin. No problems today. We made a follow up apt with the kids dr. After hearing all we had to say, he was stumped as well, but tends to favor the idea of a seizure. He scheduled us an appt with a neurologist.



On a different note, does anyone know what happened to The Bean's Dad?
I clicked on the link to his blog, and it's a dead link. Tried to Google him, and got nothing.

New Years Eve terror

I'll start this entry by saying that the baby is alright now. There's a happy ending (so far).

New years eve, the kids and wife and I decided to venture out to eat, and take a run to our favorite thrift store. We ate an Old Country buffet, and everyone was in good spirits. We drove to the thrift store. The baby had woke up, and wanted fed. The wife gave him about 1 ounce of formula, and he went back to sleep. The wife had gone her own way in the store: she had the baby and Logan - I had Lance. When we finished shopping, we headed out to the car. The baby woke up, and spit up. He spit up enough that we needed to change his outfit. SO the wife changes his otufit and diaper - and he spits up more. Then we notice that he's rather unresponsive. He's alive - and breathing - just not alert. We thought it might be that he was sleepy, but we were still worried. Rather than the 20 minute trip home, we decided to divert to her parents house, not more than 5 minutes travel time away. Figured we could get him out of his carseat, and get a better assessment. We made it about 1 minute down the road when the baby started spewing again - in large volumes. The wife was turned backwards in her seat, and I could hear the baby barfing, and coughing. I pulled over, and got the baby out. His throw up was milky - same color as formula - but God, there was so much of it. And the baby was worse. Much worse. No eye contact, no tracking of his eyes. pupils fixed and dilated - breathing was low and deep, and no muscle control whatsoever.

We had no cell phone - so we jumped back in the van, and drove a block down the road. I ran in and called 911. Within about 2-3 minutes, we had a firetruck and ambulance there. The baby started to regain some of his color (he went ghostly pale) once they put him on oxygen. But he was still very unresponsive.

We get to the local children's hospital within about 30 minutes, waited in the waiting room for about 3 hours, and once they finally got us a room, he started to snap out of it. He was able to lift his own head, his eyes we open and alert, he'd track us as we moved, smiled, laughed, cried once he realized how hungry he was. It was as if he had been short circuited for 3 hours. He never lost consciousness, but 'woke up' 3 hours later.

We saw no visible signs of seizure. No eyes rolling, no body flailing. The Dr's told us that at this age (3 months old), seizures in infants tend to be violent. He had not fallen on his head, no blunt force trauma, no signs of seizure. They monitored him for 2-3 hours after that, and ended up finding out nothing. At least not what caused it. They did an ekg of his heart, and it came back normal. They tested his blood, and his sugar level was fine. Now, he had just gotten breast fed right before they did the blood test, so that may have altered the results. He is up to date with his shots - but had not received a vaccination in over a month or so. In searching online for similar symptoms, I've come across sites with parental horror stories of similar happenings within hours or days of the child being vaccinated.

I dont know. We have no idea what happened to our baby.


To recap, in case you're reading this from a Google search, and have experienced the same thing...

• Within 30 minutes of feeding, the baby started to throw up. No projectile vomiting, just a gurgling, drolling throw up.
• The amount of throw up was large. No visible object, like a button or pill.
• Lack of muscle control. No neck control, not able to hold up head, not able to clench fist of fingers.
• Breathing was slow and faint
• Eyes were fixed and pupils were very dilated. If any eye movement, it was sluggish. Eye lids were almost shut - just barely open, like he was peeking.
• No fever - body was not hot . Body temperature seemed to drop, and particularly his cheeks got cold and clammy.
• Oxygen seemed to bring back some color to his face, but did NOT effect his unresponsiveness.
• 3 hours later, (give or take), he snapped out of it as if someone had thrown a switch.
• Once he had recovered, his heart rate, respiration rate, and pulse ox levels were well within normal parameters.

All the trouble started around 3:30-4pm. We were discharged from the hospital around 11:30pm.

So far, the baby has been eating and sleeping well. He is attentive, responsive, and appears to be back to normal. We have a motion monitor on his bed (with an alarm). But we're clueless what happened - or if it might strike again.