LASIK

My driver's license expires this year on my birthday in September. The current license says that I have corrective lenses. I have worn contacts for many years now but I have been coveting those people who have had LASIK. I'll admit, I was a bit nervous about the procedure. You see, I'm a fainter. I have a highly overactive vagus nerve which means I have vasovagal responses - in other words, when my body senses danger ("danger Will Robinson!") it just shuts down. My blood pressure drops and I faint. Two times at the eye doctor I have fainted in the chair as they have gone in to do the glaucoma reading. So, as you can imagine, I've been a little more nervous than most when considering having laser surgery.

Because my eyes are not that bad, I've always just figured that I could just live with contacts. The risk of fainting during the procedure was just too great. Well, in the past years, I've had very bad allergies that affect my eyes. My eyes are itchy, I get red bumps on the undersides of my eye lids, and my contacts float around and it's pretty much just terrible. My eye doctor said that my contacts are probably not helping because they act as sponges and soak up the histamines and hold them on my eyes all day. He suggested that LASIK would help in allergy season. He may have been feeding me a line in order to get a LASIK sale but it was the push I needed.

Sporting my super dark glasses for a few days to compensate for the fact that the sun got several hundred times brighter.

So, I saved up money in my Health Savings Account and on the 18th, I became corrective lens free!! What a miracle! I kept looking at things and in awe saying "wow, I can see!" Scott informed me that duh, that's what I paid for "why are you so surprised?" I can't explain that even though I knew cerebrally it would work, I was still in amazement that it did.

After two weeks now the doc says that I can see 20/20 with only a bit of blurriness in my right eye, which wasn't completely healed so it will likely just get better. I love not having to put contact in and out each day. Girl's Camp was a joy without that burden of contacts.

Call me LASIK girl! I had super awesome eye shield to wear to bed for the first three days. Can't they come up with some better way than to tape them to my face? That was extremely sticky tape!

"But did you faint?" will likely be the question you are asking . . . after arming myself with lots of information, with a Priesthood blessing from my husband, and a valium at the clinic, I did just fine. In fact, I walked out saying to myself "that's what you've been worried about for all these years?"

Now, I can go to the driver's license division in the next month or so and take the eye test and of course I'll pass with flying colors and not have to have that little "Restriction - B Corrective Lenses" on the back. As for ensuring the picture on the license is a good one - I still have to worry about that.

The Cast is off!

As you may recall, just over a month ago my Maddy had to go to the Emergency Room for an X-Ray

Check out those stickers! You can tell how she is motivated!

We waited here for a loooooooooooooooooong time for them to come and put a splint on it. A splint because it was Thursday and they only did casts during the fracture clinic which was on Wednesday.

Almost a week later, we were back at the hospital this time for a wonderful orange cast.

Fast forward 4 weeks and here we are again



This handsome fellow came along with us.



After kind of a scary moment, the cast is gone. Maddy was very brave and her leg stunk like a foot that had been in a gym cleat for - well - a month!

The doc warned us that she might walk on it in the short term but it's likely that she could stop walking on it later in the evening - "don't freak out! it's normal". He also warned us that she may walk funny for up to 3 weeks becuase she has to redevelop those muscles and again "don't worry, it's normal!". We came straight home and to a long hour bath (well, not we - Maddy did). She smelled so nice. I'm so glad to not have to bathe her in the sink after encasing her cast in plastic (now why in the world did I not take a picture of that!???!!! 

We put her cast together in the boot one last time and Maddy had the pleasure of knocking it in the the trash and saying "bye bye" to her orange cast. It served her well.

30 days

I am so very far behind. We have had quite a few activities in the past month or so but I have not had the time at work to do any blogging, which is of course, where I do most of my blogging! So, I guess I will do a month in review.

We went to the Hogle Zoo Maddy decided to trade hats with Dad while waiting for the train.I love the giraffes! Why is that?Next up was the Utah State Fair. I was so excited to see the baby piggies (yup, they were adorable) and the yummy, junky fair food (big disappointment this year).Maddy rode a horse. She was very excited and didn't care whether I was there to keep her on or not. Yeah for my horsey loving daughter!But, then she rode the merry-go-round and found that it was way better than the real horse. She giggled the entire ride - I mean, literally the whole ride! I had to pry her fingers from the bar in order to take her off when the ride was over. All three of us rode the Ferris wheel.Maddy and I rode the hot air balloon ride that made me si-ick!

And of course, we saw the animals too!
At the very end of September Maddy broke her leg. She was running down the lawn at the babysitter's house to great her BFF Heidi (she's 10 and was coming home from school) and just collapsed in Heidi's arms sobbing. They thought maybe she had a bee sting or something since there was no explanation for her crying. The next morning when she seemed absolutely fine except refused to put any weight on her foot, I took her to the doctor. Our pediatrician sent us to Primary Children's Hospital for an X-ray which turned into a check-in at the ER after they found a buckle fracture in her left tibia. Maddy got a splint that day (Friday) and then we were told to return the next Wednesday to get a hard cast.

Maddy was very excited and not shy about telling everyone that she wanted an orange cast. She was a little disappointed that it didn't come with purple hearts. She'll have this for 4 weeks and gets it off the 26th of October - just in time for Halloween. She does extremely well crawling and walking on her knees but just yesterday she started a funny little limp around and proudly told us "look, I walk on two legs! I getting better." After the leg break but before the hard cast, we took Maddy to the circus. It was the Saturday before my birthday so we decided to celebrate.
It was quite a feat to get Maddy, her stroller, two hot dogs, one Sprite, and a bucket of popcorn up into the stand. I felt a bit like that riddle - "you have one boat and a bag of food and a pig and a tiger - how do you get them to the other shore without the tiger eating the pig or the pig eating the food?"We did pay for a seat for Maddy but she only sat there for a little bit. Most of the time she was on my lamp - until she discovered the floor in front of me was fun. FiguresAnd, the floor afforded nice stretching out room when she decided that she was kind of "done". Best parts of the circus? The guy who was shot from a crossbow while on fire (yeah you understood right, the guy was on fire!), the elephants, and the horses who walked on up on their legs (Airs Above the Ground right mom?)

Next time we'll have to do the matinee rather than the 7:30 evening showing!

.

During the Saturday session of conference Maddy and I took a drive up the canyon. My hope was that it would allow me the ability to listen to conference better than I would be able to at home. It worked well. We stopped and saw Bridal Veil Falls in Provo canyon. Maddy was disappointed that we couldn't wade in the water like the other kids. I was grateful for her cast because it meant that I didn't have to wade in the ice-cold water with her! We searched for orange leaves and though I found many that I thought were contenders, Maddy insisted that they were all red, not in fact, orange.

So there you have it, around 30 days of Bishop happenin's. Not all our months are this filled with activities, they just all piled in here at the end of the summer.

on the mend

Just thought you might like an update. I took Maddy in to the doctors office Wednesday morning since her fever was still up (104!) and they checked for bladder infection and ear infection - both look fine. No throat problems they could see - no real reason for the fever. "We'll just have to wait it out" they told me. I took Maddy to Scott's mom in Payson so I could go into the office for a few hours. She keep alternating Tylenol and Ibuprofen to keep the fever down and we found that as long as that fever was gone, she was a little more normal!

That night on the way home from Payson she screamed the whole way home. It was the longest hour of my life! Ok, maybe not, but it was painful for sure.

Thursday she had a lower fever 102 and Stacy said I could bring her over for the day - figuring that the infectious stage (if there was one) would have been before the fever. Well, by noon the fever had broken and Stacy mentioned that she had a good day and wasn't too miserable, just a little more quiet and subdued than normal.

Friday morning - NO FEVER!!!!! Wahoo! Of course - now there was a rash . . .

Saturday morning there wasn't a fever but I was a little nervous about the rash that was spreading and the fact that Maddy wouldn't stop crying. We took her to the doctor again and (of course) by this time she had calmed down. They checked her ears again just to make sure an ear infection hadn't developed. The rash is caused by a virus and isn't anything to be too worried about - in fact, by the time the rash develops, that is the upswing and Maddy should be feeling better.

Happy to say that she is feeling much better. She is more clingy than normal and as long as I'm not trying to accomplish anything - clingy is good. :)

So, I could have just let it run its course and not spent $40 for two visits to the doctor - but, that $40 bought me peace of mind (sort of) twice. At least nothing is terribly wrong with the little one.

The day is Shot

My poor baby had to have her shots yesterday. I had a fever Monday so I figured, even though it was gone Tuesday morning, that I'd better send Scott to the appointment just in case I was still contagious. Maddy's doctor said "I notice your wife isn't here and it's shot day . . .". I suppose he thought that I wused out and didn't want to see my baby stuck with needle after needle. Well, not my reason for being absent but an unintended benefit! She is now caught up on all her shots and she is 10 lbs 12 oz and 23 inches long. Her weight and head circumference was in the 50th percentile but she is 75th for length. Maybe she will turn out to have Scott's height!

We have to take her to Primary Children's Medical Center next week to have an ultrasound of her hips. Apparently Dr. L saw something that made him a little worried so they are checking. He told Scott over and over that it's not a big deal and probably won't be anything but he wants to check for displasia (sp?) and make sure that if it is there, we can correct it with braces rather than surgery later. I hope that the results come back negative and we don't have to worry about that!

I felt fairly well but decided that since it was 1:00 and Maddy wasn't feeling great, that I'd stay home with her. She was a little bit more cranky than normal but nothing too bad. She took her shots like a trooper!