Too busy to write? No, not really. Just slack!

I have been exceptionally slack with writing over the last few months, and to be honest, I don’t really have any reason not to be sitting at my laptop, tapping away at the keys.

 It’s been a big few months for us.  It turned out that back in October, Julian hadn’t just fractured the radial head in his elbow, he had what is called an ‘Essex-Lopresti fracture’, which basically means he fractured the radial head in his elbow, dislocated his wrist and compressed the ligament in his forearm.  He ended up with a ‘sugar-tong’ cast for 4 weeks, and he has healed quite nicely.  It took about a week and a half for him to be able to straighten his arm out properly though!

Julian turned 13 last month!  Such a huge milestone for him, and given his pre-teen attitude up until that point, nothing short of a miracle!!  Just kidding.  It was a pretty big deal though.  He wanted to go out to dinner in a restaurant for his birthday, so 36 people ended up at the Hog’s Breath at Main Beach, including 3 of his mates for a stomach bursting meal.  Of course, teenagers being teenagers, he and his mates ended up watching Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy while eating chips and finally crashing at about 1am . . . after which, Nigel & I thankfully crashed as well!  A big thank you to my folks for taking our younger 3 for the night, and to all our friends and family – some of whom travelled many hours to get there – thank you so much for making Julian’s birthday something he will never forget.

And of course, school has finished for the year, Christmas has come and gone - my family's first Christmas without my big brother - and we are so close to 2014 we can just about touch it!

Be safe, be healthy and make sure your children (in particular those with teenage attitudes!) remember that no matter how close you come to strangling them, you love them with all your heart, and you always will.

What HAS he done now?

Nigel’s brother has spent the last week with us, and we decided to have a family day last Saturday for my birthday.  It was lovely.  Wayne took my parents in his 4WD ute, we had the kids in ours and we took the drive to Lost World Valley (part of Lamington National Park).  We picked wild raspberries, got a bit edgy when a bull came very close to us protecting his ‘Wifey’ and the kids had fun skipping stones in the creek.

From there, we took Duck Creek Road (4WD only) up to O’Reillys (Lamington National Park) for coffee, juice and hot chips before stopping off at one of our favourite lookouts – Kamarun lookout – to take in the gorgeous view before the long drive home.

We had no sooner gotten out of the car when we all heard a loud thud, then a scream, and turned to see Julian lying on the ground half on his side, half on his stomach – very still - near the covered gazebo.  Nigel and I raced over to see what had happened (closely followed by Wayne, Mum and Dad) and ended up with Julian screaming at us “Don’t touch my arm, don’t you dare touch my arm!”

Between the two of us, we managed to convince him to let us roll him over onto his back so Nigel could check his arm while I supported him from behind.  Mum came over with her every present, fully stocked first aid kit and while I cleaned the scrapes on one arm, Nigel was checking over the other one, which Julian was having trouble moving, and all the while we were trying to find out what had happened.  Turns out he had tried to vault a stone pillar using his right hand, which had slipped and he put his left arm out to ‘save’ himself as he fell. 

We had 2 junior Doctors come over (they were having a bit of a break away and had decided to wander up and check out the sunset) who are currently interning at Redcliffe hospital (what are the odds?!) and offered to check Julian over to make sure nothing was broken.  Luckily for Julian, one of them was interning in Orthopedics!!!  There was no break, however they did say to keep an eye on his arm because some injuries wouldn’t really show up until the next day.

And the next morning, this proved to be true.  His elbow had swollen up overnight, his wrist was extremely painful and he had pins and needles in his fingers.  So, off to the hospital we went.  The result?  Julian had fractured the radial head in his elbow and had also severely sprained his wrist.  So, we have an appointment on Monday to see if they’ll keep the cast on or keep it off.  In the meantime, he’s in a lot of pain, but very thankful he hadn’t broken anything.

Boys.

Nigel and I would like to send out a huge thank you to the 2 Junior Doctors from Redcliffe Hospital who helped us out on Saturday afternoon.  You were both very confident, reassuring and comforting.  I may not look forward to meeting you again in the future, but don't take that personally!!!  

Also, a huge thank you to the staff at Robina Hospital Emergency Department.  I don't think I have ever seen a more efficient Emergency Department (and I have seen a LOT).  No doubt I will be seeing you again sometime in the future!

A Day for Jules

 Each school holidays, my parents take one of our kids for a week.  The kids love it!  They get a holiday with Nanny and Poppy, and time to themselves away from their three siblings.

 These holidays though, they ended up taking the younger three instead.  Two were supposed to go to their Grandma and Granddad’s, but unfortunately Grandma ended up extremely ill and in hospital the night before they were going to take them home with them, so my parents offered to take them as well so they wouldn’t miss out on a ‘holiday’.

That’s just what my parents do – they hate to see their grandchildren disappointed and love to help out whenever they can. 

So for the first week of the school holidays, it was just Jules and us.  In my post ‘Stress Relief for Siblings’, I wrote about how Nigel and I took our younger three to Fingal Head for a day while Jules was on his own ‘holiday’ with Nanny and Poppy.  This time around, we decided to take the drive down with Julian.

This isn’t as easy as it sounds – the walk up to the Lighthouse and cliffs one way would be quite tiring for him, so we needed to find an alternative way that was a lot shorter.  We ended up finding another car park that was closer, and made sure he took it easy on the stairs on the way up.

It was a great day.  Fish and chips for lunch, wandering along the beach and climbing unusual trees (well, Julian did anyway) and getting stuck on the way down.  He did end up getting palpitations on the way back to the car at the end of the day, so hopefully these were recorded on the event recorder he was wearing!

 

This time was good for us.  It gave Nigel and I a chance to enjoy his strange sense of humour without having to curb it in front of his younger siblings, and a chance to just sit and talk.

Day 4 with an Event Recorder

Why is it that up until the point you actually have tests done, the problem that was presenting itself would happen on a daily basis suddenly slows down and you’re lucky to have just one present itself in a week???  Grrrr.

In between Julian’s last two Pulmonary Hypertension Clinics he started to get almost daily palpitations, and they were pretty random in occurrence.  Under exertion, at rest, it didn’t really matter what he was doing, all of a sudden you could see his t-shirt moving in time with his rapidly beating heart and he would go pale and blue all at the same time.

It was enough to concern his specialists and Dr. W referred Julian to have a 24 hour Halter Monitor and an Event Recorder for a week. He has red splotches all over his chest and on his side from the stickers they use (it’s getting harder and harder to find a ‘clear’ spot on his chest!).  Needless to say, we’re slathering them with Medi-Quatro several times a day to get them to heal.  I know he needs to have this done, but it’s so hard to watch him desperately try not to rip them off when they start to itch.  

So far, he’s managed to catch two.  One while he was playing soccer with his younger brother and one while we were lazing on the couch last night, catching up on all the missed ‘Person of Interest’ – we’ve got about 14 more episodes to watch now!

Dr. W granted my rather cheeky request to attempt to bring an episode on – in fact, the grin on his face (while the other 8 people in the room looked at me in mild horror) when he said “Do you think you can?  Knock yourself out” showed me how well he has come to know me over the past nine years!  I haven’t tried it yet; I have until Monday.  Julian’s already started peeking around corners and looking over his shoulder, waiting for when I do . . .  if I do.  I probably won’t.  Shhhh, don’t tell him that though.

Julian and the loss of my brother

A couple of days ago, Mum asked me how Julian was coping with my older brother’s passing, and I had to take a few minutes to think about it.  To be honest, I’m not really sure.  Given the fact that he and I have been at loggerheads these past few weeks, I’d hazard a guess that it’s not fantastic.  The problem here is that, he won’t talk to me about it and I’m left wondering if I should push him to talk or leave him be . . .

I’ve decided to leave him be.  He’s seeing his psychiatrist this afternoon, so he may feel more comfortable talking to her.

I’ve also decided that this time around, I need to focus more on myself than on Julian.  I know he has lost his Uncle, but I have lost my big brother.  As you grow older, you can sometimes lose the closeness you had with your siblings, especially when you have families on your own.  Unfortunately, this happened with Robert and I, especially over the last few years, and there’s a certain amount of regret coupled with my grief.

Robert was a huge inspiration to Nigel and I when Julian was diagnosed.  He was born with a Congenital Heart Defect called ‘Secondary Pulmonary Hypertension’ caused by ‘Eisenmongers’, and also developed another condition called ‘Polycythemia’.  Our father and his mother were told that the chances of surviving his childhood were virtually non-existent, and yet he went on to be one of the oldest surviving people with his condition in Australia, passing away just 2 days short of his 49^th Birthday.

You can see why Nigel and I took comfort in Robert’s life.   When Julian was diagnosed and we were told that he probably wouldn’t survive his childhood, he reminded us that the doctor’s had been wrong about how long he would live since he was born.  We used his life to remind Julian – who will turn 13 in November - of how it is possible to beat the odds the medical world tells you are against you.  Every year was a milestone for Robert, and every time the doctors told him “You won’t” he looked them in the eye and said “I will”.

I have asked the psychiatrist to talk to Julian about Robert.  I hope that this appointment will help him ease his grief and worries.  And I hope that it will help him to feel that he can talk to his Dad and I about it as well.