Up All Night

When I was single, the phrase "up all night" indicated a night filled with adventure, partying, or romance.  At age 39, with 2 kids, and the special needs stuff, well, the phrase "up all night" takes on a whole new meaning, and none of it particularly fun.

Yesterday was a typical day of perpetual motion.  Most of the perpetual motion was taking Zach to school ( a 25 minute drive) coming back to Camillus, and back off to the east to take Mom to her doctors appointment.  This doctor's appointment was to see if the pulmonologist would clear Mom for her upcoming hip replacement surgery.  That appointment took 2 hours - we discussed the current state of Mom's cancer, and they did in fact clear her.  Gotta love the case management of the medical field - the office had her down for having surgery for November 30th - her actual surgery date is October 27th.  It's non-stop, correcting these sort of mistakes between the pulmonologist, cardiologist, dermatologist, oncologist, radiologist, and surgeons.  Electronic record keeping would really be great for this of course - but there are big issues regarding privacy and HIPAA laws, standards, and security.  Companies with the appropriate background to make this happen all want to make big money off of it, creating proprietary hardware/software/middleware thus I don't expect to see it happen anytime soon. This is not a technology problem - our government and several of its agencies, particularly the military,  have been creating secure networks and applications for decades.  Greed always gets in the way.

Anyhow, good news that Mom's cancer is still at bay for now, and she is doing OK with her COPD.  The pulmonologist recommended Mom get the flu shot before surgery, and ten minutes prior to this statement, the office ran out of the vaccine.  They sent us off to the downtown office for her to get it there and that we did after picking up Zach from school. Add 45 minutes of extra time to the schedule.  Oh well.   Thumbs up for surgery, and now let's pray that she manages to bounce back from the surgery quickly and that it actually takes care of the pain she has been in for the past year.

Some of the perpetual motion from yesterday  was because I had committed Sophia to a ballet class - and we needed to find her attire: leotard, tights, ballet shoes, tap shoes. Wal-Mart came in particularly handy with the leotard business, however, we ended up having to drive around for the ballet shoes.  But alas, she was fitted head to toe in pink and looked as sweet as a pea.  Straight from the ballet shoe store we went off to class.

Of course, no where I go these days can allow me to escape autism.  While in the class, in walks a mom with her daughter that I quickly recognized.  Karla works at my former employer, and we quickly began chatting about all that was up.  After hearing me talk to her about Zach and some of the other families we have met, a woman who was listening to our conversation chimed in and told us she was a special education teacher in our school district.  She then went on to to tell me she has a 3 year old with autism.  I was a little confused by the end of the conversation because her son is verbal, gestures, doesn't have behavioral or major sensory issues.  In fact, they have not pursued a diagnosis.  He is getting some services and she works with him.   She has more background than me being a special ed teacher, but I was still perplexed by the fact that she didn't pursue formal diagnosis if he did indeed have autism.  Perhaps after seeing years of children with special needs and how the system works, she realizes the pitfalls to diagnosis.  

As well as not being  able to avoid autism, we also cannot seem to avoid chaos.  As I packed Sophia in the car in her cute little pink outfit, I slammed the door shut and saw the look on Sophie's face.  You got it - her hand was in between the car and the car door.  Off I went driving 70 miles an hour home to get an ice pack.  Her hand looked fine, I called the triage at the pediatrician's office, and they said it was likely soft tissue damage based on what I described.  Anti-inflammatories and keeping an eye on it were all they recommended. 

After the great mashed hand incident of 2009, I managed to get the kids into pajamas and to bed.  Eventually,  I fell asleep alongside them, until, 1 am.  I woke up to Zach staring me in the face.  He didn't look happy.  He could not sleep.  He wasn't fooling around, he just could not sleep.  I felt bad for him because it really did not come off as him doing it on purpose.  I changed his diaper, rubbed his back, snuggled with him.  He finally fell back asleep at around 5ish.

I have a cold that feels as it may be turning into a sinus infection, little sleep, and a meeting where I will be a speaker this afternoon, driving cross town twice a day for Zach's school, driving the other way across town to take Zach to a doctor's appointment, plus afternoon therapy - another perpetual motion day here at the Morphet home all to be culminated by the irony of no sleep - tomorrow is Zach's next sleep deprived EEG.  That's right folks, we will be purposely keeping Zach up tonight for his test tomorrow. 

Yesterday was Steve and my 8th wedding anniversary.  Now that I think about it, it was filled with adventure (trying to get Sophia's ballet gear), partying ( Sophia, Zach and I played computer games for an hour and a half together), and romance (I was snuggled and kissed many times last night).  All this fun without Steve who is out of town on business.  What is all the whining about?