The Bruckners: Thursday, May 3rd: Finn "graduates"

Christine:
What an amazing day! I spent the morning with my mom back at home, cleaning up a bit, paying bills (boo), and otherwise just being productive. Around lunchtime, we packed up and headed out to lunch before going down to Peoria to be with Finnegan. Luckily, Ian was headed up from Peoria to attend his Uncle Don's wake, so he met us for lunch at Steak 'n' Shake (yum!).

My mom and I rocked out to Lady A on our way to Peoria. I loved every moment of that car ride!

Once at the hospital, we both rushed to Finn's bedside to give him some love and attention. He was the most alert I have ever seen him! At any sound his eyes were open and looking around. His nurse for the day came in and gave me this wonderful report about all the WONDERFUL things Finn accomplished today:

He accomplished his goal of maintaining a mean BP above 25, so it was erased off of his "goal board." Now, he just needs to wean off the cpap, gain weight (which he did!!!), and remain infection free!
He moved up in diaper size from the micropreemie to the preemie diapers. The micropreemie diapers weren't wide enough to fit around his belly, so we had to move up! The preemie diapers are a bit too big, but they look a lot more comfy on him! His nurse gave us a stack of his micropreemie diapers as momentos.
His BP cuff got moved up from a size 1 to a size 2! The nurse gave us his size 1 BP cuff as well.
He will most likely not need to be back on phototherapy, so she also gave us his "sunglasses" to keep.
He continues to digest and tolerate all of his feedings, and he is pooping!

I am so proud of him! My mom and I were beaming at him after the nurse gave us this report. He is just unbelievable!

He had his initial head sonogram today. The preliminary report came back normal, but the official report will be read tomorrow during rounds. It was a relief to hear that word, "normal."

They had to remove his PICC line today because of inflamation in his vein. They tried 6 times with 3 nurses and over 70 years of experience before they got an IV put in his little hand. His veins are just too tiny! They were planning on putting in another PICC line, but he may only need his IV for three more days! The only thing he is currently getting from his IV is his TPN or supplemental nutrition. As his "food" intake increases, they are decreasing the amount of TPN given to him in his IV. According to his feeding schedule, if Finnegan tolerates his feedings through May 6th, he will not need an IV at all! So, instead of sticking him again for a PICC line, the NNPs and Nurses both agreed that they will just wait to see what happens with his current IV. They said, since he's already beat the odds, who's to say this IV won't last for a couple days!? I hate the fact that they had to stick him so many times, but I'm glad they aren't going to again unless they absolutely have to.

He has an order for glycerin in case he doesn't poop for 24 hours... but he knows all too well where that glycerin goes, so he's decided to poop pretty frequently on his own, thank you very much. Currently, the only drug he is on is caffine, and starting tomorrow that will be taken off of his IV pump and put into his "formula" (aka my breastmilk). By next week, my little man may have no needles in his little body! :)

He's still having bradies and on 30 helper breaths at 21% oxygen (room air). His little nose is going through a bit of a beating from the prongs and mask of the cpap machine, but the nurses and respiratory therapists are working hard to try to remedy the problem so that a permanent mark won't appear on his little nose. Preemie skin is VERY delicate and sensitive, so this skin breakdown is common, but avoidable. So far, he has a darkened spot on the inside of his right nostril, but it's not very visible unless you look for it. To avoid any other spots from forming, they switch from mask to prongs every six hours, and check his little nose and placing his mask and prongs on very carefully. They are watching his head placement a lot more as well. Finn isn't too much of a fan of all this because he likes to throw his head back and otherwise do the opposite of what the nurses want him to do, but so far so good!

It's been very peaceful being with Finn in his room. As I sit on the couch, I can hear his little squeaks from his hiccups and see his little arm reach up to touch his face or attempt to rip off his cpap. I could probably sit and watch him all day, and the cool part is that he is starting to look back. :)

I've definitely started to feel like more of a mom this week. The reality of it all has begun to creep up on me and I've realized that the feelings I have about Finnegan and the pride I have in my little boy is what moms are supposed to feel like. Finnegan is my son. And he's quite an amazing one!

My recovery is going well. My brusing is WAY down so my skin actually looks like real skin! My incision is starting to hurt a lot more, so I'm wearing a lot of loose fitting pants and trying to lay down as much as possible. In other good news, my ankles and feet aren't swelling up as much, and I haven't been using as many pain killers (tonight is an exception...)!

I have my follow-up appointment with the doctor on Monday, and I should be able to start driving again on Tuesday. I still can't do much of anything with regards to housework and cleaning and bending over is still semi-out of the question, but I feel a lot more human!

Ian -

Wow, this has been great! Christine has written most of these last two blogs. I spent yesterday and today trying to arrange my schedule starting next week. It looks like I'll be working a reduced schedule, 12-5:30, through the time Finnegan comes home. That will give me the mornings to be at the hospital for his rounds with the rest of his care team. Then I'll take another week or two off, work another week or two of a reduced schedule and then *hopefully* back to a "new" normal. The first couple weeks will be remotely because I still need to care for Christine who can't drive until Tuesday and can't lift anything more than 10 pounds, exercise, or clean (I think she asked her doctor to add that to the list) until who knows when.

Her entire recovery is expected to be 6-8 weeks which is another 4-6 from now. I assume she'll slowly build back up to a normal routine. She's been busy grading papers from before her hospital stay and job hunting for the fall. There are some promising jobs out there. Hopefully she'll get a few offers and get have to choose between teaching high school, working at the university in a teaching capacity, or working at the university in a business capacity. Her masters degree in Communication and experience lends itself well to many jobs. She hates PR, so I won't say "spin", but it's all how she "applies" her education and experience.

I'm also hopefully have my surgery next week, so as soon as my bottom can tolerate sitting in an office chair, I'll be back in the office. I need normalcy. I really do. Thank God for understanding managers, directors and FMLA. Everything just hit all three of us in the family at the exact same time. I wish I could say the HR department at ISU has been helpful, but they've been dismal. No one has been friendly, they keep screwing things up, and in general I've come to really dislike working with them as an employee. It's not that anyone is giving me a hard time, it's just that no one seems to have their act together. On a professional level the people I work with in HR in the normal day-to-day course of my job are great. They've got the colleague thing down, but when I'm their "customer" it is another story.

On the plus side, thanks to great insurance, Finnegan's estimated $500,000+ hospital bill will only cost us a $275 copay. Same for Christine's $50,000 stay. On the down side, the State of Illinois has been trying to get rid of this insurance company. It's such a shame because they're great to work with! I wouldn't mind paying a little more to keep them. They tried to get rid of them last year, but that was challenged in court and ruled (I think) illegal because of the way they did it. New insurance is supposed to kick in July 1st, but the state hasn't chosen who we can choose from. Last year they tried to not offer a single HMO in our county. They gave Chicago the cream of the crop, but we would have been stuck with stupid 80/20 plans. Can you imagine 20% of $500,000? That on its own would make me leave ISU. I really don't want to. State of Illinois hear this, "I can't afford that!", I love working at ISU and I don't want to leave. Don't screw me and everyone else who works for you (or at least everyone who works for you that doesn't live in Chicagoland) over. We already personally pay for our benefits just like those in the private sector do, but if those in the private sector personally pay more than we do for similar benefits, then just have us pay what they pay instead of getting rid of great plans altogether! I'm not even sure that's the case, but if it were, that would only be fair. If you strip our benefits, we'll go find jobs in the private sector. Sure, you'll find people to take our places, but they won't be as good as us and you'll end up spending more money because of turn-over and inefficiencies than you would have had you just kept us moderately happy! Try to explain that to the general public.

In other news, we're still hopefully under contract for a home in Lexington. We've asked for an extension because of our situation, but we haven't heard back from them yet. Our Realtor expects they'll accept. The house in Lexington would be great! It sits on almost an acre in a wooded subdivision. The town only has 2,100 people! I don't really know if that's good or bad, I've only known living with tens of thousands. It's 20 minutes Northeast of ISU on I-55, and about 25 minutes closer than where we are now to our family in Chicagoland. That's almost 50 minutes round trip less! Either I need a raise or Christine needs a job for the Fall since this situation bumped her out of work for the last month of her school year. We both have a lot to offer, so hopefully at least one of those things will happen quickly :). If not, we'll stay put in our apartment and look for a house again when the time is right.

Yesterday I traveled North to Chicago Heights to pay my final respects to my Uncle Don who passed away peacefully after a long battle with illness. I enjoyed his company at family gatherings :). I think he was even been the first person to ask, quite some time ago, if I had "put a ring on her [Christine's] finger yet?", and since I hadn't, "what's the holdup?!". I'll miss him, just like everyone else will, but I'm glad his end was peaceful. As would be his words, it wasn't a "goodbye". Instead, it was an "until we see each other again."