Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Jordan and Lindsey's Wedding

Jordan and Lindsey were married on Thursday, April 18, 2013 in the Seattle Temple. It was such an amazing thing to be in the House of The Lord to witness the sealing of my son to his chosen wife. It was even better than I had imagined over the years. It makes me a bit glad that I have so many children. I will get to witness many more sealings!

We had a wedding luncheon (0 pictures) following the sealing and pictures. We held it at Lindsey's home ward building which was only a few minutes distance from the temple. My favorite part was watching two of Jordan's buddies help a couple of guys with a car issue who had pulled into the parking lot. They were in luck, because Tyler happened to have his tool chest in the back of his car and was able to help them. We tried to get them to come in out of the rain and have some food, but they weren't comfortable with that. We did take some food out to them. Jordan has some great friends, I was very impressed with all of them.  

Later that evening we attended the reception which was held at a yacht club. It had begun raining/drizzling while we took pictures at the temple and by the time of the reception it was quite rainy. Which was too bad because it would have been nice to use the outside areas for the reception. The reception was so nice and I feel bad that I didn't get to do much more than chase my little boys around. They were the entertainment of the day and night. Sigh. Oh, well. Lindsey's mom and family did a great job with the reception and it was very lovely. There were a lot of people there to support them and celebrate with them. I was thankful to have Grandma and Grandpa Welch and Aunt Nicole, Aunt Michele and Uncle Erin there to celebrate with us! 

We are so happy to have another daughter and so happy that they have found each other and made eternal covenants with each other and with Heavenly Father. Another 'forever family' has begun!

Mr. and Mrs. Jordan Welch

Three handsome, little men waiting to head to the temple.

Soren enjoying the 'candy bar' at the reception.
It was a hit with the kids! (and most of the adults too!)

Gearing up for that sugar high!!

A view of the reception. In the corner of the room to the left
of the open door you see was the Italian soda bar.

In the corner by the windows was the ice cream sundae bar.
They had lots of yummy options.
Her brothers and brother in law were the Ice cream and soda server guys!

The cake. The table had white lights under it and they surely intrigued James all night.
The whole set up was lovely.
Love the baby pictures of Jordan and Lindsey on the tables in the back.

The happy couple cutting the cake. 

First dance as a married couple. They are both stick people!

The sendoff! We all had little streamer rings to throw as they ran to their car.
Not exactly riding into the sunset but away they went.

Thursday, April 04, 2013

life now


So that's how it ended and where we are today. When I got home I continued the Lovenox until I had enough Coumadin in me to stop the Lovenox. Thankfully, the Coumadin is about $8 for a month's worth of meds. It is not something I wanted to be on forever, it is not a thing you want in your body, they use it for rat poison! But it is effective and so I took it until the six month mark from my PE. It made my hair brittle, but I didn't notice any really bad effects from it. I am thankful that it kept me from forming any new clots while the old ones aged and hardened and didn't launch any more emboli.

Last week I went to see Dr. Black and look at the results of the blood tests I had done in Sept. He said that he could not see any reason to keep taking the Coumadin.  My test results all indicated normal blood clotting. He did ask me to take a baby aspirin daily for now. I am happy to do that. 

After getting the okay to be done with Coumadin, I had a ceremonial smashing of the remaining pills. I hope I never need them again. I hope this was an isolated incident and that there will not be a repeat of it.



Its an interesting place that Curtis and I find ourselves now.  We have been having children for so long, that's really all we know. I don't think  either of us had any idea we'd have so many, but we are thankful for the wonderful family we have. As we look to the future, we are excited to be moving to the grandparent stage, where the new people entering our family are coming by marriage and someone's womb besides mine. It is a bittersweet thing to come to the end of the childbearing era, and we mourn the child that could have been. I know that Heavenly Father knows the end from the beginning and will make all things right for that child as well as for me and that he knows that in a different situation I would have been willing to try again to give that spirit a mortal body. As it was, it just couldn't be. I have felt His comfort as I have pondered and mourned this event. I am thankful for the knowledge of the plan of salvation and happiness that gives us understanding of this mortal journey. It surely brings peace to know that someone is in charge and all will be made right. And that someday we will understand why things had to be as they are.  

In a couple of weeks, Jordan will be married. He met his fiancé, Lindsey, in ID and it has been such a good thing for him. He has direction in his life now. He is registered to start school and knows what he wants to study. We are so thrilled to see so much good in his life. The gospel is such a blessing. The sealing of two people to each other is such a blessing.  We cannot wait to be part of the beginning of yet one more eternal family in the Seattle Temple. (pictures will be forthcoming)

Wednesday, April 03, 2013

More fun in Provo

After being in the ER for a bit Dr. Ludlow came in to see me and examine me. He took the time to talk with us and go over all the details with us. He explained the medication that I had been given and the necessity for it. It was very hard to take a drug you know will abort a fetus but if Mom bleeds to death there is no baby anyway. That is only logical and there was really little other choice. He talked to us about the possibility of the D&C, actually at that point he was pretty sure it was going to be necessary, as well as the possibility of a hysterectomy.

When he did the exam he removed a huge clot from me that was about the size of a grapefruit. It was still early morning, so he wanted me to have one more dose of the Cytotec, which works by making the uterus clamp down, thereby slowing the bleeding) and see how that worked before deciding to do the D&C. They wheeled me up to a room and put me in bed. Curtis went in search of food. Later that morning, Dr. Ludlow came and checked me again and the bleeding had stopped significantly and he told me that he felt that the D&C would not now be necessary. He wanted me to stay the day in the hospital and be monitored and if all was well they would release me that evening.

So I spent the day lying in a hospital bed. It was not an ICU type of room, it was just a regular room on the surgery recovery floor. I found it sort of funny that there was such haste to get me there to UVRMC and so little after I got there. The nurses took good care of me and removed all those lovely IVs that were not needed. But mostly they left us alone and we had a quiet day.

Dr. Ludlow came in later in the afternoon and said they were happy to release me to go home. He did say that it would be a good idea for us to stay in the valley for a couple of days to monitor bleeding. If it picked up again, we would need to come back in. We had a good visit with him and asked him if he thought I would be able to go to SC for Ford's graduation from Basic Training. He seemed to think it would be fine and that led to a discussion about his time in the military.  I think he probably spend 30 extra minutes talking to us. If anyone has a need for a good OB in the Ut. Valley area I would highly recommend Dr. Ludlow. He was fantastic.

After finally getting all the necessary paperwork done I was released. Nicole had brought over the girls' car for us to use for the couple of days that we were to stay. We called my Uncle Boyd and asked if we could use their downstairs bedroom for a day or two. He was gracious enough to let us come.

We had had the dr. call in a RX for more Lovenox to Walgreens since it is just kitty-corner from the hospital. We went over there to pick it up and to get alcohol wipes and sanitary pads and such. It was the biggest  joke we've ever had played on us. They wanted to charge us $2600 for the shots. Curtis was so mad. He rarely gets mad enough that anyone would notice, but he was irate. I think he was very tired as well.  He had them check things again to see if a mistake had happened. It had not. He asked them the price of one shot to get us through the night. $150. Needless to say, we could not afford to pay that, but how could we afford not to?

In the end of it all, the pharmacist there told us he could transfer the RX to Walmart. He even called there to make sure they had the meds. So we left Walgreens and raced to Walmart to make it before the pharmacy closed.  There we got the shots we needed for 3 days and paid $300 for them.  I wondered then, and have since, how in the world Walgreen's stays in business. Who in their right mind would  take their prescriptions there?

We spent the next couple of days resting, visiting friends, and doing a bit of shopping. Mr. Shakespeare, Curtis's boss, came to pick us up on Thurs. evening to take us home. It was an uneventful trip home and it was nice to be home again.  Nice to see the kids and try again, to get our lives back to normal....

Tuesday, April 02, 2013

Here We Go Again....

Sunday evening, the bleeding began to be heavier. I told Curtis that I was bleeding and that I thought it was all going to end in miscarriage. I laid in bed wishing I could change the outcome. I wondered why it seemed that so many times when I've found myself pregnant and had a hard time accepting it initially,  miscarriages seemed to follow, especially after I've come to terms with being pregnant and getting excited about it.  There is a lot of guilt involved in that, wondering if in some way you've caused the miscarriage and feeling bad that you weren't more excited about the pregnancy to begin with. It has been one of my hardest challenges. I think I've only had one miscarriage where I had planned on the pregnancy and was excited from the get go about it. There was no guilt that time and it was easy to recover from the miscarriage.

Towards midnight, I passed some tissue and it seemed to be attached to me. I thought it was the amniotic sac. I didn't try to detach it, fearing more bleeding, but covered it and got Curtis up, we told Mom and we drove to the Emergency Room in a sober mood. I was checked in and they called the on-call dr. to come examine me. He looked at my chart and history and asked some questions and then did an exam. It was determined that it was only a clot that I had passed (a clot?? on anticoagulants?) and that he could not see any active bleeding from my cervix. It was about 2 a.m. and they decided they would like to keep me for a few hours and then do an ultrasound when the tech got there in the morning.  We agreed and they put us in a room to rest. Not much bleeding during that resting time, quite light.

The US tech came and got me sometime between 7-8 in the morning. I was not expecting to see anything and I actually hadn't seen anything but I surely heard the 'whoosh-whoosh' of a little heart beating away. There it was on the screen, a little fetus, with a furiously beating heart. I was so  surprised. I was so sure it was gone. I began to feel a glimmer of hope at that point that maybe this was not going to end in miscarriage. After the US they sent me home and told me to keep off my feet, but to come back if the bleeding got worse. I was told to follow up with Dr. Black.

I spend the majority of that day in my favorite chair. It was becoming molded to me, I'd sat in it for so long. The bleeding continued but was very light. As evening came on, I wondered if I should take my Lovenox shot and decided that I should, so I  did at 10 pm. About 1/2 hour after taking the shot I again felt some large clumps of tissue being passed from my body and the bleeding seemed to be picking up. By midnight we decided we had better head to the hospital again. So again, we woke my mom to tell her what was going on and then drove to the hospital. Again, I was checked in and the same dr. in the same clothing, came in to examine me, again. Poor guy, he'd been there all that time.

Again, he thought that all the tissue passed was clots, no fetal tissue. He said he still could see no active bleeding in the exam and again he encouraged me to go home and rest. He suggested that I shower and get cleaned up and that would help me feel better. I was rather a mess at that point.

So we drove home and I tried to just climb into bed, but Curtis thought the dr. was right and talked me into showering. It felt really good at first to wash all that day's troubles away, but as I was standing there, eyes closed, and letting the water run over me, I opened my eyes to see red everywhere, running and swirling away down the drain. I stood there in disbelief for a time. It was very surreal to watch my blood wash away. I then tried to figure out how in the world I was going to get out of the shower because the blood was not stopping. Then I started to get panicked because I could not figure out how to get out without covering the bathroom in blood. I finally called for Curtis to come help me, as I did not know what else to do, and it was still a mess. We packed a large chux type pad between my legs and put on some scrubs they had given me and off we went again to the hospital.

By this time, I was feeling very shaky and lightheaded. Probably mostly from fear, but I was very afraid that I might bleed to death. They took one look at me this time and immediately got me in the ER room and started taking care of me.

These are the dr.'s notes from the ER: "Approximately 2 hours later, the patient again returned. She had had mass bleeding. She  reported that the floor of her shower and her bathroom, in her words,'looked like somebody had been murdered.' There was an extensive amount of blood. When she came to us, she had filled several chux and several tampons. When she came in, she was pail and diaphoretic. She was lightheaded and complained of being very dizzy. She had a look of panic on her face. Her vitals were P 100, BP 115/66. Her pulse decreased. She was in the 100s-115 on her pulse and 80s-90 systolic.

Immediately on her coming back to us, we put in two large bore IVs and stared running lactated Ringer's wide open. I spoke with Dr. Ludlow, who is a High Risk OB physician at Utah Valley Hospital. We relayed all of this to Dr. Ludlow. He recommended that we give 600 mcg of Cytotec, stating that I should inform the patient that this would like abort the fetus. Dr. Ludlow stated that he wanted the patient flown immediately and that she should have a transfusion begun immediately. I discussed this with the patient and she agreed. I also explained to the patient the effects of the Cytotec, and she also agreed to this. 

Dr. Ludlow said that the patient's course of treatment, on her arrival there, would be an emergency D&C regardless, due to the fact that she was bleeding and that there was immediate risk to the mother's life. 

We contacted the flight crew and they were on the way. We continued with lactated Ringer's giving the patient blood while we were waiting for the flight crew to come. After the Cytotec was given, the patient did begin to have a little bit better color, higher blood pressures, and less tachycardia. She was doing much better. She was speaking in full sentences. She no longer had the look of panic on her face that she had had before. She was transferred to UVRMC, under the care of Dr. Ludlow, in guarded condition. Dr. Ludlow also expressed to us that we would need to have the ability to do an emergency hysterectomy if we did  a D&C of this patient while she was on this much Lovenox."

My memories of my time in that ER room were of some nurses who did everything in their power to help me out. Sheila, particularly, was fantastic and competent in all she did to treat me and also to treat me as a person, not just a medical emergency. I was cold, probably from shock and blood loss and felt often that I was going to hyperventilate. They kept me covered with warm blankets, several of them, as well as monitoring my bleeding and changing bedding and pads when needed so I didn't have to sit in a mess. I think I caused a bit of a stir there that night. There was lots of rushing around and adrenalin seemed to be flowing. I noticed that when one nurse was trying to put in IV's she was a bit shaky. I had to have some large IV's so that blood transfusion could be done as well as in prep for a possible surgery. I remember the blood transfusion and how much better I started to feel after that. I was given 2 units of blood. I am so appreciative of the donors who gave their blood to help me out. I  know I should donate more often, since I have the universal donor type, O-.  Something to definitely plan on in the future.

I remember wondering again if this was going to be it. When I was lightheaded, the sounds were funny and far away and I wondered if I was heading into that tunnel. Thankfully, once the blood was transfused all those symptoms left me and I actually felt ok.

We did a deja vu of the ambulance transport and airplane ride. This time the plane was the IHC Lifeflight. They were awesome. When we arrived at UVRMC I was rushed into the ER this time.......

Monday, April 01, 2013

Easter Seder

Our Easter day began with an old tradition that was revived due to the requests of our children. The Easter baskets were hidden around the house and had to be searched for. If you find someone else's you have to leave it alone and not share where it is so that they can have the fun of trying to find it. Baskets have been known to be found in dryers, in tents, on top of appliances, in closets and cupboards.....it's lots of fun to look for them. Contents were the traditional Peeps, jelly beans, Cadbury Mini eggs, plus other goodies.
I found it!! (Charles and Soren)

Dad helping James....

The boys comparing their basket contents....

"No. You may not eat it all before church."

Hannah looking her basket over...

Sadie looks satisfied with hers....

"What did you get?"
This year I wanted to do more to celebrate Easter. After all, without Easter there would be no reason to celebrate Christmas, which is when we really go all out to celebrate Christ. I wanted to make Easter more special than I have done in the past and I wanted to do something a little different than the usual ham and yummy potatoes for dinner. So when I read about an Easter Seder with a Passover/last week of Christ message, I decided that I would like to try it out. I wasn't sure my kids would eat anything or enjoy it, but I think we liked it well enough to do it again.
I found the idea here in an article on powerofmoms.com. 
We followed it almost exactly, I think. I liked that it was generally foods my kids would eat and not quite the traditional things like lamb or matzoh. We used chicken and pita. 
After Church we all, including Grandma, gathered in the addition and sat in a large circle on the floor and discussed each day in the last week of the Savior's life and ate a bite of a symbolic food or performed a symbolic action related to that day. It took a while and I think they were really quite hungry by the time we were done. At that point we let everyone eat what they wanted until they were full. 
 I hope that as we keep this tradition all of us will have a greater understanding of the events that occurred in the last week of Christ's life. I know that I personally haven't known all that happened or the sequence of all that Christ went through. I think this is a great way to impart some of that knowledge in a fun way and get us to think and ponder on this most significant event in the history of the world.

Our Easter Seder on the floor in the addition

Everyone was brave to try a taste of all the food...

Not your traditional Easter Dinner

Even Grandma joined us! She was brave too.



Nice gecko fingers, Sadie! It is an unwritten rule that children MUST
put olives on their fingers before consuming them.

some of the yummy and interesting food we ate!
My favorite was the haroset. yum!

'Did my feet get clean enough?'

More geckos!!

Charles

Off they go, one at a time!!