We had a tough week: Pneumonia

Two weeks ago, everyone got sick that was home.

I called home and Holly said they were all sick: Holly, Mark, Luke, and John. Well, everyone but Meg and me got sick. They were all coughing and hacking, having trouble sleeping, blowing their noses. The usual, I figured. Just in the summer instead of the winter.

When I went home for the weekend after fishing, I did like I  usually do and pretend I never get sick. We ate at the same table, drank out of the same cups, lolled around in the bed sleeping in until 6:45 Am or so.

So I went out fishing again, expecting everyone to be better by the time I returned again on Thursday or so. Then Holly took Mark to the clinic on Monday because he did not seem to be getting better.

When I called from the fishing grounds on Monday night, Holly said she’d taken him to the clinic and the diagnosis was not good at all from Dr. Nobel Anderson: pneumonia!. But, that he’d probably be better by Wednesday if the antibiotics worked. So I didn’t think too much of it again, but I could here him coughing in the background. But no one wants pneumonia!

We got home at night and I went in to the room and listened to him. He sounded awful: very short breaths, very rapid, interrupted by extreme coughing and hacking, followed by more restless sleep. Also, he was on the floor instead of in his bunk (well, all three boys were on the floor). When I talked to Holly, she said he did not have the strength to get into his top bunk.

She said he seemed slightly better on Wednesday, so she hadn’t taken him to the clinic. We decided to give it another day. I tried to get him to drink some fluids as he lay in his perch on the couch all day, but he would only take a weak sip from time to time, and ate no food. Holly said he’d lost five pounds by Wednesday. He hadn’t been to the bathroom except a couple times a day, with almost no urine splashing off the walls. That was a joke. I meant no urine production.

Thursday night was a tough night. Long coughing spells, night terrors, and small rapid, shallow breaths. I decided to take him to the clinic first thing on Friday Morning. They checked his O2 saturation right away and put him on Oxygen, as he was down below 90%, and then took a good look at him and decided to start hydrating him with a saline drip that would allow a quick dose of new antibiotics as well. Adam was Mark’s nurse and did a great job, especially in the X-Ray room where Mark almost collapsed from fatigue just trying to stand up in front of the big red X.

Holly, John, and I took turns reading to him throughout the day and by 2 PM on Friday it was obvious he was doing better, but his 02 SAT was still too low. while on 2L/min O2, his O2 SAT was at 96-99%, but whenever we took him off the O2 and let him breathe just room air, his O2 SAT would tank, dropping down to 89-91% within a few minutes. The clinic said he had to go to Juneau. They just did not have the 24 hour care needed to make sure he was okay. Ron Horn came by to see if we needed anything before we left.

They said, that in kids they don’t worry too much about cardiac arrest, it’s respiratory arrest that gets them. Well, I didn’t have anything to argue about, there. I asked if we could take an O2 bottle and an O2 Saturation tester to take home, but they said no, it wasn’t worth the risk, plus it wasn’t policy. Mark had a fun time trying to keep his saturation level up above 96%. In the photo above, you can see his Saturation level is at 97%.

Plus there was a pediatrician in Juneau who was good with this type of thing. The clinic called up the medivac team and we went to Juneau. First we were in the ER for about four hours because they were backed up with patients. The nurse in the ER saw his excellent O2 Sat numbers and immediately took him off the O2. It took about 45 minutes for his O2 SAT to drop, but it did: right back down to 88 at one point.

At about that time, the pediatrician showed up and looked at things and decided to keep him for the night at 2 LPM O2, and changed his antibiotics to two other drugs, and move him upstairs where he’d be monitored. They put us in a negative pressure room that kept all the germs in. And boy did they keep the germs in. I got sicker than a dog in that room—I’ve never been that sick in my life: vomiting, diarrhea, back pain, and I won’t even go into what happened to my prostate! I was so sick I checked myself in the ER and signed up for some meds. Thankfully, I ran into Penny Fossman, and I was able to borrow a vehicle to run some errands (get some meds). Thanks Penny!

The worst moment, for me personally, was in Wal-Mart, when I had to sprint to the bathroom to avoid vomiting on the good folks at the pharmacy.

It was kind of weird to have everyone wearing masks around us. But what could we say? “We really did just brush our teeth!” No. I couldn’t really blame them. In the picture above you can se the ante room where both doors have to be closed before one can be opened again. On the other hand, he did have a cool bed with lots of controls for the middle and each end, plus a handy lit-up button that would reach the nurse without-fail via an intercom. I’m still not quite sure if we just happened to get this negative pressure room, or if it was necessary, but by the second day, the masks weren’t really in use any longer.

Right before the second night started, at around 7 PM, they took him off O2 and let him breathe room air for a while. His O2 SAT dropped from 99% to 95% and leveled off. cool. She said we’d be able to leave in the morning if that kept up through the night.

Holly, Meg, and Holly’s brother John, took the ferry down that night and stayed in this room at the Bartlett House across the street from Bartlett Hospital. In the morning I went there to rest, as I was still sick and my back started to ache whenever I wasn’t lying down. At around noon Mark was discharged from Bartlett and he and Holly went on a Costco run for an hour, then they came back and we all crashed.

We took the Ferry home the next morning. but I was still sick, nausea and weariness.

Thank God Mark is better now. He is not back to his old self yet. He still lies on the couch some of the time, but he’s taking his meds, drinking his fluids, and resting like he’s supposed to. I’m not sure what the next step is. Presumably, he’ll have a full recovery and be sprinting up and down the court dribbling at full speed again someday. Well, that’s the hope.

As soon as Mark’s aunt Dorothy Beeman (Margaret’s sister) heard that Mark was sick, she put together a care package for him with a new shirt, a new hoodie and two boxes of honey-nut cheerios! They were in the mail when we got home and greatly cheered him up! Bless Dorothy for her kind heart!

Thanks to Bonnie Shanrbroich for the bread & jam, Lucinda Boyce for the Geos (they were a great success), and to Serena Badgley for taking care of the younger two boys so Mark could rest. Thanks also to Bob and Margaret who ‘camped’ with the younger two boys for two nights while we were in Juneau.

Thanks to all for your thoughts and prayers—Matt, Holly, Mark, Luke, John Caleb, and Meg.

Plucker’s Last Trip with Greta

This week, Bob and Margaret sold the 34’ sailboat Greta to a dude in Juneau. He’s going to sail the boat and live aboard. The weather was moderate in the Northern Lynn Canal, but mild in the Southern Lynn Canal where these pictures were taken.

Left to right, we have John, Elina, Margaret, and Bob as they motored past the Windbreaker while we were fishing on July 15 south of Map Island. Actually, the crew was pretty brave to leave home, as the weather forecast was for 30 know winds and seas of six feet.

It was a sad trip in some ways: the end of an era, no more boat, the last trip, etc.

But in many ways, it was a relief and the end of an eleven month process. it was nice to have John along to steer through the gillnet fleet as well.

Meg is in her booster chair!

We didn’t want to do the whole high-chair thing again, as we’d already given our old high chair to someone and it was such a pain to clean anyhow, so we looked at other options.

We just got out the little booster seat that we ordered from Amazon.com a couple months ago which straps into any old chair. One strap goes around the back of the chair, another goes around the seat of the chair, costs around $20 on Amazon w/ free shipping.

The tray easily snaps on and off with the little brown tabs that secure over the red tabs on the chair.

One nice feature is the eating tray snaps off and goes in the dish washer and also has a translucent cover that snaps over the food. it’s easier to eat without her grabbing at my food all the time too from my lap. What we usually do is put some little spoons or toys in the tray, as the only food we’re introducing at this point is, for some reason, sweet potatoes. Next week it’s bananas or some such-a much more practical food if you ask me, as it does not need to be cooked and has some hope of being digested. The sweet potatoes came through with no change, same size, same color, well.. I did not check the taste.

Meg and the Dragon

I played around with the B&W setting on my Lumix at floor level with Meg and some toys. This was the best shot.

She holds her head up pretty well for 6 months and a day.

Jawhorse is cool.

I used my Jawhorse to hold my lawn mower up while I figured out where the gas smell was coming from: the air filter was stuffed with oil and gas.

I cleaned the air filter with a 5-gallon bucket and some Evergreen, then put the air filter in a Ziploc bag and added a tablespoon of oil and then cleaned off the air filter with a paper towel using a lot of squeezes. The mower doesn’t stink up the shed near as much now.

Memorial Day Campout

We camped out on the lawn last night. It was a perfect day for a campout.

 

 

It rained just a tiny bit in the night, as it did the night before.

Bible story time in the tent.

 

On Sunday, we put away the rest of the wood in the shed.

The wood is a mixed bag: some lumber, some split wood some rounds. But mostly it’s pretty dry. We’d load up the wheel barrel and then stack it in the shed.  Luke and J.C. played in the yard with Meg and kept her happy.

Mark was a real champ, sticking with me to the very end, even after a board with a nail on it dropped on his head for some serious pain—a bit of a goose egg, but no blood.

This morning on Memorial Day, we started off the day with summer school, six pages in each of the books. Mark is doing a 4th grade book, Luke is doing a 1st grade book, and John Caleb is doing a Preschool book.

The boys are wearing their patriotic shirts today.

Baptisms in the Lynn Canal

Mark and Naomi were baptized in the Lynn Canal today.

First they answered some questions from Pastor Ron in front of the Church.

And also the congregation answered some questions.

Then we went down to the river to pray… (actually the Lynn Canal). Holly led the singing and people actually sang as they went down to the water right near the large cruise ship dock at the main beach in town that has sand, where we usually have our baptisms.

Naomi was baptized first.

It didn’t seem too cold.

Then it was Mark’s turn.

The Green Family:

The Davis family with Bob and Margaret:

Afterwards, we had a wiener roast on the beach with chips and other fixings.

Super Zoom LUMIX DMC-ZS7

Lately, since we have the four kids, the only camera I’ve been travelling with has been my Lumix (Panasonic) DMC-ZS7 CLICK HERE!.

When we were on the Ferry to go visit Grandpa Scott and Great Grandma Scott, I took these two pictures to demonstrate the power of the digital superzoom that the camera has.

This first shot is zoomed out all the way to the 35mm equivalent of 25mm, which is a really wide angle for a single lens camera, and wider than most DSLR kit lenses.

Notice, you can barely see the barge and tug off in the distance in the middle of the frame beneath the white cloud. In this next shot, I zoomed in to the end of my 12x optical zoom which would be 300mm 35mm equivalent. Which is pretty impressive.

In the next shot, since it was so bright and  just to experiment, I zoomed in on the tug, all the way to the end of what LUMIX calls its intelli zoom, which maxes out at 16x/23.7x. I’m not sure why sometimes it zooms farther. It does this obviously by cropping in on an already miniscule 12mp sensor. Still, the results are impressive at web resolution.

I find that to be amazing… Cropping in on this picture gives the expected results…

This is all the more impressive when you can buy this model camera on Ebay for around $160, buy-it-now, like I did.

We had a dinner party!

We invited the Hansens, the Greens, and the Mackowiaks over for dinner, which is a lot of people. There were two birthdays to celebrate and quite a bit of lasagna to eat. The kids sat at the big table and played the telephone game, the adults (mostly) sat at the other table.

In our other house, there’s no way we could have hosted this group for dinner.

Holly worked hard all day making the food and it was a wonderful evening. I think Shannon brought the bread, and the other families each brought something, but I’m kind of fuzzy on the details.

The kids got along great even though they ranged from 18 on down to 7 or so at the kids table.

I have to admit that one of the things I like best about the new house is the dinner table. Its made from solid oak, with metal rack  pinion gears, it’s 42 inches wide and expands from 5’6” to 9’6” with four leaves that stow under the top of the table on two shelves.. And the best part about it is that we got it used on Craig’s list in Juneau and it was a really good deal.

Lots of snow

This year will be remembered mostly for it’s snow, I’m thinking.

Today, I showed Marky D. how to run the 1132 used snow blower that Ronald Panigeo purchased for me off Craig’s List in Anchorage.

John Caleb loves to follow me around when I’m snow blowing and he’s very faithful about donning his ear protection. Mark’s winter gear is actually not too bad a shedding the winter snow. And Luke does a great job with meg in the rocking chair.