The upside of pneumonia

In the end of February, Oskie was admitted in to the hospital for pneumonia. he tested positive for a virus. They kept telling me he had something that sounded like "Human metamucil virus". I didn't care, all i knew was that he was having a very hard time breathing and he looked so pale it was scary and he slept for 16 hours straight. We were in the hospital for 6 nights. So this all sounds awful, but here is the upside. The doctors put him on steroids to reduce inflammation in his lungs, and it stopped his seizures. Oskie has had between 50-150 seizures a day for the last two years. I kept telling all the nurses and doctors and they were non-plussed. I finally asked for a neurology consult and now we are trying this thing called steroid pulse therapy. Steroids are very bad for you, but if you can get your dose down low and only have to give them every few days, you can stay on them for 1-3 years without significant side effects. So Osk had been seizure free since march 1st. He is laughing and smiling like never before and I am so hopeful! Hooray for pneumonia!!!!

Looking for Gato

In my twenties, oh so long ago, I had two cats named Gato and Cujo. We were very close. I was really crazy about them. I suppose I was not very careful with them, though because they got lost a lot. Cujo especially. One time he was lost for a week until I found him closed up in the utility closet under my neighbors house. Another time... well, I'll make a long story short, but I found him after looking every day for three weeks. He was five miles away from where I lived in a small hole in the drywall of a chinese family's house on Clement street in San Francisco. When I finally got him home, he looked pissed that it had taken me so long. Another time, Gato disappeared from our house in Mill Valley. After a few days, a neighbor told me that some people down the street had moved away. So I stole mail out of their mailbox, found their new number in the phone book and tracked them down. They had taken Gato, thinking he was homeless( he apparently spent a lot of time at their house talking trash about me). They kept him in the garage, but he had run away into the hills in San Rafael, and they had no idea where he was. That weekend, My sister Jennifer, my brother-in-law Ben and I spent every daylight hour walking around that neighborhood shaking boxes of kibble, calling Gato and posting flyers. Late Sunday evening, I remember hanging our last flyer at Scotty's market. At least 5 miles away and down in a valley below where Gato had disappeared. We all went home defeated. Two days later, a lady called. She had seen that VERY LAST FLYER and Gato was in her yard. WE FOUND HIM!

So why am I telling this story? These experiences have had a profound effect on me. The life lesson I learned is that, well,the cat is out there. You just have to keep looking.

This is the way I feel about Oskar. I keep looking for the person who is going to know how to help him. I truly believe that the cat is out there. I don't know if there will ever be day when I will give up. I almost gave up on Cujo , and all I had to do was intimidate a crazy chinese woman and get into her crawlspace. Some nights I cry because I feel like I can hear the cat, and I don't know where to look any more . Some nights I can't sleep because I can hear the cat and I can't wait to get up the next day and start looking again.

I will find the cat!

KITTENS KITTENS KITTENS

It has been a very exciting week around here. Al and Maddie made a video last summer when we were up at a cabin in Northern Minnesota. Maddie found an old book in the library at the lodge and she had such funny things to say about the pictures, Al filmed it. We showed it to our friends and family this summer, and thought nothing more about it. Last week, Al put the link on his Facebook page and all of a sudden,  Maddie is all over the internet and TV. She's had over 3 million hits on yahoo and you tube, and last friday she was clip of the week on the Soup. She was also on the front page of Yahoo and on about a million websites, including Boing Boing and Funny or Die. We are just cracking up and can't believe it. Last nite she had in interview with a reporter from the Boston Metro and tonight they will be playing the video on TRL on MTV followed by another interview with a producer at the Bonnie Hunt show to see if they might be interested in having her on. Now my favorite offer so far is an off-off broadway director in New York who watched all of Max and Maddie's videos and wants to talk about collaborating on a script with them. I can't even get them to collaborate on cleaning the basement, so good luck with that. 

Carnage in Minnesota

I was overserved

Last month I got bombed. Not kind of drunk...full-on blacking out, throwing up on my husband ( who probably deserved it) partying like I haven't been out of the house in 15 years drunk. I spent the whole next day crawling between the toilet and my bed. The kids were incredibly sympathetic. Sympathy I did not deserve. They brought me breakfast in bed and wrote me get- well cards. Ironically, they treated me with much greater tenderness than they had a month before when I had surgery. The next day, I was still not feeling right but pulled myself together enough to get up and run some errands. One of the stores we had to go to was closed by the time we got there and in my second-day-hangover-shame-spiral, I said " oh man, I can't do anything right". Maddie, my optimistic child answered from the backseat " That's not true, mom! You sure know how to get drunk!" 

a video of Max's concert with bad audio

When they say you inhale your food, they don't usually mean it literally

It's been a hard week. Oskar has been really congested for the last six months and I have been to the allergist and the pediatrician and the pulmonologist and just haven't been able to figure out what is going on. On Wednesday he had a swallow study, which is a test where they have you drink barium and then x-ray as it goes down and it turns out that Oskar is aspirating fluid, which means that it is going into his lungs instead of his throat. They are having me thicken his fluids. It looks like he is drinking jello, but I am just devastated because I'm not sure what it all means. I feel like this is a new problem, and I'm scared. I feel like he is getting stronger in every other way, so I don't know why all of a sudden his swallowing reflex would deteriorate. I know life isn't always fair, and I try to believe that the Universe has a plan, but somedays it's sure hard to fathom what it is and why it has to be so hard.