Surgery #3

Briggs is scheduled to have surgery this coming Tuesday, May 19th to implant his left ear. The procedure is 95% complete and all Dr. Lusk has to do is drill a little bit bigger hole in the mastoid and place the implant. They place facial nerve monitors and audiology also comes in to test the implant before they close up so it'll still be a 1 1/2 to 2 hour operation but that is MUCH better than 4 hours. I can't believe it's time again but I also want it over with more than anyone knows!! Please pray he stays healthy and this surgery is the last one!! Surgery is scheduled for 8:30 and we are to arrive at 7:00.

Update

Well Nick got Elli's stomach flu. We just can't win in our house. I feel like I'm about to loose my mind. Between everyone but me being sick non-stop and Briggs whole surgery fiasco and appointments every week... I need a BREAK!! I'm PRAYING and PRAYING and PRAYING that Briggs will stay healthy, his surgery this coming Tuesday is a success and life gets a little back to normal starting June 1st! Briggs post-op and first two activation appts. are scheduled for May 27th and 28th and Elli's 4 yr. and Briggs 1 yr. check-ups are May 29th and after that we shouldn't have to go back to Boys Town or doctors offices for a whole month! YAY! As great as they all are there, I need a BREAK from it all! He of course will have teaching visits every week but those don't count. I enjoy those and they come to our house. :-)

On a VERY great note... Briggs is doing AMAZING!!!!!!!!! He is 6 weeks post activation and he is responding to sound ALL THE TIME!! It's just SO great to watch him and when he's doing something he shouldn't and his back is turned and I say, "Briggs, no, no" he turns around, looks at me and gives me his "oh no, she caught me" grin and stops. I have a video that I'm not able to attach b/c I don't know how and it's a 1 minute video with Briggs responding to my different sounds 3 times!!! He is responding to the ling sounds and definitely showing intuition in his vocalizations. He's waving hi and bye when you ask him to, without showing him the action first. He's also making a "vroom" sound and does his motor boat sound when he picks up a car and drives it across the floor. All the professionals are amazed at how well he's doing and we are too! It's an amazing journey!!

Briggs has his pre-op today and we go to Omaha tomorrow for his appt. with Dr. Lusk. Please pray there is no fluid and he's feels confident going into surgery. He has a C.I. surgery scheduled every week until July and I don't want to wait that long! Surgery is scheduled for Tuesday.

Briggs 1st Birthday!!

Briggs birthday was Wednesday, and of course it was filled with chaos. We started out the morning with pictures. I took the kids by myself and got some GREAT pictures! Briggs 1 year and Elli's 4 year. I'll have to try to post them. Elli looks SO grown up in her pictures. Then we stopped by work for a brief visit. Briggs was waving to everyone and showing his smile. It was pretty cute. Elli was pretty whiny, which is not like her and kept complaining all morning of her stomach hurting really bad. So we bee-lined out fast and got home so I could quickly pack the diaper bag and Briggs lunch so we could head to Omaha for an afternoon of appointments. The kids both fell asleep minutes into the car ride and I even mentioned to Nick that it was relaxing to finally have a pause and quietness from my non-stop morning. Well, we were about 10 minutes from Boys Town and Elli wakes up and says her tummy hurts REALLY, REALLY bad and then she starts crying a little and pukes EVERYWHERE!! All over her clothes, in her hair, in her seat, on the seat belt. It smelled SO bad! So I crawl into the back seat to try and clean some of it up with Briggs wipes, although I can't use all of them because he had diarrhea from his antibiotic they put him on after surgery. LUCKILY we were close to the hospital. So we pull in and Elli gets out and we take her clothes off. I of course had no extra clothes for her b/c I never need a clothes change for her (I've learned my lesson). I did have some towels in my trunk and I ran in to the hospital to get it wet so we could finish cleaning up the mess that was all over my car. I literally was in there for 1 minute and when I walk back out it was pouring! So there is Nick standing outside of the car, holding Elli's Dora umbrella over Briggs and his head. It was funny and I wish I'd had my camera. Meanwhile, Elli is crying in the car because she's cold (no clothes on) and wants me to be with her. So I run in for Briggs post-op appt. while Nick and Elli sat in the car. I was in there for an hour. Dr. Lusk dug and dug in the ear and Briggs was screaming and pretty much choking on his saliva. Dr. Lusk wanted to be sure the fluid was draining so he kept putting drops in his ear and digging around. Then he had to remove the steri strips from surgery. Briggs was NOT a happy camper. So I cancel his audiology appt. so we can get Elli home. I get back to the car and Elli wants me to sit by her. So here I am wedged in between these two car seats smelling vomit and to top it off Briggs cried the ENTIRE (1 hour) way home. When I sit in the back seat next to him he wants me to get him out and he kept hitting his ear so I'm sure it hurt from all the poking and prodding. So we got home from the hospital and both kids took a long nap!! Elli woke up and wanted to try some soup, took two bites and threw up ALL over the kitchen floor. She threw up again a few hours later (this time in the toilet) and dry heaved one more time a little while later (she had nothing left in her tummy). Briggs woke up, he opened his presents and then he was in his swing in the backyard enjoying the nice weather, and ate a cupcake. So he did have an enjoyable birthday in the evening!! Yesterday he had a party at daycare and got alot of nice gifts from his daycare friends. Tomorrow is his birthday party with our families. It's a good thing he doesn't know any different at this age b/c if he did he might mark this birthday as one of his least favorites. :-) We go back to Dr. Lusk next Thursday to check the ear.

Happy 1st Birthday Briggs (tomorrow)!!!!

Briggs 1st birthday is tomorrow. I have the day off and in the morning I'm taking the kids to get their pictures taken (Elli will be 4 on May 26th). On our way home from that I'm going to bring the kids into work to show them off (everyone has been wanting to see them and of course I love showing them off)! Then we head to Omaha for an afternoon full of appointments (Happy Birthday Briggs!). I am excited to do more testing on his right ear and talk to the doctor about what all happened last week. I was so upset and in shock the day of his surgery and now everything has had time to soak in so I have a lot of questions I need to ask. Then I think we'll go out to dinner or take him to the park so he can swing. He loves to do that!

I wish so much that I would've kept a journal during his 1st year... everything we've been through, everything he's been through, all of my different emotions. I was very sad in the beginning, but I really blame alot of that on my post-partum hormones and the unknown (I don't do well with the unknown). Having absolutely no experience with hearing loss and having no clue which way to turn but wanting to do EVERYTHING we could for him and not knowing what to do was VERY, VERY hard for me. No one wants to hear there is something "wrong" with your baby. But once I realized there was nothing "wrong" with him and we just have to walk a path we've never walked before, I was MUCH better. Whose to say we're all "normal". Everyone has something "wrong" with them. My husband and I accepted his hearing loss pretty much right away. It is what it is and we can't make it go away so we have to deal with it. We realized very early that there is no reason for us to be sad about it and the last thing we ever want to do is make Briggs and Elli and everyone for that matter think there is something "wrong" with him and that he is different than normal hearing people.

Briggs is such a neat little guy and everyone who meets him, falls in love and wants to take him home. He is very laid back and has a great attention span and has been the most cooperative, patient baby throughout all of his appointments. He literally just sits there and watches as they all do their thing. The other day he got a sliver in his hand and I had to take a needle and tweezers and he just sat, very still and watched, and studied everything I was doing. He didn't budge or fuss once while I was digging around trying to get it out. I don't know if he's just used to it or if he has a high pain tolerance. I was just amazed and that is how he always is!

Briggs has touched many lives and will continue. Elli has been amazing throughout all of this and loves her brother SO much! We have an amazing support base and SO many people who love Briggs to pieces. We have truly been blessed with two AMAZING kiddos!!

His brithday party is this Saturday! I'll post about tomorrows appointments and his brithday with pictures on Thursday.

Surgery #2 Pictures

On our way to the hospital

In my jams!

Playing with my cars

I kept throwing them... I was in a good mood!

Cars and trucks are his new favorites.

I drank 11 ozs. of juice after surgery! Then I peed on my mommy and daddy.

Tuesday morning

This cupboard keeps me entertained for hours!

Surgery #2 Update and Elli Pre-School Visit

I will post pictures tomorrow. I forget my camera!
Surgery #2 was not a success. I was SO much more emotional before this surgery and realized that for me, not knowing what to expect, is better than, knowing what to expect. Briggs was great!! He was so smiley and went away with the anesthesiologist with no problem and he recovered SO much better than the first surgery (they started feeding him in the recovery room, which made a world of difference). He had his first smile only a few hours after surgery this time around. The hard part is when they take him away and I have no control. I feel like I'm going to throw up the entire time he is gone and I just want him back, in my arms, knowing he is safe.
Dr. Lusk was 95% done with the operation and was drilling the hole in the mastoid when he found fluid. Briggs has never had an ear infection. He had no symptoms of one either, no fever, no tugging at his ears, sleeping through the night, no problems eating. Dr. Lusk always looks in the ear before starting the operation and he saw no fluid (although he doesn't have the high tech equipment to see really, really deep in the O.R.). Dr. Lusk has done over 500 implants and this is only the 2nd time this has happened to him. He called a doctor in Florida to consult and the doctor in Florida agreed that it was not wise to place the implant. You never want to put an implant in when there is fluid present. If the fluid is in fact an infection then that infection would never go away with all the antibiotics, it would take over his implant and we'd eventually have to remove it, get rid of the infection and re-implant about 6 months later. Although I'm DREADING another surgery, this was the best for Briggs. Dr. Lusk did place a tube to drain that fluid and we have him on an ear drop and antibiotic.
So Briggs basically went through a 4 hour operation for nothing. Briggs did have a bad cold a few weeks ago but it had definitely subsided a good week before his operation.
So we go back Tuesday, May 19th for surgery #3 to place the left implant. The good news, Dr. Lusk has most of the operation completed so it won't the full 4 hours. It should be more like 2 hours. We see him next week for his post-op and then we'll go back the week before surgery to check the fluid.
Please pray the fluid goes away and Briggs can have the implant and we can be done with surgery once and for all!!
Dr. Lusk does surgery every Monday and he has a C.I. surgery scheduled every Monday until July!! That blew my mind.

Now on to Elli... Elli is turning 4 in May and she will be starting pre-school this fall. Elli is going to be a hearing peer model for the hearing impaired pre-school kids at Prescott Elementary. Prescott has a hearing impaired pre-school program which starts at age 3 and that is where Briggs will go when he is 3 and 4 and he should be with his normal hearing peers by age 5 and ready to start main stream kindergarten at the elematery school in our neighborhood. So yesterday we took Elli there, and Nick and I observed a class. The school is on the other side of town for us so we wanted to be sure it would be the right fit for Elli. We think it's the perfect scenerio b/c she will be in a class with all kids who have C.I.'s or hearing aids which will give her exposure to other kids with hearing impairment. It will give Nick and I a feel of what the program Briggs will be in when he turns 3. Elli did AWESOME!! She LOVED it and she fit right in and played with all the kids. It was so neat to see other kids with C.I.'s and watch them talk the ears off of the teachers. Literally the teacher had to keep telling them it was not their turn to talk. One little boy was being pretty onery and he purposely slide off his chair and was looking at the floor and the teacher said, Isaac, you need to sit in your chair and pay attention. He said, I know I'm trying. Other than seeing the C.I.'s and hearing aids, you would have no idea any of these kids had hearing impairment! I was very amazed at how organized the class and the kids were and Elli couldn't wait to go back. We're so fortunate to have a program like this available to us!

We go back next Wednesday for Briggs post-op and they'll do more sound booth testing on his implanted ear. It's also his 1st birthday next Wednesday!! I cannot believe he is almost 1!!

Surgery #2

Surgery #2 (left ear implant) is scheduled for this Monday, April 27th. We have his pre-op with his pediatrician today and hopefully she gives him the okay. He's been battling a cold and it's gone but he has this random, lingering cough. It should be fine but that is the only concern at this time. I just want this surgery over with!! Then surgery will be completely behind us and Briggs will be bilateral and we won't have this surgery stress anymore!! We would greatly appreciate the prayers during this time!! Pray the surgeon will have steady hands and Briggs will stay healthy. Pray surgery will go as perfect as the 1st one!! Pray he'll be protected and pray he'll have a very fast recovery! We've been so busy with his first activation that this surgery has sort-of slipped my mind. But now we're here and we have to face it. Like I said, I just want it over with!!! Thank you SO much for your prayers!