Month: May 2008

water deprivation test

jade, , , , 719 wordsLeave a comment

In three weeks, Abigail will be having a water deprivation test. There is a really good layperson’s explanation of it on this website. Basically Abigail isn’t allowed to drink anything and they take blood samples every hour and test any/all urine that she outputs too.

This is basically the definitive test for diabetes insipidus. If/when certain things in the blood and the urine reach certain levels in a certain amount of time, it indicates that the kidneys are not handling things properly and letting too much water leave the body (urine) even though none is entering. At that point they give you a medicine, and whether or not you respond to that tells them which variety of DI that you have – there’s neurogenic, which is a problem with the pituitary gland not producing the hormone; and nephrogenic, which is a problem with the kidney not responding to the hormone. So if the medicine makes you feel better you have neurogenic, if not, it’s nephrogenic. From what I have learned, sometimes more tests will be done if you have neurogenic diabetes insipidus, because they want to figure out WHY your pituitary gland isn’t working right. There are some pretty not-nice sounding possibilities there. And there is also the possibility that if it isn’t producing that hormone, it could be slouching in other departments too.

By all accounts, the water deprivation test is, putting it mildly.. not pleasant. Assuming that the person doing the test DOES have DI, then they’re basically being put on the fast track towards dehydration. Add to that the already extreme thirst you feel and it’s reportedly quite agonising. I’m still unable to decide if it will be worse for Abigail or worse for me. She’ll have all the discomfort, of course, but I will have to watch her doing thing and continue to deny her what her body’s instincts are telling her she needs (drinks) while also probably holding/restraining her for them to take the blood tests all the time as well as trying to convince little Miss OCD that she can use their toilet or potty or whatever it is going to be that allows her urine to be collected, measured and tested. So, quick poll: who do you think it will be worse for?

I am dreading the test but looking forward to it being over and hopefully finally having the answers and being able to move towards getting her a treatment plan that makes her feel better without having to drink so much. (That sounds like she’s an alcoholic, doesn’t it?) I plan to bring lots of things to do while we are in the hospital, make some fresh playdough for her maybe, some books to read, games maybe. We probably won’t even be able to go to the Starlight Room since she needs to be monitored during the test, which sucks and it was really cool there.

There’s a shirt I saw on etsy that I might be tempted to get her if she definitely does have DI. Even though it’s designed as just a funny baby/toddler shirt, I think the meaning is much more humourous when applied to a DI sufferer (insipid diabetic?): iPee. Thinking funny things like that and reading this thread about “you know you have DI when…” helps me to not panic too much about getting through the test. I’d never even heard of diabetes insipidus six months ago but there are other real people who have it and who are laughing about it too.

You go into a public restroom, begin to pee. Someone in the next stall over is peeing and they finish. You continue to pee. Another person goes into the the next stall and pees. You continue to pee. The other person finishes. You stop after three of these.

I took Abigail to the toilet in the shops the other day. They have these parent/child cubicles with a full size toilet and a half-size one, so your kid doesn’t have to wait alone or go in alone. I got her on the toilet and undid myself and peed and she was still going by the time I was doing my pants back up.

You’d be surprised at how much pee can come out of such a tiny girl.

water deprivation test

big and little

jade, , , , 167 wordsLeave a comment

My mum’s laundry is down a few steps, about a metre lower than the rest of the house. Because of this we have bought over a baby gate to put in the doorway to make sure that Kristian doesn’t try to go down and fall. Also it means we can put the cat’s food and water bowls there to make sure he doesn’t mess with them.

I went to put the gate on just now since we just arrived, and noticed some markings in the side of the door frame – measurements of height from Stephanie and Abigail on various dates. So we decided to do some more, with Abby and Kristian. (Stephanie is at school.)

Kristian’s mark for today, 21st May, when he is 1 year, 4 months and 4 days old is about a millimetre higher than Abigail’s mark from 30th April last year.. when she was 2 years and 6 days old.

It’s funny how different they are when they both come from the same lucky dip of genes.

big and little

things of interest

jade, , , , , , , 582 words2 Comments

I’m not into news in general, because most of it is a bit boring. I do like to read the articles in the “Oddly Enough” category, though, because they are often good for a laugh or a WTF? There seem to be a lot of those this week.

I find the story about the Icelandic Phallological Museum to be quite amusing. The guy has a collection of 261 penises from 90 different species. He apparently doesn’t have a human penis yet, but has had several men offer to donate theirs once they no longer require it.

Then there’s this article about a Canadian woman was having some rather rough and unusual sexual fun with her partner and ended up on three years probation. He asked her to carve a love heart into his chest. She slipped and punctured his actual heart. Now I certainly can’t imagine wanting to do that or have it done to me but the woman was charged with assault and the article implies her sentence was one of the “light” ones that you get when you plead guilty instead of trying to get off. Given that the guy had ASKED her to do it and the injury part was an accident, isn’t assault a little bit harsh? It was a consensual activity between two adults that had an unfortunate result. So can anyone who injures themselves accidentally during sex now charge their partner with assault? Sorry, but that just seems ludicrous. Anyone who engages in vigorous (and sometimes rough) physical activities should expect that occasionally you’ll get a bump or scratch you weren’t expecting. It’s a part of the game. If you don’t like it, don’t play.

Further to that topic, here’s a more lighthearted article about sexual related injuries :) Though this part did give me pause for thought:

“Six patients presented with a precipitous decrease in vision in one eye with no apparent predisposing factors. After obtaining a careful history, each patient revealed that he or she had been engaging in rigorous sexual activity…”
In these cases, the patients popped blood vessels in their eyes, perhaps from screaming during orgasm.

But then you get stories like the one about a young couple who were killed in India. And this is the kind that just makes me wonder why? Their crime? Being in love, and wanting to spend their lives together, basically. They had loved each other since school age, yet she’d still been forced into an arranged marriage with another man. To make their “crime” worse, it’s a taboo to marry someone from the same village as you, and the guy was from a lower caste than the girl. I think what is most difficult for me to understand is that her own parents don’t see anything wrong with the way she was killed, and her father even confessed to having a part in it and is PROUD that he did it. How could you do that to your child? How can that family be so different to me? My most sincere hope for my children is that they grow up and find someone that they love and who loves them. Yet that guy sees that as so terrible that it is worth taking his own child’s life. I really hope that the couple and their unborn child (she was 22 weeks pregnant when she was murdered) are together now in another world where no one challenges their right to love.

I wish that this world could be that way.

things of interest

helping bring books to kids

jade, , , , , , 376 words4 Comments

A short while ago, there was a note in Stephanie’s school newsletter about the Scholastic Bookclub. The woman who had been organising and co-ordinating it for the school had decided she didn’t want to do it anymore since her daughter is in grade 6 and will soon be moving on from that school. So they needed someone new.

In a moment of community minded generosity, not to mention extreme bravery, I rang up and enquired about it. Turns out that I was the only fool to do so. I mean that only jokingly, of course.. the fool part. Not the part about me being the only one, because I was.

My motivations here are not entirely non-selfish. Stephanie always wants me to come to excursions or sports days or easter parades (and those are truly the worst). I cannot sit through more years of Little Peter fucking Rabbit bla bla bla sang terribly out of tune and out of time. And having an internal brain paradox as part of me wants to yell at them and remind them it’s not “easter”, it’s completely the wrong time of year, and besides that, it’s another stolen pagan festival. But I simultaneously feel glad that I don’t have the balls for such a stunt, because Stephanie would surely die of embarrassment and hate me forever.

Anyway. I figure that by performing this worthy service to the school, I more than make up for all of those type of events that usually involve other parents and watching children do stuff that I just don’t care about. And also, there’s the books thing. I think that reading is important and I remember having the Bookclub forms from when I was in school and how much everyone loved getting them and getting books. So to be able to fill my quota of school-related duty by helping with something that’s valuable to children is a bonus too. That I can do most of the work at home and that it involves minimal contact with other people: fan-fricking-tastic.

Another random perk I have discovered? They send you thousands (ok, not thousands. but lots) of return envelopes that you don’t need. These can be re-purposed by certain little persons who are right into mail and envelopes.

helping bring books to kids

hiccup

jade, , , , , 536 words3 Comments

Somehow I managed to frack up my wordpress when I tried posting the other day. It’s taken me this long to get it back again, between it not wanting to be fixed and me not having time to make it be fixed anyway. But it is fixed, and upgraded even. Though I am not sure if I like this new look or not.

I had a query about the last topic I mentioned in the previous entry, so I suppose that is a good place to start from today. c asked: is the last problem you mentioned that neil isn’t really into family & the way you & your mum spend so much time together? i really hate that. someone who’s so not into family really bugs me. i dealt with that for years.

Yeah.

I’m not doing anything to provoke him, I’m not doing anything different than I ever have been. And the person who is most affected by my presence seems to like it, so I try to keep that in mind. Part of what annoys me is that it’s not just me, it’s the children too. And most of the time they don’t know, or don’t notice or aren’t in the wrong place at the wrong time so it’s ok. But a few weeks ago he was rude to Stephanie when she was just asking him a simple question, and she asked several times thinking that he hadn’t heard her the first time(s), yet the rest of us all knew that he darn well did hear her and was being spiteful and ignoring her. That is what really pisses me off. She didn’t do anything wrong. She came with me. If you have a problem then be horrible to me but not to her. When he does that it really makes me want to shake him to see if maybe something might change in there.

So even though I know that it’s not my/our fault, per se, I still feel angry and bad that he takes out his problem with me and my attachments on her, by being grumpy and jealous and whatever else. Even though I know it’s all to do with his perception and that I haven’t done anything wrong, I still don’t like being felt that way about.

Being somewhat Pollyanna, though, I can find a small bit of good.. I can joke to myself that I must have gotten better at whatever it is that bothers people. With him, all that is required is my presence, or my existence even. Back in the day, my general existence wasn’t enough to set off a war, I had to actually display some kind of personality “flaw” to send a person to sulk into her alcohol. When that happened then, I really did feel like there was something fundamentally wrong with me and I was a terrible failure as a person. That I can now find an ironic humour in having “improved” at pissing people off is a huge indicator of how far I have come and how much my sense of self-worth has grown when I am able to hold onto the knowledge that it isn’t me, it’s them.

hiccup