Happy New Year! I don’t know if it’s just me, but this past year seemed longer than normal. I guess now that I think about it, 2010 seemed like a long year, too. It probably has to do with all of the stuff we’ve been through since James was born. I’m sure 2012 will seem just as long.
We did manage to keep James out of the hospital last year, so let’s see if we can make it two years in a row. Actually, I should probably clarify that James was not in the hospital last year with an illness. He was in the hospital for surgery on his testicles in February, though. But he was not in the hospital with pneumonia like he was the prior two years.
Not much happened in the last week, except that James suction machine broke on Monday. It’s one of those portable ones, and for some reason it wasn’t turning on. It’s not good when your son needs frequent suctioning, and the suction machine doesn’t work. Fortunately, we had a backup machine in the closet. We got it out, and guess what? It didn’t work either! We tried swapping the power cords between the two machines to see if we could get either one of them to work and nothing. We thought we were being smart by having a backup machine. I guess we probably should have tested the backup every so often to make sure it worked. Stacy put a call into home health, and they brought us out a new suction machine. Unfortunately, the machine they brought us is not portable and needs be plugged in at all times in order to use it.
The home health company did not have any portable suction machines available, so I guess this suction machine is better than nothing. Since we wouldn’t be able to travel with James without a functioning portable suction machine, we looked for a replacement cord. How much could they be? $90! Yep, $90 for a power cord. Then we thought, ‘what if it’s not the power cord? What if it’s the battery?’ It’s $80 for a replacement battery. Oy! For $170 plus tax, we have a replacement power cord and battery on the way. I guess this is why we have James’ medical fund. Thank you to those of you that have contributed to his medical fund. If you want to help out, you can make a donation here.
I went to get James up Wednesday morning and found him like this:
I am not sure how he managed to wiggle himself to the edge of his bed, but we might need to think about somehow adding a rail the goes all the way across so that he doesn’t wind up off the bed one night.
Yesterday we had a pretty low-key New Years Eve. We didn’t do anything special. Just hung out at home, ordered some Lou Malnati’s pizza, and watched the Sprout channel. And we were all in bed before the clock struck midnight. It was kind of nice actually. Just being home with the people I love. There is no other place that I would rather be.
