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This will probably end up being a rather short post. Not much has happened these past couple of weeks other than James’ salivary gland removal surgery. If you read that post, you know what an experience that was. We are glad he is back to normal…well, close to being back to normal, anyway. I updated the surgery post yesterday with the following additional information:

We really thought that everything was pretty much back to normal earlier this week, but we still had one concern. There was a hard, warm bump on his left cheek that had been there since the surgery and was still there after all of that swelling had gone down. We thought we should give it a couple more days to see if it was just the last thing to go away.

When it was still there this morning, Stacy put a call in to the doctor to see if we should be concerned. Because it was a Saturday, we got his answering service and left a message. He didn’t call us back, so we decided to take James to the ER to have someone look at him.  The ER doc was able to get a hold of our ENT (who didn’t call us back) and he sincerely apologized…he didn’t get the message. From what it sounded like, it was just part of the healing process and to give James Motrin if we think he is uncomfortable.

Fingers crossed that the doctor is right, this bump is just part of the healing process, and that it goes away soon.

James is mostly back to normal. Not quite there yet, but he looks a hell of a lot better than he did! He is unable to tell us how he feels or if there was any discomfort with all of that swelling, so we hope it looked worse than it felt.

Let’s move on to other things that happened these past couple of weeks…

 

Bathroom Demo

When we first bought our house, we had one bathroom with a bathtub and one bathroom with a shower. The bathroom that had the bathtub is right across the hall from James’ bedroom and as he got bigger it became more of a challenge to get him in and out of the bathtub to bathe him. Last year we received an unbelievable donation of a renovated bathroom for James in which they replaced the bathtub with a roll-in shower. That left us with two showers and no bathtub for Stacy or me to soak in when we needed it. You may recall that I bought a makeshift bathtub when Stacy wanted to soak. It served its purpose, but definitely wasn’t a permanent solution.

 

Our temporary bathtub

 

The shower in our master bathroom was in such bad shape with missing grout and tiles falling off that we were left with a decision: keep the shower and retile it or have a bathtub put in. We opted to go with the second option. We found a plumber who was reasonably priced and was willing to get us a tub and fixtures at cost. He also told us that we could save quite a bit of money if we did the demolition ourselves and he didn’t have to pay someone else to do it. I was going to wait until this weekend to start tearing apart the shower, but Stacy didn’t want to wait. I was in the middle of working out Wednesday night and heard a bunch of banging. I stopped to see what the noise was, and this is what I found:

 

Starting demo on the shower

 

This is one of the many reasons that I love this girl. She’s not afraid to pick up a tool and get dirty. I think it was a bit of stress reliever for her after dealing with the aftermath of James’ surgery. I would prefer it if she was wearing shoes, though.

I am not sure how long this bathroom is going to take to be remodeled, but I’ll plan on posting pictures when it’s done.

 

Wills and Special Needs Trust

We hired an attorney to write up our wills and a special needs trust for James. This is what I have been reading through before bed this week. I can only make it through a couple of pages before I am out. They are very important documents, but damn they are boring!

 

Will and Trust paperwork

 

Hip Abduction Support Pillow

I think I mentioned in a previous post that James’ left hip is starting to pop out of its socket which probably causes him some discomfort. When he sleeps he has a tendency to cross his legs which is probably not good for his hips, so on the recommendation of another special needs mom, Stacy bought a ProCare Hip Abduction Foam Support Pillow to try. We’ll see if it works.

 

Hip Abduction Support Pillow

 

Haleigh’s Hope

And the last note is that James has started Haleigh’s Hope CBD oil to see if it helps with his seizures. We had previously tried Charlotte’s Web, but unfortunately it did not work for James. Fingers crossed we have better results with Haleigh’s Hope.