(our friends Nicole and Duncan)
The video is obviously just a short taste of the fire works, which went for about half an hour. The first bit is with me filming, the second with Tim. At about 40 seconds you can hear Jaxon and I going “Oh Wow” and then he starts yelling at the fire works…go go go go!!
All of these photo’s were taken with no flash.
Jaxon had his first birthday ever. But he didn’t eat a single bite of my cake.
Dude and Jaxon are the best of friends…for now.
Last Easter Jaxon didn’t get chocolate. This year he got to appreciate it even more.
Jaxon and I went to Darwin to visit his Grandma and Great Grandma.
Jaxon and his Grandma Robyn.
We trialed a great dane from great dane rescue. He was great, all for the tail whipping Jaxon’s face all the time. Hank went to a better home.
Jaxon’s Grandpa Ted and Grandma Anne came to visit twice!
They left their fat chihuahua Spok with us for two months while they travelled.
He made himself right at home.
Jaxon learnt the fine art of scaring the shit out of Mum and Dad.
This time honoured craft, get’s practiced a LOT.
We moved from our old house in to a much nicer house. And lost Oscar.
The new house is much cooler. Spider’s aside.
Jaxon’s great uncle Joe and Aunt Widdy came to visit. They’re expecting their first baby in 2009!
Dad grew a moe.
Jaxon finally had his MRI and CT Scans. He was a little trooper!
We found out Jaxon has 12 bones in his neck. Nothing can be done and despite the fact that people might think this was a bad thing, we feel like it is the best news ever. We are extremely happy with these results.
Grandma Robyn came to stay with us through this time. She got Daddy to come to the pool with us and now he loves it!
Tim left the house on this bike one day.
And returned on this one. I am yet to blog about this, but it’s coming I promise!
Nanny and Poppy “dropped in” on us for Christmas. We had ahh, Christmas in December. It was lovely.
Then we had the real deal.
Jaxon and Dude had their first major run in (under his eye). Now, they’re not so close any more.
And Jaxon got his first taste of fire works!
So I’ve nearly been a blogger now for a full year. When I first started I was blogging about Jaxon’s first birthday cake and the trouble it caused me. Now, not too long from now, I’ll be talking about his second birthday…and where I’ll buy his birthday cake from.
While some years in my life have flown by and I sit and wonder where the time went, this year has been different. This year has taken so long to get through. But now that it’s over, we look forward to next year. Which I am sure will fly by now that we have that enormous weight of not knowing what was going to happen in terms of Jaxon’s neck and arm off our shoulder’s.
This time next year Jaxon will be talking more. I can’t even imagine what that will be like. Just the other day he and I were driving in the car and all he said was “uuuum” and I looked back because he sounded like a competely different child. He sounded all grown up. Next year, it will all have happened for him. Not only will he sound grown up, but he’ll be grown up. I’m not even sure that I am ready for that to happen yet.
Tonight Tim, Jaxon and I are going to see the New Years Eve fire works down by the river. We’re not sure Jaxon is ready but we’ll try. The last time Tim and I went we were just 24 days away from having Jaxon. As we sat there alone watching the display, just Tim and I, I cried. I cried because I was scared. I cried because I knew that this was it. Two thousand and Six would be the last year that Tim and I would be just that. Tim and I. I couldn’t imagine what life was going to be as a “Tim, Jaxon and I” and it scared the hell out of me. I didn’t know if I was ready to be a mother and it was too late. I couldn’t change it.
I wont lie. Being a mother has been hard. I know that some woman adjust to being a mother in the first few weeks of their child’s life but things weren’t like that for a long time with me. I feel guilty about it, but I didn’t love Jaxon for a very long time. I would have done anything to protect him and keep him safe and provide for him, and he still made me smile. But those things do not equal love.
So I am proud to say that the year of 2008 has brought something very special to my life. I finally, and without a single doubt in my mind, love my son. With all of my heart. Not only would I do anything to keep him safe from harm and not only do I want to provide for him the best life possible, but I love him. So much that it hurts to think about him not being around. And I wouldn’t change the “Tim, Jaxon and I” bit for the world.
Perhaps this next year, 2009, will be the year that Tim and I begin to think about adding another Jaxon like creature to our family. Perhaps.
So from my family to yours, I wish you all the best for the year 2009.
On Saturday morning Tim, Jaxon and I went to a local forrest to get some happy snaps with the new Nikon. We didn’t plan it all that well and about an hour in Jaxon decided that he was hungry for more than the snacks that I had packed him so we headed home with plans to go to a different “rain forresty” kind of place the next day.
But when we woke up on Sunday morning it was raining. I can’t tell you how disappointed I was that we couldn’t go on our bush walk. It wasn’t the rain stopping us, but the new camera in the rain stopping us. We don’t have wet gear. We don’t even own raincoats because it rains here over summer so you dry as quick as you get wet.
So this morning when I couldn’t sleep at 4 am I had planned on getting Jaxon up and going for a drive to get some sun rise shots somewhere. But because it had rained the day before and it’s still hot as hell here, the fog was so thick you could barely see three feet in front of you.
I thought about it for an hour or two. On some of our morning drives to Brisbane the fog lifting through the hill’s with the sunrise has been one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. But it really didn’t look like we were going to get a sunrise with the fog, because it was overcast. So we stayed home today.
But come this afternoon I wanted to get out and take photo’s. Of anything. It just so happened a storm was rolling in and we have some of the most awesome storm’s on the planet here.
That could be an exaggeration, but they’re still worth a look in.
I went for a drive out to the towns look-out. Which was closed.
That’s probably a good thing since it’s a metal tower and there was lightening about. I wasn’t alone there. Some other guy was there with his own camera, standing on top of his car doing exactly what I was trying to do. Get storm shots.
It was hot and muggy and I was sweating my ass off. Standing there taking photo’s, I heard the storm rumble in up the street.It was like a steam train thundering by.
One second I was hot and bothered and the next the wind that hit me was freezing cold and the wind was knocking me over. I jumped back in the car and started home, while the other guy stayed right where he was for the mother load of photo’s.
Jaxon has had a big boy bed in his bedroom for about a month now. He hasn’t slept in it yet. It’s simply there for us to read books on and do puzzles on.
Today I decided that he could have his afternoon nap in his big boy bed. I laid him down and he cuddled his beloved duck.
But not 30 seconds after I shut his door there came a faint little knock followed by his cute little “who is it?” so I knew he had got out of his bed.
I decided that unless he was going to kick up a stink in there that I would leave him. I didn’t really care if he spent an hour playing and eventually went to sleep, as long as he got some sleep.
An hour later, after much banging about with toys he hasn’t touched since he was ten months old, Jaxon’s room went silent.
I assumed he’d climbed back up on his bed and gone to sleep. I was right about one bit. He had gone to sleep. But climb up on his comfortable bed to do it? Nope.
When Jaxon woke half an hour later he was incredibly mad at us. And I don’t blame him one bit. He’d slept on the floor next to the door. He had red carpet marks ingrained up one side of his body, including his face!
Next time (I don’t know when that should be) I’ll leave him a pillow and a blanket on the floor…just in case.
This was using no flash and only the lights from the tree.We were trying to do something like this here but ti didn’t really work because Jaxon’s not the sit and pose kind of toddler. Maybe next year.
This is the first video I’ve taken with the d90. (I tell big lies, it’s the 3rd, but the other’s didn’t work and weren’t as cool as this one) This is completely unedited.
In all honesty though, I’ve been feeling a little guilty this year that I haven’t managed to get a single Christmas card out. Not a single one.
I bought them with good intention’s way back in October. You should see them, oh wait…that’s what this post is all about. Well, trust me, they’re really cute. With puppy’s wearing Santa hats. Maybe next year.
It’s not that I haven’t been thinking about you. I really have. It is that time of year after all. But we’ve been really busy and Christmas just kept sneaking up on me. Now it’s the 23rd of December and it’s way too late so I just wont bother.
I hope everyone has a lovely Christmas!
For the past 4 months now I’ve wanted a new camera. Not just any old camera, but a NIKON D90.
That’s a $2000 camera. It’s a Digital SLR camera, and despite the fact that it just broke our bank, it’s a low end DSLR camera.
I’ve sold countless household goods to get the money to get my camera for Christmas. We’ve sold the old TV and the old pool. We’ve sold the bassinet and the old water bed and all sorts of small things that I couldn’t even begin to list them for you.
Tim was beginning to wonder if he didn’t have a “for sale” sign on his back and if he wouldn’t be safer if he hand cuffed himself to the bed so I couldn’t hand him over to his new owner’s while he slept.
Today we went Christmas shopping and got my camera (and a new couch!).There is a HUGE problem with it though. The battery, takes three hours to charge.
So the camera is like this brick sitting on my computer desk that I can look at but can’t really use. I can’t play with it until the battery is ready.
It’s sitting here looking at me, teasing me. Taunting me. I’ve found myself cleaning obsessively. I was so determined not to think about it sitting there on the desk that I nearly scrubbed a hole through the kitchen benches. I’ve lost my husband. He went for a ride to get away from the madness. This blog entry has only taken up five minutes and 22 seconds of my time. I was hoping for more.
Aside from waiting for Jaxon to be born, and of course his MRI and CT date…this might be the longest wait I’ve had to endure for a very long time!
I’ve never been big on video games so when Jaxon was just a few weeks old his Nanny and Poppy bought our household (cough cough, Tim) one of those XBOX things. They probably didn’t know it at the time, but I was really angry about it!
So this visit when they bought us a Wii thingee and a Wii Fit I was a little hesitant about it. I’d heard from all over that it’s heaps of fun. But maybe, just maybe, I thought those people were “geeks” and that me being a non video game playing kind of person would probably still think it sucked.
The main reason I really don’t like video games is that they’re not interactive. While one person plays the other watches and while one has fun the other sits and waits for their turn. Silently wishing that the other player would roll over and die so they didn’t have to share.
But that was 24 hours ago. Right this minute I say, RUN…don’t walk, to the nearest store and get yourself a Wii!!!
OMG the laughter! The fun! The heart rate! At one point I think Tim might have fainted. Right between when he caught his third hula hoop and got hit in the head by a flying shoe. It seriously ranks up there with one of the funniest things I have ever seen. And so much fun!
And as Jaxon is about to demonstrate, it’s interactive. Because not only do I want to beat Tim’s ass to a pulp in ten pin bowling, but I also want to see HIM making a fool out of himself too.
So anyone who doesn’t have one and has never intended to have video games in their home. Take it from someone whose last experience with video games was Atari’s Space Invader’s back in 1983…Wii is the bomb!
Go get one, you wont regret the purchase for a second!
As the days go by I will have more to say about this Wii thing and the In-Law visit. Stay Tuned!!
You guys are lucky! Two blog entries in one day. Well it’s some ridiculous time of the day, like 12.49am on Saturday morning so really it’s not. I’m still up because my in-laws are slaving me away in the kitchen for our early Christmas dinner. I kid you not!
No seriously, I was blog surfing. You know, just having a quick look here and there. You just never know where you’ll end up. But I happened to end up here and here it’s hilarious so you must go and have a look! Gotta love Johnny Depp!!
Then I must go to bed and try to get comfortable with an incredibly painful lower back (one which makes it almost impossible to walk, sit, stand or lay down for longer than five minutes)
Last week Tim managed to pop FOUR ribs out in his back at work. I took full advantage of the cripple in my home. I helped him to get in and out of cars (watch your finger’s), I walked as slow as he needed when we went out (need a wheel chair?) Here’s your dinner (would you like me to cut it up for you?) Are you ok? (there there, there there) and so on. You get the picture. I was milkin it!
He took it all on the chin, telling me to milk it while I could because he would never do that to me. This of course is a lie. If I could just find my rolodex of all such events I’d put them here. But I can’t so you’ll just have to trust me on this one. He’s just as capable of dishing it out when the shoe is on the other foot.
But Karma’s a bitch isn’t it? Because while he was unable to walk and pick things up, I picked up his slack. I did a little more than I should have and when my lower back started to nag at me I just kept on going. Because Tim being hurt for longer means Tim out of work for longer (not that he took ANY time of, stubborn bastard) but you get my point? We can’t afford for him to be off work.
Well guess what? The house hold suffers pretty badly when I’m out of action too. You see where I am going with this don’t you??
Tim has had to do three poo nappies in 24 hours. THREE!
I told you.
The house is falling apart!
In all honesty, he’s been great. Despite the crap I put on him for the last week. He has rubbed deep heat in, he has helped around the house and he has done a lot of the Jaxon stuff that I would normally be doing myself. Now to get him in the kitchen peeling tato’s and roasting roasts!?
Here’s a photo we got tonight out for dinner.
Isn’t he incredibly cute??? I made him you know!?
We took Jaxon to see the reindeer last week while Santa had a coffee.
The only way we could convince him to go and pat them was to tell him they were “just big puppy dogs”
Now you have to wait and see how we got Jaxon to sit on Santa’s lap!
I don’t think I’ve ever put it here on the blog. But Tim’s parents have this annoying habit of just appearing on our door step unannounced.
I know this might not seem so annoying or unusual until you find out that Tim’s parent’s live either a 25 hour drive from us, or a 4 hour flight/three hour drive from us.
It’s not like they’re sitting at the dinner table after dinner and one of them says “hey, let’s go and see the kids tonight”
They literally have to plan these visits out. Poppy needs to get time off of work, Nanny needs to book flights and hire cars. All the while, keeping this HUGE secret from us.
The first time they did it was quite funny. I was working late and Tim and I had not had a smoke for four days. It was coming on a new record for us and I was feeling great about it. But when I walked through the door I could smell smoke and I went off at Tim because he’d given in.
Only to have Poppy and Nanny (who is a smoker) walk out of our bedroom.
Last year they just knocked on our back door. My first words? “Oh fuck me”
This time, last night, they knocked on the front door and I answered it, half naked.
Three weeks ago, while Tim and I returned from Brisbane after Jaxon’s appointment, I casually told Tim that my “in-law-radar” had spiked, and that he should ask them when they’re coming.
It’s not like they’ll tell us they’re coming. I just get him to ask in hope that they’ll slip up and make a mistake.
Poppy tell’s me that is the third time I’ve done it. The third time I’ve said to Tim “they’re on their way” and it’s been on the money.
I told him it’s a feeling I get. That the hair on the back of my neck starts dancing. Sometimes it’s just the weather reminds me of Melbourne and I think “they’re bringing the weather with them”
Sometimes, like this time, it was because I was missing them and needed that little bit of “home” just before a lonely Christmas.
I’m glad they’re here. Even though my first instinct was to tell them to buggar off and come back when the house was clean!
This is a project I have been working on for days. We’ve had the web cam operating for three days now trying to get just 24 hours. But the first night we had it on, the program that sequences the photo’s shut down and didn’t make my movie for me. The second morning the power went out and we didn’t get the sunrise. Then half way through day two Jaxon clicked my mouse and turned the web cam off. It’s taken a lot of work to get all of this put together.
I’ve cut a lot out. Time’s when we’re in the loungeroom or the back yard or the back of the house have been cut out because nothing is happening. The sunrise went for a lot longer and there was a bigger gap between when Tim left for work and I get up. This would have been about 20 minutes worth if I hadn’t.
I hope you enjoy it. This is approximately 20,000 photo’s. The web cam took a shot every three seconds.
Here are some things you might want to look out for.
Other things you didn’t get to see.
We just got sent the disc with all of Jaxon’s MRI and CT scan’s on them. I’ve spent hours and hours sorting through them (401 images) so that they’re in order so you had better watch it and you had better like it!!
A lot of people are saying that they don’t really know what they’re looking at. The reality is that Tim and I don’t really know what we’re looking at but we do know what we’re meant to be looking at. I’ll try to explain it with still shots of what you’re looking at.
These one’s here are the MRI. They have taken a body shot of Jaxon every 2mm’s from his back right to his front. Through these one’s you get to see his lungs, his brain, his muscles and most of his organs.
Through these one’s they have taken a body slice shot from his head right down to his waist every 2mm. You get to see through his head and then in to his neck. The circle on the bottom is through the center of his spine. There are two categories here, the other has the white line along the bottom. On those one’s I assume that they’re looking at the nerves running through the spine to see where and how Jaxon’s arm is damaged and if the neck is in danger of pinching nerves or paralyzing him. You see as they move down through his chest where you see his lungs which are black with white veins running through them. Another thing that was noted the other day was that his right lung is much smaller than his left, you can clearly see his lungs in these. You see the kidney’s and if you’re clued in on them you see his intestines.
These one’s here is Jaxon being built from his left side to his right side. You see it starts at his arm where you only get to see his shoulder. Then it moves through his arm and in to his chest. In the shot above you can see his lungs and the start of the bone structure of his spine.
These one’s are the CT scan. They show bones and cartilage. I think everyone gets these. These show why Jaxon’s neck is on an angle and also why nothing can really be done about it. When it comes down to it these is just one mass of bone that it is one way or another connected to another.
This one here shows clearly how his right side is underdeveloped. I think it’s his shoulder bone, that you can see is much smaller and shorter on one said than it is on the other.
There are also two lot’s of photo’s where a white halo is moving away or in to the photo. If you look closely, you’ll see that it’s the oxygen tube down his throat having it’s photo taken. Or, Jaxon was blowing bubbles.
I’ve been looking for a swim vest that is suitable for Jaxon. The problem is there is only one supplier that really has what we need (as recommended by the physio as being best for his arm development)
So the vest’s that I’ve been looking at come in small, medium and large. Small caters for 15-25 kilo’s. Medium also happens to cater for 15-25 kilo’s. Then large caters for 25 to 50 kilo’s.
At 22 months of age, Jaxon weighs 8.6 kilo’s (18.5′ish pound)
He’s going to be 20 years old and a capable swimmer before he can fit in to any of those!!!
Tim: This toy is for ages three years and under, it’s inappropriate for Jaxon.
Me: Darling, you and I are probably inappropriate for ages three and under. Whats your point?
Tim: Jaxon! Look what Mummy and Daddy got you!
I just remembered that I hadn’t put Jaxon’s MRI and Cat Scan results here yet. I don’t know if I can go through and write it all again, since I told the girls on the boards the day we found out. So I’m just going to copy and paste it all here with a couple of modifications.
1) They are NOT going to do anything and they don’t think they will ever be able to do anything. No surgery.
2) That means that Jaxon will always have his head on an angle like that.
3) The arm is not nerve damage from pinched nerves in the neck. It IS a brachial plexus as they first said. It happened during the c-section and is quite common with breech births. He may never have full movement in that arm but the good thing is he wont know any different.
4) He doesn’t HAVE a deltoid muscle. Or he does, but it’s almost dead and gone due to non use. That’s the one that runs over your shoulder and down the back of his right arm.
5) All of the bones in his right shoulder are under developed. We could see huge gaps on that side because they’re basically shrunk. I actually thought he was missing his clavicle it is that small, it is a LOT smaller than his left one. If we don’t keep up with encouraging him to use that arm the other muscles will shrink or die too. But the deltoid is a bit of a lost cause.
He may never have full function in his arm either. He can’t lift it above his head and he can’t hold his hand out to take something (palm facing up) but we know now so we can work around it to help it. Also thinking now that we know it’s a brachial plexus I will call the chiro and see what he thinks and if he could see him now he knows exactly what is in there. Maybe they can help because they did last time.
Now to what’s actually IN his neck. Get this. He’s meant to have 7 bones in his neck.
He has 12 or more bone’s in his neck.
Its just TOO hard to see and count them. Even with the every 2mm body shots you just couldn’t count them all. It’s like a big puzzle in there. They look like pebbles spread through out his neck and they bulge in the center as well. Like a boab tree does. Seriously, it looked like a really old style cobble stone road in there. None of them are connected, none of them are even slightly “vertebrae” shaped or the same size and shape. None of them are in line. Some are behind other’s, some are off to the side. Some are sitting right on top of another one. I can not describe to you what it looked like. I am going to have to find a picture that best describes it because they didn’t have a printer. Just imagine though that the 7 bones that a normal person has in their neck and then that in his neck they got shattered by blunt force and just scattered all over the place. The more I think about it the more amazing it seems to me that his neck actually has support, since there seems to be no solid structure from his back up to the base of his head.
Then, why did this happen. For a couple weeks I’ve been wondering if this was my fault. Something I did during pregnancy. Then Mum and Tim both managed to talk me out of thinking that. But when I asked the doctor “What caused this” he said “What were YOU doing in your seventh week?” (not what was your Husband/best friend/dog doing…what was *I* doing) So, week seven. Major cramping and a 2am ER visit. An ER visit where the nurse on duty called the doctor and they prescribed me with ibruprofin for the pain, even though they knew I was pregnant. The very next day I went to my regular doctor and SHE told me that I had to stop taking it immediately because it was bad for the babies development. Turns out she was right and I only ever took one of those tablets. We suspect that that was the cause although we have no proof. Our cat also died around that time too and Tim said I am more than welcome to blame it on one of his special two headed sperms.
His foot is PERFECT!! He has no signs of lapsing back. We still go back now whenever we’re in town, but Wendy was all thumbs up about his foot. She also told us that Jaxon’s neck case had made it in to medical journal’s and was sent to doctor’s all over the world because it’s like a 1 in a 50,000 occurrence. Very rare.
I guess now we just have to wait and see what school is like for Jaxon. Maybe he’ll get teased. Maybe he wont be able to participate in all school sports and that sort of thing, even though we think he’ll be academically minded.
Oh, nearly forgot. If they are going to do something, and that is almost impossible at this stage unless technology changes over night, it wont be until he’s stopped growing so we’re looking years and years down the track. By then, maybe Jaxon can decide if he’s ok about it the way it is and we wont even bother. We do go back every six months to be monitored for a year and then probably once a year until they decide it’s time to decide. But now we really don’t need to worry at all!!
Overall, we’re very happy with today’s results. Regardless of the number of bones he has. We’ll tell Jaxon he’s above average with more bones than the “average human” he he
That’s what I wrote for my girls. And I’d like to share what one of their replies was.
Boo- I only read your original post and shot up here to reply… but I will go back and read everyone’s comments in a sec. I just had to jump ahead of myself and tell you how HAPPY I am for YOU. Maybe that sounds weird, but let me clarify.
This is NOT the same Boo I met on these boards. You’ve been through so many trials and roller coaster emotions- through pregnancy, c-section, doctors, crying, being gone for a spell, etc. I just want you to know how proud of you I am. The Boo who posted today is so optimistic and so proud of her PERFECTLY created son. You have grown so much as a mother and I am blessed to have seen you transform into this beautiful wonderful person who any little boy would be blessed to have the honor of calling you Mum. Jaxon is an amazing little man with an amazing momma!
I’m so elated you got answers and that they are all manageable issues you are now prepared to deal with.
Muuuahhh!!!
Thank you Angela.
Last year, at about this time, Tim and I took Jaxon to see Santa in our local shopping center. We did everything the photographer told us to do. We walked in with Jaxon facing backwards and gently placed Jaxon in Santa’s lap.
Everything was going fine for all of 2.5 seconds, when, ever so slightly, Santa shifted his foot and Jaxon saw it. That was the moment when Jaxon figured out that this wasn’t just a big fat ass teddy bear we were placing him with. This was some kind of monster we were going to feed him to.
I thought maybe this year would be better. A year has gone by, Jaxon is older and much more mature (cough cough) and I would really like a photo of him on Santa’s lap for all of his grandparents.
Today we returned. I didn’t get two feet from Santa before Jaxon clung to my neck and waist like I was about to throw him to the lions. He screamed in my ear and no lolly pop from Santa was going to fool him.
So maybe next year will be “third times a charm”? I can only hope, I am so envious of all the girls on the boards with smiley happy babies, um, toddler’s, on Santa’s lap.
I have been trying to write about this for a while but it’s sort of just become a non issue now that the day has been and gone. So I’ll just write about it quickly. I think I can do that!?
We stayed in a hotel because we had a 7am check in with a 7 hour fast. We thought it would be better but we were very very wrong. We really should have known because Jaxon wont sleep anywhere but his cot. So that’s exactly what he did. Or didn’t do. He finally gave up the ghost at 2am. The hotel was hot and it was a raining muggy night with air conditioning that barely worked. So we had a window open and at 3.30am a very loud and obnoxious bird woke Jaxon up again. That was the end of any hope of sleep we had. We left for the hospital early and decided to kill some time in peak hour traffic. Joy.
I can not praise the hospital enough for the day that we had. We really thought it was going to be awful for Jaxon but they had a great big play room with ride in cars and home corner’s and play stations. For the 20 minutes that we waited Jaxon test drove each and every one of the 7 little cars they had.
For me I think the worst thing was having to sign a form that said “I “the parent” am aware of all of the risks involved with this procedure” You know, like your child might die in the next two hours because of what we’re doing but since you signed this form, we got our asses covered. I’ve had to sign that same form I think 6 times now. It’s just a form, but it’s not just a form if you know what I mean?
The nurses were wonderful. But I don’t think either of them appreciated that when asked if Jaxon had any metal objects on his clothes that we both said “no, but we need to remove his penis ring” They just didn’t get it. But we just had to be making light of it all really or we would have gone mad!
Then came the hardest bit. I had to accompany Jaxon in to the MRI machine. We laid him down on the HUGE adult sized table with his head on a big plastic O ring and they put a teeny tiny gas mask over his mouth. Man. He was screaming at me and pleading with me. Mum, you’re meant to keep me safe is the look in a child’s eyes when something like that is being forced upon them. And he’s right. And that’s all I wanted to do. But the logical section of my brain made me hold his arms and legs down so he couldn’t rip the mask off. The logical part of my brain said it had to be done. Even though deep inside all I wanted to do was grab Jaxon and run. His eyes glazed over and his screams turned in to murmur’s as his eyes (intently looking to me for help) glazed over. Then he went limp and his eyes closed.
Have you ever put a dog to sleep?? That’s what kept running through my head as I left my silent son laying on a table with people who had made me sign his life away to them.That is the best way to describe to you what it’s like to “put your son to sleep” Even when I left the room and saw my Mum and Tim sitting there, the sympathy in their eyes for me having to do that was exactly the same as if I had just left the room at the vets without my long time family pet.
I stayed cool, calm and collected for all of two seconds once I’d left the room. I fell to pieces in Tims arms. I thought I had it all under control right up until I saw Tim and then I lost it. Nothing a bottle of coke and a great big chunk of vanilla slice wont fix.
The wait was 2.5 hours but it didn’t really seem that long. I think the hardest thing about all of this has been the actual wait. Once it was all starting to happen and once we knew we were one step closer to finding out some real answer’s (which we got today, will post later) we just felt relief.
So they came and got us and took us to the recovery room. Jaxon was snug as a bug in a rug laying on a bed with his little heart monitor going. He was still out like a light and looked ever so precious and fragile so the nurses spoke to us for a little. One was a student nurse and she was getting told (get this!) that I was a “darling mother” because she’d told me not to touch him or pick him up and I didn’t. A lot of mother’s just rush in and ignore what the nurses say even though they say it because doing that scares the child when they wake up.
When he finally woke up he snuggled in my arms, he drank 200 mil of milk (he normally has 20 mil, he was HUNGRY!) and a tub of pears and something else which has just totally slipped my mind (a bottle of apple juice). Let’s just say he ate like a normal 22 month old would eat on a normal day in a single sitting! Except that meant he ate four times what he would normally eat!
So we went home and Jaxon doesn’t remember a single thing. He’s never going to remember these things which is a real blessing. The fast was easy, but having him look in my eyes for me to protect him was really hard, because that’s exactly what mother’s do and thats exactly what I wanted to do. So I am very glad that in 10 years he wont know this happened. He doesn’t even know it happened now.
These photo’s are. 1 and 2 are him in the recovery room. That little red mask is the gas mask. And then the one in my arms is when he just woke up and I got to hold him. You can sort of see the blue bandage that is holding his drip in his arm. The nurse was kind of funny. She said to me when he woke up “If you’re strong enough you can cuddle him back to his room” and I was thinking “Lady, I could hold him for a week if I had to”
We got the results today so I will post them here tomorrow.
I wish I had a tripod, because I couldn’t keep the camera still to take the photo’s. I don’t know if this was just Australia or if other parts of the world will get to see it tonight. The moon, Jupiter and Venus all lined up to make a smiley face in the sky. I thought Tim was pulling my leg when he told me it was going to happen but sure enough when we came out of the pool there it was smiling down at us.
Ahh. It is just Australia. Here’s what I found.
THE world may be facing its worst economic turmoil in decades, but the heavens are about to smile on Australia.
A rare cosmic alignment tonight will produce a smiling face – or an emoticon, depending on your generation – high over the country.
I don’t know if it’s worldwide or just Australia wide, but for the last 30 days it’s been “Movember”
The month where men all over the place don’t shave for a full month to raise money for prostate cancer research.
I’ll admit, it’s a good cause. But I hate facial hair on my husband. Not for any other reason than when I kiss him I feel like I might be kissing my Dad. A man whom I have never ever seen without a beard.
So when Tim gave me a peck on the lips it was all good. But when he went in for the kill, and stuck the tongue in and all I saw was my Dad…that’s a mood killer right there.
The real issue is, that I LOVE the mo on Tim. I think it really suits him. For the sake of our sex life, and my sanity…that mo’s gotta go!
The Mug Shot.
