Wow its been awhile.....

I guess I'm going to have to change the name of my blog. Not like it really matters I never get on here anymore. But how is this suppose to be the Ramblings of a Stay at Home Mom when I'm not a stay at home mom anymore. Yep you heard me right. I'm officially a full time working mother of 5 kids.

So either I'm super mom or stupid. I don't know how I am going to manage this when the kids get back to playing sports again this fall. Cody playing soccer and Tyler playing football. And lord they will be in High School next year. Not to mention, cub scouts, brownies, girl scouts and boy scouts. Ugggg.

Though I'm a little more excited for the holidays. I get my first paycheck tomorrow and I get to buy my kiddos some stuff for Christmas. We were stressing about that. Didn't think we were going to be able to get them much this year. But I think things are going to start looking up.

Not so much to say tonight. I will tell you all about my job shortly.

Our Weekend of Dieting

Seafood seems to be the key ingredient right now...We went and bout a few cookbooks on healthy cooking and got the Weight Watchers cookbook to better health.

Tonights dinner:

Grilled whiting
Grilled red potatoes..no butter no salt Mrs. Dash is a wonderful thing!
Grilled Zucchini
and Grilled shrimp and scallop kaboobs with with Paula Deen's Sweet Burbon Sauce (only 80mg's of sodium per tablespoon) glaze.

To drink: orange juice for John and Tea with sweet n low for me


On a major positive note John has lost 30 pounds of fluid in one week!

Day 1 post Cath

John is doing well not complaining about his portion sizes that I cut in half and neither of us have had soda today. I am staying on the tea so I don't get caffine headaches.

We can't do this cold turkey so we are starting with walking everyday even and cutting portion sizes. We have cut the salt intake by more then half, which neither of us ate alot of salt anyhow. We just ate already salty food. More green stuff and leaner meats. And come to find out Burgers are good in moderation if they are grilled.

Cardiac Cath day

John just went in to have his cath done to find out why his heart isn't beating the way that it is suppose to. They said that it wouldn't take long the surgery itself would only be about a half an hour. I will update when he is out what the diagnosis is.


Update:

John's blood vessles in his heart are all clear and look great. He has pressure on his heart from the fluid but we are working on that with the lasix. He has lost more weight and it is obvious that the lasix is doing is' job. We still have to change the diet...He needs to lose about 100 pounds and stay away from the salt because it makes you retain water. So we are going home and continueing the medication that the doctor has prescribed and to continue to change our diet to get all of this extra fluid off from him.

I plan on keeping a journal on how to care for congestive heart failure but with work and kids who knows how well I will be able to keep up on that.

Congestive Heart Failure at 34….What???

It all started 3 weeks ago, John was going through a bout where he was coughing all of the time. At this point is chest was hurting him so bad I thought that he really had pneumonia. So he finally asked me to take him to the hospital. He went through x-rays and even a cat scan to determine if maybe he had punctured a long, but everything came back ok. He was released that night with an upper respiratory infection, given tramadol for the chest pain and Z-pack for the infection.
A week later we were in our family doctor’s office because his symptoms weren’t getting any better. The doctor informs us that the cat scan showed that though he didn’t have any signs of a punctured lung or pneumonia it did show that he had a broken 6th rib, which the hospital never called and informed us of. He was again given another round of a different kind of antibiotics, another script of tramadol for the broken ribs, started on a new blood pressure medication (Ziac) and an inhaler of albuteral.
For a week he worked. He went everyday driving an 80,000 pound vehicle, because that is the way he was raised. You work, sick or not to take care of your family.
This past Saturday, he was swelling in his stomach and had some edema in his legs. He told me that his stomach felt like you could stick a pin in his stomach and he would just pop. Soooo, back to the hospital we went. This time they put him on and EKG machine and had him hooked up to bp and O2 saturation monitors. His blood pressure was through the roof, and his O2 sats were decent. They took some blood, and did some more x-rays and the doctor came back into the room and informed us that My 34 year old husband was in Congestive Heart Failure and needed to be admitted to get the fluid off from his heart and lungs or he was going to be in sever respiratory and cardiac distress.
At 5am Sunday morning, he was admitted into the hospital and immediatley given a substantial dose of Lasix and 2 different kinds of blood pressure medication. One of them being Lacinapro. By 9am they had oxygen on him at 3% on nasal cannula because as he slept his o2 sat levels were dropping to 70. Through the day Sunday they just continued the blood pressure medication, adding a 3rd and the lasix support to rid his body of the fluids.
Monday…..5am, lasix was again administered but no bp meds on board this morning because his bp was 100/58 which is WAYYYY better than the 178/110 that we started at Saturday night. He had an echo on his heart this morning and now we are just waiting on the cardiologist to see John to determine what the next steps are that needs to be taken. We know that if his heart is strong enough then they will be perfoWe asked why this took so long for it to be diagnosed correctly and the nurse turned to me and said “Because a 34 year old man doesn’t have congestive heart failure.” All I can do right now is Thank god for the E.R. doctor that took the time to listen to all of the symptoms that he was having and doing the right thing and finding out what was wrong with my husband…I could have lost him this week if it wasn’t for him.
Things will be changing now for our family and I thought that I would invite you all in on our journey.
We have to change a lifestyle that we have been living for far to long. So as soon as I know he is out of the woods for good. I will be going home and cleaning our cabinets out. No more salt, no more soda, and we need to get Wii fit and wii active for John and I to do together. We are going to become a more active family and we have to do this to save my husband life.
So you are welcome to join me in our day to day journal of the way things need to be, the ups and downs and ins and outs of congestive heart failure and severely high blood pressure and the pains of starting a life anew.rming a procedure to reduce the amount of fluid that has built up in his abdomen.



Update:

The Cardiologist came in about 2 today and told us that John’s heart isn’t releasing right..It’s weaker then he would like to see it. A normal heart releases 55 % of the blood that it takes in and John’s is only releasing about 25%. In a couple of days after they get a little more fluid out of his body they will be transferring him to Fairfield Medical Center and doing a heart catheterization in the next couple of days to find out why John’s heart is so weak. The doctor’s at Logan have him on the right path to help make his heart stronger. They have his blood pressure under control and upped his lasix dose.

School Update.......Errrrr

Ok so I'm a perfectionist at certain things...My house maybe not so much but in my defense it takes a lot of energy to clean up after 5 children and a not so helpful husband. But school, now that's a totally different subject.

It's funny..I think that everyone should have to work for 5 years before they enroll in college...It really makes you appreciate the gift of a secondary education. So at 34 years old I strive to do the best I possibly can in my classes.

....And right now, I'm struggling. Now I consider myself a bit of a computer wiz. I catch on really quickly to new programs and don't seem to have problems learning how to fix stuff that is wrong with it. In all my years having a computer mine has never gotten a virus that I couldn't fix. With that being said...I HATE microsoft Excel 2007!!! With every ounce of passion in my body I hate this program.

I just totally bombed my first test since starting back to school and I hate to think what it is going to do to my GPA. So if any of my wonderfull blogger friends would like to tutor me I'm up for the challange but unless you are an advanced user don't bother because the questions I have are not normal!!!

On a good note...My legal class is going wonderfully and I totally got an email from my instructor today wanting me to email him copies of my homework so he could use it as an answer key. That was pretty sweet I tell ya.

.........Oh and Jana..............GO BEARCATS!!! Totally going to wipe the floor with your gayturds!!
<3~~Stacy

Lovin' the holiday season!!

I'm usually totally hating Christmas about now...worrying about what I can get the kids..If we are going to be able to get them everything that they want. Which this years I'm not going to be able to and I know it but you know what I can't base my holidays around if they get everything that they want. They will get some of it if not most of it, but the boys are getting older and you know as they get older it gets more expensive. Can't do it! Oh well they will be happy with what they get or maybe I will just take that back too LOL!

We always put up our Christmas tree the weekend of Thanksgiving and this year wasn't any different then any other. Of course John and I had to go out and replace almost all of my bulbs because the cats thought it would be funny to knock my whole tree down the stairs last year and all of my glass bulbs kinda got shattered...That was a lot of glass and soooo not a lot of fun to clean up.

Black Friday was a blast...wish I would have remembered to take a few pictures while we were out but the hubby and I literally ate lunch at 8:00 in the morning...I had Charlie's chicken philly sub and John had Taco Bell...Got some great deals at Old Navy and some stuff at game stop...They will be happy ..I HOPE!