WE ARE NOT DEAD.
Sorry for the scare :( To be honest I don't really have a good excuse for why it has been almost 3 months! Crazy I know, I guess the start of our 2nd year of marriage has proved to be harder/busier/scarier but of course funner and happier than we thought :) I don't really know how to catch up on the last 3 months because I don't remember much so I guess I'll just blog about the important parts.
At the beginning of October Dave's left eye started hurting really bad and he couldn't see very well out of it. He made a doctors appointment for the next day, and we got bad news :( First of all, the doctor was completely shocked with what he found, calling around to all these other doctors saying things like, "You've got to see this". It turned out he had a cyst in his eye, that was like a donut shape right behind his iris. This was pushing it forward into the lens blocking where the eye would normally drain its fluids. This put a ton of pressure on his eye which was really painful for him :( I guess the normal pressure in your eye should be between 10-20, and when he got to his appointment it was up to 80. I dont know what that means, like 80 what? But it sounds painful knowing its so much higher than its supposed to be! They gave him some medicine and eye drops to keep the pressure down until he could go see another doctor. The doctor scheduled him an appointment for like 4 or 5 days later at OHSU in Portland. They have the best eye specialists in the west at this place so we were lucky to live 20 minutes away. The day after his appointment he had to go in to make sure his pressure was okay, and everything was good.
the only picture we have of all this...which I am actually kind of happy about. Any other pictures would be too sad :(
That night we went to bed and at about 3:30am Dave woke up to go to the bathroom and I always wake up when he gets out of bed. I asked him how his eye was doing and he said it was starting to really hurt again, he put some eye drops in and said he was just going to see if it would get better but after about 5 minutes he couldnt really handle it. We got in the car and drove straight to the hospital, and they took him in and started hooking him up to an IV and giving him all sorts of drugs so he wouldn't be in so much pain. It made me so sad/ sick to see him in the hospital all hooked up to everything. When they started pumping the drugs into him through the IV and I could SEE it going into his BODY i couldnt handle it. I went to look for the bathroom and after finding it, spent about 5 minutes with my head in the sink with ice cold water. I think the queeziness was partly that it was 4am, but I just kept telling myself I couldn't get sick, I had to be able to take care of Dave! So I snapped out of it pretty quick and went back in his room. We were at the hospital for about 2 hours when they told us we were going to need to portland to see the doctor he had seen earlier that day. I drove him to that office and we spent about another 2 hours there just getting more tests done on his eye. It was so sad, he felt so sick the whole time and he just had to sit in this chair having them do stuff to his eye. His drugs started wearing off, so they took him down to that hospital and got him some more drugs in there. Before I knew it we were in an ambulance on our way to OHSU to see some specialists that we weren't supposed to see for another 3 days. I had always wanted to ride in an ambulance, but I was sadly disappointed. It wasn't that cool and I felt so bad for dave I was just sick. We got to OHSU, got him admitted, and once again went through the same process we had at the last 3 places we had been that morning. More paperwork, questions, and tons of tests on his eye. Until we had got to this hospital, Dave was able to function just fine and the drugs weren't that strong. But when we got to OHSU they gave him a ton of drugs. He couldnt even form complete sentences and after a few words he would just be mumbling. It was so sad :( My parents and brother-in-law Cam came down to the hospital around 9:30am. Dave was so tired and he was so thirsty but they wouldn't let him drink anything because there was a chance he would have to go in for surgery that day. So they gave him a wet sponge to put in his mouth...so sad. My dad and Cam were able to give Dave a blessing, and although Dave was too out of it to remember, it was special. I was so thankful to not only have family close to come hang out with me at the hospital, but also worthy to give Dave a blessing. The rest of the day consisted of a lot of questions, waiting, more tests, more drugs, etc. It was long. This was a Sunday by the way, so none of the specialists were actually working. A couple of them were on call and came to look at him but said it could wait until monday morning as long as he stayed in the hospital overnight so they could keep drugging him. When we knew he would be staying overnight I went home to shower and grab some clothes for Dave, and when me and my parents got back to the hospital it was so sad.
Right when I walked in his room, Dave was sitting up on his bed, with an eye patch on, with his dinner tray, and he was trying so hard to open his little carton of milk. He had absolutely no strength and it absolutely broke my heart. I almost started crying right there because it was honestly like he was a 90 year old man on his death bed. I didnt know how long he had been trying to open the milk by the time we had got there! Although I just wanted to cry, I knew I couldnt so I sat on his bed with him, opened his milk, and fed him his dinner.
He ended up eating about 2 vegetables and a pinch of bread and he was done. After dinner he told me he felt like reeses peices so i went on search to find a vending machine. Luckily the first one I found had reeses peices & I was excited to bring them to him. I opened them and started feeding them to him but by the second one he didn't want anymore. It ended up taking him like a day and a half to finish a little bag of reeses peices. I spent the night with him but didn't really sleep. The whole night there was a guy next to us throwing up about every 30 seconds REALLY loud. It was so gross I had to try super hard to plug my ears so I wouldnt get sick. Everytime Dave would have to go to the bathroom, which was a lot from all the fluids they were pumping in him, I would have to help him off his bed and try to untangle all the cords he was having to lay with. He was so weak he couldnt stand or do anything by himself. It was a long night and my heart just ached for him the whole time. As a layed awake most of the night I was thinking that I had never had to be the strong one before. I have never had someone be so dependent on me, and I never realized what hard work it is to have someone that dependent on you. But I also learned how good it felt to have someone you love so much be so dependent on you. It was amazing that I was able to "sleep" in a chair, feed him, help him go to the bathroom, run out to grab a nurse everytime he needed more medicine, etc. and it never felt like a burden. It never felt like an annoyance, or like I wished i was just home in my bed. The only hard part was seeing my husband in that state. My strong, manly husband, laying completely helpless in a hospital, so out of it on drugs that he wasn't himself at all. I would try to talk to him and joke around with him but he would take about 5 minutes before he would respond and it would always be mumbles. Sometimes I would think it was kind of funny but he would get frustrated when I would laugh because he knew he wasnt making sense. Thats when it got sad :(
Monday morning we were able to go see the specialists and do yet again, more tests. I was so sick of watching them poke my husbands eye I wanted to rip their little tool out of their hands and poke their eyes. It was another long day with more tests, waiting, and finally a solution. The doctors decided there was about a 99% chance that this wasnt cancerous (which was the original reason for the long drawn out process and all the tests, they wanted to know as much as they could before they operated). By that afternoon, they told us they would be able to do the procedure with a laser and that they could burn a hole in the cyst so that the fluids could start draining properly again. Sounded good to us, to about 2 minutes later, he was fixed. A few minutes after that he felt a ton better. They then took a ton of pictures of the whole thing, because this was something that none of the doctors had ever seen and they wanted to use it for teaching purposes and to be published in a medical journal. Pretty cool, Daves eye will be famous.
We were able to go home that evening. I was thinking, why couldnt they have just lasered his eye in the first place instead of making us spend 2 days in hospitals and keeping dave in so much pain?! But I am thankful for the way it happened. I'm thankful that the doctors were so cautious because had it been cancerous, it could have released those cells into his body and who knows what would have happened. And I am thankful that I was able to take care of my husband. I often feel like I dont always take care of him as good as I should, as far as things like cooking dinner, cleaning the house, laundry....all the things that are "my job". He helps me way too much, and I'm greatful for that but it was really nice being able to completely take care of him without him even having the ability to try and help. It made me love him so much more, I think seeing someone in such a weak state, especially when its someone like dave who is always happy and strong and just amazing, can teach you a lot about a person. Even it was just the drugs that were making him weak. And I also learned how much stronger I am that I thought. I'm still a pretty big wimp, and of course I was worried during the whole thing, but for some reason I was able to stay level-headed and not be a total mess (which is not like me at all)
Dave has now been going to weekly appointments to make sure everything is still okay. He will gradually have to go less and less which will be nice. It was a scare, but we knew we were being watched out for :)
Enough about eyeballs, the rest of October was pretty uneventful....up until Halloween. This year for Halloween Dave & I dressed up like Minnie & Mickey Mouse. We both had to dress up for work & a couple in our ward had a halloween party that night. Well on October 30th, my sister Jenny went into labor with her first baby, and my parent first grandchild. Me and dave were so excited I dont think we slept at all that night. At 4:45 on halloween morning I called my mom to see if there was a baby yet but there wasnt :( I was still so excited I decided to just get up and start getting ready since I wasnt sleeping anyways. Well it didnt take long after that........
Oakley Jae Smith was born at 5:15am on Halloween :)
She was 8lbs 8oz. and 20.5in long.
Dave and I rushed to the hospital to see our new little neice, but only got to stay for about 15 minutes because we had to be to work. I'm not gonna lie, she wasnt that cute that morning, she was still all smashed, but you could tell she had potential :)
Sorry for the scare :( To be honest I don't really have a good excuse for why it has been almost 3 months! Crazy I know, I guess the start of our 2nd year of marriage has proved to be harder/busier/scarier but of course funner and happier than we thought :) I don't really know how to catch up on the last 3 months because I don't remember much so I guess I'll just blog about the important parts.
At the beginning of October Dave's left eye started hurting really bad and he couldn't see very well out of it. He made a doctors appointment for the next day, and we got bad news :( First of all, the doctor was completely shocked with what he found, calling around to all these other doctors saying things like, "You've got to see this". It turned out he had a cyst in his eye, that was like a donut shape right behind his iris. This was pushing it forward into the lens blocking where the eye would normally drain its fluids. This put a ton of pressure on his eye which was really painful for him :( I guess the normal pressure in your eye should be between 10-20, and when he got to his appointment it was up to 80. I dont know what that means, like 80 what? But it sounds painful knowing its so much higher than its supposed to be! They gave him some medicine and eye drops to keep the pressure down until he could go see another doctor. The doctor scheduled him an appointment for like 4 or 5 days later at OHSU in Portland. They have the best eye specialists in the west at this place so we were lucky to live 20 minutes away. The day after his appointment he had to go in to make sure his pressure was okay, and everything was good.
the only picture we have of all this...which I am actually kind of happy about. Any other pictures would be too sad :(
That night we went to bed and at about 3:30am Dave woke up to go to the bathroom and I always wake up when he gets out of bed. I asked him how his eye was doing and he said it was starting to really hurt again, he put some eye drops in and said he was just going to see if it would get better but after about 5 minutes he couldnt really handle it. We got in the car and drove straight to the hospital, and they took him in and started hooking him up to an IV and giving him all sorts of drugs so he wouldn't be in so much pain. It made me so sad/ sick to see him in the hospital all hooked up to everything. When they started pumping the drugs into him through the IV and I could SEE it going into his BODY i couldnt handle it. I went to look for the bathroom and after finding it, spent about 5 minutes with my head in the sink with ice cold water. I think the queeziness was partly that it was 4am, but I just kept telling myself I couldn't get sick, I had to be able to take care of Dave! So I snapped out of it pretty quick and went back in his room. We were at the hospital for about 2 hours when they told us we were going to need to portland to see the doctor he had seen earlier that day. I drove him to that office and we spent about another 2 hours there just getting more tests done on his eye. It was so sad, he felt so sick the whole time and he just had to sit in this chair having them do stuff to his eye. His drugs started wearing off, so they took him down to that hospital and got him some more drugs in there. Before I knew it we were in an ambulance on our way to OHSU to see some specialists that we weren't supposed to see for another 3 days. I had always wanted to ride in an ambulance, but I was sadly disappointed. It wasn't that cool and I felt so bad for dave I was just sick. We got to OHSU, got him admitted, and once again went through the same process we had at the last 3 places we had been that morning. More paperwork, questions, and tons of tests on his eye. Until we had got to this hospital, Dave was able to function just fine and the drugs weren't that strong. But when we got to OHSU they gave him a ton of drugs. He couldnt even form complete sentences and after a few words he would just be mumbling. It was so sad :( My parents and brother-in-law Cam came down to the hospital around 9:30am. Dave was so tired and he was so thirsty but they wouldn't let him drink anything because there was a chance he would have to go in for surgery that day. So they gave him a wet sponge to put in his mouth...so sad. My dad and Cam were able to give Dave a blessing, and although Dave was too out of it to remember, it was special. I was so thankful to not only have family close to come hang out with me at the hospital, but also worthy to give Dave a blessing. The rest of the day consisted of a lot of questions, waiting, more tests, more drugs, etc. It was long. This was a Sunday by the way, so none of the specialists were actually working. A couple of them were on call and came to look at him but said it could wait until monday morning as long as he stayed in the hospital overnight so they could keep drugging him. When we knew he would be staying overnight I went home to shower and grab some clothes for Dave, and when me and my parents got back to the hospital it was so sad.
Right when I walked in his room, Dave was sitting up on his bed, with an eye patch on, with his dinner tray, and he was trying so hard to open his little carton of milk. He had absolutely no strength and it absolutely broke my heart. I almost started crying right there because it was honestly like he was a 90 year old man on his death bed. I didnt know how long he had been trying to open the milk by the time we had got there! Although I just wanted to cry, I knew I couldnt so I sat on his bed with him, opened his milk, and fed him his dinner.
He ended up eating about 2 vegetables and a pinch of bread and he was done. After dinner he told me he felt like reeses peices so i went on search to find a vending machine. Luckily the first one I found had reeses peices & I was excited to bring them to him. I opened them and started feeding them to him but by the second one he didn't want anymore. It ended up taking him like a day and a half to finish a little bag of reeses peices. I spent the night with him but didn't really sleep. The whole night there was a guy next to us throwing up about every 30 seconds REALLY loud. It was so gross I had to try super hard to plug my ears so I wouldnt get sick. Everytime Dave would have to go to the bathroom, which was a lot from all the fluids they were pumping in him, I would have to help him off his bed and try to untangle all the cords he was having to lay with. He was so weak he couldnt stand or do anything by himself. It was a long night and my heart just ached for him the whole time. As a layed awake most of the night I was thinking that I had never had to be the strong one before. I have never had someone be so dependent on me, and I never realized what hard work it is to have someone that dependent on you. But I also learned how good it felt to have someone you love so much be so dependent on you. It was amazing that I was able to "sleep" in a chair, feed him, help him go to the bathroom, run out to grab a nurse everytime he needed more medicine, etc. and it never felt like a burden. It never felt like an annoyance, or like I wished i was just home in my bed. The only hard part was seeing my husband in that state. My strong, manly husband, laying completely helpless in a hospital, so out of it on drugs that he wasn't himself at all. I would try to talk to him and joke around with him but he would take about 5 minutes before he would respond and it would always be mumbles. Sometimes I would think it was kind of funny but he would get frustrated when I would laugh because he knew he wasnt making sense. Thats when it got sad :(
Monday morning we were able to go see the specialists and do yet again, more tests. I was so sick of watching them poke my husbands eye I wanted to rip their little tool out of their hands and poke their eyes. It was another long day with more tests, waiting, and finally a solution. The doctors decided there was about a 99% chance that this wasnt cancerous (which was the original reason for the long drawn out process and all the tests, they wanted to know as much as they could before they operated). By that afternoon, they told us they would be able to do the procedure with a laser and that they could burn a hole in the cyst so that the fluids could start draining properly again. Sounded good to us, to about 2 minutes later, he was fixed. A few minutes after that he felt a ton better. They then took a ton of pictures of the whole thing, because this was something that none of the doctors had ever seen and they wanted to use it for teaching purposes and to be published in a medical journal. Pretty cool, Daves eye will be famous.
We were able to go home that evening. I was thinking, why couldnt they have just lasered his eye in the first place instead of making us spend 2 days in hospitals and keeping dave in so much pain?! But I am thankful for the way it happened. I'm thankful that the doctors were so cautious because had it been cancerous, it could have released those cells into his body and who knows what would have happened. And I am thankful that I was able to take care of my husband. I often feel like I dont always take care of him as good as I should, as far as things like cooking dinner, cleaning the house, laundry....all the things that are "my job". He helps me way too much, and I'm greatful for that but it was really nice being able to completely take care of him without him even having the ability to try and help. It made me love him so much more, I think seeing someone in such a weak state, especially when its someone like dave who is always happy and strong and just amazing, can teach you a lot about a person. Even it was just the drugs that were making him weak. And I also learned how much stronger I am that I thought. I'm still a pretty big wimp, and of course I was worried during the whole thing, but for some reason I was able to stay level-headed and not be a total mess (which is not like me at all)
Dave has now been going to weekly appointments to make sure everything is still okay. He will gradually have to go less and less which will be nice. It was a scare, but we knew we were being watched out for :)
Enough about eyeballs, the rest of October was pretty uneventful....up until Halloween. This year for Halloween Dave & I dressed up like Minnie & Mickey Mouse. We both had to dress up for work & a couple in our ward had a halloween party that night. Well on October 30th, my sister Jenny went into labor with her first baby, and my parent first grandchild. Me and dave were so excited I dont think we slept at all that night. At 4:45 on halloween morning I called my mom to see if there was a baby yet but there wasnt :( I was still so excited I decided to just get up and start getting ready since I wasnt sleeping anyways. Well it didnt take long after that........
Oakley Jae Smith was born at 5:15am on Halloween :)
She was 8lbs 8oz. and 20.5in long.
Dave and I rushed to the hospital to see our new little neice, but only got to stay for about 15 minutes because we had to be to work. I'm not gonna lie, she wasnt that cute that morning, she was still all smashed, but you could tell she had potential :)
That day at work we had a costume contest at work & I won the $100 prize :)
After work we went to the halloween party, but both me and Dave were so excited to go back to the hospital and see Oakley, we only stayed a couple hours. My sister had wanted to see our costumes so we went to the hospital all dressed up, so Oakleys first picture with us is in costume. I mean this just screams "FUNNEST AUNT AND UNCLE EVER" doesnt it?
Here are some more pictures of Halloween, and THE CUTEST BABY EVER.
some of the 100 sugar cookies I made :)
doesnt it look like he has a weird flat nose? I thought it looked funny :)
At the end of the night we kissed and smudged noses. The kissing then stopped and it became a war of who could rub off their nose the most on the other. :)
AND NOW.....
Oakley Jae:
Proud parents :)
WE LOVE HER! She is the cutest baby in the world.
And for a random ending....
Dave, mid haircut. I decided to see what he would look like with a mohawk/ratail thing. Dont worry, we buzzed it off in like 30 seconds.
9 comments:
I'm so glad Dave is ok after that whole ordeal! I thouhgt you guys were dead, but I'm glad that things are going well.
Love you guys!
S&J
Wow, so how bout I reply with the longest comment ever to your longest post ever?? Nah I won't. :) Us Thompsons totally know about the whole hospital, tests, no answers, waiting, it really sucks. Glad Dave is okay now, hope he continues to improve. Its funny cuz I just read the other day in a tabloid about an actress whose eye is always red in pictures no matter what angle and it turned out she had an eye injury when she was younger. I thought of that when I saw Daves pic and he has red eye in his injured eye only. Strange huh?
Your costumes are way cute! Monica even with black smudged all over your face you still manage to be gorgeous!
Okay so I guess it is the longest comment ever to your longest post ever, oh well! lol
wow, it's good to hear the whole story about dave's eye. i'm so glad he's doing good now. i think i took over your weekness that weekend, i cried myself to sleep cuz i thought my brother was going to lose his eye. it's amazing how everything worked out! but you guys have an adorable niece and i love your costumes! :)
Return to the blogging world! Glad to hear you're alive. My family said they saw you and Dave at Josh Kartchner's "homecoming".
"Enjoy your victory... with one frickin' eye!" --Jim Carey
So glad that's not true. Seriously, that "weird-eye" photo is as disturbing as the mousketeer shots are adorable. Nice contrast.
daves eye looked pretty crazy...its hard to see your hubby sick...not fun,but it sounds like you were a champ. Glad you're not dead..bc you are "serioulsy, so blessed!" :)
Oh man, that sounds like it was awful. Having eye problems is really painful and way scary. I've had two eye ulcers in my left eye and it was awful. I'm glad you are doing better!
your blog is so cute, i love it!
So what else has been happening in your lives? we miss you?
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