Four Feet More

I had another post scheduled for today, but after reading the news this morning, I decided to bring this to your attention instead.

Generally, I try to keep politics away from this blog, but as someone who's suffered a miscarriage, this scares the bejeezus out of me!


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/us/01abortion.html

While I can understand a bit of what prompted such legislation, I think they are going about it all wrong.  During my time working in neonatology, I saw quite  few cases that horrified me.  One was very much like the case mentioned here, where a pregnant, teenage couple, in an effort to abort their fetus, took a bunch of drugs and then the boyfriend kicked the girlfriend repeatedly in the stomach.  Their efforts did not being about the desired results, and the baby was born prematurely, with severe problems.  I'm not sure what happened to the child after she left the NICU.  Were these kids wrong in their actions?  Absolutely!  But do they deserve life in prison because of it?  I don't believe so.  Instead, shouldn't we examine a system that makes some people so desperate that they feel the only way out is to endure the pain of a brutal beating, thereby causing the death of their unborn child?  What social programs are in place to help these girls obtain legal abortions (which are still allowed in the Utah bill)?  Or perhaps support them while they put their baby up for adoption?  As Christine said (a blogger I was recently introduced to by Michelle), are there programs to financially assist these teenage girls who chose to be mothers to their babies while they finish high school and college?  It just seems that there is a greater issue that is being overlooked while people focus on the act of obtaining abortions through non-medical means.

However, putting the issue of intentional abortions and social programs aside, there is something else in this bill which is even more alarming.  A woman who suffers a miscarriage due to "reckless behavior" can also be punished by life in prison.  The thing that scares me so much about this is, who determines what constitutes "reckless behavior?" (and I admit, I haven't seen the entire bill to read line-by-line)  The examples given are drinking alcohol and driving recklessly while pregnant.  But what about me?  I ate at a sushi bar while pregnant.  Sure, I didn't consume anything raw, but maybe some of those California Rolls touched a bit of sashimi and that resulted in my miscarriage.  Is that reckless behavior?  And even if it was reckless, was my intent to satisfy my craving for sushi or to harm my unborn child?  I think every woman who has suffered a miscarriage ought to think about this issue very carefully.  Most of you reading this blog were devastated by the loss and went on to either conceive or adopt another child.  I'm sure all of us questioned what we may have done that caused us to lose our child.  Many of you, like me, may have even had people tell you why you were to blame for the loss of your child (in my case, I was "too stressed" about having a healthy pregnancy).  It seems that lawmakers in Utah, while they may have good intentions, are completely missing the mark with this one.

What are your thoughts?  (and if any of you are tempted to leave inflammatory or disrespectful comments, I warn you in advance, they will be deleted).

As I mentioned in my previous post, I've been sick with a cold for the past week. Yesterday afternoon, I decided to take a hot shower to relieve some of the congestion in my head. Jeff was out with some clients, so during this 5-10 minute period the kids would be unsupervised. No biggie, right?

I had just put conditioner in my hair when I heard Eamon shouting outside the bathroom door, "Mama! Vika hit her head!" "What?" I asked. "Vika hit her head and there's blood on her shirt!" he replied, this time more frantically. "WHAT??!!!" I screamed now, panic setting in. "Tell her to get up here if she can!"

I quickly scrambled from the shower, threw on a robe and met Vika on the stair landing. She was holding a paper towel to the back of her head, but didn't look too bad. Until she turned around. The entire back of her tank-top was covered in blood. "Oh my God!" I said, gently parting her hair to see the damage. There was so much blood that it was hard to see, so I had her sit down and push the cloth to her head while I asked Eamon what on earth had happened.

We live in a three-level townhouse, where you can look down on the living room from the dining room. There is a rail separating the two spaces, and Eamon thought it would be fun to jump from the rail down into the living room (about 6 feet). After a successful jump and landing, he encouraged Vika to give it a try. Her jump was also successful, but the landing...not so much. Basically, she hit the couch, bounced backwards and knocked her head on the coffee table, creating a gash in the middle-back portion of her scalp.

In anger and shock I yelled, "That's why we tell you not to jump off the railing!!!!" I grabbed the phone and called Jeff. "Jeff," I said, "I need you to come home NOW. Vika cracked her head open and there's blood all down the back of her shirt." He told me to call 911 next, which I did. However, I was still in a bathrobe with conditioner in my hair, and began to freak out about paramedics coming into the house while I was practically naked. Seeing that Vika was alert and sitting quietly, I managed to pull on some clothes while on the phone with dispatch. In the meantime, Eamon, who was completely distressed by the situation, was hiding in his bed with the covers pulled over his head, whimpering that he hoped Vika didn't die. "Calm down Eamon!" I said, "Vika's going to be alright!"

Moments later, our home was flooded by firemen and paramedics, who efficiently checked out Vika while I told them what happened. They got the bleeding to stop and said that the wound wasn't as bad as it looked, but that it might need stitches (producing more whimpering from both Vika and Eamon). After some discussion, they felt it might be more stressful for Vix to go to the hospital in an ambulance, so we agreed to drive her to urgent care. They applied a bandage and ice bag to her head, and we put her in a clean shirt (couldn't have her going to urgent care all covered in blood!). Then we headed out to the hospital.

Fortunately, since it was late afternoon and urgent care was about to close, we had no wait. They got Vika in right away and cleaned her wound. After some close examination, the doctor decided that staples would be needed to hold the wound closed. Vika nearly broke my fingers, she squeezed them so hard when she heard this. But she was a trooper and about an hour later, we headed home with a girl who was all in one piece (even if it was held together by 3 staples).

After we got home, I began to notice other things about the house. Like the blood trail that went from the living room, up the first flight of stairs and through the dining room into the kitchen. In the kitchen, there was a pool of blood in front of the sink and red smeared down the cabinets. There were also large smears of blood where Eamon had clearly tried to clean up so they wouldn't get caught. I saw a bunch of blood in the downstairs bathroom as well. Apparently, after the fall (which happened very soon after I got into the shower), the kids tried to clean the wound and all the blood on their own so they wouldn't get in trouble for jumping off the railing. They must have been in a complete panic about getting caught. Upon realizing that the blood wasn't stopping and the mess was getting bigger by the moment, Eamon decided to come and get me for help. Dang kids. I was in the shower for less than 5 minutes! I really should be able to trust that they are not going to kill or maim themselves in that short amount of time. Silly Me.

This is the second time we've had to call 911 for Vika in the last 6 months. My mom joined us at Urgent Care, and when she asked Eamon what happened he replied, "Vika isn't as good of a monkey as me." In his simple way, he kind of summed it all up.

Sometimes kids with traumatic backgrounds, like mine, find it difficult to deal with too many good things happening at once. They do a form of "sabotaging" with their actions, making life chaotic or unhappy. I think this is because they lived so long with chaos and unhappiness that it has become almost comfortable to them now. They think that the good times can't possibly last, and by sabotaging, they feel a bit more in control of when the good times end.

Such is the case with Vika (although she has gotten better). On Saturday, Vika had a big day. Mom and Ed took her on a birthday shopping spree and then they went to lunch at Texas Roadhouse (Vika loves ribs). Afterward, she and I went to the Kenny Chesney concert with Laurie. That was a lot of fun by the way. Kenny puts on a really good show and so did Lady Antebellum. We were surrounded by girls in Daisy Dukes and cowboy boots. In San Francisco, on the bay at night. I was more than a little amused to see those same girls shivering in the cold night air. But at least they looked cute! ;) When Kenny made his entrance (on a type of chair which swung above the audience on cables), Vika's eyes lit up. She stood on her chair and danced, a happy smile brightening her face. The three of us had a great time, and Vika chatted happily as we walked back to the car later that night (we left a bit early because the other concert-goers were getting very drunk, and I didn't want to leave the parking lot at the same time they did). It was a great bonding experience, and we agreed that Vika and I need to do Girls' Night Out more often.

Then yesterday, everything went to hell. Vika woke up grumpy and irritable. She refused to do her morning chores (making bed, brushing teeth, etc.) and pretty much fought us all day long. She yelled at me, calling me rude for asking her to sort her dirty laundry. She deliberately ignored me when I asked her to clean up the toothpaste she smeared on the bathroom counter. And when I asked her if she was going to clean her room, she looked at me with raised eyebrows and said, "No!" All in all, we had an extremely uncooperative little girl. So Jeff and I decided to be uncooperative right back and even ignore her requests, just to show her what it was like. When she asked me for something, I responded, "I have a little girl who has shown me that words are not important" and then I would go back to my task. When lunchtime came, she had to make her own (to get a rise out of me, she had 3 plates full of Lays Potato Chips - I did not take the bait, but did say that I hoped they didn't give her a stomach ache).

After some time of this, Jeff and I talked a bit with Vika about how words and cooperation are important, especially in a family. She continued her downward spiral and went outside, crying and saying how she wishes she wasn't in our family. Jeff and I both kept our calm, and her drama mostly played out. Eamon and I went to my mom's house and Vika stayed home with Jeff to finish cleaning her room (she had kind of decided that she was going to cooperate by this time).

A couple hours later, Eamon and I returned home, and Vika came running down the stairs, all smiles to greet us. She said she had cleaned her room and showed me the nails she had painted with her new pedicure kit (hot pink with white flowers). I noticed that there was a blue stain on her shirt and hands, but didn't have time to ask her about it before she ran upstairs with Eamon. However, a couple minutes later, she came back down, complaining that her stomach was hurting really bad. I thought it was all the potato chips she had for lunch, but then noticed the blue stain again and saw some blue around her mouth. In growing alarm I asked, "Vika, what else did you eat? What made your mouth all blue?"

It turns out that she had made a "scientific concoction", using the Cool Blue kids Listerene in the bathroom, some water and chalk, and had drank 1/3 of a cup of it. I ran upstairs and quickly retrieved the bottle which said to call Poison Control immediately and seek medical attention if more than a little bit is swallowed. Hands shaking in panic, I sat a crying Vika down by the toilet while Jeff called Poison Control. They asked questions such as was she still breathing and conscious (yes), was she vomiting (no), and how long ago did she drink the Listerene (about 10 minutes). The dispatcher at Poison Control sent an ambulance and within 2 minutes our dining room was filled with paramedics and firefighters examining Vika and checking her vital signs. They seemed a bit amused by the situation, which lessened my panic somewhat and helped calm us down (poor Eamon had been pacing the floor saying, "I don't like this Mama!"). After reading the ingredients in the bottle and hanging with Vika for a while, the paramedics felt it was OK for her to stay at home and get some rest. If she began vomiting or her condition seemed to worsen, we were to call them back or take her to the hospital for further attention.

It was a dramatic climax to an awful day for Vika. Her stomach still hurting, Vika laid down and I sat by her, torn between wanting to give comfort and wanting to scold her for doing something so stupid! We have had many family talks about how you "don't drink what's under the sink," and when we got the Children's Listerene specifically, we had another discussion about how you don't swallow it. So, although I decided to offer comfort instead of scolding, I was more than a little angry at my daughter. Vika looked up at me with sad eyes and said, "I don't ever want to leave this family! And I don't want to die."

Perhaps this was the "Significant Emotional Event" that will encourage Vix to start to change her behavior. So far this morning she's been a bit more cooperative, and I know it will be an ongoing process for many more years. But if something good came out of last night's poisoning scare, I'll take it!

I mentioned a week or so ago that I had car trouble. That’s putting it rather mildly. One week and $2600 later, I got my car back from the shop. But let’s go back a bit…

It all began about 10 months ago, when my car (a 2000 Honda CR-V) started taking longer to warm up in the mornings. If it didn’t warm up a few minutes before I left for work, it would occasionally stall or run rough until it did warm up. I took the CR-V into the shop and got a tune-up, thinking that bad spark plugs might be the problem. For a while after the tune-up, the car did run better, but then the problems resurfaced. Eventually, I got into the habit of turning my car on for 5 minutes before leaving each day to warm it up so I could head to school without the car stalling.

However, I realized that this was just a band-aid, so I took the car into the shop again. BTW, this auto shop is run by a friend who used to investigate other auto shops for dishonest practices, so I trust them with my car. Anyway, this time they thought it might be the air intake motor (or something that sounds like that – I don’t remember the actual name), so they flushed out the system and cleaned the filters. Again, the car ran more smoothly for a while after this fix, but the problems resurfaced about a month later. At this point, Jeff replaced the air intake motor to fix the problem. It didn’t work though, and the car’s condition continued to worsen.

I brought it into my mechanic again, and this time they recommended I run a full diagnostic on it. The results that came back were quite distressing. My car needed a valve job! A 2000 Honda, with less that 90,000 miles on it needed a valve job! It just seemed wrong. I had the mechanic hold the car for a day, while I did some investigating on my own (I didn’t want to spend all that money if this wasn’t actually the problem).

Here’s where things get interesting. Online, I found that Honda CR-Vs produced between the years 1997 and 2001 have a little problem with their motors. Their valves tighten with wear, rather than loosen, and they should be adjusted every 30,000 miles. However, in my owner’s manual, it says to adjust the valves every 105,000 miles – which is why we never suspected this was the problem. In all the American owner’s manuals the recommendation is for an adjustment every 105,000 miles. In the European owner’s manuals, it says every 30,000 miles. I’m not sure why there is this discrepancy, but the conspiracy theorists say it’s because Honda felt Americans would be less likely to buy a car that required valve adjustments so regularly. Who knows what the truth is? All I know is that other CR-V owners around the country, myself included, have had to get costly valve jobs when their cars were around the 90,000 mile mark because they never knew to get their valves adjusted every 30,000 miles.

On the bright side, my car now runs like a champ, and I paid less than others have to fix the problem. Plus, I got a new timing belt, a tune-up, and some other things done at the same time. It just stinks that I’m now $2600 poorer because of a problem that you wouldn’t think would happen with a Honda. I’m still mulling over in my mind whether or not I should contact Honda Corporate about the issue. I’m not sure it would do any good, and it could just be an exercise in frustration on my part. But, maybe others have complained, and there is some offer of reimbursement out there? I guess I won’t ever know unless I pick up the phone.

So, a word of caution to all of you out there who may own a Honda CR-V built between 1997 and 2001. Get your valves adjusted on a regular basis! It will save you a lot of hassles and money in the long run.

Not sure how many of you heard about the wild fires burning in Northern California, but a few of them were within an hour of us, and stories of the devastation have dominated the local news. Even still, I didn't really think too much about them until the other night, when I went outside and saw this:


That's the sun, and it's red from all the smoke in the air.

The next morning, we awoke to find ashes all over our cars. That certainly made the fires seem a lot closer. Fortunately, they are now mostly contained, so hopefully no further damage will be done.

The last week, we've had a bit of drama occurring in our family. Actually, it's like one of those dramas that have a bit of humor, where even though you are laughing, you are thinking, "This is SO wrong!"