My Sammy Girl

Wow...so it is almost 2 weeks into the new year and I haven't posted an entry yet.  I'm just glad that I didn't say to post more often in my January change.  We've been pretty busy here.  Jonathan is on the move.  Yes I do have a video and here it is...Jonathan is doing the army crawl.  Sorry for the short distance, but he has gotten so much better and I have to upload some more videos that I have gotten of him army crawling.  Once I get them up, I will post in the blog.

So he is on the move now!!  I can't get much done because I am constantly turning him around because he is getting into things he shouldn't.  He goes into the pack n play when it is nap time, because I don't trust him to wake up and not get into things.  Which is fine....he has been pretty content napping in the pack n play.  

I did capture a wonderful moment...Jonathan napping on Daddy!!  Don't tell Daddy, but this is one of my favorite pictures!!  So that is pretty much the new stuff with Jonathan...He's on the move and destruction is quickly following his trail!

Jonathan & Daddy...1/9/12

So the past couple of days has been a rough day on our Sammy girl.  It started a week ago.  We figured Sammy had finally caught up with her age (she's 11 and 1/2 years old), she just wasn't wanting to go upstairs with us.  She like to be around people, more particularly around us.  We just let her be, if she wanted to come up we would walk with her up the stairs, if not, she was perfectly content on her bed in the family room or in the utility room.  We did notice that she had lost a lot of weight.  Just hit us that she was very thin and you can see her ribs.

A couple days ago, Sammy had an accident overnight.  She had diarrhea in the house (like I said middle of the night, so we couldn't hear her if she was by the back door to go outside).  She had gone around our dinning room table and in the kitchen.  So I spent about 2 hours cleaning up the mess.  I did call the vet and set up an appointment for him to come out, as Sammy and Dakota are both due for their vaccines anyway.  So, Sammy had a few additional episodes and thanks to some advice from a family member, I switched her food to the boiled chicken and rice as well as gave her some pedialyte.  She had said to give this to her for the next 5 days and then to provided that she is doing better, she can be slowly weened back onto her normal food.  So she had a small portion at her dinner time feeding.  Sammy ended up have a couple more episodes throughout the night, this time I was close by and was able to let her outside in time...no mess in the house.  When it cam breakfast time for the dogs, Sammy had another small portion of the chicken and rice and I decided it was probably a good idea that I not give her the daily aspirin that I give her to help with her joints.  She did pretty well all day (although we were very nervous because of her age).  She got 3 small meals throughout the day.  I'm mixing the pedialyte with their water (so Dakota is getting it too, but that's what happens when you have 2 dogs), Sammy gets 3 small meals, and no one is getting any treats.  Sammy can't have them because of her diet and well, lets face it, they are really not healthy for them anyway.  

Dakota could stand to loose a little bit a weight....she has trained us that she won't come in from outside unless we have a treat in our hand, if not, she will bark and wake the neighbors up if it is late...she does not do this when it is freezing cold out.  However, since I've been a stay at home mom, I have broken this habit and just shut the door on her , she will want to come in on her own eventually.  Hubby on the other hand, I had to remind him Sammy couldn't have a treat because of her diet, this meant Dakota couldn't have one.  On the upside, Dakota thinks ice cubs are treats and sometimes we can get away with giving her an ice cube.

So back to Sammy....the vet came out today and I gave him a little background on Sammy and what has been going on the past week (much like I just did for you).  He did an exam and he said well, here's what I can tell you.  The exam for a dog her age was remarkable!!!  He said everything sounded normal, her teeth look great, gums are in great condition.  After hearing all of this, I guess we were getting worried for nothing.  I did let him know that her eating habits did not change, she was still scarfing down her food just like any normal dog would.  Neither of our dogs get table scraps.  I must admit, I do sneak her some people food once in a great while....nothing recent so it wouldn't have caused the diarrhea...it's usually when I'm cutting up veggies for Jonathan's puree or a salad for me, or dinner...but it is always veggies.  So with everything looking good, he said it is probably a case of gastroenteritis.  Great news!!  He said since she is in great shape we have a couple options that we could do...

Option 1:  Change her food to something easier to digest (Check...already done), Stop any and all medications that could possibly cause the diarrhea (check, I decided to cut out the aspirin to strip her down to the basics), He said he would be giving her some meds as well as a shot (he did say what it was and it's on the paperwork, I'm just too lazy to go look and I don't remember what it is) to help boast the meds.  He said the meds would be 1 pill 2x's a day.

Option 2:  All of the above with the addition of blood work the full senior workup.  

He said since she's really in good shape he would go either way.  I decided to to option 1 and then if she's still not better after the 5 days of meds, then we could call him back to do the blood work.  Regardless, he will have to come back anyway.  If she's not feeling better, for the blood work, if she is feeling better, for her vaccines.  So she got a shot and really, she seemed to be feeling better within 5 minutes!!  Back to herself and wanting all of the attention.  Of course she was like this when Dakota was getting her turn with the doctor.  I was holding Dakota and Sammy was nudging under my elbow wanting the attention.  She really does love the attention.  She hasn't had any diarrhea episodes the whole day, so I believe she is on her way back up.

As for her weight loss, he said that as long as she still eating we will work with that at a later date.  He would like to get her digestive system back on track first, and maybe this will help her out with the weight as well.

So this is where we stand now, and now it is time for this Mommy to go to bed.  So, I am hoping to get back on track on my blogging and not have such a big gap between this blog and the next one.

A Developing Story

Before I start this post, I want to give a shout-out to my sister.  Today is her birthday...So Happy birthday to my favorite sister (ok so she's my only sister...but still my favorite!!)....We Love you and hope you have a wonderful day.

Onto today's post.  As promised, I will update you on Jonathan's development.

When Jonathan was discharged on June 9, 2011, he was diagnosed with Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP).  Once he was discharged, we had weekly opthamology appointments for a few weeks, which then turned into every 2 weeks, then a month, and now we are on our 6 month stretch.  He goes back to his opthamologist in February 2012 (Jonathan will be a week shy of a year old at that time).  So the last time we saw the opthamologist was the beginning of August, 2011.  At that time, the doctor said that it appears Jonathan's ROP was correcting itself...so he was growing out of it.  His diagnosis was downgraded from stage 2 ROP to immature.

Jonathan has had some visits with his Early Intervention (EI) Team.  His team is put together with 4 therapists; Speech, Occupational, Physical and Developmental.  When this was set up they put this group together who are more sensitive to the micro preemies and their behavior.  They first saw him in August.  They said that he was doing really good at that time.  His adjusted age when they saw him was just over 2 months old.  They did say his reach and grab skills were 50% delayed, but they didn't feel that he needed to have any treatment at that time.  They did say part of the delay was most likely due to the ROP.  But over all, they felt that we could just do some exercises and "play time" at home to keep him developing in the right direction.  So no treatment was recommended then.

In October, 2011, we went back up to the Neonatal followup clinic.  There were a couple concerns there.  The first concern was that Jonathan had fallen off of his weight curve.  So the nutritionist was in the room and it was suggested that we keep him on the high calorie formula (he is on Neosure 27 Cal.).  They wanted to keep him on this for about another month and then we can start the rice cereal when he was 5 months adjusted.  After talking with the Nurse Practitioner, we decided to start him on the cereal 3 weeks after his appointment and she also said she didn't feel he had fallen off of his curve was as big of a deal as they were making it out to be.  She said he was in the 50th percentile because they had gotten him there and maybe he just wasn't comfortable there.  He is now in the 25th percentile.  After talking with our county health nurse that follows him as well, she said she had him in the 25th percentile when she was here in September.  Our Nurse Practitioner said that if he is still on the 25th percentile curve in our December visit, then that will be his curve, he may just be more comfortable there.

There was also a concern that he had a slight head tilt to his right.  He has actually had this problem since before he was discharged.  It was just more prominent at discharge then it is now.  However, the neonatal doctor did say that she would like to see this corrected and if it doesn't get corrected by December, then she will be ordering some physical therapy....so we were given some stretches to do and orders to do them as often as possible.

Jonathan...Our "textbook" 5 month old
during one of his first feedings

In November, 2011, Jonathan's EI team came back to do another evaluation on Jonathan.  Jonathan was days shy of 9 months old, however, his adjusted again was almost 5 months old.  They said that they were once again happy with his development and he was a "textbook" 5 month old.  I did bring up the concern of Jonathan's head tilt, and they said that it appears to be correcting (at least in their eyes).  They said it was only a very slight tilt, but it could be more prominent when he's tired or upset.  So we will see what our December visit at the clinic says...until then, we will keep doing our stretches.

Jonathan's EI team is planning on coming out for another evaluation in February 2012 when Jonathan is about a year old.  They said to not be surprised if they recommend treatment at that time, the goal in the 1 to 2 year old range is to close the gap between his chronological and adjusted ages.  

February already appears to be a busy month for us.  Already scheduled in February are the EI team, 1 year Pediatrician appointment, Ophamology, The County Health Nurse, and something tells me the Neonatal clinic will want to see him then too (however, that is not scheduled yet).  So that is pretty much where we are at with the development side of things.  Jonathan seems to be doing everything that he needs to be doing at this time.  He is cooing and laughing and playing....and so much fun to have around!!  

So don't forget to laugh today, and if you need some help, here is some encouragement....

And now a word from our sponsors..... (sorry, didn't get a lot of pictures in on this post, but at least you've got 2 videos to see)...

So it appears that Jonathan's story is all caught up at the moment.  So I'm not really sure what the next entry will be about...we will see what idea pops into my head.

Until next time, smile, laugh and enjoy life!!!