Doing the same thing over and over

We've got a lot going on- nothing new there.  But I'm kind of stuck and not doing anything.

You see, my mom's in the hospital.  5th time since February of last year.  3rd time in 1.5 months.  She's been there since Monday of this week, so we spent part of Thanksgiving there.  She was there for about 3 days back in mid-October.  Then a week about 3 weeks ago.  And now we're going on a week again.  She's having mega-potassium issues.  I didn't know much about potassium until her whole saga began- very abruptly and unexpectedly in September of last year.  You have a normal range of 3.5 to 4.5 that you should have.  2.5 puts you in the hospital for IV potassium.  Lower than 2 is rarely seen because it results in death due to the heart & breathing issues that it can cause.

Last year she was admitted to the ICU with a level of 1.8 and it took about a week to get it up to the acceptable range with bags and bags of Potassium.  She was out and then she was fine from March to September again this year.

And suddenly she went down again- with heart papaltations and fatigue and  general ickyness.  Her levels were caught at 2.0 so she went to the regular floor instead of the ICU these times (which is nice because the kiddos can visit too).  Last time she was there for a week it took all week to get the levels up then she started a new med designed to hold the potassium.  And it worked great, but combined with the supplemental potassium it worked a little too good and her level sky rocketed to 6.0.  High is also really bad because it can cause heart issues.  Seriously, it's no win.

So they lowered her meds, but lowered them too much causing her to crash again to 2.0 and landing her back in the hospital.  She is getting 8+ bags of potassium a day along with oral potassium but she can't seem to keep it in her body right now.  THey can't figure out why.  She went in Monday at 2.0 and now she's hovering around 2.6 depending on when they draw.  It's so frustrating-- and I'm not even the one in there!  They placed a PICC yesterday so at least she's not getting pricked for blood draws every 2 hours or having new IV's placed for the potassium every few days, but it's really starting to scare me.  When you have a huge (HUGE) team of doctors scouring your charts and trying to figure things out for months and they can't get you to raise more than .6 in several days???  She's totally a mystery case and she's so worn out from the whole thing and I'm just plain scared.  I'm hoping she can get a second opinion or move to a new hospital or something-- what's the saying about stupidity being doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result?  I feel like that's all we're at.  They're pumping her full of meds and nothing is happening, but they just keep doing it.  But at the same time, it's so scary to know that being at 2.0 (2.anything really) is so critically dangerous for your heart and she's just stuck there and there is nothing they can do.  There's no magical treatment they have in their back pocket for extreme cases.  She is just a total unknown.

So... just icky for now.  At this point I hope they can just raise the levels, get it to stick, and then they can worry about figuring out the cause or disease or whatever it is causing this.

One day I won't be so busy...

We're still all alive!  Just busy and up to our eye-balls in more busy.  Basically, busy.  And any free moment I have, I want to be sleeping.  But usually I'm cutting lamination for school or writing lesson plans or doing laundry.  You all get it.  

The girls will be 18 months this week.  I can't believe it.  Sydney is such a talker.  Colby was an early talker which was a huge surprise due to his prematurity.  Sydney is a twin, not the first child, and an avid passie user-- all factors that are considered to make for later talking.  But she doesn't care.  She can say pretty much anything and will repeat everything except her name and other people's names.  Except Zoe, who we all call Bo Bo.  She will yell "BO BO!" when she's trying to find her.  She understands what she's saying because she's making connection between objects she sees and wants and uses words correctly.  She will put more than one word together-- my favorite is when she says "Where is it?" which she will do when she can't find her passie.  She also screams "Let go!" to Zoe.  And will say "Hold this" when she's done with something.  The other night I caught her on film yelling at Johnny saying "I want slush!" when he was eating slush and not feeding her fast enough.  It's just crazy.  

Zoe talks too, but not quite as much, though I noticed a big spike in her talking this weekend.  She can repeat pretty much anything too, but doesn't choose to on her own as much.  In general Zoe's quieter and more of  studier.  She'll work with little things for a long.   She's also Colby's biggest fan and Colby has started to (slowly) accept her company when playing cars or trains.  She's in heaven.

And Colby's Colby.  Still super smart and cute.  He's really "getting" things now.  He can reason things out verbally to you so they actually make sense.  His memory is about a trillion times better than mine (and he uses it against me regularly).  He's really "getting" Connor now.  We always would mention Connor when we saw pictures and when Colby would look at our stuff on the shelf in our bedroom.  And we'd tell him he has a brother and all that, but now he gets it and brings it up at times that kind of blindside you.  The other day he was telling me who his buddies are and he said something like : "Phoenix is my buddy.  Logan is my buddy.  And my angel Connor is my buddy."  And he told Johnny the other night out of the blue in the car "Dada I'm not afraid of the dark, you know why? My buddy Connor is my angel and he comes down from the sky so I don't get scared in the dark sometimes. He makes me feel safe then he goes back in the sky cause he has wings."

And Baby #5 is good.  I'm 20 weeks 1 day today.  Everything is still going well though I'm still being monitored really closely.  The best part so far is having Colby the age he is.  LIke I said, he gets things and he really "gets" this pregnancy.  He tried so hard to feel a kick this afternoon but kept missing them.  He still thinks it's girl, but we shall see.  :)

Alrighty, I'm ready for bed.  Like I said. we're busy, but we're good.  I have lots of cute pictures but they're on my laptop which desperately needs a charge.  I'll upload them soon... maybe.  :)