Eisley Jacobs's Blog, page 7

Dragons Forever 3: Dragons of the Deep

For those of you who have followed the blog forever and a day, you know when I finish a novel I usually sing the chorus to Petra’s It is Finished song. I can’t help it, it’s the first thing that comes to mind, followed closely by the Hallelujah Chorus. And I’ll have you know, it happened the very same way again. I sang both songs and people laughed at me. Never mind starbucks said I could never come back, the novel is done!

Can I get a whoop, whoop?

Ahem… anyway. Yes, I have finished Dragons Forever 3, DRAGONS OF THE DEEP. And I’m happy to report I don’t think it will need a major overhaul when it comes back from the first round Betas. Though, I’ve said that before and been completely wrong, so don’t mark my words.

This does free me up for PIECES OF ME though. The proofer is about 1/3 done (Has another full time job) and then it will go through one more proofer and then I will announce a pub date, unless I get a note back from those agents. In which case, I will announce some other form of news… but I’m certainly not waiting around twiddling my thumbs on this one. It’s a fun story and if there was going to be a sequel, it’s been bubbling in my head for a while now.

But, I must now reopen my mind to everything fantasy… everything that is the novel we call PRINCE, because it was formerly known as something else. Still don’t have a good title… but it will come. Darn that StarTrek!

Related posts:
Dragons of the Deep Have you heard the news? I’m accepting drawings for Dragons...
February recap… Since February is quickly coming to a close (Seriously, how...
Why is it… Why is it that this house buying process has to...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Oh snap!

My proof arrived early.

*hyperventilates*

I wasn’t expecting it until next Tuesday(ish) and here on Thursday it has arrived! This is a very bad thing… very.

Huh? Why?

My goal was to finish this pass of DF3 by Tuesday so that I could jump into this proof with both feet and not feel beheaded! But it had to go and arrive today. And I still have about 8,000 words to make it through on DF3.

So, here’s what I’m going to do.

*panic*

No, no. I am not going to panic. I’m going to let the pretty book sit right over there (points) and just allow it to collect dust… I think. OR I could just tell myself that I can’t get online another second until DF3 is off to the betas. I could do that. But I doubt I will stick to that.

*bites fingers*

However, my Remarkable Son has rugby tonight. I could bring him to rugby and sit in the parking lot with no internet and get those 8,000 words tucked away. No I can’t write 8,000 words in an hour and a half… but I bet I could write like 2,000 with no trouble.  Well, only if I leave my phone behind. Shoot. Technology sucks sometimes. LOL

Forget it. I’m going to do it… I am going to go sit in a half-lit parking lot for two hours and get some work done… darnit! Because this lovely below needs me.

Related posts:
New adventure… for the remarkable. My son Gabe is a fascinating child. He’s the middle...
Today’s trial… Pieces of Me is in the hands of a Chi...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Long Day…

Seems like this is a family update kind of week. Like everything that is happening in my world revolves around the kids.

Oh, wait. It kinda does. Ha!

So right, like I was saying… it’s about my kids again. One specifically. Not the remarkable one, though all my kids are pretty awesome. Not the extremely creative one either (no blog post about that yet. I’ll put it on my to-do list– or maybe I have and I’ve just forgotten? Could very well be). No, this post is about the youngest of the lot. Toby.

My little comedian. He is hilarious.. he has to be. He is the youngest.

Now Toby had a rough start to life. First off, he absolutely hated being in utero. I mean really. He fought me until 37 weeks when the doctor took pity on me and removed him from his prison. Really I think the child was angry that he was  missing out on all the fun outside my womb. Little did he realize what awaited him.

He was born at the lofty weight of nearly 10 pounds… 3 weeks before his due date. I couldn’t blame him for that though, I had preclampsia and gained 5 pounds in three days on toast. TOAST!

Needless to say, when he arrived we were both happier people. He was now out and able to move his limbs freely (and I’m certain he took a few swings at his brother before he was a month old) and I was not pregnant and feeling like a over inflated balloon.

However, our joy didn’t last long. Toby decided that while he was happy to be out of my body and breathing oxygen, his body wasn’t taking to the formula we were providing him (I produce no milk… so that wasn’t an option). He began to lose weight rapidly and had to go into the hospital for daily weight checks to assure the doctor he was healthy and that he would start to gain. When we finally figured out it was a bad formula, we switched him and he began to gain immediately! No hospitalization needed! Huzzah!

But this cheering would be short lived as my dear son would fall ill to RSV, Respiratory Syncytial Virus. In adults, this condition is pretty harmless and presents itself as nothing more then a common cold. And it’s almost completely undetectable to a healthy set of lungs. But for lungs still trying to get their swing on breathing air… it can be life threatening. 125,000 children a year are hospitalized from this serious virus and some of them even die.

Thankfully Toby did not die from his nine day hospitalization with RSV. But let me tell you, from a parent to parent, no one wants to see their 3-4 week old infant be suctioned with no change in his lung function for eight whole days. It was heartbreaking. I really thought we were going to loose him. The doctors kept telling me he was supposed to have made a turn for the better on day three, but day four still no change. And five. And six. It was a nightmare. I lived in the hospital and only survived on prayers.

I said all that to set up my Toby’s lungs. RSV is horrible. Horrible. Horrible. But the effects it leaves behind can change a life forever. A little life like my Toby. Now 10 years old, who is still battling low lung functions and uncontrolled Asthma (we are trying desperately to find something that works for him). He’s had pneumonia more then 12 times in his life (I’ve lost count, but the most recent was last month). Most of those within the first two years of his life. He’s had bronchitis as well as other bacterial type infections for years and years and years. It’s been a battle to keep him healthy. Short of putting him in a bubble it’s been next to impossible to get through a cold season without an ER/Urgent Care visit.

Doctors speculate that he’s got some pretty significant scarring from the NG tube being shoved down his nose numerous times a day when he was an infant in the hospital dealing with RSV. But they had to get the infection waste out of him. It’s not their fault, but a cause of the cure. Then possibly more trauma with each reoccurring pneumonia or bronchitis. They can only speculate.

The sad part of this all is that I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be struggling as much as he is now if we’d had better care and more proactive doctors.  In 2007, straight out of the military, the first doctor said to me, “You know he’s got Asthma, right?” 

I was shocked. Absolutely shocked. No, I didn’t know that… no one had ever even mentioned the word Asthma to me. Ever. Ever. EVER!

She said it as more of a, be aware of this… but didn’t hover on it because instead we needed to address the fact that the boy had so much fluid in his ears he was not able to hear properly. Hearing trumped the Asthma shocker.  So we got tubes and saw a decrease in his sicknesses. So, of course, I assumed his ears were the major cause of our sicknesses. Makes sense, right?

Argh.

Now we are up to three years ago when I began to notice in all family pictures or pictures with friends that Toby lacked any pigment to his skin. There was no pink to his cheeks and barely color to his lips. This can’t be normal can it? I brought it up with a Nurse Practitioner,  who asked him questions and poked on his belly. Said, oh… maybe it’s allergies. So then he had to go through an allergy prick test at five. He was a trooper.

Thing was. He wasn’t allergic to a darn thing. No cats. No dogs. No molds. Nothing.

Yet he was still reacting to something! 

At this point I think I felt like the over reactive mom, thinking that there was something wrong with my child and there really wasn’t. So I let it all go. 

Maybe he was just a pale kid.

What I didn’t know, was that Toby was indeed struggling to breath. And because he’d been struggling all his life, his body had learned how to “survive” on about 65% of his lung functions… which meant his body had no extra energy/oxygen for pinking up his cheeks. I’d always wondered why he didn’t play outside with the other kids… or rather why he would start then come back or sit and watch. I thought it was a social thing. Not a lung thing.

Two years ago my dear son got the worst winter cold I’d ever seen… in the middle of the summer. Allergies they said. Funny thing about that, he was tested and found having none. So after a trip to the doctor around day six when he began to run a fever, he was put on antibiotics for an ear infection and possible bronchitis (no x-ray). His fever left pretty quickly, as well as his runny/stuffed up nose. But the nasty cough lingered. And lingered. And lingered. Three weeks later my dear son was still coughing. I called the triage nurse to confirm that he should still have this lingering cough and she assured me that it takes “forever” for the cough to go away. So we held out another couple weeks before I finally said, enough is enough! Around week five of this cough and wheezy thing… we went back to the doctor and I said… “HELP!! There has got to be something we can do for this kid!” 

He was actually shocked Toby was still sounding as bad as he was. Then he said something that would change our lives forever. Words, I can only guess, other doctors assumed I’d already been told. And I hadn’t.

“What type of maintenance meds is he on for his Asthma?”

Come again? What are those? And furthermore, why does he need them he’s never had an asthma attack?

He fell off his chair. Almost literally. Then proceeded to school me in Toby’s condition then prescribed more meds then he’d ever taken in his life. Nose sprays. Inhaled powder. Steroids. Nebulizers. Inhalers. You name it, we got an RX for it. But you know what… in four short days, Toby’s cough was all but gone. And in a week, no cough remained.

Then the most miraculous thing happened… our once SICK boy became well. For almost a full calendar year, Toby barely came down with a slight cough and recovered in the same week. It was amazing. And, it these maintenance meds were working.

Then the move to California hit us. I should have ran into the doctor and gotten all the meds I needed before our insurance ran out, but I was a little busy selling a house on my own with three kids in tow. It’s my fault, but there was some light at the end of the tunnel. Every year we’d been in California, Toby had never gotten sick. So maybe it was something in Colorado that was making him ill… and he won’t need his meds anymore.

Someone should have slapped me. AND HARD! I mean really. REALLY hard. 

Wake up woman. Your son has chronic lung function issues… KEEP HIM ON THE FLIPPEN MEDS!

Well, I know that now. Well I  knew it last month when he got pneumonia. And now again he is ill with another lung infection (hello prednisone).

So, we have progressed to the point of finding what is going to work for him again with a pulmonary doctor. We need to find what will bring him back up to “normal” and prevent him from succumbing to a lung illness every month of his life. Because, this is normal for him. For us. And it’s heart breaking.

He has barely been able to be a real kid because his psychotic mom realizes that inconsiderate people bring their kids into public with viruses. A simple virus in my sons lungs can and will put him out for 2-4 weeks. And I don’t want that for him. But yet, I can’t hide him forever.

Today the pulmonary doc  prescribed a new med (Alvesco) to add to the growing number he’s already taking. Advair. Singulair. Albuterol Nebs every four hours. Albuterol Inhaler (rescue, but at least once a day if not four times a week). And he’s also on  prednisone for eight days. All this for a little ten year old who just wants to be a kid.

Toby and I have discussed recently the idea of him not being sick anymore… and being able to run outside without having issues. It was so precious and heart breaking. His eyes lit up and he said, “Do you think that’s even possible?” 

I hope so. 

So yes, I’m emotionally spent today. I hurt for my little man and pray that he doesn’t have to endure this for the rest of his life.

Related posts:
When it rains… dance in it! You know that saying, “When it rains, it pours?” Well,...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

New adventure… for the remarkable.

My son Gabe is a fascinating child. He’s the middle kid of three and he loves everything about life.  He’s a good student and complains very little about anything. Well, except for his brother. But most boys complain about their little brothers. And their sisters. But that is another story.  My remarkable son is… well remarkable. He was born with a sure temper (he’s Irish and Norse… and would you just take a look at that flaming red hair?!) but he tames it well… usually. He can use the temper in righteous ways and he has a heart that would melt blocks of ice.

A couple years ago, we took a trip to downtown Denver to pass out “Need Bags” to the homeless. From that point forward, this remarkable young man has prayed for the homeless of Denver and all around the world.

Besides Gabriel’s phenomenally big heart, he is exceptional at any sport he decides to try out. It drives his siblings a bit crazy, but the first time he picks up a baseball bat– we have a home run. First time he put on a pair of ice skates, he was doing figure eights and speeding down the ice. First time he held a football and tried to throw a spiral, it worked.

It worked? It worked!

There’s practically nothing this child has ever attempted that he hasn’t excelled at. It’s kinda fun and scary in a cool sorta way. I tell him frequently to use his powers for good.

Gabe, the Remarkable

That brings us to this past month when a friend of ours invited Gabe to come practice Rugby with the local team. They were already half way through the year, so joining the team seemed like an impossibility, especially they wanted something like $230 for him to play four games. But then, something amazing happened… something we did not expect. Yet, we should have. The coach asked if Gabe could please join the team… because they needed him. They even dropped the price for a half year registration.

So here he is, on a new adventure, and after just 3 short weeks of practicing (having never played before in his life), he suited up and took the field in his first Rugby game today… and they won.

I’m one proud mamma of a remarkable son.

No related posts.