Dad's Going Home!

Alright! Dad is scheduled to go home from the hospital today!!! Whoohooohooo!!! It's been a long 2 weeks, but the important part is that he's well enough to come home! He'll have the PEG tube on him still, and that should be easy enough since we've all dealt with a PEG tube when he was in the States. He'll have to add yet another "exercise" for his occupational therapy, for speech and swallowing exercises. Or maybe it's yet another day tagged on for his therapy schedules.....I think Mom's planning for him to go to Medical City for his speech and swallowing therapy since they do have a specialized department there for that purpose.

Ok, just some catch-up scraps for today's post, more Sisterhood Challenge layouts, completing the lot for the 6th month:

6th MONTH RAINE


6th MONTH RANGER

Yes, time to try and get some early shut eye tonight! :)

The "-Ber" Months

The start of the "-ber" months (SeptemBER, OctoBER, NovemBER and DecemBER) usually indicate the start of the Christmas season. Too early? Sounds like it but can you believe that September is almost DONE?!?!?! Yikes! Where did it go?!? Man oh man! So much stuff to do 'til Christmas, too!

Time to start panicking? Maybe not. I have written my list, so I know that's a start. An even better start? I've already shopped for the Christmas gifts the kids are giving their classmates. I have 3 out of 4 classes done, so I'm in pretty good shape. For now. I also have a few small gifts that are probably going to be going to the various maids and drivers of the different households. Some, not all, but definitely a great start! Now, the wrapping is a different story, hehehe. I'm hoping NOT to leave that at the last minute this year!!! Gotta start putting it on the calendar, I guess, just to make sure. Little by little, slowly but surely.

Breathing in, breathing out. Looks like I'm still ahead of the game. For now :)

Just a quick post today. It's tired and I'm late. One catch-up page for today, from the 40th Wedding Anniversary:

SIBLINGS COMPLETE

I love this picture of all of us. We all looked good (hehehe), especially us girls. We had pretty skin, looking quite flawless, really. Seems like we had the best acne treatments ever....thank goodness for the power of make up and great make up artists! :) A pimple here or there, a blemish, a sunspot...everything erased!

Time for some sleep, otherwise those facial blemishes would be appearing on my skin tomorrow!

The Sisterhood Challenge Begins Anew!

Yup, the Challenge has started again! :) It took Bang to start her pages again, and boom, the rest of us followed. Hehehe. She with the one child. Hahahaaha! Oh, and Stella has joined us, finding the new hobby of digiscrapping quite addicting, from what I hear! Welcome to the club, Stel! Hehehe.

I have the 6th month pages of Raegan and Rogan here:

6th MONTH RAEGAN


6th MONTH ROGAN

We are more than halfway done for the kiddos' First Year Album!!! Whoohoohooo!!!

Ok, off to download the heck out of the internet again. Crossing my fingers the kids won't notice, LOL! Yeah, right! They now assume that whenever the connection is slow (or not as fast as they like), that *I* and my downloading are to blame!!! Hmp!

P.E.G. - The Other Feeding Tube

A few days ago, I blogged about Dad getting an NGT. Today, he was outfitted with a PEG tube --- a percutaneous endoscopic gastronomy tube. No way in heck I'd be able to figure that out on my own, hehehe. Too much of a medical term, that percutaneous. Anyhoo, Dad had the PEG inserted near his old PEG site, in the stomach area. It was done first thing this morning, and by the time we got to the hospital, Dad was just sleeping the effects off the anaesthesia. He practically slept the whole day! At least his body is responding and demanding some rest.

How does he eat?

Next thing to look forward to? Dad going to a regular room. His "regular" room, i.e., the Presidential Suite of the hospital! Hehehehe. Maybe not for a few days. But at least it IS something to look forward to!

All of us went to mass in the hospital's chapel. We had the kids picked up so we could all go together, along with Mom. Afterwards, everyone went out for dinner while I stayed with Mom at the hospital. Til late, around 9- or 10-ish? Can't remember now. The nights have sort of been blending together, kwim?

Disneyland Scraps

Just posting some layouts I've done the past week or so. With spending so many hours in the hospital, at least I was productive enough in the scrapping department! It's gotten to the point that I'd sit behind Dad's bed while he was asleep (in the ICU), plug in my laptop and start scrapping! It definitely whiled away the time.

So, here are some pages for our Hong Kong Disneyland album. Elizza has been a scrapping machine, too, churning out her Disney pages so fast! I'm slower; for some reason I get scrapping blocks every now and then. Sigh. Oh well. At least I've got pages to show, eh?

DISNEY EXPRESS
DISNEYLAND ENTRANCE
JUMPING FOR JOY
DISNEYLAND ARCH

It's late (what else is new?!) and time for bed!

TTFN!

Major Insomnia

Ugh. Going through the entire night withOUT any sleep at all. Maybe a 5-minute catnap somewhere, but the TV woke me (it was still on) and that was it. I couldn't go back to sleep. Must have been orovo diet pills I took early this afternoon. Don't they usually contain some ingredient that makes you stay up? That, plus the couple of glasses of Coke Light, and I was too filled with caffeine to do anything BUT be awake!

This is the first time this has happened to me! So what's a girl to do in the middle of the night? Why, I scrapped of course! But after a few layouts, I knew I had to at least TRY to go to sleep. So I shut everything down, drew my covers over me, and closed my eyes. Uhm....nothing still. So with a resigned sigh, I booted up my laptop yet again surfed my CT sites. Luckily, there was a bunch of new kits I had to download, and I figured the middle of the night (or should I say morning?!?!) was the best time to do it since everyone else was asleep! My connection sure was flying!

Some catch up scraps, from Palawan:

LIFE'S GOOD
OPERATION: SAND COVER

Here are some pages of Raine at her cousin's Spa Party a few months ago:

MANICURE
HAIR FASHION

Ok, off to take a shower. I might as well go to the office nice and early. :)

Kiddo Photoshoot

Zharine texted me last night asking if she could "borrow" the kids for a photoshoot. It was for the launching of her new magazine. Well! Who was I to say no to some media exposure for the kids?!? Hehehehe. No talent fee, but hey, with the yummy cupcakes that Zharine brought to Zhar's shower last month, I was set!!!

I pulled the girls from swimming training, bad Mama. Hehehe. But they had fun (and were TOO full, with the ice cream and cake set out before them!). And because they were big girls, Zharine put them to "work" as teenagers!!! Ok fine, tweeners I guess would be the proper term for that now. The ---ahem---politically correct term. Whatever. It was funny to see them pose and smile in an instant, and then go back to having serious faces the next :) Good exposure, good practice. Especially in not being camera-shy! Think of all the great scrappable pics I'd have if they'd have this down to a tee, eh???

Thank goodness the whole shoot was in an airconditioned place! It was a big venue, and I'm sure the ac compressor was working overtime, but it was nice and cool for us parents waiting in the wings. Coupled with some ice cream cones, it was quite a refreshing few hours, hehehe.

No pics from the shoot, but I'm sure Elizza will be uploading them soon. Somewhere. Hint! Hint!!! Hehe.

I do have some scraps to show off though, some Hong Kong Disneyland ones:

BUBBLES
DISNEY BUS

Oh, a very HAPPY 6th BIRTHDAY to RILEY!!!!

TTFN!

N.G.T.

Nasal Gastric Tube. Am pretty sure that's what NGT means, without having to look it up :) It's this tube that goes from a person's nostrils, into the throat, into the stomach. Bypassing the lungs completely. It's to help a patient avoid getting food or liquid in the lungs because of weak throat muscles, resulting in aspiraiton pneumonia.

Dad had to have this done, to force him to get better, and to remove the incidence of having a repeat of his pneumonia. Surprisingly, he had agreed to have this done; normally, he'd be fighting and insisting on a PEG (a tube that goes straight into the stomach, with a little bit extending outside the body. Gross sounding, I know, but my description is worse than how it really is, hehehe).

Anyhoo, Dad took the presence of this foreign tube inside of him calmly. He was still on oxygen, so the NGT wasn't such a big deal in his nose than if it were the only tube going inside of him. Eldon made me listen when air was being pumped inside the tube (to check). I heard a whooshing sound when the stethoscope was on Dad's tummy and on his throat. But there was absolutely no sound when the 'scope was on his chest. It was just quiet, the way it should be.

Got home very late, as usual, not even early enough to see the kids. Sigh.

Just a short update and some uploading of some recent scraps that hadn't been seen here :)

CROWN OF THORNS
BOAT BOYS

Ok. Am pooped.

Practically Living in the Hospital

Kinda. I did take a breather of sorts when we had an early lunch with the kids at Shakey's. Not sure if it was them or Japa who was craving for thin crust pizza, but off to Shakey's we went. It was a REALLY nice thing to sit down with my family and just chat and eat with them. I pretty much missed that the whole week since we went straight to the hospital after work.

As a treat, Japa ordered root beer floats for Raegan, Rogan and Raine while Ranger had an ice cream right off the bat. Not that he delved into it straight away. The chicken, mojos and pizza came a few minutes after, and he let the ice cream melt. *roll eyes here* The kids were excited to have their first float ever, officially, hehehe. And wouldn't you know it, we forgot to bring a camera!!!

But wait, I did have my new phone which came with a 5 megapixel camera. I figured it was a good time to try as any. So.....the kids posed, I aimed, I took pics, and I'm holding my breath as I figure out the blue tooth sending capability between my phone and my laptop. Technology, eh? Gotta love it!




Not bad for a camera phone eh?

Dad's doing better today. Livelier, talking a lot more. Clearly, too! Which is surprising, since according to the doctors, patients who would be candidates for having an NGT inserted usually have weak vocal chords. But for Dad, I guess the NGT is more to avoid the occurrence of aspiration pneumonia all over again.

Researching Meds and Other Medical Jargon

A teeny bit of an emergency happened this afternoon. While Mom was at the Chapel attending mass, Dad's heart rate zoomed to 206 beats per minute. His nurse phoned Mom and she comes running to his room to find it full of doctors, fellows, residents and nurses. She was probably all panicky and nervous as heck.

But dear Mother is a pillar of strength and in a few minutes, she had me on the phone, telling me to look up the words "tacky something" and "poly-scheme something". Hehehe. Her words, not mine. Smart woman that I am (hehehehe) AND well read (another hehehe), I figured out TACHYCARDIA. I have NO idea where I read that but it looked and sounded medical enough and so that's what I typed up. As for the poly-something. I had absolutely no idea what that was and I told Mom that it could be anything!

Thank goodness for the internet, that's all I can say. And to my credit, of COURSE I knew enough to look up the necessary stuff on the credible sites like the Mayo Clinic or WebMD! Do these dang Fellows and Residents thing I'm an imbecile?!?!? Hello!!!!! I don't need Nikon rifle scopes to narrow in on a particular site just to be able to get an accurate representation of a medical condition! Jerks and total know-it-alls. Hmp!

Anyhoo, I spent the afternoon immersed in cyberspace looking at terms such as:
tachcardia, paroxysmal tachycardia (that's the poly-something Mom had overheard), isoptin, cordarone, and other generic medicine names. And I as I was texting Mom the information, I had to sift through my brain as to what I remembered of Dad's medical conditions and the various medicines he was taking so that I could pass on adverse effects, symptoms, etc, to Mom. Needless to say, my brain was a little bit overworked as I typed in words I didn't know the meaning of, looked at anatomical drawings of the heart that I didn't really care to see. Overall, an exhausting brain exercise.

Which, technically, is NOTHING compared to what Mom goes through each and every minute of everyday that she stays with Dad in the ICU. I don't know how she does it, but she does. Yes, she's very exhausted at night, literally dropping off to sleep like a baby on her bed, but she's up first thing in the morning and off she goes to the hospital. Sometimes I feel it's better for her that Dad's in the ICU instead of a regular room because SHE's regulated (sort of) by the strict visiting hours that the icu adopts. Sort of, like I said. She has a way of making the nurses bend over to give her a few minutes here, a few minutes there. Hehehe. Typical Mother :)

Hospital Bound

Just a quick note...am off to the hospital to see Dad. He was rushed to the ER yesterday early morning because he said he couldn't breathe. Good thing he's strong enough nowadays; he can actually tell that his body isn't working the way it should.

Most of us were the hospital the whole day yesterday. Forgetting to eat properly, too, which was why I had the beginnings of a headache at about 8 pm. Time to go home. Dad was being ornery, and was louder than a bunch of Sebo vacuums in concert. Sigh. He refused to eat (after a certain point), he was cussing (at Mom, too!), and he was kicking (me)....trying to get down the bed! Ack! Definitely NOT a pretty sight to behold, let me tell you! Mom told us to leave the ICU room so that Dad wouldn't have an audience to "perform" in front of. Sigh! Typical Dad.

The good thing was, at least he was fighting and was talking clearly. The important thing is that he SHOULD be getting oxygen in him....and I'm off to see if he did just that overnight.

Tata!

Goodbye to Hong Kong Disneyland!

Here's the Hollywood Hotel in Hong Kong Disneyland.

I am STOKED to be able to stay at a Disney hotel!!! FINALLY!!!

Enjoying Hong Kong Disneyland!

Off to Hong Kong Disneyland

Feeling Not-So-Good

Ugh. Everyone's getting sick at home.....at least, the girls are. Raegan woke up Sunday morning feeling awful. She was lethargic and quiet. So we had her take some pain reliever/fever reducer and she got a little bit better. Sunday night she had cough AND colds. Not a good combination. But she had that field trip yesterday and couldn't miss it (which was mainly a reason why I decided to go with her).

But bad Mama totally forgot to take Raegan's meds with her on the trip! Ack! Luckily, the teachers had a first aid kit and there were some acetaminophen that Raegan could take. The poor kid was pale and quiet, very unlike herself. Good thing it was quite a drive to Bulacan; she at least got a lot of rest yesterday, that's for sure. Even in-between places to visit, she took her little catnaps. These helped her get better today, I think, so we just have the colds and the cough to worry about now.

Raine on the other hand, woke up feeling nauseous this morning. And she had a major headache. On one side of the head. Which meant only one thing: migraine. Sigh! So I told her to eat breakfast first and then we would deal with her migraine. I gave her some tempra and reminded her to take more when she got home from school.

When I got home in the evening, both girls were up and about and were generally feeling better. They skipped swimming again, leaving Rogan to go by himself . At least they got a lot of rest from missing swimming. Good thing they got sick now, instead of in November when their swimming competition is!

While both girls seem on the mend (cross your fingers!!!), Mama isn't doing so hot. I woke up with a humongous migraine, so much so that I could barely get up. My head was about as big as my bed, hehehehe! Seriously! Anyway, I hurriedly popped in my Excedin pills and waited the 15-20 minutes before the meds started working. When I was done with my shower, me head was loads better.

In the office, I tried concentrating where I could, but I seemed to be having the chills. Normally, it was just not cold in our little office. But today, I had goosebumps the whole day! Sheesh! Then my eyes started watering in the late afternoon and I knew I just had to take some Tylenol. Aaargh! Oh well. Better now than when we're in Hong Kong this weekend, right?

Say a little prayer, please, that all of these bad germs pass through our house and that it doesn't hit the boys at all! We know that we do NOT want ANY of the high-need boys to feel sick!!! No no no! Anything but that! Hehehehe.

Good night, and hopefully when I wake tomorrow, my migraine will have disappeared. Somewhere.

Yowzers!

{BLOG TRAFFIC}

Out of curiosity, I checked my blog stats from the Blog Party, and the numbers just surprised me! Hehehe. What a way to get blog traffic eh? I get an average of 60 visits a day, I think (if I'm reading my stats correctly, lol), and I have no way of knowing if those are unique visits or not..but I do know my regular blog visitors: all 5 of them, hahahaha!

But thanks to Zakirah's Merdeka! kit's giveaway on the Team's blog party, my numbers jumped to 198 on August 31 ---that's Merdeka Day here in Southeast Asia--- and to a whopping 257 on September 1 ---when most in the US and Europe joined the blog party!!! I never get those kinds of numbers!

Oh, and thanks to Maria of DigiFree who listed my free quickpage made with the Merdeka! kit on her site, the numbers are still up. To those who downloaded the QP, I hope you like it and use it for your scrapbooks! You can still scrolldown a couple of posts to grab it; I'm leaving the link on there for a little bit.

{OH, THE SWELTERING HEAT!}

I spent the day with Raegan and her batchmates on a fieldtrip to Bulacan. Yes, Bulacan. Probably my first trip there; at least, one that I remember and where I willingly went! Hehehe. I was intrigued by our itinerary and the cultural tour guide, Des Bautista.

Anyway, I took Doods' CRV and drove. I didn't realize how much I miss driving; speeding through the roads with no traffic. The North Expressway was pretty much empty except for our convoy of 8 vans and SUVs. It was pretty fun. I did talk to a couple of the drivers and told ---pleaded, really--- to NOT NOT NOT lose me and to make sure I was in their sight at ALL times since I had absolutely NOT idea where we were going and how to get there! Hehehe. They were very nice and were always on the lookout for me, which made the almost-2-hour drive bearable.

Our first stop was supposed to be to see this old lady who still made pastillas wrappers the old-fashioned way. However, Des told us that the lady had called him earlier today and said she wasn't feeling well....so Des just led us to the Bulacan Garden showing the kids plants and trees. The kids weren't all that into it: first it was sooooo hot and sunny, it was almost unbearable! And second, I guess they weren't all into the names of plants. Which was a pity, I thought. I remember when we were on a road trip with Doods and he kept pointing out to the kids trees on the way and telling them what it was and some story behind the name or the tree or the fruit. It was very interesting and entertaining.

The kids' attention were caught when Des mentioned some plant being more than 2 million years old....suddenly, he was surrounded by 40 eager faces peering at the ground. Hahahaha. I think he did that on purpose. He explained that that particular plant (sorry, couldn't remember what it was called) was part of the plant family that came from the plants oh-so-many-million-years-ago because they were stiff and hard. Probably what the dinosaurs ate. Oookaaay. No matter, it captured the kids' attention and diverted their thoughts from the heat and the sweat running down their faces. That wily old man! Hehehehe.

After the garden, we went to the house and shrine of Marcelo H. del Pilar, which housed the papers from La Solidaridad, the Filipino revolutionary paper. Then it was on to the Church of Bulacan, some Museum that was being renovated, which featured our National Artists, the Shrine of St. Anne, and the Church of Barasoain. I'm too tired to list everything that we did today.....driving 2 hours there and back, in the company of 40 boisterous kids will sap anyone's strength. Add to that the HEAT, and that was it. I have a migraine coming, and it is HUGE!

{SCRAP}

Just a quick upload of a Palawan page I did a couple of days ago and never got to post here:

EL NIDO ARRIVAL

TTFN!