Corridor 9

Yesterday you got to glimpse a look at the new pack that I had. Well… today you’ll get a peek at the new pack that Sadie has. It’s the new 2008 Ruff Wear Palisades pack and it’s very cool. With her own water bladders, separate harness/pack system, and compartments to store enough gear for a week, this is definitely going to make her the talk of the trail. In addition to the pack, she’s also testing out Ruff Wear’s Grip Trex booties. I’m not much of a bootie fan, but these things look killer. Additional Pictures are in the Photo Gallery above.

You can see the reviews under the Animal Companion Gear link at BackpackGearTest.org.

The Lowe Alpine Is a lightweight day/overnight pack that I’m testing for BackpackGearTest.org. I’ve been able to use this a couple of times on hikes. There is one more report series due before this test is officially closed so I definitely have to get some more hiking in during the next few weeks. Have a look at the Gear Album in the Photo Gallery listed above to see some of the wonderful features this pack has. By the way, I stuffed all the gear in the picture above into this pack and still had room to spare!

Well, once again I completely borked the website. I’ve had to restore from yesterday’s backup so some things are going to be broken till I reconfigure them finally fixed.

ARGH! This is the downfall of using a production server for testing.

UPDATE: I think I got everything reconfigured. If you happen to find a problem, please use the contact form above to let me know.

You may have heard or read recently the the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Washington D.C. law banning homeowners from owning a handgun. The video above shows a bit more information and clears up some bogus “statistics” regarding the myth that more guns = more violence.

Nothing much has changed with Kristie’s condition, but to make sure that we have all the necessary information in line let’s take a look at whats going on.

• She’s still on bed rest in the hospital till the baby comes: Closest approximations are still 6 weeks away.
• A PIC line remains in her arm so they can give her IV medications and draw blood from
• She can take a 5 minute shower and sit up a few times a day as her back injury was hurting her when she was laying down all day.
• Her fluids are relatively stable and haven’t decreased dramatically this past week like we were fearful of.
• The baby is real low and in the delivery position, so at least we don’t have to worry about breech or anything.
• The only new update is the fact that she can now get wheeled outside for 1 hour a day to get some sun and relief from the hospital. It’s not like i can wheel her to Dairy Queen or anything, but just that little bit of freedom makes things seem more bearable.

If anything changes, I’ll be sure to update the blog ASAP, but don’t be surprised if we don’t hear anything for a while.

This is one of those “you have to see it to believe it” stories. You may remember a little post here last April about the insurance company that the city has raising their insurance rates. Well, it’s April again and naturally the insurance rates went up again. It’s almost too much to handle this time.

Let’s refresh our memory on what each plan offers:

As with before, the “standard” insurance plan that covers roughly 80% of the medical bills went up marginally. Note that when I say it went up marginally I’m talking about about $110 increase for a family plan. Not that I could afford a family plan mind you as it’s now over $1000 per month out of pocket expense. I don’t know about you… but $1000 a month is a lot to pay for family insurance.

Let’s have a look at the new rates:

As with last year, it doesn’t seem like that much of an increase. But let’s look at our minimum wage worker again and see how many hours a month he’s working for free.

You did catch that right? No? Let me elaborate a bit more for you

Make sense now? Yea… the average worker would need to work 4.3 weeks per month for free just to afford family insurance. But wait you say…. isn’t minimum wage going up this year? Well, yes it is, and just for you I’ll calculate a family plan at the new minimum wage.

But wait! There’s more! You didn’t forget that we’re looking at the insurance rates per month of the standard plan did you? How about we take a look at the new Premium Insurance rates.

$3330 a month for insurance! I can’t afford that…. can you? Can anyone? Lets work this problem backwards; lets see how much money someone would have to make if they wanted to work every month just for insurance.

$20.81 per hour, or roughly 4 times minimum wage. Not for bills, not for food, just for insurance.When is it going to end? At this rate, in 5 years, family insurance will be $9760.69. Once again, the word outrageous doesn’t even come close to the atrocity that is happening to the average worker.

Insurance should be affordable, useful, and easily available. Even at the standard rate, these terms don’t fit when talking about the Meritain Insurance that the city has. Isn’t it time that we start looking other places for insurance? Isn’t it time we start taking care of our employees?

I guess there is a bright side to this; at least the cost isn’t double, like it was last year.

This past week has been rather uneventful. The highlight of the week was on Thursday when I took 12 hours of vacation time in the morning so that I could be here at the hospital with Kristie for and ultrasound and placement of a PIC line. As usual, I was able to go back and watch the ultrasound in real time. The fluid level in the amniotic sack was estimated to be about 5.3 cc which is a bit lower than last Thursday.

We were worried that the drop in amniotic fluid level might indicate additional problems down the line. As I mentioned before, the lack of fluid during pregnancy can contribute the a lack of development in the baby’s lungs. However, we were assured that this would likely not be the case as the baby is already almost 30 weeks along. Dr. Quatro consulted with a perineonatologist from Vanderbilt University a few days ago and they confirmed that the baby’s lungs should be developed enough that the lack of fluid should not be an issue. Only during early development would this lack of fluid matter, and he should not induce labor simply due to low fluid volume. This is definitely a relief for us.

As for the PIC line, I was not able to be in with Kristie during the procedure. I was forced to hang out in the waiting area. I wasn’t too happy about this as I’d taken vacation for the specific reason of comforting her during this time. While they had a few problems getting it in due to her vein’s spasming, the procedure wasn’t too painful for her, and it definitely was worth it so she doesn’t have to be stuck 17 more times for IVs.

Kendall ended up staying the night Friday and camping out on the floor. It had been quite a while since she was able to spend the entire night with Kristie, and they both seemed to enjoy watching TV and having fun.

Some new information on the baby front:

The other night, Kristie was taken off the IV fluids because she was doing so well on her output. They were using her injection port to give her the antibiotics with instead of a constant fluid drip. When the nurse came in later that night, she ended up removing the injection port all together and placing her on oral antibiotics for a period of time.

When we were moved to the second room, we were given a rather small room due to the fact that she doesn’t need an observation room, but doesn’t need a mother/baby room either. The room was only about 150 sq ft and was not real good for visitors and such. In the end she was moved to a room that was roughly twice the size and had a couch bed that I could occupy instead of the hard backed chair that has been killing my back for the past few nights.

Today Kristie is getting a PIC line. It functions just like an IV port, but doesn’t need to be replaced every 4 days like an IV port does. This way she doesn’t need to have 17 separate IVs over the course of her 2 month stay. I’m actually writing this now from the x-ray waiting room as she’s back in the arteriogram room having the procedure. With this PIC line they will be able to draw blood, and inject fluids and antibiotics.

She also had an ultrasound earlier today to check the baby’s position and amount of amniotic fluid. The baby is currently turned head down and is sitting just on top of her cervix. The heartbeat is still nice and strong, and everything with him seems to look good. The amount of amniotic fluid that she has is a bit small. With averages being between 8-25 cm, her 5.3 cm is not looking so hot. If it drops much more, they will likely induce labor so that the baby’s lungs arent damaged due to a lack of fluid.

Other than that, everything is pretty much the same as before. Nothing much to discuss, so no posts everyday. I’ll keep you informed regarding future events.

Yesterday Kristie was moved to a new room. They moved her out from Labor and Delivery Observation into more of a post delivery room; smaller, but only slightly less pricey.

She’s now allowed to take “quick showers”… See. every nurse that came in always mentioned taking a quick shower. After about the 10th time Kristie asked if Dr. Quatro wrote “quick” in the chart. Actually, he wrote “patient is allowed to take one 5-minute shower per day”. LOL

Nothing is new with the status. The baby is still getting monitored every few hours, but no longer constantly. She’s still receiving 1 L of fluid every 10 hours which means waking up every 2-3 hours during the night. She’s now on antibiotics every 6 hours until she has the baby.

Still waiting I guess….

Throughout the day, Kristie has been hurting miserably with her back, using a bedpan has been unsuccessful to say the least, and lack of sleep has made her grouchy! Needless to say, I’m the one feeling the brunt of her pain.

It’s official, her water has broken. It hasn’t gushed like you would normally expect, but she’s been loosing water for a while now. Because of this, she’s been taken off anti-contraction medicine. See, the problem is that if her water is broken, she doesn’t need to leave the baby in there. It’s her bodies way of telling her it’s time to have a boy.

In addition to being removed from the contraction medicine, she’s also been put on antibiotics. When the water broke, the risk of infection to both her and the baby went up dramatically. She is on antibiotics now every few hours and they are having to draw blood to check for infection every day now. Did I mention Kristie hates needles?

Expected time frame is within a week for delivery.

Kristie’s first night here at the hospital was quite restless. She has already started having contractions, and is already dilated to 3 cm. She began having contractions at roughly 1 am if I remember right. Unfortunately, because they are really trying to hold off delivering this baby for a while, they are giving her anti-contraction drugs. While this keeps the baby in there longer, it also increases the risks a bit.

In addition to the pregnancy problems, she’s always had back problems. Laying on these beds for 24 hours a day really sucks. During the night she was told that she no longer gets bathroom privileges anymore either. It’s bedpans for now.

12:40 at the fire station, and I’ve been here for roughly 30 hours. Kristie just called me after visiting with the doctor regarding her pregnancy. She called me and you know what the first words out her mouth were… “We’ll, I’m headed to the hospital!”

I was almost in shock, mouth dropped wide open, and I left promptly. We had a brief stop in the ER prior to coming straight up to Labor and Delivery, where she was placed on a fetal monitor, contraction monitor, and bed rest.

Part of the concern is the fact that Kristie is only 28 weeks along. For those guys out there who don’t know… a normal term pregnancy is roughly 40 weeks. That puts the baby almost 3 months early.

Note: I’ll try to keep up to date on blog posts throughout this process, but right now I’ve got to catch up on some old information.