The fools we make of ourselves for our children

See the video below:

The things we do for our kids. I've mentioned before that Georgia eats meat and tonight she was having chicken. We have a little difficulty getting her to eat. At a recent trip to the doctor for a bit of a mysterious rash we mentioned that she was not eating. The doctor said to make eating more fun. We scoffed at that but, after a while you're willing to try anything...now, there's not a lot of eating going on in the video but we were laughing pretty hard at Georgia honestly though, the whole time this was going on I was thinking:

"Finally! Someone appreciates my chicken noises!"

Meatatarian Baby

Georgia's almost 7 months old now and we've been struggling a little with getting her to start to eat some real people food. Like any good parent we started with purees stuff...homemade sweet potatos, carrots, pears, bananas and iron fortified single grain cereals like rice, oats, barley, wheat but she didn't seem to want any of that stuff.

We started to worry a bit. Why doesn't she eat? Other babies eat. Why won't ours?

Apparently we were doing it wrong...

We've been having a little success with mum mums and farley biscuits. She would grab on to one of those and stick it in her mouth. They dissolve on contact with saliva so not a bit deal. Georgia doesn't have any teeth yet but she tends to bite those mum mums.

She's also got a sippy cup which she's pretty good at using now. The thing we noticed was that she eats on her own terms. She puts the food in her mouth if she can hold on to it.

We've been trying different stuff but we've had the most success with pureed meat. With the meat on the spoon Georgia grabbed it and put it in her mouth, mumped it around, swallowed and everything and then she took a few more spoonfuls.

So basically, she likes meat and has to feed herself...We might be in a bit of trouble since she seems pretty willful. Not sure which one of her parents she gets that from

PRP

Damn....PRP is painful.

Let me tell you how this went down. First, I drove to Barrhaven, then I waited in a doctors/physio waiting room while some dude freaked out about not being able to get a massage right then. He'd called and they booked him but forgot to tell the massage therapist and the therapist went out for lunch while he was supposed to be massaging the dude...Not fun. Mr Aggravated sat right next to me but they handled him well.

Finally, they called my name and led me back to a room which was like any examination room in any doctors office. The doctor proceeded to take my blood except my veins were deep. The first time he stuck me he missed. The second time he stuck me he got the vein but it didn't stay put. 

At this point I started to feel really bad. I started to sweat and feel dizzy. They had me lie down and gave me an orange juice. Apparently this is called vasovagal response. Triggered by stress or trauma...I dunno I felt like this just after my trigger finger surgery. We associated this to the Tylenol 3s I was prescribed but I suppose I have experienced a LOT of physical trauma lately.

While I was recovering from my episode, they started to look at my other arm to see if they could stick a needle in there to get blood but the veins wouldn't show so it was back to the other arm. They stuck me a 3rd time and it was good. They basically have this syringe within a syringe. It sounds weird but bear with me.

They take the syringe filled with blood and put it in a centrifuge. This separates the platelets from the red blood cells. while the blood was spinning, he stuck me with a freezing needle. When they pulled the syringe from the centrifuge the blood was separated. The red stuff was on the bottom and there was a yellowy clear solution on top. With the other syringe (the one inside the larger syringe), the doctor could siphon out only the yellowy clear platelet solution. 

He then injected the platelet solution into the elbow. The doctor offered to prescribe Tylenol 3s for the pain but I said no, since my last experience with them was really bad. The doctor suggested I use extra strength Tylenol. All in all, the whole process took 30-45 minutes. I ended up taking a meeting fro work before I drove home...

No problem right?

About 2 hours after I got home the pain was really bad. Worse than when they did my Trigger finger surgery. Today, (A day later) My arm still hurts...a lot...I can't move it so well and I'm also limited to lifting 5-10 lbs with it for about 3 weeks. No picking up Georgia...:(...sucks

The Next Big Thing

I'm pretty busted up at the moment but it was worse a few weeks ago. On Friday, April 13th I underwent surgery on my finger to fix a condition called trigger finger. The surgeon cut about a 1 inch incision into the palm of my hand, stuck some scissors in there and clipped the band that the tendon on my 3rd finder moves through. I'm still recovering from this but it's moving along well and I'm happy with the results so far.

I've got some exercises to do and I have to force my hand open and closed through the extreme ranges of motion but eventually I will be able to play guitar again. I've still got stitches in my hand but they'll start to dissolve in around 2 weeks.

Next on the agenda is to fix my tennis elbow. I don't play tennis or golf but I have tennis elbow. It hurts a lot. I've tried physio and cortisone shots but only got a month or so of relief. The worst is reaching for something but the pain just decides to flare up whenever...Nighttime can be bad.

Rather than go though surgery again to fix this problem The next step is actually something really cool called a Platelet Rich Plasma injection (PRP for short) Basically, what they do is take your own blood and spin it in a centrifuge separating out the platelets and growth factors. They then inject the platelets at the site of the injury which promotes healing using stuff from your own body.

The thing about tennis elbow is that it's a very stubborn injury. There's not a lot of blood flow to the area so it doesn't heal well on it's own. Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation did not do the trick here. Hopefully this does the trick for me.

Under the Knife : WARNING GRAPHIC IMAGES

So I had the trigger finger release surgery last Friday. Here's what they sent me home with:

I think the surgery went well. It didn't take very long. It actually took longer to freeze me then to do the actual surgery. I had some pain for which they gave me Tylenol 3. The pain meds caused me some issues with my blood pressure so after a day I stopped taking them, but I didn't need to any way.

At first, my finger was pretty stiff. I could barely move it. Now, a few days later I can move it better. I can't quite make a fist yet but it's getting better every day.

The bandages came off today and I got my first look at what they did. It's not pretty so if you're squeemish, stop reading, close your browser, and come back later when I've posted something else. It's gross but It could be worse I suppose:

It's pretty swollen at the moment...but will get better