Deep Thoughts....

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

back home...

Well I didn't get a chance to update anymore on the trip, but thats ok. Gunnar had his appointment and the news was so so... We found out that Gunnar's bladder is about 1/3 of the size it should be, Dr. Gearheart suggested Gunnar have a bladder augmentation in which they take the bladder and cut it open to form like a half sphere, then they take part of the intestine and use it to form the other half of the sphere (to make the bladder bigger). Then they will take his appendix and attach one end of it to the new bigger bladder and attach the other end to his belly button. Then instead of going to the bathroom like normal, he will just have to put a catheter into the hole where his belly button should be like 5-6 times a day. This gives him a 95% change of being dry, which means no more pull-ups! While the no pull-ups thing is good, the whole having to cath himself is a little scary for him, and it was pretty unexpected as Dr. Donovan (his normal urologist) had never mentioned this possibility. So everyone is still talking it over, it turns out there is a 19 yr old that lives in Sioux City that had this surgery 7 years ago, so Mom, Dad, and Gunnar went to meet him and get a better idea of everything. I guess the guy was really nice and Gunnar seemed to like him, and he was able to answer a lot of questions having gone through it himself. So Gunnar is now saying that he doesn't want to have to wear pull-ups the rest of his life, so I think he is leaning more towards this surgery now. But they are still talking about it so we will see what happens, hopefully all goes well. Well I don't have much time so thats about all for now, I'm still going to the library to get internet access, so I will update more when I get a chance.

¶ 12:11

0 comments

Sunday, August 07, 2005

Greetings from Baltimore…

Well Milwaukee has been going well, I am working at a pet store right now, which I love cuz I love animals as you all know. I am interviewing for a police dispatching job as well, so hopefully I will get that. Gunnar has an appointment at the John Hopkins Children’s Hospital tomorrow, so the family came up on Friday and stayed the night. We left for Baltimore on Saturday, it was getting late with the loss of an hour cuz of the time change, so after about 14 hours of driving we stopped in Pennsylvania and stayed the night, then got up this morning and drove the last 150 miles to Baltimore. We went to Washington DC today site seeing, it was pretty neat, and none of us has been there before so it was new to us all. We just parked and walked from place to place, pry a couple of miles overall. We saw the White House, Capital Building (from a far) Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, World War II Memorial, and the Vietnam Vets wall. It was really neat to actually see all this stuff. We were thinking of going to see the ocean but decided we didnt want to drive that far so we decided on this instead, which was a good decision cuz it was a great time. Washington monument is pretty huge, makes Sioux City's Floyd Monument look like a pencil. The weather was pretty good, a little hot, but overall today was a fun day. Tomorrow Gunnar has his appointment which should take a few hours, then we’re gonna see some more stuff in Baltimore. Tuesday we will leave for Cleveland, and site see Tuesday then go to Cedar Point Amusement Park on Wednesday and Thursday. We are all pretty excited.

I still don’t have internet at home, so I have been going to the library periodically to check email and stuff, so I haven’t had any updates yet. But the Children’s house we are staying in has internet so here I am. Well I am gonna get going, just wanted to update everything. I’ll possibly update more later in the trip.

¶ 18:10

0 comments