Vegas, DCFS and Infection.....OH MY!

Wow - it's April already?! And Easter is next weekend?!?! Can't believe how quickly 2012 is going by....

I think I mentioned a few posts ago that Travis' Christmas gift to me was a trip to Vegas in March. We flew out of Peoria on the morning of March 19th. I've only flown a few times and it doesn't really make me very nervous, except when it comes time to land. The last ten minutes or so as the planes descending and feeling rocky and then when it HITS the ground are my least favorite. But this was Travis' very first flight EVER! We made it past luggage check with no problems and grabbed a bite to eat at one of the little restaurants there. We had quite awhile to wait before our could board the plane, but the time went by really quickly! Because of Travis' size, he purposely booked us the emergency row seats so he could have more leg room and that meant we had "priority boarding" and were able to get on the plane right away. As soon as the plane started moving, I could tell Travis was nervous - he kept shifting around in his seat, his palms were sweaty and he kept looking at me. I tried not to giggle at him, but it was pretty funny b/c Travis doesn't get nervous. Ever.  The flight was pretty painless and the view out of the window was beautiful! They were selling tickets to Blue Man Group for a pretty good price on the plane, so we went ahead and bought some. The two-hour time difference definitely works in your favor when flying out to Vegas - pretty awesome to get back two hours of your day!  Now Peoria airport is pretty small and it's easy to get around, but the airport in Vegas is a totally different story!!  Holy cow....you have to walk forever and then go on escalators and then hop on a tram just to get to where your luggage is! And of course our luggage was on carasoul 10 (or whatever they call it) which was like 6.7 miles from where we exited the tram - or so it seemed. Then it was a waiting game to watch for your luggage to come around. Once we grabbed our two suitcases, we had to figure out what shuttle bus to hop on to get to Treasure Island, our hotel. We stood in line for almost two hours I think it was before we were on a shuttle, but once we got to our hotel - the week of fun began!!  Our hotel was nothing like either of us have ever seen before. I mean let's be honest - Vegas, in general, is nothing either of us farm folk have ever seen before! We didn't do a whole lot that first day - grabbed a bite to eat (The price of food out there is CRAZY - a beer costs $5? WOW!), gambled a little bit and then relaxed and went to bed early. We had a perfect biew of Trump Tower from our bedroom window - awesome! I am a BIG Donald Trump fan - don't necessarily agree with his political opinions, but he is possibly THE smartest business man there is. Tuesday morning, we got ready and decided to go for a walk. We found a McDonald's along the way and grabbed some breakfast (our cheapest meal the entire week!). Then we decided to check out a nearby hotel and guess what happened?  My ridiculously nice husband - who can't tell people "no" - got us sucked into a two-hour timeshare tour. What?! Well, it wasn't too terribly bad and we got free show tickets to Jubilee, free buffet for two and buy one, get one free buffet tickets. The Jubilee tickets were like $75 dollars or something like that a piece and the buffet was probably $25-ish per person. So we scored $150 in show tickets and $75 in buffet tickets for free by spending two hours touring a beautiful timeshare. Throughout the week, he almost got us sucked into the same thing a number of times!  After the timeshare ordeal, we grabbed some lunch at Toby Keith's restaurant. I had a fried bologna sandwich which was REALLY good! That night Travis was wanting to take a nap and I was like "No way!" so I decided we would go see Marriage Can Be Murder which was one of those dinner theater shows where the audience participates in solving the crime. Travis wasn't so sure about it, but he was a good sport. He even ended up being part of the show b/c the fella that welcomed all of us claimed that Travis was his long-lost twin brother (this guy was MUCH smaller than Travis which made it even funnier). Come to find out, he was the first murderer!!  So the "cop" had to interview Travis and find out how he knew the killer. It was SO much fun and Travis said he had a blast. In fact, I think at the end of the week, Travis said that was his most favorite show! When we got back to our hotel, the pirate show that happens every night outside our hotel was just beginning so we stayed and watched. It was pretty neat! We also bought tickets for the tour of Hoover Dam the next morning. It took up a good chunk of the day, but it was one of those things that I'm glad we did - probably wouldn't care to do it again, but it was still amazing to see! That night we used our free tickets to see Jubilee - we went to the 10:30 pm show which is the topless show. It was ok....we were both ready for it to end way before it actually did though. We did get prime time seating though! Originally, our seats were in the back but we got there pretty early and they moved us up right next to the stage which was pretty awesome - for Travis anyway. LOL I literally could have reached over and squeezed a boobie or two if I had the urge (which I obviously didn't). I also didn't honestly know where to look the whole time - half-naked women and feminine men dancing around in jock straps. It was somewhat uncomfortable for me! Oh well - it was free right?  Thursday we decided we would get our shopping done before doing anything else. Joanne told me about the M&M store and I knew we had to go there to find Maddie's souvenirs and boy did we ever! That store is AWESOME!  Four levels of M&M everything! I figured we'd pick just a couple things, but Daddio went crazy over his Princess - a backpack, jammies, towel and blanket. All in red M&Ms of course to match our red tractors - duh! We bought the older three two shirts each, Lexi a Las Vegas satchel purse thingy, and the boys a set of Vegas dice and Vegas BINGO set. That night we ate dinner at the buffet in our hotel and Travis discovered that the dessert table had unlimited sprinkles - boy was he excited!  He said "Sprinkles make everything taste good!" It was pretty hilarious....  That night we saw Blue Man Group which I LOVED!!!  It was so funny and just beyond entertaining - we both enjoyed the entire show. I mean they get the entire audience involved and they come walking up into the crowd and they walked directly in front of us in our row and pulled a girl down to the stage that was sitting behind us. SO fun!!!  We had to be up and ready Friday morning for the 6:00am shuttle, but our week was just what we both needed. We needed some time away from "life" to just relax and recharge. We're already talking about our next trip out there - Travis wants it to be a yearly vacation for us. Sounds good to me!!

Now while we were out there, Julie from DCFS called and left me a message that she needed to reschedule my home visit which was planned for the Tuesday after we came home. When I heard the message, my heart sank. I wasn't necessarily surprised b/c that's pretty much how this whole process has been going with them. To start off by being told that they didn't see a problem with me opening in January to them losing/misplacing my paperwork and so on and so on - this rescheduling wasn't a total shock. Thankfully, she just wanted to push it out to the next day!  So I busted my butt to make sure I had my house ready and any and all paperwork ready that she was going to ask to see. This particular rep had been to my house before when I had the daycare open and what I remembered of her was someone who had absolutely ZERO personality. She also did that visit during the time that I was taking Kiegan to Blm. 3-4 nights a week for his learning disability and I just will never forget her admitting that if one of her children had a learning issue and needed to be driven 45 minutes for help that she wouldn't be willing to do that for him/her. Will never forget that comment! So I wasn't exactly looking forward to seeing her again.  But I apparently caught her on a good day b/c she made the visit completely pain-free which I appreciated and I did my best to make sure that I had everything available to her that I knew she would need to see. As soon as she got back into the preschool room the first words out of her mouth were, "Wow! This is impressive!" I can't tell you what a relief it was to hear her say that!! She asked some general questions about how I planned to run my day, what curriculum I was using, etc. and before she left she said, "If I had preschool-aged kids of my own, I'd definitely send them here." Awesome!! That's quite the compliment from a DCFS rep, especially this one! So even though she was here for almost two hours, it went by very quickly and she told me to consider myself licensed and to start advertising. Yes m'am!! I was SO excited and relieved, needless to say. So I've been busy getting my enrollment packets put together and working on my advertising plan.  Things are officially moving forward!!

Now onto Travis and his fun week. Oh boy! On February 24th, he went and had a vasectomy which seemed to go ok - some pain and discomfort but that was to be expected. Sometime this past Tuesday though he was complaining of some pain in his groin - didn't think much of it really. Maybe he just pulled something? Wednesday we woke up and was definitely feeling some more pain, but went to work anyway. He called me mid-morning saying that the pain was so terrible that I needed to call the doctor's office in Blm. where the procedure was done to see if they could see him. They were able to get him in at 1:45.  I picked him up from work and we took off. He was hurting so bad that he could barely walk and had sweat just dripping off of him from the pain. I honestly didn't know if he was going to be able to get into the vehicle and when he finally got in, he had tears in his eyes b/c it was hurting that bad. Come to find out he somehow got some bacteria in him - assuming from when he had the vasectomy, but the nurse practicioner couldn't explain why it took 30+ days for it to surface. He verified that Travis was allergic to penicillan and then prescribed him a pain killer and a 21-day antibiotic. He informed Travis that if this doesn't fix things, Plan B was to remove the testicle. Not the best news to tell a man! An ultrasound was also scheduled for the next morning to verify that it was definitely an infection. He took the rest of the week off from work b/c he literally couldn't move due to the pain. Thursday morning, we headed out to the Pontiac hospital for the ultrasound and then took off to see our family doctor b/c of some lower leg pain that he had been having for the past couple months or so. Of course our family doctor wanted an xray of the leg, so back to the hospital we went for an xray (come to find out there was nothing seen in the xray - didn't make him happy)! Later in the day, the Blm. office called with the ultrasound results and his infection was worse than they thought - it was in the tube and in the sack. So they verified again that he was allergic to penicillan and called in a second antibiotic. I immediately took off to town to pick that up so Travis could start taking it right away. He popped one in right away without either of us thinking twice about what the medicine was. In the middle of the night, things went downhill all of a sudden - he was tossing, turning and scratching the heck out of his body and constantly wringing his hands. Neither of us slept much and went downstairs around 4:00am to see what was going on. He was broke out in a rash all over his body! I immediately knew he was reacting to that second antibiotic so I grabbed the bottle and read what it was - AMOXICILLAN - which is a Penicillan based antibiotic. Seriously?! The doctor's office verified that he was allergic to Penicillan before calling this in and Travis has been using the same pharmacy for YEARS and they have on file that he's allergic to Penicillan and yet they still filled that script?! NOT GOOD!!  So we had to wait until the office opened at 9:00am before calling and letting them know their mistake. Thankfully, my mom is friends with a nurse who she was able to call and find out how much Benadryl to give him in the meantime. I had intentions of letting that doctor's office know just how upset we were, but the nurse that answered the phone was so stinkin' nice that I couldn't be gruff with her! She talked to the doctor and he called in a different antibiotic and told us that Travis was to stop taking the other one (oh really?) and to keep taking the Benadryl. I also told the pharmacy to put a note on Travis' file about his allergy b/c they claimed there was nothing in it about it. Hard to believe....  So Travis ended up just getting more and more miserable - the rash was AWFUL. He scratched himself so completely raw that he had pus coming out and he scratched his skin off in some places. He couldn't sleep again Friday night and finally went to prompt care Saturday morning to get a shot of SOMETHING to counteract the reaction. They gave him a BIG shot of Prednisone and a prescription for Prednisone (6 pills day 1, 5 pills day 2 and so on) plus a list of over-the-counter meds to take plus a list of things to help tolerate the itching. So he now had a whole buffet of medicine bottles on the counter! But he couldn't wait to get some relief!!  The rest of the weekend was pretty miserable for him. He could tell the infection in his testicle was starting to get better - he was told it would take quite a few days before he would feel a difference. I rubbed his whole body down with Calamine Lotion to help with the itching, he took multiple showers to try to help relieve the itching, he rarely slept, rarely ate and simply didn't do a whole lot b/c he was so uncomfortable!  Now today - Monday - he did go back to work and he said by this afternoon the itching didn't seem to be quite as bad. Still awful - but not AS bad. He still has 2 1/2 weeks before he's done with ALL of his meds and a follow-up ultrasound on the 20th to make sure things are better down yonder.  He went to bed early tonight so hopefully that means he's tired enough that he'll be able to sleep in bed all night. He hasn't slept all night - or in our bed - since last Wednesday!  So since turning 32 in January, he's totally falling apart on me!!  On a positive, he did lose about 10 pounds and that has made him want to lose more weight - buy a treadmill, watch what he eats, etc. So hopefully he stays on that kick b/c I think he'd be REALLY surprised about how much better he'll feel (and how much less his knees and the rest of his body will hurt) if he were to lose weight. He weighs around 370 and could easily lose a good amount of weight with very little effort on his part. So thumbs up to that idea!

Sheesh!  It's after 11:00 - time for me to head to bed!