Gosh it's been 4 days... and in 4 days....

Erica and Carl welcome Miranda RaeLin Stark into the world!!! She's absolutely adorable from all the pictures we have got to see of her, I can't wait to meet her in person, but she has a little bit of special time needed at the hospital to make sure she gains all her weight and she toughens up a bit more for this real world bull :) She's already a fighter and full of spunk from all the postings, so I am sure she will be just fine.

Part II of the knee --- the meeting with the Orthopedic doctor today..

I have fluid in my joint.. not a significant amount, what they consider the small effusion, but it's through the entire joint, and in time... a scope will be needed to figure out what is going on, but right now the doctor did not feel that it was something that he felt would give me any more comfort than that what is already being done, ie pain meds, the immobilizer for when it's at its worse.. like.. NOW. So I've still got to put a note into Dr. R tonight to see what he has to say about it and what his feelings are, but for now.. it's just going to be pain that either will or will not go away. It hasn't changed in six weeks, I am not expecting a huge change now.

On another side note, I won't go into a lot of details but I'm pretty sure I have a UTI so I am venturing to the instacare in the morning to get that checked out. Kevin's temp job ended today, so that means the apartment won't be empty for this mass inspection that is supposed to happen. So little ones off to school, I'll come home and tidy up the apartment and then I'll venture over to the instacare, unless of course i can side track that with a lab request for the test and let the doctor handle it all out of office.. now that is a good thought :)

I've promised Mrs. Erica some Enchilada's so that will be my wednesday quest for her, to make and deliver some enchilada's. After all this, she deserves them and while she is still healing and everything else.. it's the least I can do.. afterall she watched my kiddo's for me while I had the other ones!

So he's for hope of Step-Saver hiring Kevin for the local run, which they have interviewed him for, for the speedy and good recovery of Erica, for little Miss Miranda to keep thriving and doing so good so that all of us can hold her soon.

Nighty night my friends :)

The Knee....

Here is the MRI results straight from the hospital report from the radiologist...

The Knee Update straight from the Radialogist report:

MRI of the left knee without contrast dated October 19, 2011.

Comparison: Radiograph dated August 30, 2011.

History: Knee pain after injury.

Technique: Axial fat-saturated proton density. Coronal T1 and

fat-saturated T2. Sagittal proton density and fat-saturated T2.

Findings:

The medial and lateral menisci are intact without evidence of a

tear.

The ACL, PCL, MCL, and LCL complex are intact.

The extensor tendons, popliteus tendon, and pes anserine tendons

are within normal limits for the patient's age. No muscle

abnormalities are appreciated.

There are no focal cartilage defects.

There are no areas of abnormal bone marrow edema.

There is a small joint effusion. No significant popliteal cyst is

identified. There no intra-articular loose bodies.

Impression:

1. No evidence of a meniscus with ligament tear.

2. Small joint effusion.

Sooo now I wait until Monday to get the doctor to decipher this, but it seems the good is no tear, the concern is the joint effusion (which is fluid in the joint) that shouldn't be there. One step at a time.

I did speak with the physical therapist though, because everyone knows how patient I am, still recommends limiting overuse of it due to the fluid in the joint, icing, doing the motion excercises he gave me, elavation and resting it.

The apartment inspection is keeping me up and moving, which the PT said was a good thing, as long as I am not overdoing it. That is a little bit of my downfall, because this apartment inspection is like telling me that my mom is coming to visit and I want the place spotless. So I don't stay down for long and I then pay for it all night long when I can't sleep, it's a give and lose thing I think for me, but my apartment is clean, the final things will be done today when Kevin stops at Wal-mart for the stove top drip pans.

I do have to say the upside to all of this, is that my carpets are clean, I'm not tripping over stuff, it takes much less time to get the kids to get their rooms picked up and its always nice to have your house cleaned up. I did feel bad having take the kids bikes to Storage, but winter is coming and they needed to go. I'm going to have to spend a weekend next spring cleaning that storage unit and decluttering that some more!

Well I'll wrap this one up for now, as the door of in and out children on UEA break is a constant go today.

Ugh October is already half over! Where the heck has the time went??

Finally after almost 6 weeks of hobbling around in pain with this knee, the MRI has been approved and is scheduled for tomorrow at 9:30 p.m.. After a ruder than rude agent from the hospital called to set up the appointment... well first let me back track and tell the little story of this appointment getting set up.

I have an account with the hospital and the linked IHC clinics which both my regular doctor and the Orthopedic doctor work out of, the main phone number for contact on this said account is my cell phone for the very reason that the house phone being old and cordless likes to go dead without any warning. So earlier this morning I had called Dr. Hatton (the ortho's) office and put in another message, can you please get ahold of my "hand out" insurance and try to find out what is the deal with getting this MRI done. I get a phone call, on the house phone this afternoon, which I answer and it promptly dies, . I ask Adam to hang up the house phone, it rings again in the process of him getting it to the charger and he tries to answer it.. it of course dies. I wait a few minutes thinking well if it is the doctors office they will call my cell phone, after all that is the phone number that I ALWAYS tell them to call me on anyway, but no phone call comes through to the cell, so I ask Kevin to call the house voice mail and check it.. he does so.. and it was the hospital.. DANG IT!

"Danielle, this is "witch" from McKay-Dee Radiology and you have now hung up on me twice. Now either you do not need this MRI for your knee or you just do not care." ... now this is where I AM NOT JOKING. The women actually said this. She then asked me to call her back to schedule the appointment. So I called her back and got her voice mail, to which I responded. How convenient that you ask me to call you back for me to get your voice mail, I can only ASSUME that you do not want to speak with me at this time, so when you are available please call my CELL PHONE which was the number requested to be called rather than my home phone that has a tendency to die to being a old cordless phone residing in a house with children and I hung up the phone.

It was only a few minutes later that she did indeed call back, I informed her that I felt her voice mail message was very rude and inconsiderate based on the needs of a patient and she had failed miserably at doing her job as a patient care person representing the hospital, now she could schedule my MRI in the next available appointment and then give me the phone number to her direct supervisor so that I could report the voicemail message and her poor customer service. While she tried to excuse what she had done and the message she left, I finally go through the actual book my appointment and got the supervisor's phone number.

So I waited a few minutes and then I called her supervisor, which I have to say was the nicest lady and she was just in shock, when we played the voicemail back to her over the speaker phone on Kevin's cell. She apologized and confimed that the appointment had been made and that it was indeed for 9:30 p.m. tomorrow night. "Mrs. Hancock, I am very sorry for that message, it is highly unprofessional and unacceptable on behalf of the hospital. I will be taking care of this matter immediately as we get off of the phone."

Just seriously how someone after a month and a half of pain and having to be on a frakkin' prescription pain killer can say "I don't care" was beyond all belief and shock to me. Like I intentionally hung up on someone after all this time of waiting for the phone to ring! Gah!

So it'll be another busy day tomorrow, as I have a morning doctors appointment for what I am sure he is just going to tell me is viral, but I'll have good news in the I have the MRI and follow-up scheduled department for tomorrow night.

The only other thing going on in our lives that is ready to make me become an alcoholic is this inspection our apartment community is going through! We've had to replace all but one mini-blind in our apartment, the carpets were professionally cleaned today, we've scrubbed floors, walls, floor boards and everything inbetween over the last week getting ready for inspections that still don't start until next week. Hobbling around and with the help of Adam big time though it is getting done. Kevin is working almost full time each week, it's just getting up at 4am that is kicking his bumm more than anything, me it's the pain and not sleeping through the nights. The carpet cleaners today had to use some heavy duty stuff to get the red kool-aid/powerade spills out of the carpet, they all came up and the carpet looks absolutely beautiful!!

Well it's bed time.. and these kids are ... well we're sooo ready for them to go to bed!! So here's a post.. :) It'll have just make do until I write another one ;)