– Will you or have you gotten a seasonal flu vaccine? Your family?

– Why or why not?

– Will you be taking the H1N1 vaccine as it becomes available? Your family?

– Why or why not?

– What other precautions are you taking from getting sick, if any?

– Finally, if you have already had H1N1, please describe your experience.

Today K went to the lung doctor, her 3rd appointment with him since her discharge from the NICU. Each appointment gets further and further in between and now she doesn’t need to go back until December. I don’t know how long he will be following her but now he has told us that she can come off of the apnea monitor.

At each appointment, he takes the monitor and downloads all of the activity it has recorded and checks all of that to see what’s going on. He said there was nothing of any worry at all this time. Last time she had 6 recorded spots of heart rate drops — all with feedings. At the appointment before that, there were even more including one that did not look like it was during a feeding.

I mentioned the times since she’s come off the oxygen how I’ve gotten up in the morning (at least on 3 occasions) to find the heart rate drop notification light was red. This mean she’d had a heart rate drop and the machine had not been reset. All of these times I was sleeping in the same room with her and it did not wake me up so I could only figure that she’d dropped and come right back up, maybe the machine only did a short beep once. The doctor told me that the normal rate for K’s age now can go as low as 60 and that the machine was set to alarm if she went down to 80. So she didn’t actually have a true heart rate drop.

I mentioned how weird it was going to be taking her off of this monitor… and how hard. This poor little kid has been on monitors – of some kind – ever since she was born, and then for those 3 weeks before she was born! To suddenly take them away and remove that security from us is a bit unnerving. He said that we should look at her as a full term, 2 and a half month old infant who would not be on monitors. It’s hard to do, though. But the doctor also said that we could keep the monitor longer to wean ourselves off of it. I did take the plunge, though, and she didn’t wear it home. She is wearing it now, though, mostly because Steve is nervous and asked that I put it on her for tonight at least.

But the doctor said he would call the home health care people and have them pick up the other stuff. So hopefully soon they will call me about picking up the oximeter, oxygen concentrator, and 4 portable oxygen tanks. We did already send back one portable but didn’t get a refill on it. Those things would have lasted 20 hours on the rate she came home on, longer on what she went to later, so we only went through one and about a fifth of one going to doctor appointments. And the “empty” tank really isn’t empty, they tell you to quit using it when it has 500 psi left.

Kayleigh also had to get another PKU screening done as ordered by per pediatrician. I really don’t know why she needed this other one, but I’m sure it has something to do with being a follow up since the first one was probably done in the NICU. I was proud of her though, the tech stuck her foot and started dabbing the blood on the little circles on the paper (that test is weird) and K didn’t even cry. She struggled a bit because she doesn’t like anyone really forcing her to move her legs in any direction (who does?) but she didn’t cry at all, even when she was first stuck. The last time she had blood work… oh, how she cried.

In other news, the lung doctor said that Steve and I need to get flu shots. I need to go talk to the pediatrician though and learn about if we can even get it? From what I understand those things are often in limited quantities, right? And they usually give to high risk groups first, right? I’m not sure I qualify, I’ve never had one before. I’ve heard the swine flu shot is supposed to come out in October. I also need to find out if K will get that or if we will need to. They won’t give it to infants under 6 months and while she will be 6 months in October I don’t know if they will go by her actual or corrected age. I assume they would go by her actual age, though, since they do for vaccines. That in itself kind of weirds me out because it seems like everything except vaccines goes by corrected age. Oh well, we will see the pediatrician before all of that needs to be done.

Anyway——-> /ramble.

Went to the doctor this morning about my head. He wasn’t too concerned. He said we’ll see if I’m still having symptoms in a couple of weeks. I guess there’s nothing can be done anyway. He was more concerned about my congestion and tried to give me more antibiotics which I refused. So he gave me a nasal spray and told me if I’m not better by tomorrow to call so they can get me antibiotics. ugh.

My friend/neighbor has me on herbal remedies and that seems to have done more good in one night than antibiotics ever have. So I most likely won’t call the doctor tomorrow even if it’s the same but see how it is on Wednesday.

I just feel like pooty.

Added to say that now Elijah has a fever and a runny nose. Sigh.