"Then it went POW!"

WARNING! LONG POST! CONTINUE AT YOUR OWN RISK! This post will contain bad grammer, spelling, many "run-on"sentences, weird punctuation and is guaranteed to be hard to follow, so continue with caution...

This has been an eventful couple of days. It started Wednesday night. I was going to try to get a pic of Bryce in his cowboys boots with a naked bum. He was in a grumpy mood, so I was hurrying to set up my umbrella lights and camera (which I never do, cause it is such an event, but you cannot have a bad shadow on a booty picture . It might scar him for life!). I am still very much an amateur. I was plugging in stuff and plugged my cord (that syncs the lights to the camera) into the wall instead of the light box. Then I pressed the shutter to test the lights , with a stool for a prop, since Bryce was in the tub. And then it went POW! This beautiful image is untouched....lol. Smoke and all.


The camera still works for natural light ( I so want to get better at that, but this wasn't what I had in mind.) needless to say...no pics. My camera will be sent to Canon to see if it can even be fixed tomorrow. HO! HUM! I was glad that my husband was with Bryce, watching him in the tub, cause we are one of those weird couples that laugh when something scares the other one. I bet I jumped 10 feet in the air. I wonder if I had a black ring around my eye, like with those old trick cameras. Later, as I finally fell asleep, Bryce woke up at 2:30am, and for the life of me, I couldn't get him back to sleep. His daddy usually does the "getting up at night thing", cause if I exit the bed for any other reason than a trip to the potty, I can't go back to sleep and lay there staring at the ceiling with my mind racing about EVERYTHING (like how I blew up my camera!) He whispered to me that he was exhausted, so off I went. Needless to say, I got Bryce to sleep and layed him down and his head popped up and the crying began again. (My best guess is that it was a night terror, cause he doesn't usually do this. He meant business that he WAS NOT TO BE LEFT ALONE in this room with ELMO eyes staring at him from his bookcase). So, the next morning, he decides to wake a whole 2 hours earlier than usual. (In case I missed him.) He had already spent the majority of the night in our bed, sitting up, talking his garble talk and trying to see what he could see in the dark. Let me first say that, although we love to cuddle, my husband and I are not fans of our baby being in our bed at nightime, because this usually results in knees and elbows to places that we won't mention. The next morning, Bryan was off to work and I was off to take the phone off the hook. Bryce and I decided, well I decided, that I should lay back down for an hour or so. Bryce gave in and slept with me. When we woke up, my cell phone had about 15 calls from my husband and a couple from my pediatrician. I called my husband, and he began telling me to call the doctor, that something was wrong with Bryce's labwork on a minor follow-up. So, the plot thickened. DA DA DUM! I tried to reach our pediatrician. You know how that is, everybody must be calling when you are. About 4-5 hours later he called back. He told me that we were to go to Children's Hospital the next day because Bryce had stopped making Red Blood Cells. My heart sank! He explained that he checked a level at his 12 month checkup, as a routine, and it was borderline. The 6 week follow-up, was significantly lower. ( I won't even bore you with the details of the headache of trying to get the appointment, with the specialist, on short notice). My MD's office was great at helping us. So, today, off we went an hour and a half away to get him stuck for more tests. I had not slept well, and despite our best efforts, we were 30 minutes late. I HATE BEING LATE! We went to the desk of our appt. They, then sent us immediately for lab work. We got to the lab, and NO LIE, it was on FIRE! They had to call a fire truck and sent us to another lab. We arrived at the other lab, and finally got called back. We had a timid, young, lab person. She was taking her sweet time getting set up, and then it hit me. (This is a learning hospital). SHE WAS A STUDENT! My mind was saying, "practice on me! not my baby!" I AM an advocate for letting people learn, but not today, and not now. I kept my cool, and decided to give her a chance. I REPEAT "ONE CHANCE". She looked at veins and moved the tourniquet around, then said, "I will be right back." Here is where is gets kinda funny. I can hear her in the other room talking, she said,"Now, how old is he?" The other person said, "Are you gonna be alright honey?" I knew that this might get a little ugly. Well, after her awkwardness and moving the needle around in his arm, she got it. YAY, NEW GIRL! We saw the doctor later and (off course) Bryce fell asleep before she could examine him. She said that he has something called, TEC, or Transient Erythroblastopenia of children. Ok., so in English, it is a rare thing, that happens sometimes, after a virus, where their bodies quit producing RBCs. In 120 days, your body replaces the total amount of cells that you have. The specialist commended our doctor for finding the problem. She said that she sees most kids after they are already needing a transfusion and very sick. Pray that his "cell maker" will kick on, before he needs a transfusion. So, he dropped 6 points in 6 weeks. He is 6 points away from needing a transfusion. He will have arm sticks once a week until it resolves. YAY! NOT! She was reassuring that it does resolve whenever Bryce's body decides to start making cells again. A little scary though! So, on another note, my dear husband has, what I like to call George Bush disease (this is where you use words incorrectly or abbreviations wrong). We laugh about it all the time! When he was trying to make sense of the pediatrician's phone call yesterday, they were discussing the RSV (bad kid virus) that Bryce had had in January. Bryan said, "Yea, he had that bad HPV (a sexually transmitted disease) in January". Our pediatrician, said, "You might not want to get those 2 mixed up." lol Bryan was so embarrased. He didn't even know what HPV was. I had to tell him. I can't say that I would have known either, if I weren't a nurse. So, Bryce was a total CHAMP today. He never whimpered or cried, except with the blood draw. What a total ANGEL! We saw such sick kids today and counted our blessings. I will post some pics that I made today of him with my little "diaper bag camera", since I blew up the other one. I am thinking that tomorrow will be a better day. "Thank You God for your wonderful Protective Hand, and for showing us that things will always be just things (my camera), and LIFE will ALWAYS be LIFE! Thank You for our health and for the abundance of JUST YOU LORD. AMEN