Ty & Wes Time: ?Asthma, Head Injury, Walking All The Time Now & We Lost Papa

Wes: 1 Year & 1 Week Old

Ty: 3 Years, 1 Month & 1 Week Old

(awful picture, I know. I didn't take hardly any pictures this week)

2 Fridays ago, my mom had called to tell me that she thought Papa was dying. He was just getting weaker and weaker, wouldn't eat, and couldn't get out of bed. Mom asked him, "Have you given up?" and he nodded. We decided to go up to Conway for the weekend to spend time with him, so I spent the day packing up. But then plans changed when I heard my son breathing, from across the room. Tyson was wheezing really badly. He has not done this, not since he was 1 years old, after having RSV. My kids have been sick for about 6 weeks (not exaggerating) and he never had a hint of a wheeze until that day. I watched him for awhile, let him take a nap, but the wheezing was still terrible. He was having some retractions, but not out of control. He said he wasn't having trouble breathing, but would he really understand that question? I ended up taking him to the on-call doctor at our pediatrician's at 6:15 PM that night. We didn't get seen until after 7 PM, since they were so busy. I had seen this oncall MD once before. He is a nut. There is no other way to say it. He is weird. He is probably in his 60's and he looks and talks like a hippie, complete with the long hair. He is also inappropriate with his jokes and proceeded to tell me a long, elaborate plan of how to get my husband to agree to having a 3rd child (including which B+B to go to). Anyways, he listened to Tyson and said, "You sound terrible. You sound like a washing machine." He gave me 2 prescriptions for 2 different inhalers - one is a rescue inhaler and one is a steroid inhaler that he is supposed to take twice a day FOREVER. So I said, "So do you think he has Asthma?" And his medical professional answer was this, "If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck. It's probably a duck." Really? And even though this was only his first "offense" since being a newborn, he insisted he go on this daily inhaler. I am fine with having the rescue inhaler, just if he needs it, but I would really like to wait until he has a second episode to make sure this is really necessary. There are warnings all over the inhaler about monitoring pediatric growth, so that makes me concerned! I'm going to discuss this with our own pediatrician this week, so we'll see how it goes. It took Ty a bit of convincing to get him to take it, but now he takes it like a champ and wants to do it himself. On a positive note, the inhalers really helped and he wasn't wheezing at all 2 days later. I just really hope he doesn't actually have Asthma!

Ty running around the waiting room @ the Pediatrician's - making the wheezing worse

"Cheer up Wes! This is not a visit for you! You aren't going to get shots here!"

Playing games together

@ Walgreens, picking up his prescriptions. This is right before Ty actually dropped that snow globe and it busted all over the floor. First time my child has broken something in a store! So embarrassing! I offered to pay for it, but they wouldn't let me.

On Sabbath we had gotten everything packed up and headed to Conway church. I don't want to talk a lot about this, but an unfortunate incident happened at church. I thought that we were doing the right thing by going to church first and then going over to the house, but I don't know about that now. I was kind of shocked to see Papa actively dying in front of my eyes when I got to the house. I didn't know that he was that bad. He did open his eyes slightly and I told him that I was there and that I loved him, but he was pretty far gone at that point. Maybe he would have been more alert if I had come earlier, but there is no point to think about that now. So the rest of Sabbath, all of us were there and we kept filtering in and out of his "bedroom" (my parents had them set up in the dining room, since Papa couldn't do stairs). We had a bit of a Tyson scare on Sabbath afternoon. Heath & Sean had taken Ty & Fin for a walk outside. Ty ended up slipping on ice, going completely airborne, and landing flat on his back and hitting his head on the ice. Heath ran right over to him and he was not crying, and had a shocked look on his face and then his eyes rolled back and he passed out. Heath picked him up and ran back to the house. He was out for about 5 seconds or so, but while Heath was running with him, he woke up but was completely dazed. By the time he made it back to the house, he was more himself. He ended up being a little quiet and spacey at times for the rest of the day and part of the next day, but he never vomited or had any other worrisome signs. It was scary though. Definitely don't like to hear that - especially when he bumped his head about 5 more times that weekend, doing crazy-boy-stuff. That night I stayed up until about 2 AM (early for me, I know), watching Papa on a baby monitor and listening to him breathe, until my mom came and relieved me after she had gotten some sleep.

On Sunday, Papa was worse in the fact that he did not respond at all anymore. But his breathing did not seem as labored and his pulse was very strong (even though it was fast and irregular). That made us think that he might hold on for days. Devin had to work on Sunday night and debated calling out, but we all thought that he would not die that night and he couldn't get anyone to work for him, so he went to work. Well, we were wrong. About an hour after the Patriots pulled out their miracle win against the Broncos, Dad noticed a change in Papa's breathing. Dad, Mom, Shannon (with Griffin), Nanny, and I all gathered around him. Nanny read some Bible verses and Dad recited about 50 verses from memory. Right after Dad had finished the last text, Papa died at 1:40 AM. It was just heartwrenching. I have seen many people die in my line of work, but I have never been there to see someone I love take their last breath. I wouldn't recommend it. I mean, you want to be there for that person - you truly want to be there...but to actually see it, is just heartbreaking. It was very hard for my father, who was very close to Papa. And in turn, that was very hard for me to see my father in so much pain. But I am so thankful that we have the Blessed Hope that we will see him again. Papa had been in so much pain (he had a terrible back and had chronic back pain everyday and a lot of other health issues). He was tired and now he can rest in Jesus. Time is what we need to start to heal. Keep my family in your prayers.

My Papa

We had lost power a couple of times on Sunday & the boys cooked a big breakfast completely on our wood stove (pancakes, eggs & shredded potatoes, one of Papa's favorites)

Ty & Bode engrossed in a show

We sat them up on the washer & dryer, but we couldn't get them to look!

Heath had stayed over on Sunday night and was going to drive to work from Conway on Monday. But I had woken him up after Papa died and he stayed up and helped with things, until the funeral home had come. We had been up most of the night, so he did not go to work and stayed with us in Conway. We were really worried about what Tyson would say about Papa. He loved Papa so much and kept running into Papa's room saying, "Ty want to wake Papa up." So precious but so sad. I thought for sure, he would run into the room and not see him and ask where Papa was. But he never did, even after running into the room many times. It was kind of weird, but I really don't want to volunteer the information to Ty and have to discuss it, so we just avoided it. We'll let him ask us in his own time.

Some condolences that we got

Heath went to work on Tuesday and the boys and I stayed until late afternoon and I helped write Papa's obituary with Dad. Again, that was difficult but I was honored to do that with my father. The memorial service is going to be February in Florida, so we will be going down for that. We drove home on Tuesday night to get more clothes and supplies and spent the night. Mom was kind enough to keep the dogs in Conway, so I didn't have to lug them back and forth.

On Wednesday we packed everything up again and headed back to the house in Conway. Heath came back that night and we were ready for a quiet family Thanksgiving. Sean's family was coming, but otherwise we cancelled having our huge family come up for Thanksgiving. We ended up having 18 people I think, but it would have been about 40 people and that would have been too much.

Treat with Noni - Finley loves to be naked

Thursday was Thanksgiving and we had a really nice time. We had great food and great company. Ty loved watching the parade and Westin just decided that he would put his mark on the holiday and he started walking all the time! There is nothing cuter than a wobbly toddler walking! Love it! We had rented the Disney movie "Planes" and watched it in the afternoon. It was supposed to be for the kids but it turned out that all the adults ended up watching it and the kids watched for awhile but then started playing instead. It was cute. Shannon & Sean went home that night and we stayed over, since we were headed to the Edwards for the weekend.