1. Crook :: Most politicians in the world come to mind… a bunch of crooks.
2. Career :: My dream career is to be a diplomat for the United Nations.
3. Freckles :: I have a lot of freckles on my cheeks.
4. Scramble :: I am often scrambling around to get my things together for work in the mornings.
5. Mistake :: I have made a lot of mistakes in my life, but I try to have no regrets.
6. Telephone :: I really do not care to give out my home telephone number because I like to have as much peace at home as possible. For people that have my cell phone number, well you may not get a hold of me at home either… because I do not carry my cellphone around me. Bad habit.
7. Thank you :: When someone says thank you, that means a lot to me.
8. Obstruction :: People that wear large hats in church, concerts and movie theatres cause major obstructions in my view. I want to yank their hats off so bad.
9. 24/7 :: I remember when I was younger, we went to a grocery store that was open 24/7 for the first time. We would go there late late late at night just because we could. The store name was Rockbottom off of South Lindbergh Boulevard and Watson Road.
10. SciFi :: One of my favorite genres of movies and books is science fiction. Favorite science fiction movies include: The Matrix Trilogy and Star Wars (Episodes 1-6).
Yesterday, the surgeons discharged William from the hospital. I am so amazed and thankful that William has made much progress since his surgery on Wednesday.
Tuesday evening: Admitted to the hospital for IV fluids at 9 p.m.
Wednesday: Preparation for surgery began at about 8:30 a.m. After recovery, William went to PICU (pediatric intensive care unit). William was in PICU for about 24 hours where he received excellent one on one care. That evening William blew bubbles, which helped keep his lungs clear and reduce the chance of getting acute chest syndrome.
Thursday: That morning, the nurse removed the tube from William’s nose that went down to his stomach. William was placed in a regular room and oxygen was removed from his nose. He later ate two popsicles.
Friday: Dr. T. reported that William’s spleen weighed in at 174 grams which is about three times as big as a normal child’s spleen. I was somewhat speechless yet even more assured that JT and I made the right decision for our son. That afternoon, William got up walking for the first time. Initially, he took baby steps then the steps gradually increased as he walked over to the play room. He sat up on his own for well over 90 minutes. William had clear liquids for the first time on Friday… chicken broth for breakfast and dinner, beef broth for lunch, breakfast shake, apple juice and Sierra Mist.
During college, I became very involved in figuring out what my dreams were about. I bought many dream books in an effort to decrypt the meaning of my dreams. For more than fifteen years, I have had many dreams about magic, water, fire, flying, sex and religion. Not necessarily in that order. In the magic dreams, I have these bewitched like powers and in the flying dreams, I am also flying to school but I can never quite fly in the speed or direction that I want to. Weird stuff. I love dreaming and even more so, I love remembering my dreams so I can figure out the meaning.
These days, because my sleep is interrupted by an alarm clock for work or caring for my children, I tend not to remember my dreams as well as I used to. When I do remember them, I try to jot down notes and look up the symbols while they are fresh on my mind. After coming across this site, I now have another reference for figuring out my crazy dreams. Dream.Dictionary-Dream.info provides information about dream symbols. I look forward to seeing the site expand with more dream information.
It took me months to realize that my blog entries did not look right in Internet Explorer 6. Then this morning, I happened to load my blog in IE 6 and the layout looked like garbage. I kept thinking that I had to adjust my margins in layout.css or style.css. This was not the case. The problem in Internet Explorer 6 was that the comment textarea was running into the right margin. And in turn, when the page loaded, this caused the middle and left columns to be pushed down.
I loaded Internet Explorer 7 on the desktop and I did not seem to have that problem there. The browsers that I use primarily are Opera and Firefox, so this somewhat explains why it took me so long to see the layout issue.
After using the IE Development Toolbar for an hour or so, I decided to research Drupal.org for a way to fix the layout. I have not made major changes to the default Zen layout, so I figured I would probably see people who had the same problems. I ended up finding the solution to my problem on this page, but before you go there let me explain. This page links you to a patch, but for some reason I could not get the patch to work. I started scrolling down the page and reading all of the comments.
I then arrived at this comment:
#14 submitted by alanburke on January 16, 2007 - 22:13
Well, Though I can’t apply the patch, the concept seems fine.
I was having issues with textareas meesed up on;
-Zen theme [Textaears floated Way off to the right]
-Garland [Floated Hidden to the left]
There many forms of abuse such as, but not limited to: physical, sexual, emotional, verbal and economical abuse.
Emotional and pyschological abuse is often more subtle than physical and sexual abuse, but by no means is any less cruel. These types of abuse can sometimes go unseen, where the victim does not know he or she is actually being abused. The impact is detrimental, and can lead to short and long-term damage to the victim’s self-esteem and self-worth.
Examples of emotional abuse include yelling, blaming the victim for the abuser’s actions, name-calling and intimidation. These actions are manipulative but suprisingly, the victim may not be aware of the abuse. You do not have to have a busted lip in order to be abused. For instance, if your significant other has a bad day at work, comes home to take it out on you and the children, then twists everything around to where you think that you are the cause of the stress and bad day — then you are a victim of emotional and psychological abuse.
Domestic violence is very serious and should not be taken lightly. If you feel that you are a victim of emotional, psychological or any other type of abuse then you should seek help now. There are many warning signs and if you have questions about if you are a victim of abuse, then you should seek help now.
We arrived Sunday evening at the hospital, then the doctors sent us home Monday to come back Tuesday evening. William’s surgery was bumped from Monday to today because they could not get enough stand by blood from the blood bank on Monday. William has a blood type with uncommon antigens. He did get a half unit transfusion at about 2 a.m. Monday morning (hemoglobin count was 8.1) but there was only one and one half units left. Before that, there was also a bit of chaos regarding miscommunication between hematology and the surgeon team. Apparently, the surgeon team was consulted to perform a partial or full splenectomy. Needless to say, this was completely against what JT and I had discussed with William’s hematologist, well before the surgery. We were consistently against the partial splenectomy because there are not enough studies for the outcome with sickle cell patients.
I was well beyond frustrated and confused at this point. Dr. T. assured us that he would discuss the matter with the surgeons and explain what we wanted and why.
We returned back to the hospital last night. After three unsuccessful pokes to my son’s arm, one of the nurses was able to get an IV in William’s arm. Thankfully, William’s hemoglobin count remained high (in fact it raised from 11.3 on Monday to 11.6). We finally met the head pediatric surgeon this morning. Again, we hear the words partial splenectomy. Initially, a feeling of disgust rushes through my mind. I tell the surgeon that this is not the case. We explained to Dr. T. that we wanted William to have a full splenectomy. The surgeon says that he will need to confirm this with Dr. T. and if there is any further confusion, he will cancel the surgery. As the surgeon continues to prep us for the surgery and procedures, I start wondering what communication error to place this time.
