COMING HOME!!!!

I went to the doctor yesterday, and he took out my PIC line, looked me over and said, "Well, this has been one long journey, but I think we got it this time. You can go back to St George and go back to work Sept. 14!" I am so happy, I am leaving for St. George this friday in the morning. I am so excited to go out to dinner with all my friends from work that I have been missing right when I get home! I never thought I would be so excited and happy to go back to work!

What a way to relax

The doctor told me just to relax, so today I went shooting with Annika, my sister, and her boyfriend Robert. It was quite fun! The rifle (AR -15 ) was the easiest I actually hit the milk jug quite a few times! The pistol (ruger 380 LCP to be exact) on the other hand was quite tricky, I hit the pepsi can....but I was aiming for the milk jug hmmm. I have no idea about guns, so thanks Robert for a fun outing :) What a way to spend a relaxing sunday..can you tell I am feeling better?

Fixed Hair

My wonderful friend of 15 years, Becky, fixed my hair today! It's still shaved up the back, so if you lift my hair up it's shaved, but becky did a great job fixing my hair so I look normal! Ya, it's so good to start to feel normal again!

Still Feeling Great!

So, things have been going really well this time around! I have no pain, headaches, or swelling woo woo! Minus my new haircut, or should I say half shaved head, I am feeling happy and healthy. I have a follow up on the 1st and should be able to come home very very very soon, I am so excited!

THANK YOU CORAL CANYON

I must say thank you to all my co workers who have supported me through this whole ordeal! I don't know who,(Except Robin who DONATED 5 DAYs WOW, she is so kind) but some of you even donated your personal days to allow me to be able to be in the hospital, recover, and not stress out! I wanted to give a special thanks to Jan for running all over town getting my paper work from the district and to Lorene for cleaning, setting up my classroom, and taking my class, and to Jason Bruce constantly checking on me over the entire summer! Thank you Thank you Thank You to all of you,I will never be able to express to you how much this all means to me!

Well..I am out again!

Well, after two more weeks in the hospital, 1 week in ICU, 2 more brain surgeries, and an almost completely shaved head I think this ordeal is FINALLY over! I guess I should begin with the surguries (am I spelling that right?) the first one they opened my head again, took out the cow muscle that they used to cover the area where they removed my skull and replaced it with a graph from my leg, it seemed to work at first but then it started to swell up again with spinal fluid. (this is when I went home for 5 hours and rode in the ambulance to the university for a second opinion). So they opened me up again, checked the graph to see if it was attaching well, then placed a shunt, which is like a drain, in my spine to allow the spinal fluid to drain while my brain was healing. I had to lay totally flat from thursday to tuesday (I could roll side to side but not lift my head at all). Every hour a certain amount of spinal fluid would drain from my spine, which was really gross to look at in the little bag hanging by my bed...ewww. The bright side of this was they gave me a pain pump that I could push the button whenever I wanted. Now, I am not saying that I abused the pain button, but my oh my did it make me hallucinate! I saw big pink flowers, a gerbil, the hamburgler, and a re occuring monkey that I named collin, it was all very amusing and strange! The good news is my head is flat, not like a baby laying on the floor to long flat, but like normal flat, I have no spinal fluid accumluating in my head, and my CT scans came back GOOD! They took the spinal shunt out, and my head is still flat, and I am feeling good,no headaches, and I got my stitches out today. Although I do miss my monkey collin a little :( I hope this is the end of my journey. I do feel as though I have been given a second chance at life and plan to use every minute of is to the fullest extent, I am going to do all the things that I have always said I was going to do, but never have, it's time to start living baby!

GOSH I just LOVE riding in ambulances.

So, I got out of the hospital yesterday for a whopping 5 hours! I went to my aunts in sandy utah, took a nap, and woke up with a terrible headache, and my head was swelling and leaking again. Called the Doc and he basically told me to deal with it, and then told my aunt if I had a seizure I would be fine and not to call the ambulance unless I STOPPED BREATHING! WHAT THE F***!

So, decided to get a second opinion and my aunt called the ambulance and they took me to the University of Utah, where I met a few wonderful neurologists who called my doctor at st marks and basically told him where to go and how to get there. Of course my Doc back peddled and said that there was a miscommunication, and he was very worried and was sending an ambulance immediatly to pick me up. The next morning my doctor met with the neuro team at the University, drained my head again, and tomorrow a shunt will be put in my back again, and could be followed by a permanent shunt put into me head. WOW

Not Done Yet~

So I have been back in the hospital for about a week now, my initial brain surgery has been re done, and the patch over my brain replaced with my own tissue. This all started last sunday, I felt perfectly fine and went to the basement to take a nap, feeling just fine. I woke up a while later passed out in the basement bathroom, I had no idea who I was, what I was doing, I couldn't breath, or move. Oddly enough I had lost my pajamas too, I know it sounds like the beginning of a lifetime movie! After what seemed like forever I figured out how to get the bathroom door open and crawled back to my room, I yelled for help and my mom came down and I tried my best to explain to her that I was so confused and did not know what was going on. My mom called my brother and he came over to see if he could help get me up the stairs, I didn't even recognize my own brother, and he says I kept insisting my name was Collin. The ambulance was finally called and I was taken to the hospital in preston for a CT scan. After a few hours I started to come back around, and started being able to recognize myself, my family and friends. It turns out I had a grand mal seizure while I was in the basement previously. The ambulance drove me back to salt lake to St. Marks and I was admitted that night. The next night I had another seizure in the middle of the night while I was in my hospital room, good thing my sister Annika was there she was able to go find a nurse and get some help.When I finally came out of the seizure, I guess I looked up at the nurses and said "What can I help you with?" Seizures are a very weird thing, I don't remember anything about them, it's almost like doing a hard reset on the computer! After all of that I am feeling pretty good, hopefully I am almost done with all of this! Nothing is worse than waking up in a strange place, not knowing who you are, and minus your pajamas, especially if you can't blame it on the tequilla~

Moonwalking and Picc Lines

So, I have been out of the hospital about a week now. My test results came back that I had a strep infection, who knew you could get strep in your head! The hospital put a pic line in my arm which is a semi permanent IV line that goes to the vein to my heart, I know it sounds scary right! The doctor told me it wouldn't hurt when they put the line it....ha ha what liars! It felt like I was being zapped from the inside, not to mention they had to try 4 different veins before they could finally get the line it, thank goodness for water proof mascara! Now I have a home health nurse that comes once a week to change the dressing on my pick line, take blood, and ask me how many times I pooped (ha ha ha). I have to give myself IV antibiotics twice a day for three weeks, only two weeks left! It's really not too bad, I have to wear this white sock like thing on my arm to cover the tubes, for some reason I keep having the desire to do the moonwalk hmmm... I will be back in st george on the 5th of august, and will be ready to start school again.

Just when I thought it was over

I know what you are all thinking....I love Kalani's new look! Well let me tell ya, it's just not that cute. So obviously I am back in the hospital AGAIN! I mean seriously, how many times do I have to be in this hospital before the name changes to ST. Kalani's Hospital instead of ST. Marks? So since I left the hospital the first time I have had a small bump on my incision that was a little gooshy. My doc kept telling me it was normal and not to worry about it, so I tried not to worry about it. Well, when I got back to hurricane I came down with the flu and suddenly my bump became much much bigger, and had spread to my neck, now I just looked and felt like some typ of deformed water buffalo. So I went to he er in st george with a fever of 102 and my giant buffalo head and neck. They took fluid out, and said it was clear which meant no infection, and said it was a ceroma and not to worry. Next they gave me something funky in my IV, all I know is I was singing that song that goes "Do the hellen keller and talk with your hips" as I was being wheeled to the cat scan room. I briefly remember asking if I could ride in the little red wagon they use for little kids. Hmmmm I wonder what they heck they gave me, and whatever it was they really needed to give me a doggy bag to take home. Anyway to make a long story short I obsessed about my bump and went to see my doc in salt lake, he took some of the fluid out of my buffalo head and found a small amount of infection. When he stuck the needle into my buffalo neck it squirted everywhere (you know how a capri sun does if you squeeze it to hard) and he sucked as much as he could out and then wrapped my head supper tight with theses cute white bandages.

Tomorrow I will find out what type of bacteria grew on my buffalo head juice, and I may have to have more surgery tomorrow. WOO I am so not excited about it, hopefully the IV antibiotics will work and I won't have to be cut open again!

BRAIN SURGERY

So, many of you know, and many of you may not know that I just recently had brain surgery. I was diagnosed with Chiari about two months ago. Basically some of my brain was coming out my foreman magnum (the hole where your brain connects to your spine). I always knew I was smarter than your average joe! I mean seriously, how many people do you know that has a brain to BIG for their skul!? Anyway, the surgery was scheduled for June 1st at 7:30 am. After about two months of preparing myself mentally, the big day finally came. As we were driving through sardine canyon on our way to the hospital (at 3 am) a coyote ran out in front of us and we hit it, ripping the bumper off my BRAND NEW CAR that I had only drove 3 times! In order to get the bumper off we had to use my moms teeny tiny cross stitch scissors to cut the broken piece of the bumper off! So we continued to the hospital and arrived on time, and began preparing me for surgery. After many tears they wheeled me into pre op. They gave me something in my IV to calm me down, not sure what it was but it made the curtains that were flowing in the air conditioning to look very beautiful, and made me very happy. So I waited, and waited, and waited and nothing happened. Finally the nurse came up to me and said, "Honey I am so sorry your surgeon mis scheduled, he is in south carolina, we can't do your surgery today." At this poing I was so drugged up that I was just fine with that, and really just wanted to go to Ihop for some pancakes. (you know you can't eat or drink 24 hours before the surgery..so I was starving!)

The next day I was not so happy! I had been mentally preparing for this for months, it's like going to the electric chair and then the power goes out! The doctor called and aplogized a thousand times and offered to refer me to another surgeon, but I still felt comfortable with him I mean we are all human, and rescheduled the surgery for the following monday June 8. The big day came again, and the surgery went off without a hitch. The surgeons removed part of my skull and the first circle of my first vertebre to make room for my ginormous brain and restore the correct flow of spinal fluid. A shunt was put into my spine to drain the fluid in order to let my brain heal. I spent three days in ICU and then spend two more days in the regular hospital. I went home and felt great for two days, then BAM! I felt like I was going to die, my head hurt so bad, I have never felt pain like that in my life. It felt like someone had attached a hose to the back of my head and was blasting my head full of water, then letting it out, and then filling it full again. Back to the doctor I went. Turns out the hole they put in my spine did not close on it's own and my spinal fluid was leaking out and not making it to my brain. They re admitted me to the hospital on the 16th of june. I had a blood patch done to try to close the hole. Basically they stuck a needle in my spine and shot my own blood into my spine, the blood is supposed to clot and fix the hole. I had to lie flat on my back for two days in order to let the patch clot. Two days passed, and THE PATCH DID NOT WORK!!!!! At this point I had spent about 6 days laying flat on my back (it's really hard to drink diet coke lying flat on your back, I should know I dumped many of them all over my face!) They did another blood patch on me and after another 24 hours of lying flat of my back the blood patch finally worked. I was released on saturday June 20 and am now just resting at a friends house in salt lake (the doc would not let me go far from the hospital). I have one more follow up visit and if all is still well I am cleared to go home! I have included some of my pictures of my incisions, they are pretty creepy, but the good news is my hair almost completely covers them! WOW, who knew being so smart that your brain is exploding out of your skull could be such a big deal!

Tubing

So.. I am on my way to go tubing this morning. I must really want to go, because I got up at 7 am to get ready on a SATURDAY! Anyone who know me knows that I do not like to get up early for any reason.

Penny The Puppy

Here are a few pictures of my puppy Penny. She is so cute! We just love her to death. She is a lab collie mix, and I think she is just about the best dog ever! She is 11 weeks old now, and she is already fully potty trained, and hardly ever has any accidents in the house WOO WOO! I don't know what I did before I had a puppy, we just love her, she is quite spoiled !

Kids

So my sister has been bugging me to post something to my blog. Keep in mind that I DID NOT even create this blog, my technology loving sister did. She said, "write a post, make us laugh." So here goes, my kindergarten kids make me laugh everyday so here are a few comments that I, and other teachers, have heard from kids in the school.
A kindergartner was asked what the four seasons were, he replied "Salt, pepper and garlic, but I am not sure what the other one is!"

I asked a little boy in my class to stop putting his hands in his pants, his reply was, "But Ms. Bowman, it gets stuck to my leg and I have to get it off!"

Two kids were outside before school, another student came in to tell me that some other kids were outside kissing..so outside I go to put a stop to the kissing. When I asked to two kissers about kissing they admitted to it and I proceeded to tell them not to kiss when the little girl said, "But Ms. Bowman, we are in LOVE!"

A student asked their teacher how to spell penis, alarmed the teacher went over to see what the little girl was writing about. The little girl said, " I got the ha part but I couldn't get the penis, how do you spell HAPPINESS!!?"

A teacher asked her student how he got so smart and he said, "Well, my brain just got the stuff and held on to it!" kids are silly, they make me laugh everyday.
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