Dylan has had asthma since he was about 3 years old, it took another 2 years to get an official diagnosis and medication prescribed to help him without having to go to the ER every month or so for breathing treatments because he was wheezing so badly. It was an ongoing frustration until finally a doctor saw the light and gave us a rescue inhaler, and a prescription for meds.

He has allergies, asthma, and eczema, if you have one chances are you know one or both of the others pretty well. They tend to come in groups. We started off with Claritin, which did nothing for him at all. We tried a few other medications, but nothing seemed to be helping. Then along came Singulair. Asthma attacks became a thing of the past. The rescue inhalers sat in drawers untouched for ages (until Ethan started having asthma attacks, but that’s a story for another day -lol-)

Years were going by and except for some problems when he got a cold, or at night when he would snore things were going pretty normal. Having his tonsils and adnoids removed two years ago seemed to whisk those problems away as well. He played baseball, spent the night at a friend’s house, traveled, all without the worry of having an asthma attack. We still carry an inhaler just in case, but rarely was it ever used.

Now, he we are and Dylan is 11 years old (going on 12 in April.) He’s been having a lot of wheezing and labored breathing the past month or so now. He’s had to use both the inhaler and nebulizer. It was time to renew his Singulair prescription and we decided to do a follow up at the doctor to see if maybe it was time to go to the next up dosage.

The doctor agreed it was definitely time to make a change in dosage. The problem is that Dylan was taking the 5mg Singulair, the highest dosage available approved for children under 18. The next up dosage would be Singulair in adult form. The doctor was afraid that it would be too much and there is no “tween” dosage available.

The current available doses are 4mg, 5mg, and 10mg. There was a noticeable difference between 4mg and 5mg, so I’m sure that 10mg would be too much. Before you come to rant about the evils of Singulair, yes I know about the possible side effects, the controversies, the possible links to suicidal thoughts, etc. My children are carefully monitored for side effects, and it still remains that Singulair is the only medication that does what it does for both allergies and asthma.

So, for now it looks like we’re onto trying new things again. I hate this cycle of try this, wait a few weeks, see if it works, try something else, wait a few weeks, see if it works. Hate it, hate it, hate it. Lucky for me my doctor hates it too. He wrote a prescription for Singulair just in case the Advair does not work. The plan seems to be that if the Advair doesn’t work we’ll go back to the 5mg Singulair and find something to go along with it

First thing on the list to try is Advair disc. I’m not super familiar with Advair for asthma treatment. I know that it was prescribed to my grandfather in his last few months of life to help with breathing (he suffered from lung cancer.) And my mother in law used it for awhile for her asthma, but was eventually switched to something different.

Here I sit on the internet doing searches and reading about this strange little purple disc that dispenses puffs of medicine. If you use Advair, or know someone who does, please share your experience here.

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Happy whatever it is you celebrate this time of year! We’re mostly non-traditional around here with a mixture of beliefs. That doesn’t stop us from enjoying the holiday season any less. So, today we’re baking and enjoying holiday movies with the kiddos. My boys, some of their friends, my niece and nephew are all here today. It’s a bit overwhelming at some moments with all these kids in the house, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I went in Pet World yesterday to get turtle food and a pig ear for Penny. I had Ethan and Noah with me so of course we went to look at the animals they had, including the puppies in the back.

They had the most adorable chihuahua named Cinnamyn stuffed into the tiniest cage in the world. I guess they figured she was little so she didn’t need a lot of space or something. She was just laying there looking all sad. I knew I didn’t have any money on me so I paid for my two things and came home.

I talked to hubby and he said we could maybe borrow the money in a small loan from the credit union if it was under 400, and we’d have 3 months to pay it back. So, I called Pet World to see how much Cinnamyn was. $1200!!! What the hell?!?!

I can’t afford to save the cute little puppy. I doubt anyone in this neighborhood can considering every day another house is foreclosed on. Poor little Cinnamyn trapped in her little cage with her big pouty brown puppy dog eyes. (and the 10 - 12 other puppies trapped in slightly larger cages)

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So, I’ve got some great cards to hang up, and a string of lights to outline our tree on the wall, and I’ve got a fun projject post that I want to put up over on Creative Bliss …. and of course the camera batteries are kablooie and I don’t have any extras in the drawer. That’s just my luck! Making note to self to pick up batteries while the boys are at the dentist this afternoon.

Ovarian cancer affects more than 22,000 women each year, and the five-year survival rate for women diagnosed with the disease is less than 50 percent. More than 15,000 of these women lose their battle with ovarian cancer every year.

Take a few minutes today to read about Ovarian Cancer, know the signs to watch out for, and talk to another woman in your life and make sure she knows all about Ovarian Cancer too. 22,000 women each year are affected each year, and we really want to see that number go down.

The best chance of survival is early detection. You know what that means ladies. It means keeping your yearly GYN exam appointment. No skipping your appointment to go shopping instead. No avoiding it as if it were medieval torcher.

Get yourself to the GYN, talk, ask questions, and stop being afraid of your gynecologist. They are not the enemy, they are your friend and they are there to help you. They want you to be healthy and so do I.

Starting last September (Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month) L’Oreal Paris ran it’s returning campaign called L’Oreal Color of Hope. One of the main features of the campaign is the L’Oreal Paris Hope Necklace. The necklace was designed by 2008 Swarovski Award for Accessory Design recipient Philip Crangi and features a double eternity ring design of cubic zirconia set in sterling silver. One ring is worn for remembrance and one ring is worn as a symbol of hope for the future.

The Hope Necklace is available for $29.95 at L’Oreal Color of Hope or by calling 888.270.7743. With every purchase of the L’Oreal Paris Hope Necklace, $5.00 will be donated to OCRF (Ovarian Cancer Research Fund) to support life saving research to fight this deadly disease.

My friend Julie over at Julie’s Journal is giving away one of these beautiful necklace from L’Oreal as part of the effort to spread awareness about Ovarian Cancer. Entering is as easy as talking to your friends about it and spreading the word on your blog or on Twitter.

>> Enter here: http://www.juliesjournal.com/2008/12/10/l%E2%80%99oreal-paris-hope-necklace-giveaway/

What are you waiting for? You’re going to talk about it today anyhow, so you might as well enter to win a necklace for yourself to. And if you win this necklace, promise me that every time you wear it you will take a moment out of your busy day, put down your Starbucks cup, and talk to another woman about Ovarian Cancer.

Whether you win or not, I fully expect you to keep your gynecologist appointment this year. Talk about Ovarian Cancer, talk about Breast Cancer, just TALK to them about these things, talk about the silent killers of women. Knowledge is a powerful weapon in this battle.

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I first read about the Dump Cake over at Jenn Cooks. It became a fast favorite for us. The best part is how easy it is to make. So super easy. Even I can’t mess this up. Only four ingredients, which I have memorized, and an hour in the oven at 350.

The first time I made this was back in August while I was visiting family. My mom and stepdad both had to work, so we took of making something yummy to eat and Dump Cake has been requested at least three times since that debut appearance.

To demonstrate how absolutely easy this is to make, Chef Ethan is making the whole thing, no help from me other than to snap the pictures and to take the finished product out of the oven.

First, we gathered the stuff we needed; can of cherry pie filling, can of crushed pineapple, box of cake mix, stick of butter or margarine…

Then Chef Ethan dove right in, and didn’t even need me to go through the directions, because he remembered it all from last time. He even reminded me to preheat the oven for him!

Step 1. Dump can of pie filling….

… oops blurry pic -lol-

Step 2. Dump can of crushed pineapple….

Spread that out, and you can sort of mix the cherry and pineapple together if you want, but you don’t have to.

Step 3. Dump package of cake mix….

Step 4. Slice up your stick of butter and scatter the chunks around on top of the cake mix.

I had a pic of this, but you couldn’t see anything, oops. Bad picture taking mommy.

Step 5. Bake at 350 degrees F for about one hour.

Step 6. Serve, preferably with some whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. Or if you don’t have any on hand, the dump cake on it’s own is still totally yummy. I like mine still warm, but it’s okay cold too.

Yumm!

With Brian just out of the hospital and expecting to be on disability for at least a few months, I’ve been wondering what the holidays are going to look like. I don’t feel like we are quite at the point of needing to go to services like Salvation Army for the holidays. After all, my kids have plenty of grandparents, a roof over their head, and food on their table.

There are plenty of people in worse off situations than we are this year. People who have lost their jobs, have no insurance, and many who have no roof over their head and no food on their table. We have our usual plans of doing some Angel Tree shopping this year, it just might not be as much as we’d like to do.

There is however one thing I feel badly about. The boys are mad that I’m not putting up our Christmas tree this year, but it’s just too darn big for this little house. There’s less than zero space in the living room, and if I put in the dining room it will take up at least half the room. That’s what happens when you move into less than 1,000 square feet with 6 people and all their stuff. They asked me to put it up on the front porch, which I considered for half a moment and then realized I don’t want my tree and ornaments ruined forever.

So we’re going to make a paper tree on the dining room wall out of all holiday cards that we get and maybe some garland and a few of our favorite tree ornaments too. It will be fun for the kids and make the house feel a little more festive. If you’d like to send us a holiday card for the wall, that would be awesome. Just leave a comment on this post and I’ll reply back with our snail mail address. We’d love to have a card from you to create our card tree on the wall.

Whatever you’re celebrating, wherever you are, I hope you have a happy and safe holiday season this year.

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I completely lost track of the days with all that was going on and I forgot to announce the $5 winner from the “Not Me” blog post!

Here we go…..

and the winner is…..

Tsoniki Crazy Bull

If you could send me an email or a Twitter DM with your PayPal address, you’ll be $5 richer by the end of the day today.

Brian had his first follow up at our regular doctor today. Dr Taylor told him don’t expect to go back to work any time soon, it will be a few weeks. He wants to make sure the infection is gone, and get his his left foot taken care of before he goes back. They had given him something that flared up his gout at the hospital and with him already being sick and on an antibiotic his immune system couldn’t fight off the gout flare up and it was into the chronic stage, it built up a fluid bubble filled with weird white pus stuff, and it exploded today right as he was on his way out the door to go to the doctor’s office. He stood up and the dog was between him and the door, she was excited to see my niece coming in the door, and scared of Brian’s crutches all at the same time and she backed right into his foot, which made the blister pop and the white pus to come out and quite a bit of pain.

Fortunately he was on his way to the doctor’s office when it happened, so he just went there and the doctor cleaned it up and bandaged it and said to keep it covered. Don’t even put that foot in the tub or shower (not that Brian can even get in the shower! he is pretty much stuck with sponge baths on a chair next to the tub until he can bear weight on his right leg. The blood work tomorrow is to make sure the infection is getting better instead of worse, I guess he’ll have to have this done every week until it’s all gone.

He’s also scheduled for a cat scan next week to do a good once over on everything, and in particular they are keeping an eye on his kidneys. From the tests in the hospital they said one of his kidneys is drastically too small. They said it’s normal for one to be smaller than the other and about half of people really only have one good kidney in the first place, but don’t notice because you really only need one. But, with gout and an infection and the medications the kidneys needed to work hard and they couldn’t keep up. They didn’t really explain a lot about the kidney stuff at the hospital and Dr. Taylor wants to do more tests to make sure everything is doing what it’s supposed to do and also follow that up with some liver function labs.

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