New Hampshire Trip - Part 2

You can read Part 1 here.

After a quick lunch, we hit the road again towards Concord Hospital to visit my brother Philip.

Not gonna lie, I was beyond exhausted but I was excited to see him after a being apart for a year even if it was because he was in the hospital.

When I saw him for the first time, he kind of looked like death. Sorry Phil, but ya did. He was pale with an oxygen mask over his face and he couldn't speak more than a few sentences without getting winded.

He was in good spirits and at least was on the far side of the room by the window. He had a lovely view (which I totally forgot to snap a picture of...) 

We spent a lot of time going between my parent's house and the hospital that week to keep the poor boy sane. He was SO bored. And I totally don't blame him. At least the hospital offered Wi-Fi! 

Noella spent a lot of time in his lap, Giraffe tucked firmly in her mouth watching cartoons on Netflix. Noella's choice of cartoons did not please my brother but he stuck through it anyway for some cuddle time. It's good practice for when he and Jennie have babies. 

Slowly he was weaned off of the oxygen mask and was able to just use the cannula nose thingy. He hated it more than the mask because it dried out his nose. I don't know how he could stand having little plastic pieces sitting in his nostrils. No thank you! 

Because he was in the hospital for blood clots in his lungs and the genetic tests were negative, they really had no idea why he had the clots in his lungs so they focused on getting his clotting factor to normal levels. This meant he had to have blood drawn every four hours for the first four days of his hospital stay. Because he has the same lovely bruising genes I do, he looked like a heroin addict. Note the MASSIVE nasty bruises on his forearm. He also has the same "rolly" veins my mom and I do; Meaning that when they go in with the needle, his veins move around when the needle hits it initially. It's not easy to draw blood from people with rolly veins therefore there's a lot of time spent fishing for the vein and therefore there's a lot more bruising. 

All of the bruises changed from deep purple to blue, to a greenish color and finally yellow before he was sent home.

By the end of the week Noella was kind of over sitting with Philip to watch cartoons. Especially when she realized the hospital had "Elligators" (Elevators) which she asked to ride about a bazillion times each visit. This resulted in Gammy, Aunt Jennie and I taking turns taking her on walks around the visiting area lobby or up the elevators just because we couldn't take her asking any more. 

Luckily the whole week wasn't spent visiting the hospital. We also made it to a few lovely parks in the area. One with Gammy and another park with Aunt Jennie. She LOVED it. 

The Miss also hit another milestone on the trip. She learned how use the "big girl" swings. The whole time she was swinging all I could think was "When did she get big enough to use those!? Wasn't I like 11 when I first learned!? Surely she's too young." But nope. She's a big big girl now! 

Aunt Jennie was SO fun. She was nice enough to share her room with us during our stay. She made sure she had extra snacks when we went to the hospital and even ran the Miss to the potty a few times for me. She seriously kept me sane because that little darling babe of mine was up before 5am 6 out of 7 days that first week. Jennie, you are AWESOME and I can't thank you enough for your help that week. 

By Saturday we were going a little stir crazy so Gammy and Papa packed us up and we headed to the beach. But that's saved for Part 3. (This was a LONG 10 days so there's 4 parts. Stay tuned!)

New Hampshire trip Part 1

On June 2nd at 5:45am the Miss and I were at the Orlando airport boarding a plane bound first to Philadelphia and finally to Manchester NH. We were on our way home.

My mom had called me on Saturday to let me know that my brother Philip had been admitted to the hospital with blood clots in his lungs and they weren't sure what caused them. I wasn't going to go initially because we didn't really have the extra money to throw around but after thinking about it for a while we decided to book a last minute ticket and we got an amazing price on it considering we bought it less than 10 hours from take off.

Noella did incredibly well on the airplane. She was beyond thrilled by the idea. I was super impressed with how happy she was for the first leg of our journey considering she was woken up at 4:30am to get to the airport for our 6am flight. I however, was exhausted as I had been awake since 7:30am Saturday...

Our lay over in Philly was not as much fun... She had decided she had already had enough for the day. I packed light and didn't check anything because we were flying U.S. Airways and it was $25 for the first bag (SO ridiculous but for two last minute tickets at less than $350, I was going to make it work). I had a small roll case, my backpack stuffed to bursting and the carseat to tote along with us to the next terminal. Oh and Noella's hand to hold. Otherwise she stopped at every single flippin window and walked over to anyone sitting on the benches near the main walkway. I was never so scared I'd lose her.

 I had never been to that airport before and it's HUGE! We had to make it to a totally different terminal in less than 45 minutes with a toddler and all of our stuff in tow. It was slow going but we were at least moving until she saw the moving sidewalks. She wanted to ride them and I didn't get the memo. I heard her mumbling something while we walked past them but I couldn't quite hear her and we needed to keep moving. I figured out the issue once we reached the end. That girl sat down and screamed in protest. I was almost in tears. No one else in that airport had children with them so clearly I was the insane one for dragging a child onto a plane that early but we muscled on with promise to ride the next one. And that we did. She stood on it and didn't move clogging the whole thing up and heaven forbid I try to move her along the 50ft walkway. She decided it was okay to walk the last 10 feet of it. Those people couldn't get around us fast enough.

When we finally made it to our next plane, I knew our seats were all the way in the last row so I shuffled Noella along the best I could and got settled. Well, I was apparently on the wrong side. The man who's side I was sitting in couldn't see that I was with Noella and started to yell at me about it from four seats up. I started to apologize and pack up to move across the aisle when the woman he was traveling with noticed Noella. By the time she decided we could stay I had already packed everything back up in preparation to move. I might have snapped at them a bit... I had had ENOUGH. I just wanted to get there and take a nap already. There might have also been tears and lots of avoiding eye contact. I made sure to apologize because the entire hour and a half flight I felt SO awful. He cut me off and mumbled a rushed "whatever, don't worry about it. I'm NEVER having kids so I don't know or care to know what you're dealing with." Cue more tears. I sat there floored for a moment making sure they had a large enough head start off the plane that I wasn't going to catch up with them again.

We made it to Manchester in once piece and found Gammy, Papa AND Aunt Jennie waiting for us. Noella was thrilled and SO excited for a break from the airplane. We grabbed a quick lunch and then it was off to see Uncle Phil in the hospital!

 After lunch she fell asleep in less than 10 minutes. Thank goodness for small miracles.

Stay tuned for Part 2!