Coburn Kids

Good news, Caden is feeling much better.  His eczema is still pretty bad but he’s managing it well.  In other news, I have officially given up hope of ever being well again.  For the last 2 weeks I have been miserable with probably the flu.  No, I didn’t get my flu shot this year and I’m kicking myself for it!  Add on top that everyone in the house has made their rounds with being sick and we’ve been pretty much housebound.

Adessa is back at preschool and Gena actually doesn’t get back on track until Jan. 28th.  Yes, she has a whole month off of school.  She is, of course, reveling in it while I am cringing. Granted the Christmas presents are a great distraction and keep her occupied with her new games, books and toys.

The job search continues, we are currently in talks with (I’m just going state-by-state here because I’ve lost track of names and companies) North Carolina, Arizona, Georgia, Texas, Oregon, Idaho and a couple in Utah (yeah!!!)  The next couple of months will be interesting to say the least.  We’ve all ready started getting the house ready for sell, it’s not a definite thing yet but I’d like to be prepared rather then trying to cram selling a home, moving and relocating into a week or two.

New Year’s Eve was fun though.  My parents came over to hang out and we played games… come to find out I am fantastic at Pictionary.  Who knew?!  I have no New Year’s Resolutions this year as I would like to simplify life.  Unless that could be my 1 overall resolution, to simplify.  Hard enough to plan for the future when you don’t know what the next few weeks or even days will bring.  I am thankful that Caden is over the majority of his surgeries, so this year should be pretty quiet, besides the enormous amount of doctor/therapy appointments that will continue. But that’s all normal enough now.  So I wish everyone out there health, happiness and sanity to get through this next year!! 

Well, little Caden has some type of full-body rash going on right now.  Really no idea what it is.  We went to the doctor and because of Gena’s history of eczema she gave us some steroid cream but it hasn’t done anything.  So over the past 6 days we’ve been watching it spread.  Started on the back of his neck, then moved to his ears, then arms, then face, then sides and it just keeps progressing.  Doesn’t seem to bother him too much though. No fever, no runny nose, no cough.

Then there’s Gena.  She has a sore throat and cough that started 3 days ago.  No rash.  I’m thinking 2 totally unrelated things.  The rest of us are doing all right though.

We had Caden’s Preemie Clinic and his hearing tested okay! So thankful for that. I also was able to see Caden’s little girlfriend he had in the NICU.  Which was very exciting.  They roomed together nearly the entire time Caden was there for 4 months.  A little 24 weeker, 6 months in the hospital, little 1 pounder just like Caden. She’s tiny but doing fabulous.  Walking and babbling everywhere.  Just goes to show how much those surgeries have set Caden back but it was great to see them.  Incredible story too that I’ll have to share sometime.  She didn’t even know she was pregnant when she delivered her little girl.

On the job front, Daniel has so many interviews and phone calls going every day it’s like he HAS a job.  This is, of course, good news but no bites yet.  The problem being that a lot of companies want to wait until the first of the year to hire anyone.  Which is understable, but crappy all at the same time.  More and more people are losing their jobs every day, can’t tell you how many stories and people I know that have.  I like to see companies though who are actually making efforts to let people keep their jobs.  By enforcing paycuts, getting rid of company match 401k and just generally being responsible in these times to see that even more people don’t lose their healthcare and homes.  It’s encouraging to see some employers actually thinking out-of-the-box and not contributing to the economic struggle right now.  That there are other solutions then just slashing payroll. So kudo’s to those companies and their management.

Here are what some companies are doing to manage:

“In a recent interview with Tom Brokaw, President-elect Barack Obama urged business owners to “figure out ways in which workers maybe have to take a haircut, but they can still keep their jobs, they can still keep their health care and they can still stay in their homes.”

• Some companies like Toyota keep workers busy during downturns with training sessions or classes. Hypertherm reallocates employees to departments where there is a greater demand for labor. Others choose alternative cost-cutting methods like hiring freezes or shorter work weeks.
• Dean Gruner, CEO of ThedaCare, a Wisconsin-based health care system provider, instituted a no-layoff policy 18 years ago. To slash expenses in lean years, the company slows the hiring process and redeploys workers to other areas. “We can manage our staffing levels by being thoughtful about our turnover rate and redesigning the work that we do,” Gruner said.
• Jason Zickerman, president and CEO of the alternative board, a business coaching group, advocates this approach for all types of companies, even in times of financial hardship. Zickerman suggests offering employees shorter work weeks at reduced pay, encouraging employees to take sabbaticals or extend year-end breaks to avoid cutbacks. If 20 workers took two weeks unpaid at the end of the year, “you’re talking almost a full-time salary,” he said.”
• One of Utah’s largest employers, Intermountain Healthcare, has told its 28,000 employees it will not contribute its share to their 401(k) retirement funds next year. Physicians and midlevel managers will forgo small, end-of-the-year “thank you” payments this year in order to provide more for those payments to rank-and-file employees, Cowley said. Those bonuses range from $85 to $250.

No updates for a while, sorry ’bout that. Daniel’s mom was here for 10 days and it was so great to have her out here.  Gena and Adessa are still talking about it! Caden loved all the attention as well.

On the job front, we have a lot of interviews right now. Spanning the entire country.  Georgia, Florida, Arizona, Illinois and Utah.  So who knows where we will end up! This is really good news though considering that we know a lot of friends and aquaintances who have lost their jobs recently.  Scary.

Caden can now have solid food again!  He’s gagging on the bigger pieces but is doing okay. We are still giving him about 16-24 ounces of formula/whole milk a day through his feeding tube still but it’s just routine for him now. I did forget to post about one of his biggest accomplishments yet, he’s crawling.  Everywhere.  He’s just so exicted that he can chase the dog and his sisters.

Other good news is that after 6 surgeries in 1 year, we should be done for a while. We know that he’ll need some nose work, gums, orthodontics, tweak of his lips, and at some point we get the “break his jaw and move it forward” surgery… but those are a few years off. We still have some upcoming Dr. appointments (same ol’ same ol’). Dec. 9th is another opthamologist appointment. Also mid-December we have his other hearing test, for which we are sincerely hoping he will not have to get a hearing aid and that he’ll do okay there. Because the poor lil’ guy deserves a break! 

Caden is home from his surgery! The little boy is just amazing, I don’t think I can say that enough. He was very irritable the first few hours after his surgery, shaking his head furiously.  After a few hours we finally figured out why when we took of his no-no’s (arm restraints that prevent him from bending his arms) he had to itch his face like crazy! He’s really restless and a bit fussy, no crying though. He started throwing up and running a fever about 3 days afterward, scary but he’s doing much better. We are still piggybacking Tylenol and Ibuprofen for pain. He’s off his all liquid diet and we did baby food for the first time yesterday.  He did really well!

I’m very grateful for his g-tube right now because he’s refusing anything in his mouth.  He won’t let our hands near his mouth.  I tried to wet his lips because they were dry and he did NOT like that. I haven’t had a chance to see inside his mouth yet but just so that everyone knows he had his soft and hard palate closure, gumline repair, and a nasolabial fistula (where the rebuild the nasal floor).  A lot for such a little guy.

A huge thanks to my church though. I had 2 wonderful ladies from my ward stop by my house on Sunday night just to visit and say hi.  Some other members of my ward dropped off dinner on Monday and Tuesday for us as well. We’ve also had so many phone calls today asking about our little son and wondering how he’s doing from family, friends and people in my ward. I can’t express my gratitude enough for all the help and support those around us have been. THANK YOU!

In other news Daniel is losing his job.  As far as I understand it just came down to a numbers game at work, considering how much Daniel has done for his company and the years he’s been there it’s a blow. I can’t tell you how stressful this is because of Caden.  Health insurance is our biggest worry, having been through this before we can’t afford to do the outrageous COBRA payments (typically running over $1000+ a month), house payments and medical bills we still have. Unemployment certainly doesn’t pay enough and we can’t lapse in coverage since then Caden would be uninsurable or fall under pre-existing condition clauses. So we have to find a large company with good benefits quickly. If you know of anything at all, please shoot us an e-mail. Doesn’t have to be in Utah either, we can’t really expect to hold hope to stay here but we would like to try.

We’ll keep trucking on. Next week we have Caden’s eye appointment on Nov. 3rd to see what’s going on with his eyes. A follow-up with his plastic surgery on Nov. 5th, we also have Caden’s Occupational Therapist that day and his Speech Pathologist as well. Then we also have Caden’s pediatrician appointment on Nov. 6th. Later on the 6th we have Daniel’s mom coming in from Chicago for a visit too.  Busy weeks ahead!

I’ve been working on a new project, digital scrapbooking.  I’ve always seen and admired people who scrapbook but was never able to really get into it for a number of reasons.

1. Too expensive.  Stickers that cost $4, ribbons that cost $2, paper that can cost .50-$2.50
2. Requires too much space.  You need somewhere to store all of the materials.
3. Time.  Big one here; you have to print the pictures, cut them, buy the stickers and pages, assemble them, keep the materials organized, write on them, remember the dates, etc.

Props to those people who use this as their creative outlet, who love and adore this and find the time in their day to make this happen.  My sister does scrapbooking and does beautiful work. I’m an online person though, no surprise.  So I thought that there had to be a better solution for me, that was just as good, but never really knew what to look for.

Then my mom, my sister-in-law and I went to the “What a Women Wants” show at the South Towne Expo center (highly recommend it.) I came across these fabulous looking digital scrapbooking pages and asked how much their software was… $25 a pop.  Hmmm, expensive there too.  My sister-in-law told me that you can get them printed at Costco for $2.99 a page.  That wasn’t bad, so I went home thinking “there has to be something cheaper” and BOOM! found it.  Tons of sites that offer free digital scrapbooking images for nothing or next to nothing. These are high quality images, elements/ribbons/pages are done in 300 dpi resolution and are the 12×12 high quality graphics you need to make stellar quality images for printing.  So I tried a couple, uploaded them to Costco and had Daniel pick them up.

I had him print out 5 pages of them, so just over $16. Figured that was a good starting point and couldn’t wait for Daniel to get home so I could see if this was even worth it.  If it would be as high quality as I thought and something that I and my kids could be proud to show.  They turned out wonderful!  So, I’ve been working on the last 7 years of photos and there’s no need to print out the pictures, no cutting, no gluing, minimal cost involved.  The only thing you really need is an editing program like Photoshop (I bet even Paint) would work, some creativity, and a Costco membership thought I’m sure some other stores do them.  It’s just the perfect solution for someone like me.  You can see some of the pages I did below:

I so wish I had brought the camera last night! We went up to Sue Halligan’s farm, an old nieghbor from my neighborhood growing up. It was about an hour drive out there but what a good turn out there was with 30-40 people. People I hadn’t had the chance to see in years. It’s so strange to see the little brother’s and sisters of neighbors you knew growing up.  You always have this permanent picture in your eye of them at 6 years old.

I was absolutely fascinated to see that chickens and kids go together like peanut butter and jelly.  I am now thoroughly convinced that every kid needs at least one chance in their childhood to chase some chickens around and terrify them. The girls had a blast though with all the other kids there, climbing in the corral, scaling fences, mooing with cows, scaling 20 foot tall haystacks!  Always a bit of a surprise to look wayyyy up and see a bunch of kids running around on mountains of haystacks, the proceeding heart attack isn’t as much fun though.

We had a great barbeque followed by s’mores over the firepit. We all had such a wonderful evening last night!

Daniel and I spent our 9th wedding anniversary in Las Vegas. It was beyond wonderful, quite a contrast to 2 years ago when I was miserable. We stayed at the Mandalay Bay (highly recommended there). We saw Phantom of the Opera at the Venetian. We had dinner at the Mix in The Hotel. I made a gambling addict of my husband. He spent $1 on a quarter machine and turned it into $125.00. We stayed up late, slept in. Went to the aquarium and to top it all off, my children were all good for Grandma. Just an extra bonus there.

Thought I would do a special blog posting for my dear husband and tell him how much I love him! He’s a fantastic father, loves spending time with his kids and goofing off with them. He would love nothing more then to spoil them rotten. He’s such a great husband as well. He respects me, adores me and I just can not do all this without him! He always puts us first. I tell him that I always knew he was the guy for me when I found out he played football for over a decade and wrote poetry. That combination just does not come along very often! I appreciate so much that we are individuals and can have our own hobbies while also sharing common interests. I just generally have a blast with my husband who can make me laugh like no other.

So I bought Daniel a Wii Fit for his Father’s Day present. He’s really wanted one and my girls just love all things “wii”. So I stepped on and tried it tonight. (Forgive me for sounding like a commercial now). It makes you input your age, height, birthdate, does your BMI for you and everything. Scary. Let’s you set goals if you want to. Gives you a Wii Fit age, I got 29… just as old as I am so good news.

It covers Yoga (my 2 girls are Yoga fanatics overnight), Strength Training, Aerobics and Balance. So I decide to try some of it out, thinking that this would be pretty easy. I’m on the Beginner level with everything. IT KICKS MY BUTT!! The balance games I’m okay on, I can get to about level 5 on them. I get 2 out of 4 stars every time. The strength training… NO ONE DOES LUNGES THAT SLOW. Got 4 stars on that one though. Yoga, it watches your balance and the Wii Fit Board is incredibly sensitive. My girls are doing better at the Yoga then me. Aerobics? Yes, they are very aerobic. I did the running, stayed with my “trainer” the whole time and got 44%. WHAT?! I did the hula hoops, Gena beat me on that and my calves were burning by the end of it. THIS IS THE BEGINNER LEVEL!

So I’m either in really sad shape, or this Wii Fit is indeed living up to it’s name. Reading online reviews, they concur. The Wii Fit will challenge you. It’s fun, don’t get me wrong and at no point did I feel I was exercising. I was working muscles, was engaged, and was getting very hot and uncomfortable after just 20 minutes. So a thumbs up. If anyone out there was thinking of getting one (and you can actually find it), it’s worth it.

In addition, my 4 year old can do any of these games, especially the Yoga and she loves it. My 6 year old is very adept at the games and is beyond excited to be doing this every day. So I have a VIDEO GAME that actually promotes strength, flexibility and aerobic exercise that my kids are loving. I can’t think of a better bonus then this.

Mommy’s been ill with 100+ fever since monday. I came home a little early that day and she was a trooper Tue and Wed. I decided to stay home today and am sending her off to the Dr. I’m getting work done which is good, and I’ll get to spend some quality time with my kids. We are supposed to go to Carol Anne’s Birthday today, so it might just be me an the kids, but she needs as much sleep as she can get. And don’t listen to a thing she says, I did NOT wake her up every 30 minutes (More like 40).

**Updated**   She has pneumonia!

****UPDATED UPDATE**** Adding insult to injury she’s allergic to the antibiotic they gave her.  She has hives all over her body (Side note she looks like she’s been tanning and got sun burnt, maybe she’ll have that elusive tan she’s always wanted)

Reading the Salt Lake Tribune today I came across a story that just hit so close to home:

http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_9424142

Family sues insurers over girl’s formula

Ashley Zundel is finally getting the nutrition she needs.
    Since January, the 9-year-old girl has put 6 pounds on her tiny frame. Her once ashen gray skin has a healthy pink hue and her hair is noticeably shinier.
    Ashley, who has eosinophilic gastroenteritis – a condition in which there is an abnormally high number of white blood cells in the stomach and small intestine – is allergic to food. It is a condition she will have her entire life.
    While the other students in her third-grade class rush the cafeteria, Ashley retreats to the teacher’s lounge where her mother hangs a 60 mL syringe of liquid formula on a stand, connecting it via a plastic tube to the “button” on her stomach.
    The $130-a-day, doctor-prescribed formula is nearly the only thing that doesn’t give Ashley diarrhea, stomach aches, headaches and sore throats – that and turkey, sweet potatoes and cherry flavored Dum Dum Pops.
    But her family’s insurance company won’t cover the formula and their donated cache of it is running out.
    This week the Zundels filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah against their insurance company – BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina – alleging the company is violating the terms of its plan and demanding that it pay the $1,000 to $4,000 a month cost of Ashley’s formula.
    Heidi Deja, a spokeswoman for the company, wouldn’t comment on the litigation, but said it typically honors claims for enteral nutrition – or tube feeding – if it is doctor-prescribed and cannot be purchased over the counter.
    The Zundels say that includes them.
    “It seems pretty clear to us,” said Brian King, their Salt Lake City attorney. The company’s own corporate medical policy states that if the formula is prescribed for a malabsorption syndrome and two other conditions, “it’s covered and it’s paid,” he said.
    Unlike some states, Utah does not require insurance companies to pay for enteral nutrition formulas for patients such as Ashley (such a state law wouldn’t help the Zundels because they have an out-of-state insurer). But Rep. Christine Johnson, D-Salt Lake City, is trying to change that.
    Johnson and House Speaker Greg Curtis are jointly sending out a letter to insurance company representatives next week asking them to meet and discuss voluntarily covering it.
    “I’m hoping to do it without a mandate,” said Johnson.
    Without the help of their insurance company, the Zundels will be hard-pressed to pay for their daughter’s formula. Tammy Zundel said she may be left with no other choice but to quit her job so her family will qualify for Medicaid.  “It makes no sense to me,” she said. 

The last paragraph is what gets to me. When we asked the social workers/hospital employees/financial aid people what we could qualify for if we ever hit Caden’s lifetime insurance maximum, or if the medical supplies that the insurance won’t cover becomes too much… we were told outright the same.  “Quit your job, qualify for medicaid.”  Doesn’t it make you sick to know that the system you pay into your entire life, when you really need it and actually TRY to keep your job and keep providing for your family, you will be denied. We can’t qaulify for CHIP, SSI, medicaid or even go privately because Caden will always, from this point forward, have pre-exisiting conditions or we simply make too much.  Which sounds okay in theory, we make too much to qualify for a government program so it should come out of our pocket so that people who really need it can get those funds.  Except that I know families who have to spend thousands, literally, a month for their child’s therapy, food, schooling and other resources.  What family can afford thousands a month every month, no matter what you make? 

The “quit your job” is a decision that too many people have had to make in this country just to give their child the medical coverage they need.  Good people who had GREAT jobs.  Who were living a comfortable lifestyle, who just happened to hit their liftetime maximum or who’s medical bills became overwhelming for their child.  We had a friend in Texas who had to quit his job and find another so that he could get a different insurance carrier for his son and start his lifetime maximum over again. Which would be a nice option for most people but how akward it must be in a job interview to ask upfront what insurance carrier they use. Or to even leave a job that you feel comfortable in, that you excel in, and start the job hunt for reasons completely beyond your control because there are no other options.

In a related matter, Daniel’s work actually had to switch their insurance carrier because of us.  They are a relatively small company, they had great rates, but when a small company has 1 employee that runs up nearly a million dollars in medical costs in a matter of months that the insurance company has to pay… they’ll raise the rates of everyone in that company. Sorry for the soapbox today, but the situations that some families find themselves in is depressing. Depending on those dollars and resources that you are led your entire life to believe that if something ever does happen they will be available to you, and then finding out that even though you did everything right you will be denied is heartbreaking.