July 24th, 2010 mattdaddy
My wife is part of a Celiac parent group and a few people expressed interest in how we ended up getting Gillian a hot school lunch that was gluten free. Believe me, it wasn’t easy.
Our daughter Gillian is the first in our school system to be diagnosed with Celiac Disease (detailed description of Celiac below), and we had quite the time getting her legal protection via a 504.
So I’ll share the 504 with you, below. If you live in the US, you’re legally entitled to everything on it for your school-aged child with Celiac. The cherry on the sundae, though, was getting the school system to train staff (by a registered dietician) and provide hot lunches every day for her (for which we’ll pay the same as every other child in our district, $2.25, but the quality is extremely high). We had trouble getting them to agree to this (we were told that they didn’t see this as a necessity), until we told them that, according to the Food & Drug Administration in Washington, DC, schools have to accommodate under 504 by preparing and serving at least one SAFE meal per day to the student (this goes for kids with 504s with food allergies as well, and there are lots of them in our district). This means safe hot dogs, hamburgers, etc (whatever is formulated in 504 plan) and prepared in separate area of the cafeteria with separate utensils.
The woman who runs the cafeteria couldn’t have been more helpful and accommodating, and Gillian had a wonderful experience eating a gluten free version of what the other children were served.
Here’s the actual file we got finalized and put into her permanent file. Just the fact that she can eat a lunch along with everyone else is HUGE since she has a tendency to feel apart from the group.
CLICK HERE TO GET the 504 plan
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July 8th, 2010 mattdaddy
This is me for 7 whole days, wrapped up so freakin tight that I had to take off my wedding ring. No fun having swollen sausage fingers. The outer part was a splint with ace bandages wrapped around the whole mess.
Yeah, that’s me at work this Tues, my first day back. I was ready to go too. Talk about cabin fever!
Here’s me, I’m finally free:) Yes, I have the ring back on. The incision is kinda nasty actually, but it’s healing and I need to leave it open. I just hope I don’t freak anyone out at work tomorrow:) You should have seen it when they pulled it all off. It was really weird man, all the blood rushing back in and all wrinkled from the cloth being wrapped around it for a week.
Dude, I canNOT imagine having a hard cast on for multiple weeks. No Flippin way dude.
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July 6th, 2010 mattdaddy
Its 4pm and I haven’t taken a Percocet. I wanted to work a few hours this morning because it was a short day for the weekend. I’m feeling pretty good right now, but I have a feeling I’ll need one before too long. All in all, there wasn’t as much sharp pain as I had feared, but it’s definitely uncomfortable.
update 7/6/2010 had a good day, went to friends, saw The Last Airbender (wait for dvd), and spent saturday by the pool at friends house. nice relaxing day, napped 3 times:) Body is healing itself. Had mild panic attack centered around a smothering dream, arm hurt, took percocet at 3am, up until 5:30 or so. Slept until noon 
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July 6th, 2010 mattdaddy
I’ve been doing some experimenting lately and one of the things we’re trying to do is to use WLW to update our posts on our intranet blog. Still having some problems we’re ironing out with the developer, but I wanted to see what it’d look like on my personal blog.
To keep everyone up to date, had a nice 4th, watched the fireworks, had a great picnic at our friends house with delicious food and generally nice weekend. Until yesterday where we spent hours reupholstering chairs. No fun.
Especially one handed:) Splint comes off Thurs, we’ll see where we go from there.
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July 1st, 2010 mattdaddy
How many episodes of Band of Brothers can I watch?:) Having some pain, not bad tho. Took pill this morning, will see how I feel when I’m due for another. Would like to forgo the next one, but not going to be a hero. To tell the truth, it’s helping but not as much as I would have thought.
Working on getting some dictation software to do some of my documenting backlog, but in the mean time I’m resting and reading a lot about datawarehousing,
typing with one hand is annoying, so I’m going to stop.
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June 30th, 2010 mattdaddy
(yes, I’m still typing one handed)
How many of you have had surgery where you are put under? Anyone have thoughts/fantasies that you would wake up? That you’d suffer some weird aneurysm and just die and leave everyone to keep living?
Yeah, I know, irrational. Until my Dr. came in, I was super nervous. He showed up and it was gone. I mean nothing, no nervousness, nothing. The even cooler thing was when I thought about the anesthesiologist, I thought it’d be cool to have the guy who put me under for my colonoscopy, and two seconds later, he walks up.
Talk about feeling like I was in good hands:)
The prep room was the weirdest for me b/c I’m usually the one to be making Fae feel better or more secure and here I was, the one who needed reassuring. She was good, cracking me up when I needed it, and just holding my hand when I needed that.
All in all it was fine, and everything worked out. The doc even called me before dinner to check on me:)
In a bit of pain now, so gonna watch a movie for a while.
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June 30th, 2010 mattdaddy
woke up this morning after 8 solid hours of sleep to serious discomfort in my arm. couldnt wait toeat so I could take a percocet. tho in truth, they dont do a whole lot.
feeling okay at this point since I took it a while ago, going to watch band of brothers today, the whole thing:)
I have been under for two things but don’t think Ive ever had a breathing tube. My throat HURTS!
btw – this is all one handed, so excuse the no caps and crappy punctuation. thank goodness for spellck:)
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June 29th, 2010 mattdaddy
Sitting in bed, percocet taken, typing one handed:) Surgery went well, just have to heal now:)
thanks for all the well wishes.
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June 28th, 2010 mattdaddy
On May 31st, 2007, an inconsiderate prick hit my car with a delivery truck causing me to flip three times. Not spin, flip. Since then, I’ve been feeling vulnerable, old, achy, and in slowly increasing amounts – in pain. My elbow is killing me right now, maybe in response to what’s up for tomorrow, or because it’s been about 3 months since my last cortisone shot. Whatever the reason, I’m hurting, I’m scared, and I just want it to all go away.
I’m tired of favoring it, or not doing certain things knowing they’re going to hurt. I”m tired of feeling vulnerable and not vital. Feeling feeble and not powerful. Have I used it all as an excuse at times to not work out – you fuggin betcha. I’m good at using excuses. Am I going to turn my life around tomorrow and make that the first day in the rest of my life? No, probably not.
I’ll tell you what is going to happen. It’s going to hurt when I’m done. I’m going to come out of the operating room and I’m going to be pinioned by a restrictive sling, I’m going to take pain killers, and I”m going to hurt. People keep saying that the first day will be uncomfortable and it’ll get progressively better, but I don’t believe it. Not emotionally. Logically, I know everything will be fine, that I’m doing the right thing, and that things will all work out. Emotionally, I’m a 8 yr old, wanting to grab my Curious George and run into my closet and lock the door. Having a flashlight of course. I don’t want it to hurt. Why do I have to go through this? The accident wasn’t my fault. I always try to see the positive things in situations. What’s positive about this? AND to top it all off, I have to wait till NOON to even show up at the hospital, and I have to stop eating at midnight.
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! This sucks sports fans.
Okay, the 8 yr old went to bed because he was a crank pot. Whew. Sometimes when things are bugging me and I don’t know what it is, writing helps. Well shit, that sucks. I”m going to have to write one handed. Ugh, the 8 yr old just woke up and wants a glass of milk.
I’m going to go watch a movie and eat a bowl of cheerios and hold my wife’s hand.
ps – if you have no idea what I’m talking about, I’m having surgery on my elbow to repair some torn stuff around the bone. I”m not psyched, obviously.
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June 26th, 2010 mattdaddy
Lets see….
Went to New Orleans for a geek conference for a week, with just my wife…and of course I was sick for most of it. Nice
Went to Great Wolf Lodge with Fae and the kids, Gillian’s troop has a trip at the end of the year and this was it. Aidan and I had to carry the bags and stuff like that…yeah, totally It was a lot of fun and the kids enjoyed it too 
We were on our way back when Aidan’s phone rang, it was his girlfriend (yes, he’s 13 and they’ve been dating a year), inviting us to game night at her house the next day. Sounded like fun. So we went over last night and not only was it a lot of fun, but they went out and got everything gluten free so Gillian could snack on everything. How cool is that? It’s amazing how thoughtful people can bed.
To top it all off, I’m having surgery on Tuesday. Yay! Not. I was in an accident in 2007 and because of it, there was some damage to my shoulder and elbow. They’re going in and removing the damaged tissue. Hoping to be in a sling for a week or so and from what the doc says, back to fairly normal in around 6 weeks. Not being able to do any kind of contact exercise has been driving me nuts, so being able to get back to it will hopefully allow me to feel better physically and emotionally
Wish me luck.
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