Random Thoughts...or...What's on Your Mind?

[oberth]

more bubbly

 

[Avro Arrow]

Thinking about everything that has happened in the past year.

A year ago was my partner's 20 week scan where we found out that something was wrong with our son's heart. It took a few more weeks to get the proper diagnosis and found out it was something called Transposition of the Greater Arteries (or TGA for short). Essentially, his heart was developing incorrectly, resulting in the blood between the lungs and heart being completely separate to the rest of the body (if you imagine the bloodflow of a normal body as a figure 8, his was two separate circles). Thankfully, the way the heart works while the foetus develops is different, there are open valves and blood mixes instead. This meant he was safe until it was born, where this valve would naturally close. If not treated, his cells would essentially suffocate - luckily, there are treatments and we had a plan in place with the Women's Hospital and the Children's Hospital.

A c-section was planned, then he would start receiving a drug that keeps this valve open then get transported via ambulance to the children's hospital and stabilised (which then needed a balloon operation to make another hole, as the medicine wasn't enough). His mum had to stay at the women's hospital, so it was just me that was at the children's hospital for the first night (they ended up convincing me to go to the Ronald McDonald house so I could rest and be ready for tomorrow, I felt awful leaving him but the nurses pointed out that I'll be even less helpful if I don't rest). His mum was able to come over the next day and properly meet him.

They kept him on his medication for two and a half weeks until he was ready for open heart surgery to re-wire his heart. The wait was agonising (8 hours) but he got through it and then amazed everyone by recovering extremely quickly and we were back home a week after that.

He had a check up a week after and everything looked good, then six weeks after that, they spotted an irregularity. It turned out that one of his arteries had slipped and was causing issues with one of his valves. The problem requited another surgery, but they couldn't tell us what surgery they were planning as they didn't know what they would do until they actually saw his heart visually (they told us the three likely options). The team had only encountered this issue once before and they have no idea why he wasn't noticeably ill (he acted like there was nothing wrong), although the solutions are surgeries they'd all done. This surgery was closer to 10 hours and, while he spoiled us the first time, the second time he was on the ventilator for much longer, and failed coming off it and had to go back on, but managed to go down to the next level of breathing support. The doctors told us to prepare to be there for months.

But out son had other plans. On the level of breathing support he was on, they have to remove it every now and then (as they take him off the fentanyl he was on at this stage, he could start feeling the discomfort, but also started smiling and recognising us again). He had a period of one hour when a doctor spotted its sats and told the nurses to see how long he could cope before they started dipping again. He never went back on the breathing support. He still has a leaky valve, so they weaned him off the IV medication and moved him onto an oral one, which meant going home, which happened just before Christmas.

He's had a few check-ups since and is doing well. He's still on medicine for his valve, but they said that they've seen much worse cases fully heal over time. While his growth took an impact, his development seems to be doing extremely well. He's 8 months and is holding on to object to stand himself up already! It's been a tough journey, but without it all he wouldn't be the same person.

That is some journey your family has been on! Thank you so much for sharing this story with all of us! I am soooo happy to hear that the little guy is doing well. What a fighter! I hope his valve continues to heal as time goes on, and that things only get better for him from here on out!

My very best wishes to you, your partner, and your wonderful son!

 

[JD]

I started with the simple idea that if I wouldn't eat a cat or dog, then I wouldn't eat any other kind of animal. And I've stuck to that for 20+ years now.

The whole cats & dogs thing comes up a lot in these conversations, and I completely agree with it.

 

[PlainSimpleJoel]

It would be awesome if someone here sold white chocolate rocky road. I know there are recipes to make it (which I might do)

 

[Velocity]

Going to the ophthalmologist tomorrow for a diabetic eye check. I hate having my eyes dilated!

 

[Worf factor9]

Going to the ophthalmologist tomorrow for a diabetic eye check. I hate having my eyes dilated!

Yeah I 'hear' you, dilation SUCKS

 

[publiusr]

It would be awesome if someone here sold white chocolate rocky road. I know there are recipes to make it (which I might do)

Here is a nice history on English Easter Chocolates:
https://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2023/04/1960s-to-2000-history-and-archive-of.html?m=1

 

[JD]

Going to the ophthalmologist tomorrow for a diabetic eye check. I hate having my eyes dilated!

Yeah I 'hear' you, dilation SUCKS

Yeah, I hate it too. Luckily it's optional where I go so I've been able to avoid it the last few years.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Going to the ophthalmologist tomorrow for a diabetic eye check. I hate having my eyes dilated!

Nobody ever has liked that.. I hate it when I have it done too at my eye doctor because then I have to wait for them to settle down or have to be driven home instead of taking a bus or taxi on my own.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

The whole cats & dogs thing comes up a lot in these conversations, and I completely agree with it.

It's really a question of lines. I wouldn't eat monkeys, dolphins, or whales. Definitely not elephants, probably not horses. But animals like fish you just don't see anything beyond instinct, no 'Me-hood'. And if there's no 'Me-hood', no approximation of what we think of as a soul, I can't see it as the same thing. Although if you put cats and dogs above the line you might want to rethink pigs. Cats and dogs just get special consideration because they're the ones who've adapted and/or chosen to be our companions.

 

[SithHappens]

I'm not a vegetarian but there are animals I wouldn't eat, I wouldn't eat rabbit because we have pet rabbits. I know it makes no sense but it does to me.

What I couldn't do is what a friend of ours did, she used to keep sheep from which she had baby lambs every year which eventually went for slaughter and ended up her freezer for food. One year one lamb she had to hand rear ( I don't know why ), and she gave it a name and it was seriously friendly and loved human contact and yes it was treated no different to any others when the time came, I mean how could you? I know it makes sense but I just couldn't and all I could think after is the episode of the simpsons when homer had a pet lobster but ended up eating it.

 

[JD]

Yeah, that's the one that really gets me, I just don't understand how people can raise their own meat animals and kill them themselves and eat there. There is just no way I could ever raise and without getting too attached to kill it. At least if you sell off at auction or something like that, you can kind of just put it out of your mind, but you can't do it all yourself.

It's really a question of lines. I wouldn't eat monkeys, dolphins, or whales. Definitely not elephants, probably not horses. But animals like fish you just don't see anything beyond instinct, no 'Me-hood'. And if there's no 'Me-hood', no approximation of what we think of as a soul, I can't see it as the same thing. Although if you put cats and dogs above the line you might want to rethink pigs. Cats and dogs just get special consideration because they're the ones who've adapted and/or chosen to be our companions.

For a long time, I never really thought about cows and chickens and animals like that having emotions and personalities, but seeing videos like this

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really made me reconsider. I had actually already been starting to feel a little guilty about eating meat, but these kind of videos really pushed me farther in that direction.

 

[Velocity]

I learned something new today. I never knew about oronyms or that they had a name, anyway. Oronyms happen when the sounds of words run into each other and we don't know where one word ends and the other begins. For example: if you say " stuffy nose" and your friend hears "stuff he knows" or you say "ice cream" but "I scream" is heard. I suppose oronyms hang out in puns a lot.

 

[JD]

That's really interesting, I had no idea there was a name for that.

 

[Worf factor9]

I suppose oronyms hang out in puns a lot.

Puns are Fun.

 

[oberth]

I learned something new today. I never knew about oronyms or that they had a name, anyway. Oronyms happen when the sounds of words run into each other and we don't know where one word ends and the other begins. For example: if you say " stuffy nose" and your friend hears "stuff he knows" or you say "ice cream" but "I scream" is heard. I suppose oronyms hang out in puns a lot.

got a link for that? the greek words ὄρος (oros) mean hill or mountain and ὄνομα (onoma) mean name respectively so in my book an oronyms are names for mountains.

normally that kind of 'greek' words are not used for differnt stuff and i certainly would like to know the etymology for yours

nix fia unguat (that's bavarian for no offence intented)

eta:

it's only wiki but for a start it might help - emphasis mine

During the 1980s, an attempt was made to promote a distinctive term for same-sounding multiple words or phrases, by referring to them as "oronyms", but the term oronym was already well established in linguistics as an onomastic designation for a class of toponymic features (names of mountains, hills, etc.), the alternative use of the same term was not well accepted in scholarly literature.

 

[Gary Mitchell]

got a link for that? the greek words ὄρος (oros) mean mountain and ὄνομα (onoma) mean name respectively so in my book an oronyms are names for mountains.

normally that kind of 'greek' words are not used for differnt stuff and i certainly would like to know the etymology for yours

nix fia unguat (that's bavarian for no offence intented)

I found a link. https://www.wordsense.eu/oronym/

 

[oberth]

I found a link. https://www.wordsense.eu/oronym/

thx, no etymology, though and i edited

 

[Worf factor9]

I found a link. https://www.wordsense.eu/oronym/

Don't be to hard on him, he's always trying to break up a Pun time.

 

[oberth]

Don't be to hard on him, he's always trying to break up a Pun time.