Well today was a very long long day. I will start with this morning which was a show cause hearing at friend of the court for Joe. I called for it, because he is so far behind on child support. He is getting unemployment now, so I am finally receiving something for the current support. However, who knows how long that will last. Plus every time Joe gets a new job he waits fro me to turn in the new job or for friend of the court to figure it out and send out an income withholding. He has never on his own gone to the court and paid it out of his pocket. He sits and waits for them to automatically take it out. He has told me time and time again he would go pay before they took it out, but never has. For this reason alone, I called the show cause. It really isn't about the money, it's the principal of taking care of his daughter and doing what he should do. Right now he is behind by over $2000.00. Of course once he files his taxes I'll get my portion of it for back child support. But he really needs to learn a lesson. That being said, at court today they told him he had until Feb 13 to come up with $225.00 and have it paid to the court or they will issue a bench warrant for his arrest. They have already said he is in contempt of court, because he didn't have a good enough reason for being so far behind. Mind you he is behind on Quincie as well.
Also while I was there, I filed a petition with the court to set up parenting time. What I think is the saddest part of this is that most fathers are fighting with the mother to get their parenting time. In my case I am taking Joe to court to make him see his child. Every time I offer E to him he has some excuse or another as to why he can't take her. This past Friday Elizabeth had a complete meltdown on me. She got up form her nap and was playing and all of a sudden out of the blue just started crying uncontrollably and when I asked her what was wrong all she could say was she wanted to see her daddy and she missed her daddy. This lasted for over an hour. I called Joe so she could talk to her. But it didn't help matters any. She just really wanted to see him. It has been over a month since she seen him. So because of this I finally decided enough was enough and I was going to have the courts deal with this and have them set up a scheduled visitation schedule for Joe to see Elizabeth. Something she can hopefully count on. She really needs to see him on a regular basis. So I hope to know a court date for this very soon. She is suppose to go and stay with Joe form tomorrow until Saturday. But I will only believe it when I actually turn her over to him.
Now on to her appointment with pulmonary at U of M today. E was originally referred to them because her normal, wonderful pulmonologist can't do a bronchoscopy( a scope to look at her lungs) on her at her normal hospital. They don't have peds surgeons anymore and because of Elizabeth's extensive history that don't feel it's safe to do it there, plus U of M can do a lot more tests there then Sparrow would be able to do. And her normal pulm wants this done to find out why she can't seem to get better and stay better. They will take specimens from her lungs and have them tested for a bunch of things including micro aspirating. Which would mean that some of her food his getting past her nissen and going into her lungs, or that when she is eating by mouth, she is aspirating it silently and it's going into her lungs. Which would mean we would have to rethink the feeding program and her eating by mouth. Plus we would have to look at her tube feeds and adjust them to make sure she didn't' reflux and aspirate it. So there are a lot of things that we hope to find by doing this.
So we met with Dr. F, who was wonderful as all of the doctors of U of M have been. We had a very long talk about Elizabeth and a few things have been decided. For one, they will definitely do a bronch on her as well as a bronch wash(cleaning of the lungs). However, Dr. F wants to get permission to do this from Elizabeth's ENT, Dr. Green, who did the trach and reconstructive surgery of her airway. Dr. F doesn't' want to mess with anything Dr. G has done without his permission. Plus she wants to let Dr. G have the opportunity to look at the upper airway and reconstructed area again while Dr. F has her sedated already. He hasn't looked at it in a year. So tentatively it's going to be done on Jan 30th, but that's not set in stone. Also Dr. F has decided to treat E kind of like a CF patient. E doesn't' have CF, but does have some very damaged lungs and feels E would benefit from some of the treatments they use on CF patients. She already uses vest therapy like CF patients. So now she wants her on Zytromax three times a week until further notice. This is an antibiotic and also I guess has anti inflammatory properties to it as well. It is the anti inflammatory properties that seem to help the patients with chronic lung disease as it helps to keep the airways from swelling. She also decided instead of E being on fast acting, short term bronchodialtors like Xopenex and an inhaled steroid through the nebulizer, we would try a med that is a combination of a long acting bronchodialtor and inhaled steroid in one given in puff form. Then I won't have to give her breathing treatments every four hours. Instead I would use the Xopenex nebulizer when she needed a rescue inhaler. So we will see how these new meds work for her. We go to see her normal pulmonologist tomorrow to go over all the changes with her. I am hoping she is okay with these changes.
And for those of you that know Elizabeth well, you will know that taking the nebulized treatments away from her are going to be a problem. In fact as I type this she is in her room crying for her "breather". She has gotten so use to breathing treatments that she relies on them a little to fall asleep. So it's going to be a trying time to get her use to not falling asleep to the breathers. But hopefully she'll get use to it soon.
So like I said, it was a very long day. And I did it all by myself, which really irritated me more then anything. Her dad couldn't even find a way to get himself to Ann Arbor to be there for yet another very important appointment for his daughter. One in which we made a lot of changes and are scheduling a procedure on her. He wants to have some legal custody of her, but can't be responsible enough to be there for the major appointments to talk with all the doctors. But he could find a way to his girlfriends house tonight to play games with her and her kids and have family time. And everyone wonders why I get so mad about things with him and have such an attitude. I wish for once he would put his daughters first and not himself. OH, and he has said that if I take him to court he will take E away from me and prove that I am an unfit mother. He says the fact that I'm on antidepressants and seek counseling makes me unfit. Never mind that he has bipolar and self-medicates instead of taking the proper meds and getting the proper help for it. Or the fact that he has been hospitalized for it. I'm the unfit one. The one that takes her to all her appointments, emergency room in the middle of the night, therapies, school functions, fight with the doctors to make her better, and do everything else in my power to protect...I'm the unfit one...okay. We'll see how far that gets him in court.
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