Focht Family Blog

A quick update from this week. I saw the surgeon on Monday who said that one of my vocal cords is paralyzed. This is why I have been having problems with swallowing, breathing and talking. They are fairly certain that the nerves will regenerate but can’t give me a timeline as to when that will happen.

I met with the endocrinologist, Dr. Fernandez, on Wednesday. She is a MILLION times nicer than the doctor in Savannah. She is concerned about my calcium levels so she told me all the symptoms for low calcium and told me to go to the ER if I get any of them. I am on calcium and Vitamin D supplements. She also put me on thyroid meds. I am starting out low and she is hoping to increase it slowly. My heartrate was high at the visit so she doesn’t want to increase too fast because it can accelerate your heartrate.

She said my thyroid levels were not that low but that I don’t want to make the left half of the thyroid do all the work or it will enlarge and have to be removed. Definitely do not want that!! So this way the thyroid meds will take some of the work off of the remaining thyroid. I go back in November for a check up on my levels although I will have my calcium tested next week and the week after and call her for the results.

I am trying to be a better mom. The kids haven’t had many outings lately because of my mom and I being under the weather. So today my mom and I took them to the Children’s Museum at Charleston. They had an art program for the boys so they spent the first hour of the morning painting. I snuck over to where they were painting and took a picture. This is Timmy. Josh is on the other side of the easel so you can’t see him.

While Timmy and Josh were painting Samantha spent her time on a shrimp boat and at the grocery store. The grocery stores are always her favorites at the children’s museums. She likes to pretend to shop and ring things out and prepare food. Here are pictures of Samantha.

Once the kids were back together again they found a room where they had golf balls that you could put into all kinds of different loops and twists. Here are two pictures of the kids on top of the mountain where they were launching some of the balls from.

One of the other golf ball items was a pole that had the golf ball run down in twists. Josh loved this one. He would start the golf ball and then try to race it to the bottom. Here is Josh running after the ball.

After this room the boys found their favorite… a water room! While they were playing Samantha talked my mom into taking her back to the grocery store. Here are two pictures of the boys playing in the water.

We had a lot of fun today. After lunch we had schooltime with all three kids and then Nathan took them for a bike ride around the campground. Tomorrow will be an indoor day for the kids so hopefully they blew off some energy today.

I have decided to start taking pictures of each campground and make little notes about them so that I can remember the different campgrounds and what we liked about them or didn’t like about them. So here is my first installment of campground pictures.

This is site 20 and 21 at James Island County Park.

Things I like: When you call to make reservations they know which sites are good for receiving satellite signals. When we were here for my surgery we had a pull through site which also had good signal for the satellite. They also have Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi signal was stronger at the pull-through site.

Things I don’t like: The spots are sandy so we are getting a lot of sand tracked in every time the kids go in and out. Pricier than most county/state parks.

Poor Nathan. I think he was getting a bad case of cabin fever. He was so happy to be moving again even though we only went about 3 hours away and are spending the week in Charleston. Timmy requested one last meal at the Japanese restaurant by the campground so mom and I took the boys to lunch on Saturday. Samantha was spending time with Nathan’s mom. Here are the boys outside the restaurant.

I also had to share a picture of the two of them hamming it up…

They are just too cute. I went to the surgeons office today for my recheck. He removed the stitches and the surgical glue. He also scoped my throat and I found out the reason I have been having problems with swallowing and talking. One of my vocal cords is paralyzed. He warned me that this could happen. It could have been from the surgery or the intubation. He checked his surgical notes and he checked both vocal cords with an electrical current before closing and both responded. He said that most likely what has happened is that the swelling from the surgery cut the blood supply off to the nerve. Now it will have to regenerate and heal itself. He seemed to think that it will heal but he didn’t give me a time line as to when that might happen. They also took blood to test all my levels and I meet with the endocrinologist on Wednesday so I will see what the levels are doing.