Happy Birthday to Me

Yep, at 8:10pm this evening I’ll be officially 36 years of age.

In my mid- to late-30’s.

Whoopee!

I’m not concerned, age is all in the mind isn’t it?

Considering that I  wore one of my birthday bras strapped onto my head for half an hour, I’d say my mind is in no danger of becoming middle-aged just yet.

It’s really kind of sad that neither Wren nor Mr Bump saw anything particularly strange in my behaviour.

They didn’t even laugh…

Surgery Date Set

Our ISP has decided to allow me to access my blog domain once again, after almost two weeks of inaction.
Not surprisingly, a new ISP is just a matter of time now.

So we now have a date for Mr Bump’s open heart surgery for ASD; the 2nd December at Westmead Children’s Hospital. He’ll be in for a week, and need to be kept fairly quiet for about a month afterwards.

No heavy New Years partying for you, this year, little man. 

In January, we’ll be hosting a “school holiday party”. It’ll allow Wren & Mr Bumps to catch up with their friends and the Boyo can show off his scar.

On the surgeon’s advice, we’ll be missing the last 3 weeks of preschool, mainly to avoid bumps and pokes to his chest.

The surgeon has plenty of experience with this particular operation, apparently. He’s made a number of trips to Rwanda with other surgeons & a team of nurses to perform surgery on children there.

In a tent.

In fact, he’ll be returning from doing another stint there, the week before Mr Bump’s op. So our little angel will be in very good hands.

The surgery will consist of a incision of about 2in length down the centre of Mr Bump’s chest, through the breastbone.

His heart will be stopped and his blood pumped by machine.

They’ll go into the right atrium (top right heart chamber) and either sew the hole shut, or patch it with tissue taken from around his heart.

It should take about an hour and a half for the surgeon to do his bit, which is a relatively short length of time for this particular operation. Some surgeries take over four hours.

I’m going to take my cross-stitch, a book and WonderHubby. I doubt I’ll manage to make any use of the first two items during the day, but WH will definitely come in handy for hugs.

Actually, I made it sound like I’m dragging him along, but of course I couldn’t keep him away if I tried. We’ll hold hands and spend the time watching the clock together.

I think I’m going to let Wren have the day off school, too. She’ll be totally unable to concentrate, anyway.

What do you think?

Would she be better off with her Grandma or trying to do her work at school?

Cutting Down on Weekly Spending

Because we’ve decided to buy a house, there are some changes we need to make to our spending patterns.

While we’ve never been extravagant (we’ve never had much to be extravagant with), I figure there must still be ways in which we can shave our spending down a bit more and make paying off a house easier.

Our first goal is to cut our spending by $280 a week.

There are several ways in which we’ll be doing that:

• Holiday savings go straight into the mortgage ($100pwk)
• Preschool ($93pwk) ~ We’re paid up until the end of the year, as I’ve been paying extra each week.
• Fewer luxury foods ($40pwk)
• Less take-away ($30pwk)
• Clothes shopping at local “op shops” ($20pwk)
• Transfer income protection insurance to WH’s super ($11pwk)
• We likely will no longer have a fireplace ($8pwk)
• Summer means more cold meals & longer daylight hours, saving electricity ($5pwk)
• Reduce car usage ($5pwk)

If you counted carefully, you’ll see we’re actually trying to save $312 on our weekly spending.

That way, if we overspend a little it won’t be the end of life-as-we-know-it.

In case you think I’m cutting out some necessities, this extreme frugality will only be in effect until just after Christmas.

We have a freezer full of meat and cupboards full of food.

I think we can manage to pull in our belts for three or four months.

From January things will be a bit easier, because one of our two remaining debts will be paid off, giving us an extra $200 a month to sock away into the mortgage.

I’ll be going into more detail in the future on how we go with our spending plan.

Believe me, you’ll be sure to hear about both our highs and lows.

And if I do go over budget, I do solemnly vow to confess all publicly.

You Guys Are Great!

One of the things I love about writing a blog is the way that when life throws you something unexpected, friends just pour out of the woodwork.

Even friends you didn’t know were out there, the ones you haven’t met yet.

The last few weeks have been a key example.

You’ve stood by me and encouraged me while my health has put things on hold here again and again.

You’ve wished us all the best with our unexpectedly sudden house~hunting.

And with Mr Bump’s impending surgery, you’ve outdone yourselves.

You’ve poured your love and support for my family into a huge vat and mixed it all together with advice and information that we’ve really needed in the last few days.

Thank you, it’s been fantastic and I wanted to let you know that we all appreciate it.

PS ~

Mr Bump himself is quite excited about having surgery.

He’s been dancing around the house, singing “I’m sicker than you are” to Wren.

Atrial Septal Defect, What Fun.

Where to begin?

Well, almost 2 years ago, our doctor heard a slight murmur when she listened to Mr Bump’s chest and sent him for an echocardiogram.

It turned out that he had two holes in his heart, which in all likelihood would close over by themselves.

Not a problem. We forgot all about it.

Fast-forward to yesterday, when Mr Bump had another echocardiogram to confirm that the holes had indeed closed.

Slight problem. Hmmm.

The larger of the two has actually grown in that time (to roughly keep pace with the size of his heart), from 8mm to 12mm in diameter.

The good news is that there are no serious health issues for Mr Bump at the moment, although it may explain why he still has had such frequent attacks of croup.

The bad news is that because of the size of the hole, his paediatric cardiologist believes that a patch will not be enough, and Mr Bump will need surgery.

This year, so that it doesn’t interfere with kindergarten next year.

We have an appointment with the surgeon on the 23rd of September, when we’ll find out exactly what that will involve.

The actual problem is called Atrial Septal Defect (ASD), which is actually more common in girls, but I guess we got lucky.

Another way we got lucky is that ASD can usually be treated with a minor procedure not involving surgery.

Not this little chicken. We’re getting the whole kit and caboodle.

Because from what I’ve read, “surgery” in this case means open-heart surgery, with a heart-lung bypass machine. Scary stuff.

The really fun part is that we’ll be going through this while doing all the stuff involved in finding, buying and moving into our new home. I can’t wait.

At least it won’t be the first time that Mr Bump’s had surgery. He had a medical circumcision in July last year, so he has a vague idea of what it will be like.

I have my fingers crossed that the surgeon will take one look at the test results and say “No surgery for you, m’ boy. We’ll be able to patch that little hole up in a jiffy.”

First, moving, now this. I just hope these things don’t come in threes.