Catharsis of the Bogue

Oddities, Profundities, Profanities and Dad Stuff

Tag: kidney failure

why I stay at home, part 1

July 9, 2014 / / 6 Comments

I am a stay at home dad.  I have touched on this before and I am I will again.  So it may be asked why?  Why is it that I stay home while my wife works.  Well a simple answer is complicated in coming.  Here is part one of a peek into my life so far.  BTW, I have decided I will run my fiction stories on Saturday’s if anyone is interested.

Way back when, after high school I was doing the college thing with my wife (then girlfriend) and things progressed, we got married and she graduated.  She was one of those who has known what she wants to be when she grows up from about 5 years old.  I was not like that.  I am still working on that one.  She wanted to be a Nurse and so she became.

In the meantime we had our first child and when here came to there, we looked at the budget and decided that almost 80% of my income at the time would go to daycare.  We couldn’t justify that so I stayed at home and took online classes working on my degree.

Through this and that our second child came along and the same argument held.  I would be working to pay for daycare and someone else would be raising our kids.  Of everything, that was the most important.  My wife and I would raise our own kids.  We would be responsible for their development and how they turned out.  No one else would be in charge of them.

I think that has had a very positive impact on these kids.  I the “old” days of my parents at least there was not daycare.  When I was a child it was available but I would say most kids were raised by their parents.  As I got older, more kids were being raised by others.  We were not going to let our kids be raised by others.

I did go back to work for about a year when my son was small and my wife was pregnant with our 3rd.  That was hard for the family but it worked.  Things finally were looking around and I was thinking about school again so I quit work in April of 2007 to do that.  Two weeks later my 11 month old had a seizure and was diagnosed with Kidney Failure.  That led to 16 weeks in the hospital to get her regulated and healthy enough to come home.

Migraines and Laundry, Which is Worse? part 2

March 24, 2014 / / 0 Comments

As I started yesterday, This is part 2 of my migraine journey and latest stay at home dad info.  And Journey just came on the radio, Any Way You Want It is AWESOME!  part 1 is Here

Admittedly, laundry sucks and it is not my favorite thing but if I don’t do it, there are no clean clothes.  No, the wife can’t do it, she works and now she is pregnant with number 4 so her energy is gone.  I am not complaining about doing laundry I just don’t like to.  But I went to fold the 3 loads I had washed.  About that time I got what I call the “numb bubble” again.

The numb bubble is one of my migraine clues.  It is not the scientific term but it is my term.  It is a strange feeling, complete numbness in a “sphere” roughly the size of a baseball that moves.  It usually starts in my fingers and “travels” through my hand, up my arm, and through my face.  That is the worst part, it is like being on lots of novacaine but it moves.  And it sucks.

If you just think that a migraine is a really bad headache, there is much more to it, usually.  I have read about migraines lately and there are different types but most have some sort of “aura” associated with them.  That is the type I have.

Since I was about 12 I have had migraines but didn’t have them diagnosed until something like 14 years ago when my girlfriend (now wife of 13 years) the nursing student (now Nurse) told me what my “sickness” actually was.  I used to wake up in the middle of the night with the “numb bubble” in full swing and the visual aura happening.  I would think, “Oh great I am sick again.”  I didn’t know all of what was happening but I knew that I would be throwing up a few times with a bad headache to go with it.  And then I would be fine later.  I believe to this day that my parents thought I was faking because I was better later.

I got medication at the hospital thanks to my girlfriend and from there it has helped to alleviate the symptoms before they led to the vomiting stage.  I still have the numb bubble but much less now, mostly just the visual aura that tells me the migraine is coming.  I have tried to explain that visual aura to people and I think I will try to do it in the next post.

Later

Justin

Continue to part 3 Here

Migraines and Laundry, Which One is Worse? Part 1

September 26, 2013 / / 0 Comments

I have spent the last couple of days reading so much stuff about how be a successful blogger.  I don’t know if I can take any more advice.  But I did get some good tips so not time wasted, just not spent writing.  So here is what I am going to do with this blog, write it! I will write whatever I want every day.  There may be 2 posts per day. There may even be a series like this one is going to be. Here is part one:

So here goes with some focus actually.  It may or may not be known that I am a stay at home dad.  I have been off and on for the past 8 years so that an actual parent can raise our kids.  My wife is a Nurse and can just make more $$ than I can so when it comes down to it, she is more logical to work than me.  Especially this last go around.  I quit working in April of 07 to go back to school and finish the last few credits of my degree.  About a week later, my 11 month old daughter had a seizure and ended up in the hospital for 16 weeks with kidney failure.  My wife carried the insurance so I took care of the little one as well as the 2 other kids.  And the house.  and the laundry.

The next 2 years I spent 3-4 days per week taking the little one to dialysis because she had her kidney’s removed, and it took that long to get a transplant lined up.  She got the transplant in May of 09, so after all of the followup DR. appointments I am here taking care of the house and the kids again, run of the mill stay at home dad.  Funniest thing is how it pisses off my father the ex Navy SEAL type A personality control freak.  But I digress yet again.  I wrote many blog posts to keep family updated on the baby’s progress at www.carepages.com pagename: ameliarosematthews.

I didn’t start this out to talk about stay at home dad stuff, or even migraines but it may be what it was meant for.  I went downstairs yesterday to catch up on the laundry.

Join us tomorrow for part 2 of the migraine and laundry series. See Part 2 Here

And part 3 Here

Justin

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