Daniel Coburn » Personal

Life’s little surprises

Daniel — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 05:31:52 +0000

Every one ages I have just recently celebrated my 21st birthday (again). I was taken out to dinner (BBQ) and to a hockey game by my wonderful wife. But as with everything we have times in our life that we face the truth of our mortality (so to speak). As with many men my wife says I’m hard of hearing, and well I guess she was right. If you look a hearing charts you’ll see there’s this wonderful threashold of “20″ if you’re above it you’re good. If you’re below it, you have hearing loss. Well I had A LOT below it so I am officially hearing impaired. Now I’m ok with that, cause I was still able to function. But when I’m in a room with a lot of people I really have a hard time singling out individual voices.

I was fortunate enough to be able to get some help from the state of UT and some really nice folks. On monday I obtained my hearing aids. And they were small, very small my wife didn’t even know that I was wearing them when I asked her, “What do you think?” I’ve had them for 2 days now and they irritate my ears a little simply because I’m not used to having something in my ear’s all day. Hopefully I’ll get used to them soon.

But why am I blogging about this? Maybe someone will read it and realize that it’s not that big of a deal to get hearing aids. They have improved enough that if you have a smaller hearing loss (just below 20) that you can get one’s that are barely noticible. (My wife one time asked if I took them off and sure enough I hadn’t)

So go get your hearing checked!

Amazing Results

Daniel — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 07:30:32 +0000

While I’m not going to give specifics, I will give some interesting “basic” details. My wife and I have a seperate blog for our family and there is actually a decent amount of traffic. Is it earth shattering? No, but it is helpful, as we chronical items with our kids. We have a son that if you look back in my blog you’ll see was born early with some serious issues. I use google for a lot of things, one of the features I love to take advantage of is the “Define” feature. I was looking at stats to our blog and I noticed that we were getting a lot of keyphrase with “Define” in them. I started plugging some in and sure enough our blog was listed for several terms at #1 as a “Web Definition”. I’m thinking that’s pretty cool.

Dad’s Day After Christmas

Daniel — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 03:13:19 +0000

Things a father should never be left alone to do with his kids:

Put nail polish on
Help his daughters with a “Make-Over”
1. Including lip gloss
2. Eye Shadow
3. Blush etc…. this is not something daddy’s are good at!
Playing Dress Up
Playing with Barbies… especially when you hear this: “Daddy You get the Naked Barbie”

I love my daughters, but look forward to my son getting older.

Christmas at the Hospital

Daniel — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 15:48:46 +0000

So Christmas morning our 17 month old son woke up not looking so well. But he seemed to be acting ok and was getting around. We do our Christmas morning with the family, have a nice breakfast etc. Our son takes his nap and when he wakes up he has a slight fever and a lot of discharge from his eyes. We clean him up but his fever is at 101.8. We called his Doctor and she said to give him some ibuprofen and if his fever continues to elevate we should bring him in. Sure enough he hit 104, so we headed to the ER (since nothing else was open). He looked miserable! He has conjunctivitis and sinusitis, poor guy! He’s still sleeping in this morning, so hopefully he’ll start feeling better today as we get antibiotics in him and medicine in his eyes… Another Christmas to remember!

Poltical Incorrectness

Daniel — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 18:52:53 +0000

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

That is all…..

Christmas Reflections

Daniel — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 02:47:16 +0000

When I grew up Christmas was a big holiday for my family. My father was especially fond of it and decked out the outside of the house every year. I remember we had schematics showing where everything went, how all the rows of light should be placed over the windows on the roof etc. My father passed away in 1995 and sometimes I reflect on things, especially this time of year since it reminds me of him, also his birthday is in January. I used to be very torn up at his loss, but I’ve learned a lot and have grown a lot. I did however hear this song the other day called Homesick by Mercy Me and it just made me think back about him and Christmas. Enjoy the song, I know I did.

Child with Cleft Lip and Palate Update

Daniel — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 04:25:59 +0000

A while ago I posted that my son had a cleft lip and palate. I wanted to give a quick update since some people seem to be finding my blog cause of it and I wanted to offer insight and any help if needed by folks out there.

My son is about 17 months old now and has been on the operating table 4 times with a total of 8 surgeries repairing his lip, palate, feeding tube and hernia. Most people really want to know about the cleft so let me go over the operations he’s had for that and some difference that occur in other parts of the states/world.

His first surgery was to repair his bi-lateral cleft lip. This surgery seems pretty basic “Sew the lips together”, but in all honesty it’s very complex. First you have to cut open all 4 surfaces and then attache the muscles and the flesh, all while trying to form a good looking lip. (Our son’s doctor did a great job Dr. Warnock). But in Utah they also put a prosthetic palate in his mouth, most other states do not do this.

His next surgery for his cleft was supposed to be to repair his soft palate only, but my wife and I did research that said doing the hard palate at this time had advantages, and also only Utah did the prosthetic. We consulted with our son’s doctor and he agreed to do it. His stance was that’s the way everyone in Utah was taught since they were taught by the same doctor, so they all did it that way. However, there’s not hard evidence that says one way is greater than the other. If we didn’t do the hard palate at this time we would have another surgery when our son was 4. So long story short they did everything on this final surgery. Soft Palate, Hard Palate, Nasal Passage repair, Dental Notches…

Our son came out of this surgery very well, one great advantage is when he sneezes very little comes out of his nose now [if you have a cleft palate kid you'll know what I mean].

I think the biggest thing to remember is it is not easy for a parent of a cleft to hear “Well at least the can correct it”, because their child is going to have a series of MAJOR surgeries. If you know someone with a cleft baby, tell them “It’s going to be tough and possibly a lot of surgery, if you need anything we’ll be here for you.” (you get the point). But the good news after seeing my son’s battle with being a preemie and the cleft, I know he’s a tough kid and will get through just about anything placed before him. Also I have a new set of fancy words that I know… In the great words of Homer J. Simpson “I am so smart S.M.R.T”

Right thing to do…

Daniel — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 18:09:24 +0000

We know our son is going to have problems when he is born. He’s going to have the Cleft, either lip or lip and pallet (most likely both). There is a hospital in Virginia that actually does all of the surgery quickly after birth vs. waiting to do them over the course of a couple of years. I would like to go there and have it done simply because I’d rather have the risk of one surgery vs. 3+. Also babies are constantly growing and are very resilient. Not 100% sure, but it’s what I’d rather do, even if there is an extra cost. I want to do what is best and least stressful on my child.

Cleft Lip and Palate

Daniel — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 15:08:20 +0000

As I mentioned in my catching up about my next child. We have had a lot of ups and downs with this pregnancy, from my wife’s health to the recent discovery that my son will have a Cleft lip and Palette. The cleft is a bi-lateral cleft which is the rarest form, and affect both sides of his lip, and with that there is about an 85% chance he has the palette as well. And one of the ultrasounds was pretty evident of that.

I’m a stats person so I live by numbers. The chance of getting the birth defect is .018% (no not 1.8% it’s .018%). So the chances of a nurse having experience with it are minimal, but fortunately we have Primary Children’s in Utah that are some of the best. With my wonderful wife, we’ve been studying what to expect.

1. 3.9 surgeries in the first 5 years. They will start at about 10 months
2. 66 Dr. appointments in the first 5 years.
3. 15% mortality rate in the first year because of other issues that might stem from this.

So what does it mean? Stress. Lots of it. The bottles cost $16 a piece and then last 15 feedings. Feeding the baby will be unique cause he won’t be able to suckle.

But good news it’s a boy, and yes we already have the name picked out

Catching up…

Daniel — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 14:23:59 +0000

So I’ve been pretty quite lately, mostly because I didn’t have much I wanted to say in public. But here are a few quick things to catch people up.

Rule #1: Life kicks you when you’re down
Rule #2: Understand rule #1 and recover.

Car I’ve had since ‘94 a ‘95 Nissan Maxima broke down
It was the day after we discovered a purchase on EBay for kids furniture is going sour, the person dropped off the face of the earth, but when we bought they had 99%+ feedback and are now at 98.1% and “No longer registered” on ebay.
This followed finding out that our child has a bi-lateral cleft lip and more than likely a cleft pallet which will require several surgery’s starting at 10 months going to 8-9 years.