Daniel Coburn

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.

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

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.

I’ve been working all weekend on a project so I’ve missed my girls a lot. I like to spend most of my Saturday with them, but I couldn’t. I was on the phone with my wife and my youngest wanted to talk to me. So she asked me, “You coming home?”, in the most adorable toddler voice. I sadly had to tell her, no I was working. She then started to cry and tell me she wanted me home. It nearly broke my heart.

On Sunday I had to go into work and my oldest was playing an “Incredibles” game. She had just passed the part where Mr. Incredible was in his blue outfit and switched into his red one. And she made the comment, his not as big as he use to be. I said, “He’s not as fluffy as he was”. She looked at me and said, “No he was fat just like you”.

Boy if kids don’t say em like they see em. As hurt as I was, I was laughing as well cause it was so cute and so innocent. Kids, you have to love them!

The other day I decided I would get my hearing checked. For a couple of reasons. First, I have had a horrible ringing in my ears for many many years. Second, my wife will hear things and look at me and say “Can’t you hear that?” The going joke with her is she’ll look at me now and just say “of course not it’s that one pitch”. Third, sometimes I think I miss things. And finally going along with #2 my wife keeps telling me I’m def.

So I get the test done and sure enough I do have hearing loss. They said it’s nothing to really worry about, I’m not def, but I do have a lose in the higher ranges. Which isn’t surprising since the high pitch that is in my ears all the time is in the higher range. So go figure…. They also said, “You are a candidate for a hearing aid, but I wouldn’t strongly recommend it”. I took that as you could hear better, but you’re not hearing that bad right now to worry, so come back later.

So I’ll wait.

More Ears. That night my daughter had a bad ear ache and we put cotton in it etc. etc. and when we took it out later it looked like it had blood on it. So we went into lets get her checked ASAP mode. My in-laws came over quickly so my wife and I could both go with Gena to the Doctor. We get to an urgent care about 8:00 PM and she gets in pretty quick. The Dr. looks in her ears and says they need to be flushed.

If you have EVER had your ears flushed you know it sucks, feels weird etc. Now imagine your ear already hurts. So my sweet daughter gets the drops to loosen the junk in her ear and sits there for a few minutes. A nurse comes in and proceeds to flush her ear. A LOT of stuff comes out including a really big piece of wax. At this point my daughter is upset, and I mean irately upset. And the nurse says there’s more. She tries again and my daughters had enough of it. I ask to just put more drops in and the nurse finally complied. I figured it’ll loosen what’s in there up. We convince my daughter and talk her up to let the nurse do it again, but that was not going to happen any time soon, she wouldn’t even let them look in her ear. Finally with her on my lap hugging me, a different nurse looked in her ear and said she could see the ear drum, so the Dr. could look again.

Her ear is infected and the drum is bulging. The Dr. said he wouldn’t be surprised if the ear drum didn’t rupture. So we internally freak out as parents until the Dr. said it would actually probably make her feel better and he then explained that it would heal. So we felt relieved. My daughter went home and we let her sleep in our bed last night. Lucky for me, it was just her and I, and she woke up several times just screaming, “Get Away From Me, Get outta here”. She was still asleep yelling at the Dr. and Nurses. Today she also threw up, but we aren’t sure why. But she’s my girl and I’m getting ready to go spoil her.

She’ll recover, she always does, but once again she’s really learning to hate Doctors. I hope she gets over that and later realizes how beneficial they are, vs. how bad.

So I’m categorizing this under “Religion”, why? Because I don’t have a political category yet. This might also end up being a rant, but lets see how this goes.

So Mitt Romney decides to run for president. I don’t know Mitt, I’ve never voted for him, until recently I didn’t know much about him. I first started hearing his name a couple of years ago about MA allowing Same-Sex marriages. I then hear he’s LDS, which is a good thing to me. Now George W. Bush is our current president and he’s a religious man, God fearing man, etc. So that makes me happy as well. Honestly it’s nice to have a president that doesn’t shy away from his beliefs so my hat’s off to GWB. And you should as well even if you don’t like his policy, too many people are too worried about the polls [read Hilary].

What got me the past few days are all the headlines “Mormon, Mitt Romney…” “Mormon enters…” When is the LAST time you saw “Southern Baptist …” “Catholic …”. What does it matter, what matters is their convictions, core beliefs. I guess it just frustrates me that society is so messed up sometimes. I wish Mitt the best of luck, and if his platform is good, then he’ll have my vote.

I wish I could say this story was about me, or something I was a part of, but it’s not. It’s a wonderful true story about a truly wonderful man and his son. It’s about believing and loving, about caring and simply being. Read the story and watch the video:
[From Sports Illustrated, By Rick Reilly]

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay For their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.

But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.

Eighty-five times he’s pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in Marathons. Eight times he’s not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a Wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and Pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars–all in the same day.

Dick’s also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back Mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. On a bike. Makes Taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much–except save his life.
This love story began in Winchester , Mass. , 43 years ago, when Rick Was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him Brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.

“He’ll be a vegetable the rest of his life;” Dick says doctors told him And his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. “Put him in an Institution.”

But the Hoyts weren’t buying it. They noticed the way Rick’s eyes Followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the Engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was Anything to help the boy communicate. “No way,” Dick says he was told. “There’s nothing going on in his brain.”

“Tell him a joke,” Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a Lot was going on in his brain. Rigged up with a computer that allowed Him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his Head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? “Go Bruins!” And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the School organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, “Dad, I want To do that.”

Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described “porker” who never ran More than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he Tried. “Then it was me who was handicapped,” Dick says. “I was sore For two weeks.”

That day changed Rick’s life. “Dad,” he typed, “when we were running, It felt like I wasn’t disabled anymore!”

And that sentence changed Dick’s life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly Shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.

“No way,” Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren’t quite a Single runner, and they weren’t quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few Years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then They found a way to get into the race Officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the Qualifying time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, “Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?”

How’s a guy who never learned to swim and hadn’t ridden a bike since he Was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick Tried.

Now they’ve done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii . It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud Getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don’t you Think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you’d do on your own? “No way,” he says. Dick does it purely for “the awesome feeling” he gets seeing Rick with A cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best Time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992–only 35 minutes off the world Record, which, in case you don’t keep track of these things, happens to Be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the Time.

“No question about it,” Rick types. “My dad is the Father of the Century.”

And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a Mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries Was 95% clogged. “If you hadn’t been in such great shape,” One doctor told him, “you probably would’ve died 15 years ago.” So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other’s life.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass. , always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father’s Day.

That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.

“The thing I’d most like,” Rick types, “is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.”

So my Nutri-system diet is still going on. I’m at between 15-20 lbs dropped. I’m feeling pretty good about the diet and the way I’m eating. Sometimes I’m tempted to just binge, but so far I haven’t. I ate pizza with my family this weekend, but that didn’t seem to have a lasting impact on things. My weight is in flux, but I’m still creeping downwards. I’ll be adding exercise to my mix probably next week. I wanted to get used to the food change first and then add in motion. I think I’m about ready.

Overall things are okay, sometimes I feel hungry, but when I do, I just grab a little snack or chew on some gum. For some reason Gum is a savior for me. We’ll see how things progress.

So been doing the diet thing. Been on it 2+ weeks now and have list about 15 lbs. Is it hard? Yeah lately it has been. Really hard since the weekend, but I’m getting it under control. I think I need to remember my vitamins.

But hey 15 lbs, and I think I’ll have lost a few more by tomorrow since I haven’t weighed myself for a couple of days now.

So I started to change my eating habits today. So no it’s not a “diet” it’s a change of life. I’m doing the nutri-system plan. The benefit of this system is it will help with portion contol while also helping with the quality of the food I’m eating. i.e. less junk, more substance. Each day I’m eating 1-2 salads, with a nice lunch or dinner, so that’s good. Also eating fruits and yogurts. A little on the hungry side right now, but still have a snack waiting for me tonight.

I’ll be posting updates from time to time so check back, wish me luck etc.