McHappy Day
Today is McHappy Day - when $1 from every Happy Meal or Big Mac sold goes to local children’s charities like Ronald McDonald House.
I’m a supporter of Ronald McDonald House. They were there for my family when we really needed them – and they’re there for thousands of families here in Canada and the US. You may be like I was and never think you’ll be in a situation where you’ll need the support of Ronald McDonald House. Hopefully you never will – but if you do, it’s good to know they are there.
This is an email I wrote almost three years ago, right after the birth of our first daughter.
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May 4, 2009
Hey everyone -
Laurie is still sleeping and I’m wide awake, so I thought it’s a good time to send a longer status update email.
We’re at the Ronald McDonald House in Hamilton, right next door to McMaster’s Children’s Hospital. If you had ever told me I’d be staying at a Ronald McDonald House in my lifetime, I probably would have laughed at you – but here we are. To be honest, I was just questioning one of their McDonald’s tie in’s last week where a dollar from every Big Mac sale goes to the Ronald McDonald House…..but starting today, I’m eating Big Macs like crazy.
Anyway….so here’s the deal. Maeve has a congenital heart defect known as Transposition of the Great Arteries. Her aorta and pulmonary arteries are hooked into the wrong sides of the heart – kind of like plugging the video (yellow) and audio (white) into the wrong holes on the TV – but only this time it isn’t your DVD player, it is your first born who can make jokes at a time like this. Honestly.
Here’s how everything went down.
Maeve started having trouble sucking and breathing Sunday morning around 1am. We thought it was because she was a little dehydrated and tired, so Laurie spent the entire night letting her sleep a little and then waking her to try feeding again. Around 5am – Maeve’s colour started looking gray – so Laurie called Nancy. Nancy came right over, looked at Maeve and then said we should go to the hospital right away. We ran right over and the amazing team in the ER triaged her right away and had her intubated withing ten minutes and her colour improved. The surgeon on call is from McMaster’s and immediately called in an assesement and transport team. The team arrived an hour later and hooked Maeve up to their equipment and starting doing tests. Maeve has been stable the entire time – but the red blood cell and oxygen levels in her blood were very below normal. After some time, the transport team was instructed to move her to McMaster’s so she could be looked at. Maeve got her first car ride in an ambulance with sirens and lights!
Once at the hospital, they did an ultrasound of her heart and discovered the problem of the switched arteries. Good news was – in utero, all babies have a hole between the atriums int the heart that mixes the blood before the lungs kick in. They called me on my mobile and asked for permission to do a baby angioplasty to open that hole so that Maeve’s heart could mix the blood and then she could breathe on her own. This is only a stablazing procedure…she would still need an operation.
I’m an optimist – so I was over the moon when the surgeon said that her defect is 100% curable. It is still an open heart surgery, but she is an Irish girl and we all know how head strong they can be!
The surgery is called the Arterial Switch Operation – or according to Wikipedia – the Jatene Procedure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jatene_procedure) and of course, it was developed here in Canada. The procedure will be done at Sick Kid’s Hospital in Toronto. Yes, the hospital is named Sick Kids. It must of been named during the “Literal Period” of hospital naming here in Ontario.
They started the angiplasty procedure and by the time we got to the hospital, they were half way done. The nurse came out and said everything went great and that the whole team was high fiving each other in there. Everyone was amazed, floored, flabergasted at how quickly Maeve’s colour returned to her. They also loved her incredible head of hair! I guess her name really does mean “intoxicating beauty”. We stayed at the hospital with her until 10 last night – and then headed back to the Ronald McDonald house for some sleep.
The cardiac surgeon here at McMaster’s presents Maeve’s case to the review panel at Sick Kid’s at 9am this morning and then we’ll know when the surgery will likely be. It is critical that it be done – but thankfully she is stable and it the surgeon’s prefer to do the surgery between the first and second weeks of life rather than right away. Once we know, we’ll let you know.
Maeve is off the venitalator and just on a little oxygen now….she is kicking and screaming and royally pissed off right now – which is just how we want her. She can have anything she wants in life now – a puppy, a pony, a tatoo….hell, I’ll “kidnap” one of those Jonas Brothers for her if that’s what she wants. She was already spoiled, but now – well – they need to invent a new word.
That’s all the info I have now….I’ll send an update as soon as I know more!
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Go get a Happy Meal – I am!
Made an enhancement to it this week (now live) so that it will create your playlists on your PlayBook, so long as at least one of the songs in the playlist are among the songs that iTunes Sync has been told to sync. (have to log off and log back into your PC so that it will also update the Windows app)”
Luke Reimer is discussing. 
Woodmichael, 
Presschimp, 
The new year is upon us and resolutions have been made (and some broken already). One of my resolutions that I hope to stick to this year is to try out a new app every day. There definitely isn’t any reason I couldn’t do this – there are over 50,000 apps in BlackBerry App World out there. The big question is – how to pick. Well, big questions usually have simple answers.
Alexander The 1st is discussing. 
BerryGoodThemes 11:30 am on April 23, 2012 Permalink |
first thing i do when open new app is click settings and see what i can change
Alex Kinsella 11:40 am on April 23, 2012 Permalink |
Now that is something I definitely do – the more settings, the better