Jack Jensen's Blog: Happy 40th Anniversary Mom & Dad!

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Happy 40th Anniversary Mom & Dad!

Happy 40th Anniversary Mom & Dad!! This weekend James, Jack and I made another trip to NY. This time it was to celebrate my parents 40th wedding anniversary. The whole family was there and we had a great dinner at Tatiana's Restaurant. It's an Italian restaurant that is along the Catskill Creek - VERY pretty and amazing food! They gave us the back room to ourselves so we could be as loud as we wanted :-)

Jack had a great time hanging out with everyone as usual. He really loves his uncles and will ALWAYS give them a kiss. If my mom, sister-in-law or I ask for a kiss we have a 20% success rate. Little stinker!

Jack went back to Connecticut with my parents for the week. I miss him already. James has a ton of stuff he wants to get done around the house and I need some time to rest. I've been having lots of painful contractions. Fortunately, they aren't leading to anything but I'm supposed to be resting. My OB would kill me if he knew I went against medical advice and went to NY this weekend. I figured that sitting in the car for 5 hrs wasn't any worse then sitting around the house. In the end, I think it was a good decision to go because I had lots of help from my family so I could rest a lot while James helped my dad with all the outside work on the farm. Jack loves the farm. Today he saw a turtle on the edge of the pond and when it went into the water he got so excited he started to clap. He also loves the geese and other birds. He calls them all ducks!

Here are a bunch of photos and some videos from this weekend.

James, Jack, Uncle Chris

George & Uncle Len

Hugs for Uncle Chris

The Whole Gang Celebrating 40 years!

Dad being VERY serious about the momentous occasion!

Chris after a meal spent entertaining Jack (see videos below!)

Pa, Jack, Grammie

Uncle Len & Jack

Cowboy Jack

The King watching Elmo's World

Jack and I hanging out (self portrait)

Uncle George & Jack after dancing to "The Chicken Dance" with their German Hats

And now...some crazy videos.....

4 comments:

Cindy said...: I love his TV-watching setup!

I couldn't view the last two videos. It says they are private.; May 4, 2009 at 9:33 AM
Aep said...: I agree, I love the TV watching pics... too comfy!
Love the videos. Your family looks like so much fun!! Glad you went to share your parents anniversary. Hope you take this week to rest no more contractions from that little lady. Any names yet?
Have a good week and hugs!!; May 5, 2009 at 9:04 PM
Anonymous said...: So "King Jack" had a boring uneventful weekend--- :-) What a great family! Jack sure loves his Uncles and Grandparents! Are you going to get him back? You might have to seriously think about that! Love the videos and Jack's hat is AWESOME!

Keeping you all in my prayers!

And get some rest--MOMMY!!!!!! (I'm being serious now!); May 6, 2009 at 8:50 AM
Joe LaSala said...: aww, I wish we knew you were up in catskill this weekend... we were at my folks on sunday and would have loved to stopped by to see you... we will need to coordinate next time :); May 6, 2009 at 1:36 PM

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Jack's Diagnosis and Recovery

At our 19 week ultrasound Jack was diagnosed with CDH. One week later James and I went to Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. for more extensive analysis. We had a fetal MRI and saw that his hernia was on the left side (the most common) and at that time his liver was 'up' or in his chest. His heart was pushed to the right in his chest and he had a normal sized right lung and a very small left lung (about 1/5 the normal size). Overall his CDH was classified as severe with a Lung to Head (LHR) ratio of 0.8. His echocardiogram showed that his heart was beating strong and there was no underlying congenital heart defect. His amnio was also normal. The prognosis was 20-50% chance of survival at birth. The struggle we faced with this diagnosis was that there is little correlation between prenatal diagnostic test results and outcome at birth. Some babies with mild defects do poorly and some with severe defects pull through and do very well. All we could do was try to be optimistic and hope and pray that Jack would be a strong baby and fight hard. On August 20, 2007 John Verner Jensen "Jack" was born by C-section at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. He weighed 6 pounds 11 ounces and was 20 inches long. Within hours of birth he was placed on ECMO (heart-lung bypass). He had a 10 day run on ECMO and went to his hernia repair surgery on this machine. He was missing 90% of his left diaphragm, had his entire stomach, spleen, and parts of his small and large intestines and liver in his chest and he required a gortex patch. Jack came out of surgery off ECMO but with the cannulas still in place until later that night. He had a really hard night after surgery and we nearly lost him. We were later told his blood gases should have been unsurvivable and that it was pure will and not medicine that saved him. After 81 days in hospital we brought Jack home breathing room air and needing only an NG (naso-gastric) feeding tube. After 27 days home he reherniated and we had to go back for emergency surgery at Johns Hopkins. His awesome surgeons literally patched him back up and after another 16 days in hospital he returned home on Dec 21, 2007 - just in time for his first Christmas. Since then Jack has tackled his eating issues and is NG-tube free! He does not require any medication. We are extremely grateful for his incredible medical team and all his friends and family for their support, kind words, thoughts and prayers.

Jack's CarePage chronicles his day-to-day journey from diagnosis to approximately 6 months old (before we started blogging). See the link below.