Walk to End Alzheimers

This morning over 500 people from the community joined Keary, Shirl, and me for the Alzheimer's Walk to End Alzheimer's at the Sports Core in Kohler.  Over $50,000 was raised.   Senator Joe Liebham and his two children as well as Miss Wisconsin led the walk.

 Before the walk there was a scavenger hunt for facts about Alzheimer's and information about the event like the name of the DJ and how many items were in the silent auction. I like to play games and I'm competitive, so I went around asking people questions trying to find the answers to some of the questions.  I was one of the first to complete the game.  Then I shared the answers with  Shirl and Keary to increase our chances of winning.  The sheet said the prize was a free pizza, but the prize was really one free admission to an Alzheimer's Association Caregiver Conference on Thursday, November 10 from 9 am to 3:30 pm at Acuity on Taylor Drive, Sheboygan. Admission is only $5.00.

We were given a pinwheel on a stick. We were told to write notes on each petal.  Then they put them in the lawn as a group.  The pinwheels came in four different colors. Yellow meant that you were a caregiver for someone with Alzheimer's or dementia.  Blue was for someone with dementia or Alzheimer's.  White and purple was for a participant who knew someone who died from Alzheimer's or someone who had come to support the Alzheimer's Association.


Another game was to guess how many M&Ms were in a jar.  I guessed 3317.  At another table I put my name in for a drawing to get a free pizza.  Shirl and I played putt putt golf to hit a golf ball into some holes.  At another table I got a free 15 minute deep massage of my shoulders, back, and hands.  It was painful and enjoyable at the same time.  I did not want her to stop!

Then we started on our walk for about an hour around the Wood Lake area. After the walk, we ate complementary hot dogs, chips and a McDonald's chocolate chip cookie with punch or water.

Then I went to look at the silent auction items and while I was in that tent, they were announcing the winners of the different drawings and games.  First prize winner was me...I won a free Pizza Hut pizza!  Then another prize was the jar of M&Ms.  I won that one, too.  My guess was within 400 of the correct number.  Wow, two prizes.  Another prize was the winner of the scavenger hunt.  Keary won!!  We won three of the first six prizes.  Then the announcer said,  "Are there any more Kautzers here?  We have a few more prizes left."  I did not hear that, but Keary told me afterwards.  How funny.  Keary said he has known the announcer for over 25 years.  

Planning Trip to China

Ni hao.  I have spent the past few days and nights searching the internet for new ideas of things to do while in Shanghai, Beijing, and Lijiang. 

I plan to hike five miles of the Great Wall from Jinshanling to Simatai, but the Simatai section has been closed since June 2010 for renovations which will take two years.  That section will be remodeled to be a tourist attraction.  It took a while to find the information I needed to deal with the closed section.  I found a map and all is well.  I can hike to a certain tower and then hike back.  The only way to go any further is to stay overnight at Dongpo Inn at Simatai.  The Inn has access to the Great Wall in that section.  We do not have enough time (need another day) to stay overnight there, so I will have to be content to just hike to the Qilin Tower and back.

To get there, we will take Tourist bus 12 from Xuanwumen and Donsi Shitiao in Beijing or take a bus from Donzhimen bus station to Miyun and then take a local bus or taxi to Jinshanling.

We will have two Chinese girls from Shanghai with us to help us figure out the details.  They have never been to Beijing, so they are coming with us to Beijing and then return home when we leave Beijing.  

An alternative is to go to the Downtown Backpackers Hotel and book a trip to the Great Wall with them for 280 rmb per person.  They drop us off and take us back...allowing three hours to hike the Great Wall.  I am not sure three hours is enough time for us to take a leisurely walk and stop a lot to take photos and enjoy the views.  Watching a sunset on the Great Wall would be great, too.

Then I researched where to find the best Peking roast duck in Shanghai.  Made In China Restaurant in the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Beijing is highly recommended.  We would have to made a reservation to reserve a nice table and a duck.  No reservations, no duck.  The cook comes to our table with the whole duck...head and all....and slices the duck before our eyes.  The duck skin loses its crispyness if it is not served right away. 

Another great adventure is to go for a rickshaw ride through old Beijing...the Hutong section. I am researching which company to go with. 

 Zai jian....good bye for now.

NICOLE'S MIRACLE BABY

 Monday night was the full moon.  We all joked about how my water would break in a horribly embarrassing place because crazy things and babies like full moons.  My water broke at 1:30am Tuesday morning...on the toilet.  Crazy, I know.  Pop.  Gush.  Fluid.  I wasn't convinced it was my water because it seemed too easy, it didn't continue to gush, and hello, I was on the toilet for a reason.  I went back to bed...on top of a towel just in case.  Around 4 am, I got up to go to the bathroom again (completely normal) and found pink-tinged slime.  Hello labor, good-bye mucous plug.  I went back to bed.  The contractions started at around 5 am, and most of them weren't too bad.  A couple had me deciding that I liked needles after all and I'd like the epidural now thank you.  So naturally, I went back to bed.  I figured we had a while to go and I wanted to labor at home for as long as I could anyway.  Eli got up at around that point, and I informed him he wouldn't be going to work that day.  We decided he should just go get his laptop from his office instead.  I go back to bed.  He comes back, we have breakfast, we pack the car, all very civilized.  So far, this is really boring, right?  Then Eli finds the paper on my hospital bag titled something like "Go to the Hospital NOW When Any of These Things Happens!!"  He skims it. Then says, "Hey, you meet all eight of these requirements....we should call the hospital."  A back and forth ensues.  I don't want to be strapped to a bed because my water broke. Eli insisted that there's a reason they make us come to the hospital.  He wins.  We call and go in.

We get to the hospital at around 9 am, park in the wrong area, try again, and finally find admitting.  They didn't even check me, just set me up with a room in labor and delivery.  About thirty minutes goes by.  My contractions are getting closer together and they finally hook me up to the monitors.  One belt is for Dante's heartbeat. One belt is for my contractions.  The first contraction hits and Dante's heartbeat drops from like 150 to 50.  Serious distress.  Me, Eli, and the nurse look at each other for a second.  Maybe we moved the monitor?  We find his heartbeat again, normal.  The second contraction hits and his heartbeat drops again.  The nurse immediately starts making me get into weird positions (not just lying on my back) to bring his heartbeat back up while frantically paging the front desk and yelling that she needs help.  No one responds for maybe 25 seconds, so she takes off running down the hallway, yelling for help.  At this point, I'm feeling a little nervous.  The room quickly fills with nurses and doctors (one of whom is mine).  They start poking me with things better left unsaid and discussing options.  They decide the baby likes it best on my hands and knees, so that's the position I'm stuck in.  His heartbeat goes back up for a bit, then another contraction hits and my doctor comes to the head of the bed to talk in a very serious voice.  She says we need to have an emergency c-section now because he's not tolerating labor.

I'm now shaking just retelling this part because that was when I started to freak out on the inside. They wheeled me away to an OR room and told me they didn't have time for regular anesthesia.  I'd have to be put to sleep.  Maybe 15 minutes had passed since the time the nurse ran down the hallway.  I had two IVs, they'd taken a lot of blood, eveyone was rushing around.  They didn't even change me out of the regular hospital gown, just put a cap over my hair.  I remember crying, and my doctor crying, and the anesthetist telling me that I needed to breathe deep and I would feel pressure on my throat.  The worst part was right before I went out when I couldn't draw in a breath to do the deep breathing they wanted.  I tried to tell him I couldn't breathe, but nothing worked.  I woke up in recovery.

Eli was there, but the baby wasn't.  He was in the Special Needs Nursery being treated for low blood sugar.  Which is where he remains because he's having trouble regulating it himself.  It's probably not helping that he refuses to drink from a bottle, so they're feeding him through a tube.  He was 5 pounds, 8 ounces at birth, smaller than they'd anticipated by a lot, but he was 20 inches long, which explains the skewing.  He's also adorable.  The nurses in the Special Need Nursery are calling him a miracle baby because it was a miracle he survived.  He had an abnormally long umbilical cord that was wrapped around his neck three times.  Every time I had a contraction, he was strangling.  My doctor said that if we'd waited another 20 minutes he probably wouldn't have made it.  Eli couldn't be in the room when he was born because it was too fast, but he got there just after and cut the cord.  He was also able to stay with Dante until they whisked him off to the nursery.  I'm still having moments of panic when I think about it.

Obviously, we're still in the hospital.  The powers that be finally let me eat and move around today, so I got to hold Dante some more.  I'm itchy and sore and sliced open, but I'm so freaking thankful that Eli bullied me into calling the hospital and that my doctor doesn't waste any time when the shit hits the fan.  The nurses are impressed with how "easily" I'm moving, but it's become clear that Dante can't come to me, so I have to go to him.  I'm sure I'll regret the movement once he's in the room with us and I don't have to move to be near him.

So there you go, after the tamest pregnancy, everything went all crazy right at the end.  And now, pictures: