Thankful Thursday

How did it get to be Thursday already? My gratitude list may seem a little strange but it reflects my current state. My son's ongoing recovery from pilonidal cyst surgery has dominated my thoughts and actions for several weeks. And by the way, he is healing like a champ and his attitude is stellar. I couldn't be prouder of my teenager.

 

 

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Starting to Tweet

I created a Twitter account at least six months ago. I figured out how to re-tweet but felt paralyzed composing my own tweet. One of my goals this summer was to get comfortable with Twitter so today, I tried again. I tweeted about how much I like the Blogsy app, then about what I was reading, and then I replied to a tweet posted by ASHA (American Speech and Hearing Association) about the misconceptions that colleagues have about the roles of speech therapists. I still don't really get the whole hash tag thing but I am determined. I've promised myself I will keep at it. Check out this tweet and blog post from Franki Sibberson.

On the Blog: Digital Writing: The First Six Weeks of School bit.ly/QHxQrR#dublinleadership12
— Franki Sibberson (@frankisibberson) August 7, 2012

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A Little Story

Yesterday I had fun creating a story with the Little Story Maker app. Young writers can make books several pages long with an image and sentence on each page. An audio recording can also be added to each page so as the text is read it is highlighted. I can't wait to try this with kindergarteners and first graders. My guess is they would absolutely love the audio feature and would find it very motivating. Students could make books of sight words, how-to books, or books about themselves. They could draw their own illustrations then take a picture of their work and upload the image into their story. I feel this app has so much potential. Silvia Tolisano wrote a very informative post on her blog about the specific features of Little Story Maker as well as some of the drawbacks such as not being able to upload the finished book as an epub file.

Update: When I returned to the app today to review my book, all the audio recordings were erased with the exception of the last page. After reading the reviews on the iTunes page, it appears that this is a common problem along with other bugs. This makes me very sad. This app has so much potential. I hope the developers fix it.

This is a screenshot of the book I made.

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Weird Thing to Write a Poem About

This poem was written using a fun and free app called Visual Poet. The only drawback is that the final image that is created can't be sent directly to your camera roll. I had to email the image to myself first then save it to my camera roll. It would be interesting to further edit the image with a photo app. I think students could do some powerful writing with Visual Poet. The text blocks can be easily repositioned and edited making it particularly useful in teaching young writers about using line breaks and the spacing of the text. The three picture blocks could also be used to teach about stanzas. Another way to use this app relates to how the writer chooses the image for each of the blocks. Different areas of the image can be zoomed in on making it perfect for writing descriptive sentences. So many possibilites.

Pain in the Butt

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Thankful Thursday

It has been a while since I've made a gratitude Tagxedo. It feels good to be thankful.

 

 

 

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More Healing, More Writing

I think my son is about to turn the corner in his healing process. The original golf ball size pilonidal cyst cavity (warning: pictures from Wikipedia link are not for the squeamish) has almost closed. It started at approximately 2.9 cm deep and has reduced in size to .7 cm deep. He also has a 9 cm incision running the length of his butt crack that once contained additional channels caused by the cyst. This area is also healing nicely. Right now I want this entire nightmare to be over. Daily packing of his wound and monitoring his medication, pain, and signs of infection have been all consuming. I seldom leave the house unless I'm getting groceries or medical supplies. I relinquished control of my lap top so my son would have something to do while on the couch or in bed.

Even though I haven't written any posts in several days, I have been writing, mostly journal entries and lists. I knew I would eventually write about this pilonidal cyst thing but I wasn't sure what that would look like. And since I primarily use my lap top to compose and post, not having easy access to it was a convenient excuse. I have used my iPad and the Blogsy app to post before but I was so slow at using the iPad's internal keyboard that it took forever and I became frustrated. I decided to spring for an Apple wireless keyboard with my birthday Amazon gift cards. The keyboard is super lightweight and portable. Directions for using it with an iPad are not included in the tiny instruction book but one two-minute YouTube video is all it took to get things up and running. It wasn't cheap, almost $70.00, but I absolutely love it and I'm now enjoying posting with my iPad.

My Apple wireless keyboard was so easy to set up and works like a charm.

 

 

 

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Lessons in Wound Care

I'm learning more about wound care than I ever anticipated.

Sweet rain. I sat in my car in my driveway and listened. As I reclined my seat, I closed my eyes. Thunder. The taps of rain grew stronger and louder against the roof and windows. There was no need to worry about the groceries in the trunk. No ice cream to melt or milk to spoil. As the rain began to let up, I knew I would have to shlep the bags into the house, put everything away, then check on my son. He usually slept about an hour after each dressing change. I think it was a combination of the oxycodone and the stress of dealing with having several inches of sterile Kerlix poked and pushed into the gaping cavities created by that wretched pilonidal cyst. Wound packing occured twice daily. Learning the tools and procedures of this process nearly caused me to pass out when I first saw my son's wound after his surgery. Watching the surgeon pull the packing out as my son shook and cried out in pain was almost too much to bare.

The rain slowed to a sprinkle and I left my car cocoon and unloaded the groceries. I grabbed the bag containing cotton tip applicators, which are like Q-tips only longer and packaged to be sterile, and took them up to my his room. I was right. He was still sleeping. I put the applicators next to the other supplies on a table near his bed and watched him sleeping for a bit. He was only fifteen but he looked much older with his muscled 6' 2" frame and scruffy facial hair. He is still my brave little boy.

 

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