Samuel Kenneth Finzer Update 52

Samuel is home! The first night went well. The only thing that we had a little trouble with was cleaning the feed bag. The valve on the bag was a little hard to find to flush it with water.

I made a daily schedule for Leyla to use to organize the dispensing of meds and cleaning of equipment. I need to make a weekly equipment cleaning schedule as well.

Here it is just for fun: Daily Samuel Schedule

Crystal really missed her brother. She was up until 11pm last night. Today she is staying home from school. She got up at 7am today and went straight to Samuel's room. She is sitting in the rocking chair by Samuel's bed and constantly watching Samuel to make sure he is alright.

It is such a blessing to be able to wake up in the morning and go into Samuel's room and see him there instead of driving to the hospital at night.

Please pray for Jasmine (my three year old) as she has a low grade fever and a cough.

Samuel Kenneth Finzer Update 51

All,

Great news. God is so good. The doctor that performed the Gastronomic Intestinal Exam overreacted. Samuel will not need a surgery for his malrotated intestine in the near future. After Samuel gets home we will need to watch that Samuel does not have severe vomiting or constipation. If he does then we will need to take him to the emergency room.

One of the things that they found out when they did the GI Exam is that Samuel's stomach settled directly under the gortex patch that they put in when he had the surgery to correct the D-Hernia. This means that there will be no G-Tube going directly into his stomach. He will continue to use the feeding tube which is going down his nose.

Over the past few days Leyla and I have been scheduling and attending appointments so that Samuel can come home. The doctor called this morning and she said that Samuel could come home today!!!!!! It is going to be another crazy day for us. Thanks for your prayers and cards.

To Do Today:

• Get training on Oxygen System
• Get training on Apnea Monitor
• Buy new car seat because ours was expired
• Meet with nutritionist
• Meet with pharmacy
• Bring Samuel home :)

Samuel Kenneth Finzer Update 50

Bad news on Samuel. They just did the gastro intestinal exam today. They found that Samuel has a malrotated intestine. This will have to be corrected with another surgery before Samuel comes home. It is not causing any immediate problems but it would cause problems with solid foods in the future. This problem is common with babies born with a D-Hernia.

Our boy has been through a lot and it pains me to see him go through another surgery. I love him dearly. We just found out about this. At this point we have many questions. When did this happen? Is this causing the problem with the bottle feeding? As soon as I know more, I will let you know.

Thanks so much for praying.

Samuel Kenneth Finzer Update 49

Samuel sometimes drinks a lot from the bottle and sometimes drinks a little. On Tuesday, Samuel took only a small amount when being held by Leyla. On Wednesday when neither of us could go, he drank a lot. Yesterday when I held him he took a little. I am thinking that Leyla and I are too exciting and Samuel would rather talk and coo to us than drink. Because of all this up and down with the bottle, the doctor is going to give Samuel some extra time. Samuel will still be coming home in March, just not the first week of March.

Samuel is still breathing kind of fast; 50-70 bpm. He is doing better little by little though.

This week they are going to do a gastro intestinal workup to see where his stomach is. This is in preparation for the G-Tube if he needs it.

Samuel sure is a cutie.

Praise God that the business is doing okay this month despite the recession. Thank God that the federal and state tax refunds are in quickly so that we can pay some bills. Thank God for all of you that are bringing meals, bringing Crystal from the bus stop, taking care of the girls. Thank God for all of the prayers for Samuel.

How to Kill a Trojan Virus on Bootup

My mother in law bless her heart has always had problems with viruses and spy ware infecting her PCs. This is despite her having anti-virus programs installed.

She had a Trojan on her PC. This Trojan is so smart that it actually prevents new anti-virus programs from being installed. The only way to kill it is to boot from a CD on before it has a chance to load. The problem with most emergency disks available is that they are old and cannot kill the latest and greatest viruses or deal with NTFS partitions.

After a lot of research here are the tools that I tried on her PC to kill the virus:

• Avira Rescue CD - This is a free bootable CD that can kill viruses. They update it hourly.
  
• Kapersky Anti-Virus CD - Another bootable CD that can kill viruses. They update it around once per week.
  
• Ultimate Boot CD for Windows - This one is a bootable XP CD (you need your XP install disk to create it). It has numerous anti-virus and anti-spyware programs that can update with the latest virus signatures. You must use Windows XP to create the CD. It doesn't run under Vista. However it can run under a Virtual PC with Windows XP.
  

To burn the CDs you will need an ISO burner such as ImgBurn


FYI, here are some dead ends that I ran into:

• McAfee has no such thing as a recent Emergency Disk that can deal with NTFS volumes.
• Norton has no such thing as a recent Emergency Disk that can deal with NTFS volumes.
• The original Ultimate Boot CD is a DOS bootable CD that has ancient McAfee Anti Virus on it. Worthless.
• Trinity Rescue Kit is a Linux bootable CD that contains no Anti-Virus Software.

The outcome:

• Avira Rescue CD could not kill the virus, it simply renamed it.
• I was never able to create the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows. Neither a virtual machine or a regular Windows XP desktop worked. It always gave an obscure error.
• Kapersky Anti-Virus is the clear winner. It was able to delete the virus. The PC is running full speed again and my mother in law is happy.
  

Some questions that I still need to answer:

• It would be nice to figure out how to get the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows to boot with a USB drive. It would be great I could simply boot up and get the latest anti-virus definitions instead of burning a new CD every time.
• It would be nice to figure out how to get the AVGFree Version 8 as a plug in to the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows. Version 7.5 is included currently.

Here are some links I found to make a USB drive bootable:
http://www.nu2.nu/mkbt/
http://www.bootdisk.com/pendrive.htm
http://www.prime-expert.com/flashboot/index.php

Samuel Kenneth Finzer Update 48

Big news. Samuel is going to come home in two or three weeks. They will be evaluating him in two weeks to see if he will be coming home with a G-Tube (a feeding line right to his stomach). This week they are trying something different. They are feeding him every 4 hours instead of 3 so that he is hungrier for the bottle. He was only taking 5-10ml because he wasn't hungry enough. Yesterday he took 40 from the bottle.

I have mixed feelings about Samuel coming home. I am going to be very happy that I will get to see my boy every day. However when he comes home it will essentially be a NICU at home with Leyla as the nurse. Samuel will be on oxygen until end of summer and most likely have a G-Tube. There will also be monitoring equipment. What this all means is that instead of going to the hospital; Leyla will be at the house caring for Samuel 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Samuel will be in his room with all that equipment; oxygen tanks, monitors, and a feeding machine. Please pray for Leyla, she has been under a lot of stress with the mastitis, the crazy pumping schedule, traveling to the hospital. She is going to be teaching an online course (possibly two sections) starting in March.

I just don't even know what to think. It is different, longer term than I was expecting. No vacation to the beach this summer like I was hoping. No visiting relatives for birthday parties. However, I know God has a plan for all of this. It is only a season and it will pass.

Samuel Kenneth Finzer Update 47

Samuel is doing well. He is now taking two feedings a day from Leyla. He is now visibly showing off for mom when she is there.




He was able to reach the mobile and is now hitting the animals. These are some of my favorite pictures. When Samuel thinks something is cool he makes an ooooo face.




My parents are coming down until Thursday to give the neighbors and the church a break. It takes a lot of help to put Crystal on the bus, get Crystal from the bus and take care of the girls while Leyla is at the hospital feeding Samuel. I can say enough how grateful we are to all of you. More updates later. Thanks for praying.

Samuel Kenneth Finzer Update 46

Today has been an up week on the Samuel roller coaster. They moved Samuel into the chronic NICU and gave Leyla a long term parking pass. Samuel will be there a while. The room is much nicer than the main NICU pod which had like 20 babies all in one room. Samuel could hardly sleep with all the monitor alarms and babies crying. I think Samuel will do much better in his own room.

He had trouble feeding from the bottle this week. A big praise though is that yesterday Leyla was able to breast feed him. Samuel did really well with that. After feeding from Leyla, Samuel is noticeably more relaxed and is not breathing as fast. Leyla is really happy. I am really happy. Her mom is really happy.

They lowered his oxygen to from .5 to .4 Liters/Hour. They also increased his feeding from 70ml to 75ml (this is a little over two ounces).

When I saw Samuel last night he was doing really well. He was content. I will post some pictures tomorrow for all of you.

Thanks to all of you that are helping take care of the girls while Leyla is feeding Samuel.

I have a request for whoever is reading this blog; we need help for about 2 hours tonight for someone to take care of the kids. We have a parent teacher conference at 6:40pm. I know it is short notice. Leyla's mom can't help since she has another commitment.

Thanks for your prayers.

Samuel Kenneth Finzer Update 45

Sorry for the lack of updates. It has been kind of a crazy week. They tried reducing the oxygen from .3 Liters per hour to .2 and Samuel could not handle it. He was sweating and could not take a bottle. They had to bump up his oxygen back to .5 liters per hour. He was at three bottles per day and now he is at no bottles per day. All the feeding is being done from the feeding tube. This week they are planning to feed him with one bottle a day. The nutritionist will feed him instead of Leyla.

Leyla and I have been over to visit Samuel a couple times. He is a real cutie. He really liked it when I sang "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" to him. I think that is his favorite.

Both girls were sick with a fever for a couple days. Crystal still has a cold. We had to cancel a trip to COSI with my sister and her boys because the girls were sick. Leyla has mastitis again. Leyla is still bleeding since the birth. Our hamster died over the weekend. This was Crystal's pet. She took it really well. She wants to get a goldfish now.

As you can imagine, with the set back for Samuel and all the sickness we are emotionally drained now.

A big praise in all this is that I was requested by name for a new assignment. I will be there until the end of the year. It is in Dublin so it is a much shorter drive than Polaris since we live in Hilliard. I don't have to worry about getting laid off since I am making my company money by being out on assignment the entire year.

Thanks to all the neighbors that helped during the snow storm. Thanks for all the wonderful meals and cards.

Please pray.