More of the good, less of the bad.

The alcohol wipe they used to remove the mysterious alien marks on Kaya's head are some kind of medical miracle wipe. The problems are all going away on their own. Lungs are doing better each day. Food is being digested and amounts increased each day. The eventration in the diaphragm is still there but not causing respiration problems so the are just watching it. There were some things with the Heart echo called ASD Atrial septum deviation where basically the Atrial walls of the heart have not closed completely but they say it is common and not of concern. The Doc this morning even thinks the facial paralysis is beginning to diminish. All great things. So I asked if I could take home some of the miracle alcohol wipes for when she breaks her arm or some other injury, I can just wipe her with the "Healing wipes" and be good as new. They told me to take as many as I wanted.

Tiff also got to start trying to breastfeed her today. It's a slow start because for the first 3 days when Kaya was showing the signs of wanting to nurse they can't let her so she's a little confused but it'll all be good. She get's to try every 3 hours. They are also planning to take out the last line from her navel tomorrow and then they may move her to the other side of the NICU for babies without respiratory problems. After that it sounds like she just has to learn to eat regularly and we may get to take her home.

Tiff is doing well. She is a trooper and has been up and moving since the second morning. I think she's about done with the hospital but it looks like she'll be here one more night.

All our thanks to everyone for the thoughts and prayers.
We are so happy with the progress she has made and we look forward to being home in the near future.

A little time with the mommy.
Good good things.

What a difference a day makes...

Today started off good like yesterday and then it got better instead of worse for a change. The "Free air" outside the lungs has dissipated on it's own
The eventration (sp)? which was the diaphragm problem that almost sent us to Primary Childrens was not seen on this mornings X-ray as large as it had been. It will be watched but is not presently a huge concern.
Kaya is Breathing on her own, no tubes, no C-pap, no canula. Her breathing is good although her lungs are still a little cloudy with meconium.
The facial paralysis is likely a damaged nerve from being born and may never go away. Not sure how evident it will be.
All of these things were combined with some mysterious dots on her head. The dots were black and down both sides of her head in a symmetrical pattern and had the Docs completely baffled. They were thinking some kind of genetic disorder. Each of the NeoNat Docs had different thoughts. Possible birth marks, other things I can't pronounce. The Attending Doc this morning had been online on medical journals looking for answers and had been measuring the spots. We started to discuss the spots and I commented that it looked like someone had used a magic marker to spot her head for identification. The Doc laughed and said she also thought they looked like ink. Then she said "just for fun let's see if they rub off" she grabbed an alcohol rub and proceeded to rub off the strange genetic defects. I thought Tiff was gonna pass out, then she and the Doc had a little cry over it. Turns out that when they did the brain scanner for the seizures they had to mark her head, but they failed to wash it off, or communicate it to anyone else. So there you go, Occam's Razor says the simplest solution is usually the right one. Kaya is currently sleeping easily and has been eating (from a tube) and digesting well. We are extremely encouraged by her progress while trying to remain cautiously optimistic about the coming days. Our thanks to all of you who have kept our little girl and us in your thoughts and prayers, it's working.
And now for the pictures.


Sleeping peacefully
The tube is just a feeding tube

The obligatory pink bow.

I got to hold my daughter for the first time.
today it was a good day.

She even tried to open her extremely swollen eyes for her dad.
That's Daddy's girl right there.

Day 2, One step forward, 5 steps back

This morning before the C-pap went on.

Last night when Tiff and I went to bed we were very encouraged by Kaya's progress. She was off the vent, breathing on her own and getting rid of the rest of the junk in her lungs. This morning I went up to see her and she was doing well. I got pictures of her with just a canula in her nose. Went back with my dad an hour later and the neonatal Doc hit me with a laundry list of problems. They had to put her on a C-pap because she was having a hard time breathing. She has air that has escaped to the outside of her lungs through a small tear and is building in her body cavity, It's going to require a needle through the ribs to tap it and let it out. Sign this consent form. They later decided not to do it as the air pocket is shrinking. Next, partial paralysis on her face. Not sure why but maybe a nerve that got stretched during delivery. Next she has a body that is small. Head is normal size but body didn't get everything it needed from the placenta. Which then leads to her lungs and diaphragm. The diaphragm is not developed correctly on one side and may require surgery. Doc says he wants to review the x-ray with the surgeons at Primary Childrens and possibly move her there for all of these problems. Do you have any questions? I told him my brain was still back on the C-pap machine.
So there you have it. We have one very sick but very strong willed little girl. So this is where we are now at 5pm. The Surgeons at Primary's think the diaphragm problem may not be the whole problem with the lungs, so we wait.
The air pocket is shrinking, so we wait.
The facial paralysis may or may not ever go away, so we wait.
They want to send chromosomes to the lab to test for genetic defects, syndromes, that may be part of a larger picture that is causing so many problems, or it may just be that the placenta didn't do it's job very well, even though Tiff did everything right.
So we wait.
Tonight they are going to do a songram of her brain to check it out.
So we wait.
Then they'll sonogram her heart
so we wait.
Then at 8 they will take another X-ray of her chest to check the air pocket.
And so we wait.
From what I can gather we expect to be in the NICU somewhere between another week and a month. It all depends on how our little girl progresses. Currently she is sleeping soundly with her Cpap and her array of wires and tubes,
and so we wait.




On an up note Tiff did get to hold her for a minute.


Our plugged in baby girl.

Kaya Kinnerley Newton Day 1

We are rapidly approaching the end of one of the best and worst days of my life. Tiff was scheduled for a possible C section as Kaya has been breech for about 2 weeks. We came in at 5am. They prepped her for a C section and then at 7:15am the doc checked and she had turned, put her head down and was getting ready to join us. Fast forward to around 4pm the doc came back, unhappy about the progress and decided to do the C section. When they broke Tiff's water it was green so they knew Meconium(Poop) was present and had the NICU respiratory team standing by to suction Kaya. The C section went well but once she was out they found she had aspirated a lot of meconium. I watched as 5 then 7 then 11 people worked on my little girl. They had to intubate her. It was very touch and go for a while, I felt like I was in a scene from ER. Then once in the NICU she started having what they thought were seizures possibly due to blood on her brain or oxygen starvation. Right now that has ceased and may have just been normal infant reaction to life on the outside. It is now 12:15 am and they just pulled her off the ventilator. Things are looking slightly better, but now we have the possibility of infection due to the meconium she inhaled. Tiff is recovering well and I just wheeled her up to see Kaya.
I have no idea what time she was born and all the weights I heard during the chaos were in Kilos but they tell me she weighed in at 5lbs 3oz
Our little girl is alive and fighting.
Prayers, kind thoughts, and good vibes are welcome offerings.

Our little Girl


Proud Brothers

26.2

Today is June 12, I've had this day circled on the calendar for 5 months. I've trained my everlovin ass off for today, and it was almost a disaster, almost.

My training was going well till I took that week and a half off for the Selway trip. I came home from that and ran my final 20 miler and completely messed up my Illiotibial band which runs from your hip to knee. I hurt it to the point I couldn't finish my other runs and actually walked home from a few runs almost in tears. I was completely unsure what today would bring and the prospects of even finishing were not good. Thanks to a some creative stretching and a varitable cornucopia of modern medicines I was able to pull it off. Not as fast as I had hoped but it was my first time and the hip and knee gave me a little trouble. I did sub-4 it though.


The Girl in the red is Jenny Davidson, This was all her fault.
I had spent about 2 years just happily running. Usually 5-10 miles and the occasional longer run. I was happy, I enjoyed running, then one fateful day Jenny called and queried me, "you ever gonna do anything with the running?" So here we are. I had just caught up to her badass self after 23 miles of trying.
I know some of you are gonna make some wise crack about me running shirtless. I'm ok with that. I may have been one of only 2 guys that were shirtless but I was NOT one of the 15-20 guys with bloody nipples bleeding all down their shirts. Put some ducktape on those puppies for hell's sake. I finally had to take my shirt off as it was soaked from the 2 hours of hard rain at the start and it was keeping me cold.

My sister-in -law Michelle made this and bought it to me.
Thanks Shell, you rock!

Chompin on a post-race Creamie while I waited for my Shirt. I guess most marathoners aren't 6'6". All things considered it went well, I enjoyed it and I'll likely do it again, but not tomorrow.
They say you can learn a lot about yourself in 26.2 miles.
What did I learn?
26.2 miles is a Hella long way to run.

Mustache May, it's not an easy month.

I'm writing this feeling a little melancholy over the last day of a difficult yet fantastic month. I typically loathe the month of May. Anyone who has seen me in the last 31 days is painfully aware that it is Mustache May once again. For me Mustache May began in Moab working for Western River Expeditions. They had some weird rule about facial hair that would only allow for Mustaches. For some unknown reason the owners thought that beards looked unprofessional. So in a rebellious uprising we all got together to show them how arbitrary the rule was. We decided if they didn't want beards they would get a group of pedophile look-a-likes running river trips. Thus were the humble beginnings. As a group of guides we have for the most part lost touch with one another. The one thing that still unites us is the pain we all continue to endure every May. Call it insanity, call it stupid, call it commitment to friends and an idea. We endure. Mustache May for me has grown, I brought it to UVU as a flight instructor and eventually to Skywest. I take alot of heat during the month and I'm aware that I look like an idiot, but after 13 years of Mustache May I'm getting used to the abuse. So we went to Noah's baseball game the other night and ran into our neighbor Wendy. I may have started the smack talk by making fun of her high heels but she quickly retorted with some wisecrack about the stache. You would think it ended there but no. We went to church yesterday where we had a combined meeting for the 5th sunday. As the meeting began I noticed that Wendy and her Husband Tyler were doubled over in a giggle fest. As I tried to figure out what they were laughing at I looked to the front of the room to see the Bishop sticking a fake mustache to his face. Tiff and Tyler then sported theirs as did a half dozen others. I think the old folks in the ward wondered what the hell was happening. All I can say to Wendy is, Well Played, I'll never make fun of your heels again. This year instead of shaving tonight at midnight, I'm going to make it one more day. I fly tomorrow with a fellow patron of Mustache May. So tomorrow we will be team Stache. Then I can shave tomorrow night in Gillette, WY. How apropos.

There were a few very bright spots to the Month for me. Namely a 4 day self support kayak trip down Idaho's Selway River. The Selway flows through the Selway-Bitteroot Wilderness in northern Idaho. It is one of the most difficult river permits in the nation to aquire. They allow only one launch per day of no more than 16 people. I was invited to go with a fantastic group of 9 paddlers. The river was at it's peak runoff for the year and it was HUGE. Having all of your gear for 4 days stuffed in the back of your kayak makes it all the more challenging. A swim on this trip would have meant a lost boat, lost gear, no food, and a 47 mile hike out. We drove for hours to get there, got rained on everyday but not all day, and ran rapids that had me scared like a little school girl. Many of that rapids were on scale with the biggest in the Grand Canyon. It was one of the greatest trips of my life and I would do it again in an instant.

Gauge at the put-in reading 5.2 = BIG water


The Coveted Selway Permit



View of Double Drop Rapid.
not the biggest but not the smallest either.
It's on par with Lava in the Grand.


Breakfast on the bridge above Moose Creek.
We didn't get on the water this day until 2pm.
We were there 4 days and only actually in our boats for about 7 hours.


Camp on the last night.

My good friend Shannon (that's GOOD friend not Girlfriend for you smartasses that doubt my integrity) has put together a far more exhaustive report of the trip on her blog. please view it here http://team-zubs.blogspot.com


Shannon and I rallied home after the Selway so she could get back to California and so I could load up the raft and the boys and the dog and My beautiful prego wife and drag them all down the desolation daily run for an overnighter. We had the time of our lives and the dog eventually learned to stand on the whitewater platform I built for her.

Boys, boats, dog, what else is there?


Some of you I know think I'm a slacker and possibly a bad Father.
To you I ask, do they look happy or no?
I'm not as bad a dad as you might think.

I may be bias but I challenge you to find a more beautiful woman anywhere.
My Tippy is a trooper, and she looks hot even with a belly in the desert!


The boys, practicing the art of just being.


Got the duckie out for some paddlin


Ani chased us as we paddled.
She's a great water dog.


Moose, just being Moose.



We had no where to be, so we chilled riverside style.


Then we tossed the big black dog back on the boat



and made for home.

Stopped at Rays for a cheesburger, and rolled on to Mapleton,
Physically, emotionally, and Spiritually Full!
Probably the best week of my life.
Peace out yo!

And so it begins.....

The paddling season is officially here. This past weekend was the first of the Black Canyon of the Bear releases. About 85 boaters from around the west showed up for good times and good paddling. I made the trip up to Grace Idaho with a great crew of people. Thanks to Shan for the pics I have stolen from her blog.

This pic is taken from the Grace Bridge looking down stream. In the lead is Johnnie A. Unfortunately, he is not in his boat, he took a bad swim. Chasing him is Ray, then Dowd is upside down, Shan superstylin behind Dowd, and I'm hanging on in the back just trying to survive. Nothin but good times!!