Getting Gage referred for his CT scan for his scaphocephaly isn’t as easy at it would normally be. We are right in the middle of changing insurance plans and pediatricians. His current pediatrician is a 30-45 minute drive from us, depending on traffic. My husband’s insurance from his new job is kicking in on April 1 (no, really!), so we are changing to a closer pediatrician at the same time. This means the referral to get his CT scan has to wait until we see the new pediatrician.

Thank goodness the surgery, if necessary, wouldn’t be for a month or two anyhow!

All this has made for a lot of extra stress, but I feel very encouraged by the fact that the new pediatrician was able to get us an appointment for Monday, April 4. I was afraid I would have to push to get an appointment that fast, but they made it easy. I filled out the form to get Gage’s records to them also, so hopefully the pediatrician will have all the info he needs right at the start.

In the meantime, I am spending as much time as I reasonably can (with two kids) working on my business. I’m focusing harder on getting good links with the right keywords, adding content and just generally finding more ways to get visitors to my sites. Hopefully this will be enough so that I can quit medical transcription in the next few months. That has been a goal for a while, but with everything that has been going on, I would love to only have the home business and not the work at home job. I’m close to the goal I set for when I will allow myself to quit, but it has to sustain itself for a few months to, so I don’t get caught by a seasonal fluctuation that didn’t actually mean anything.

With everything going on, it was so nice to just take a day and have fun with family. We went to my mother’s in the morning and the kids had an egg hunt. Lots of time to visit with my sisters and mom. Then off to my husband’s parents’ house for dinner and visiting with more relatives.

It was so nice to not have to think about everything that’s been going on… much. We had to answer the usual questions, of course, but for the most part we were able to have a regular relaxing day.

Of course, today reality is back. I just got a call from Gage’s pediatrician, and I need to get an appointment with the new pediatrician as soon as possible so that Gage can get his referral for the CT scan. That’s the trouble with changing insurance - lots of little complications. Gage is due for a regular appointment and immunizations anyhow, so now I just have more reasons. He also told me to go in and fill out a form to get Gage’s records sent to the new pediatrician, since they need the request in writing, and once again, the sooner the better.

We’ve been making lots of plans for Ariel’s care for when we’re busy coping with Gage’s surgery. She’ll get to visit with her cousins a lot more, so that hopefully she won’t feel too jealous of all the extra care Gage is likely to need. Ariel knows very little right now about what is wrong with Gage - I don’t want to worry a toddler, but she will have to know a bit more when the surgery comes up so that she is used to the idea that she will have to be extra careful with her baby brother for a long time.

This is definitely not the easiest time for me. I spend a lot of time thinking about what is going on and wondering how things will go. It’s going to make working at home much more challenging, and and I so grateful that I do work at home, so that everything I need to do is much more possible. It is really one of the greatest benefits of working at home that I don’t need to wonder how I will manage all of this and keep a job.

It’s one of those moments I am so glad to be a work at home mom. Gage just turned one month old yesterday, and we found out that he will probably have to have surgery to fix his scaphocephaly. Some of the sutures in his skull closed prematurely, which is making his head grow long and narrow. It’s a pretty scary thought that my tiny baby might have to have surgery on his head, but both the pediatric neurosurgeon and the websites I’ve visited have been very reassuring. That’s a rare treat, getting reassurance online. It seems like so many medical sites make fears worse.

This surgery is probably going to make life difficult for a year. Gage will probably have to wear a helmet for a year after, with weekly adjustments. Thank goodness I don’t have to schedule appointments around my work schedule!

Am I scared or nervous? You bet! But I’m doing my best to be calm around Gage and Ariel. I particularly don’t want Ariel worried, as she’s young enough to get excessively worried. Gage is young enough he probably wouldn’t notice anything.

We’ll be going in for a CT scan in the next couple weeks, and once that confirms the diagnosis, we’ll be looking at surgery dates, I think.

Sometimes I don’t know how I’m going to cope with everything, but I know I will. The flexibility working at home gives me makes things much more possible. It’s of course also more motivation to build my business now so that I need to do medical transcription less.

As you probably know, link exchanges are very tiresome to do. They take time and you have to watch your link partners for dirty tricks.

I’ve been neglecting my link exchanges lately because I was tired of that. However, I found out about a resource that should help make link exchanges more pleasant. It’s Duncan Carver’s Link Management Assistant, and it is free. You have to love the price.

I took some time to go through my current links, checking for reciprocal links and whether or not the website was still around. Lost quite a few that way. The remainder I added to the new directory, adding categories as appropriate to improve usability.

I really hope this makes link exchanges more pleasant for me. There are a few features I would like to see, such as the ability to edit the submission form, but on the whole I am quite pleased. It took a little extra work for me to get things going the way I felt they should, as I use CSS and the template given were in tables, but I think the results are quite satisfactory.

I haven’t done it here, but this program even allows you to import categories from DMOZ. I didn’t want to clutter the directory on this website, however, so I have left those out. Besides, there are a lot of sites using DMOZ for their directories, so there would probably be more duplicate content than I would like to deal with.

With any luck, I’ll be able to use this tool to start building more links to my website. It certainly will be nice to not have to manually add every link. I do, however, have it set to require my approval for all links and for email addresses to be confirmed. I want to run a clean directory.

Just a small update there for now. I removed some expired offers and added some nice fresh ones. Keeping up with the freebies and free trials can be time consuming, but I think it will be worth it.

I can be kind of picky about the offers I put up there. I don’t like to add every free offer I find. I do, however, accept free offers from visitors, although I have yet to have that happen. But there is a form for webmasters to fill out if they have an offer for me to consider.