Bones are for Breaking

I mean why stop at one kid breaking themselves and needing surgery?  Katelee decided she didn't want to miss out on the action,so she attempted and succeeded in a good break.  She didn't want Grant to take her spot in the family as the child needing most medical attention.

On her very last day of Snowblitz (the snowboarding program that takes students to Brighton ski resort for a lesson and fun once a week), I got a call (and a pic) 

from her saying she think she broke her wrist and did I want her to be treated up at the resort.  It was nearly the end of the session, so I told her no to come home on the bus and I would take her to the instacare.  Thank heavens because the next picture I saw was of her wrist being wrapped with carpet foam in cardboard, so I think we made the right decision there.  One would think the ski resort medical centers would have a little better supplies.

She got home and we raced over to the instacare to have it checked out before they closed.  Sure enough, her wrist was broken in a couple of places.  The bone looked a little wavy to me, like it did when she broke it when she was 10, so I asked the doctor if it needed to be reset then and there and he said it wasn't broken to a certain degree, so no, I just needed to make an appt with an orthopedic doc for when the swelling went down to get it casted.  So much sadness on this little face...

as she was heading to the hospital with me, she got a text saying she had made the high school lacrosse team! Yea for that, tears for realizing she wouldn't be able to play in the season.  Tears after hearing about a cast because we are going on a cruise for spring break.  Hoping we would get casted and possibly have it off before our school break, we got in to the ortho as soon as possible, only to hear she needed surgery.  The orthopedic doctor thought possibly if we had reset the bone that night of the injury we may not have had to do a surgery...grrrr.  I was pretty bugged at that.  So, surgery it was!

After talking to the surgeon, he gave us some hope for the trip saying once we got her fixed up and wrapped, she wouldn't need a cast and could do all the activities (except maybe the surfing) on the cruise.  So, perhaps a cast would have been a bigger bummer, who knows.  She was pretty positive going in to the operation.  Coming out though...yikes...

She had a really, really hard time.  She was in so much pain they had to do extra nerve blocks and the student anestheisologists got an earful from their training doc as he was practically shouting and pointing out Katelee's ultrasound to everyone that walked by that she had the largest dorsal nerve he'd ever seen for her age and young adults.  ( I might be making up the medical jargon there, but it was probably why she was in so much pain).  Lots of tears, lots of blocks, it was sad, but we finally made it out the door.  

On to rest and recovery...

She ended up actually needing some permanent screws and the surgery was the only way to repair that break, so I no longer can be angry at the instacare for rushing us out the door and not setting it.  Add another insult to injury, she had to have surgery the day before her birthday, so once again her day of birth celebration was not what she was hoping.  But, we at least got her out of the house for dinner at grandma's.  I made chicken tacos and really, tacos make everything better.  

The past year or so has definitely had moments where I want to cover my face and pretend it's not real, but

hiding doesn't keep it from happening!  So, we trudge forward and celebrate the good, which is plentiful.  

Harrison had another stellar testimony in our ward talking about how winter and snow are bad for McArthur's bones, but he knows there have been blessings even though it's been a hard time.  He even had a pretty thorough conversation about it with the Great Clips stylist.  He told her all about our broken bones situations and how his 'siblings are learning things the hard way.'  Hopefully it is sinking in for him to prep those bones or know it's going to work out if/when the world seems to be breaking around us (or in us!).

Grant, had the best doctor's appointment ever...

and got to leave the office without wearing his brace. He is officially brace free!!  There was a chance the cage could settle into his spine, so we have had to do repeated x-rays to make sure Grant wouldn't need a follow up surgery through the backside of his neck.  He has healed just how the surgeon hoped and has the green light to start exercising and lifting a little more than 5lbs.  He was told to take it slowly and ease into it...predictions on whether that advice will be heeded?  Grant says he doesn't need/want physical therapy at this time, so we will just follow up with the doc again in summer.  

So, this time when a high school dance came around (Prom), he could legit be in pics and participate without accommodations or restrictions.  

He's gained back some of his weight and is doing so well in his recovery.  Here are Hailey and Grant's prom photos.  They had a great time and again rocked the his/her matching shoes.  

He and his buddies planned a really nice night after a day-time paintball excursion. 

Grant also 'wrapped up' his swim season with the end of the year banquet.  He passed on the beloved banana costume, which he actually wore and cheered his team on from the sidelines in a chair when he was up to it.  

He received the "Pain in the Neck" award  (too soon?), I may laugh about that sometime, just not quite yet.  

He has made some really great connections with swim team, next year will be hard because most of his friends are seniors on swim or Trey (above) is retiring to focus on other things.  He will miss Maddie the most, they became really close buddies.  

But, I am sure he will be a great leader and friend to the upcoming team as he is a senior, if he decides to try out.  

So many things to celebrate, even if it isn't in the timing you expect or want.  This little group of friends (which we have affectionately dubbed ourselves as Pheasant Point Alumna- we used to all be in the same ward) all have birthdays over the winter.  We decided to do an afternoon tea together to especially honor Kristen's 50th.  But, as we have adjusted and postponed celebrations around here it made me realize that the good comes, the moments of afternoon tea might have to wait, but they will be there.  We just gotta keep our head up and look for the good because that steaming hot chocolate is worth the wait.  

Moving On

Well, we made it through December of 2021- moving on to the next year.  We are pretty darn happy everyone can MOVE after a broken neck, so a neck brace and stiffness is no biggie.  It is crazy how life just keeps going forward even when you feel at a stand still, the world never is.  I mean nothing (bar a global pandemic) halts a junior jazz season...

We love watching Harrison play sports and basketball might be his favorite.  He gets so into the game and is jumping with excitement all over the court.  He loves to play and does it even at recess when the weather permits.  He came home after school one day and ranted about how difficult his day had been.  He explained to me that the weather was good enough that week to break out the basketballs for recess.  The boys playing were broken up into teams and they told Harrison he had different rules than everyone else because he kept swatting the ball away.  Everyone else was able to do that, but Harrison would not be allowed to.  As he told me this story, he started sobbing and thinking it wasn't fair and in agony cried out, "Curse my basketball skills,  curse them!"  hahahaha  Hopefully he eventually will see people will want those skills on the court.  

Grant stayed home from school for a couple of weeks into January, just to make sure he was up to going through the school and classes and was healing ok.  He ended up contracting a terrible virus (which probably was covid).  We took him to Instacare because he felt like he had open sores up and down his throat and he felt like it was on fire.  We were worried there was damage from the breathing tube, but we will have to follow up on that later when his collar is off.  He has lost around 25-30 lbs, so we are working on getting him healthy in all ways.  He's looking good and moving in the right direction.

Miss Brenna joined the metal mouth club and will be sporting a brace face smile for the next couple of years.  

She got to enjoy a beautiful ski day with Dad.  Dave says she a natural.  While Grant and Katelee decided to take up boarding, Brenna is sticking with the skis.  

Brenna also got to experience her very first temple day with Katelee and Dave!  She went to do baptisms for the dead with them and it had been a long time for Katelee too, so she was happy to be back.  We are all glad temples are available to visit and serve in again!

After we got through January, and my birthday, which was cool and quiet and lovely, it was time for Grant and Brenna to be celebrated.  

Seventeen years for this fella.  He's super in to cars and shoes and friends.  He has absolutely been a champ dealing with his surgery and collar and restrictions and we are so grateful he's in our family!

Cinnamon rolls and quiche for the birthday boy and a laid back day for him as well...pretty on par with how his life is going at the moment.  

When it was Brenna's turn to celebrate (#12), she decided to take a couple of friends and her bro tubing.  As you can see, it was a very warm day, and has been for quite some time, so the snow was sparse, but the fun was plentiful.  

Harrison was lucky enough to join in the fun and hung out with Dave while the girls did their thang...

but it was helpful to have him there for an extra couple of tubes in the sledding train.  They capped the night off with a stop at the Chocolate for dessert, so it pretty much was a top notch party.  

I stayed home and let Dave be the party host because Grant was going to Sweethearts with Hailey. 

 I just like to be around on dance days in case we need to run to the store or he needs help with anything, especially since his is a broken kid at this point in time.  

We talked extensively about him wearing the brace the entire night, he has months of recovery in this apparatus.  I did give him permission to snap some photos without it.  

Pretty sure my instructions were not followed.  At least I made an impact on Hailey when I told her he could absolutely not go bowling.  He's not supposed to be lifting anything heavy.  That was the plan, but she happily made adjustments.  

I was just happy he got to go and had someone to match shoes with.  He's making lots of progress.  

While I missed the friend party, we still did a family dinner with Miss Brenna. 

 Her gift this year is her dance solo, so she just got a few little items which she was really grateful for, that's always fun to see.  

Brenna always has been a personality like no other- big, a mover and the most organized child ever to walk the planet.  She has lists and lists for her lists.  She is a beautiful dance and a resilient person who is going to do great things-she already does!

Our days of full family fun seem to be hard to schedule and few and far between.  These older kids are always gone and the younger ones have lots of activities as well.  We still had a (forced) fancy dinner and dance for Valentines day.  It will be interesting to see how everyone views these traditions when they look back.  There is lots of eye rolling and sighs from some, some giggles and joy from others but at least everyone had a happy belly!  

We have many nights where we take the younger two out, soon it might just be us and Harry baby.  He would be all over that as long as the evening included treats and history...like this ice cream shop we tried out.  No matter the dynamic or who is involved in the nights out, we keep moving on and enjoying who and what we get!

Abundant Gratitude

The holiday season started with a typical focus on gratitude.  We always write on our chalkboard things we are grateful for in the month of November.  By the end of the month, it is fun to see the same repeated blessings and some new ones each year.  We were grateful for safety as Grant got in his first little fender bender...

Those high school parking lots are always treacherous.  He and another driver just backed into each other.  We popped the piece back in and had a little repair done, but it was a pretty mild car bump.

Of course we mentioned food in our 'grateful fors.'  Grant had the special job to dress up as a fruit at each of his swimming meets.  It was so fun to look across the pool and never have to wonder where our swimmer was, he was always donning a giant banana costume.  

As Thanksgiving drew near, we had a food/gratitude YW activity as well.  We shook cans of whipping cream and made butter to go on yummy rolls.  It was fun to shake shake shake with the ladies.  

All the regulars made their appearance at our family Thanksgiving feast.  We had a great time at our Petrick family dinner and went to Encanto.  Cute movie, great songs, but we don't talk about Bruno... Ha!  

It seemed like a fairly typical holiday season.  Interestingly enough, we had a youth activity for our church with a guest speaker who has a religious podcast.  She felt inspired to give a talk she has never given before.  She felt she needed to find a yoke.  She woke up day of the talk on a mission to find a yoke and miracle of miracles, she did.  She was led to a historical society, where they opened a door and there was a yoke sitting at the table.  They even let her borrow it for free.  

Tami spoke about how the Lord will carry our burdens as we yoke ourselves to him.  I loved it and hoped someone there needed that.  Reflecting back, I see I was one of the people for sure!  After continuing through the holiday season, we got one great snow storm.  It was big enough to call a snow day for the schools.  Of course, my kids were thrilled.  I took Brenna and Harrison sledding, watching people fly of tubes certain that someone was going to break some part of their body...I should have had an inkling then.

Meanwhile, back at home, Grant was accepting a challenge from the swim team to put on his speedo and jump into the snow.  Without his contacts in, throwing on goggles and wearing nothing but his swimsuit he dove into our back yard snow pile that he was sure was deep, all while Katelee videoed the episode.  He jumped head first and then laid there unable to move.  No one else was home, so after a good minute, Katelee told him that's not how swimming works and had to help him into the house.  As i was wrapping up the sledding fun, I got a text from Grant telling me he "kinked his neck" and it was really hurt.  When I asked if he could move it, he said he could and he was sitting in the bath trying to relax.

As the night went on, he wasn't getting better and started telling us his fingers were hurting.  I talked to some friends and they suggested I get a doctor's appointment or see someone the next day.  We called a chiropractor neighbor to take a quick look and he manipulated it a bit, we all told Grant to roll it out, etc, thinking he had a pinched nerve.  But, when we got to the chiropractor's office the next day and Grant had to take an x-ray, he could hardly stand, the pain was too great.  He was getting queasy and had to throw up whenever he was told to move his neck.  He started saying his arms were on fire.  The chiropractor took an x-ray and practically threw us out of his office saying to get Grant to his neurosurgeon friend immediately and that Grant had a severe broken neck.  

He got us an appointment with a surgeon, and I called Dave so he could meet us as the hospital.  The surgeon's office had us take him to radiology for an x-ray, where Grant completely passed out as he stood against the wall.  Dave and the x-ray tech ran to catch him, luckily before he hit the floor.  

His C-5 burst and was pushing into his spinal chord.  The ER staff was shocked at how he was still walking and moving around and truthfully, everything we did post-accident to the hospital visit could have paralyzed him.  He was made to lay still, put in a collar and unfortunately, we had to take him home for the weekend until we could get him in to surgery.  Paige was floored that we took him home.  She said no way would Primary Children's hospital release him.  Looking back, we should have insisted we have the surgery that day.  The ER doctors told us in no way were we to move him, he was going to be taken by ambulance to a hospital that could hold him for surgery that day and then a few min later the surgeon told us he was good to schedule it for the following Monday.  Needless to say, it was a scary weekend making sure he wasn't moving and still had feeling in his arms.  The pieces of bone did break more over the waiting days and put more and more pressure on his nerves so he was in excruciating pain.  

Surgery time got pushed to the end of the day so we waited and waited and finally got him prepped.  

He was in good spirits-it was so impressive to see how he handled the entire situation.  The night before surgery, our stake president came over to visit and give him a blessing and it was sweet and personal and comforting.  Grant never complained about what he was going through.  

The corpectomy was a success.  The doctor wasn't sure if he would need a follow up procedure through the back of his neck, but the cage held well and he pulled through with no nerve damage and a gnarly scar. 

He and I spent the night at the hospital and were able to return home a few days before Christmas.  It was a legit Christmas miracle.  Having him alive and walking was all we needed for Christmas.  Cute Harrison was a good cheerleader.  The day after we got home from the hospital he said, "Tomorrow is the 23rd which means it's time to have more Christmas spirit and be even more jolly."  He could tell we needed some picking up.

 We had so many who reached out to share our burden and help carry the yoke.  We had family immediately at my house the day we found out his neck was broken, we had someone text me out of the blue while I was in the chiropractor's office getting the scary news.  She was able to get word out and we had dinners on our table for 2 weeks.  We had Christmas Elves come get all our gifts and wrap them for me because Christmas still happened.  We didn't need presents because all of this support and his miracle of walking is the only gift we needed.  Time after time doctors and nurses were blown away with the minimal damage he was experiencing.  

Grant even came to our family party on Christmas Eve (which proved to be too much for him as he recovered, but he wanted to give it a go).  At least he got to be there when Taco Bell welcomed us with "welcome to Taco Bell, we are out of meat," when we tried to do our annual pay it forward for Christmas.  Grant got to be there and we kept looking at him overwhelmed with gratitude.  

So he has 3 months in a neck brace.  Totally do-able because he can walk.  

Every hug, every smile, every moment together 

just filled us with abundant gratitude.   Harrison had told us at the beginning of December that it was going to be the best Christmas because now everyone in our hosue had been baptized.  It definitely will be one of the most memorable.

 Harrison got up to bear his testimony the first Sunday in January.  He said how it's been hard and how Grant shouldn't be able to walk and how Harrison knew miracles were real because Jesus had one of his big brother Grant.  

He is right and we will never forget that.  We will also never forget this gem of a Christmas gift Harrison wrapped up...

what you can't see are his hands in a prancing position like his ready to pounce across a field as a deer.  It was one of Dave's favorite gifts, along with this pillow of my face.  I thought he could take it traveling with him on his work trips and keep it in his hotel bed.  hahaha!  

So, even though our world could have drastically changed and we were going through a really hard month, we had lots of help and could feel from people we could see and those we couldn't- in other states and across the veil.  We had a fast our families joined in on to give Grant strength in recovery and it sustained us all.  We were able to keep going as regularly as possible, we even had a little piano recital while the boys stayed home to tend to the patient.  

The month surprised us with something we never ever expected we would go through, 

scared us and left us emotional for weeks,

but turned out to be something we could raise our glasses to in gratitude and amazement.  

I can't even put into words the feelings that we experienced but all I can say is now, our cups runneth over.