Thursday December 18

Sometimes life throws ya a curve ball :(

Things were looking so good today.

He was having more feeling up in his thigh, still not so much down his calf and foot, but better than yesterday.

He was upbeat, we had a few visitors in the morning.

Our bishop stopped by for a chat.

His daughter just came home from her mission yesterday, so that was sweet of him to take the time to come and see us.

Our neighbor, Billy, stopped by.

He works there as a Hospitalist and came to check up and see how things were going.

And they were going good.

We started taking about discharge.

I had Vern get Porter from school and he played with the boys.

I didn't want to leave and have them say, okay he can go home....and then me not be there.

So he played there.....

We ordered lunch.

The physical therapist came by.

We got him up and got him walking a bit with the walker.

And we went to the PT room and he even tried climbing stairs.

He was doing such a great job.

We went back to the room and Brad and Jenni had stopped by for a visit.

We talked for a while and had a great time laughing and chatting.

It really lifted his spirits.

After they left we said, "Well, lets call the nurse and see what we can do to get out of here."

He kind of scooted forward on his chair, and he felt a zap in his back and down his leg as we got him on the bed.

He was hurting, but it got worse and worse and it was so bad.

His whole leg seized up and was spasming and he was in a lot of pain.

And he was nauseous.

That was the last thing I wanted him to do was throw up.

I can't imagine what that would have caused!

It was about 1 1/2 hours of full on pain.

And then another half hour of feeling good for about 2 minutes and then about 5 minutes of full on pain again.

I have never in my life seen him like that before.

They kept trying to control it and nothing was happening.

I felt so helpless.

I didn't know what to do.

He couldn't catch his breathe.

I just stayed close with him.

Reminded him to breathe.

We said prayers.

I tried to get him to relax and put himself in another place.

He tried.

I know he did.

It was just so bad.

His friend Pete stopped by again from the fire station and we had to turn him away cause Brent didn't want him around when he was like that.

Towards the end of the 1 1/2 hours, Billy stopped by again.

He was like "What the heck....you were doing so good!!!"

He made some calls and finally got the guy we needed to come and save the day.

He upped the valium dose, and I think that's what did the trick.

He almost immediately relaxed his body that had been pretty much full on contracted the entire time.

He still had a few stings here and there.

But for the most part, everything quieted down.

So he did not go home.

Obviously.

This happened at about 4:15.

My original plan was to leave around 4:30 to pick the girls up and then come back and get dad to go home.

I am so Thankful that this didn't happen after I left.

I'm not sure how much I helped, but I needed to be there by him.

Vern picked the girls up from school for me.

They all went to Bubbles house and made gingerbread men.

They were awesome again.

Cassi worked on her book report and did a great job of making a armoire out of a box, with Narnia in the background.

Around 7:30, the doc came around.

He would have come earlier, but he was in surgery.

He explained about the nerves having a skin on it to protect it....and when he dug and scraped at the, the skin got scraped off too.

Leaving those as just raw nerves.

So anything is going to agitate those nerves.

And nerves are tricky.

You just can't predict what is going to happen.

You can't know how quick they will heal, or how well.

Maybe getting and doing the walking and then stairs and then sitting in a sitting position for so long was just too much on the nerves.

He explained some options to us.

There is the choice of doing a steroid shot around that nerve.

To kind of protect it with a bubble of medicine to maybe ease the nerve pain.

He talked about a nerve stimulator.

He says that could take a while to get going, and insurance is a buggar about it.

But that's an option.

So the game plan?

Not sure.

We are sleeping, and praying on it.

I hope he gets some sleep tonight.

And I will head back in the morning and we will talk about what to do next.

I know for sure it would be so scary for that to happen when he was home.

I know that kids would be traumatized to see him like that.

So we need to get this figured out before he comes home.

He is being so brave.

This is so hard.

It is hard.

We know in our heart of hearts that this will all be okay.

We know that we are being watched over and we know we are blessed.

We know.

I finally got home around 9.
This kids were exhausted.

They had picked up the house a bit and Madi sorted laundry....which was a lot!

I got the little ones to bed, then the big girls and I made some pretzel bark for their teacher gifts.

So they got to bed late, but it sure was nice spending a little bit of that time with them.

After they went to bed, I heard Cassi sniffing.

I went and checked on her and she was crying.

Break my heart.

She just said she was worried and I told her that it's okay to worry, but we also have to have faith and hope and know that Heavenly Father will take care of dad and take care of us.

Poor kids :(

Poor dad.

Man oh man, we sure are blessed though.

Another day full of well wishes.

I also had a friend, Michelle Burk, who went grocery shopping for me.

What a sweet heart.

And when she came to drop it off, she also did my dishes.

Stinker.

Another friend, Carol Fuhriman, dropped dinner off to the kids about the same time Vern brought them back from school.

Carol offered to take some laundry to wash.......

Good thing Vern was there.

She knows my laundry weirdness.

I don't even let the kids to the laundry......

And she told carol that it would probably cause me more stress than actually having to do my own laundry.

And she's right ;)

But I am so grateful for the willingness to help out.

Oh, and I guess Cassi came home with a bag full of food.

Rolls, baked potatoes, desserts, etc.

The staff at Mary Mac had a luncheon today, and after third recess, Elsie's aide, Mrs. Dynka caught Cassi and gave her the bag and said that the staff all agreed that the leftovers should go to the Matthews family.

Warms my heart.

We are truly blessed.

And we know that there are many prayers out there for our little family , and mainly Dad.

We are so thankful.