School starts soon!

I think before I had children I pictured this day with me and my first born shedding tears and slowly leaving each other for the beginning of a new chapter in our lives. The first of the "leaving of the parents" and becoming independent.

It is still a time of independence and new beginnings, but not with the tears! What could be better than that?!

Aidan is begging me to start homeschooling now. I need to try to get my association membership completed before we really begin. I don't know why it hasn't gone through yet, but I am looking into it.

I have found several fun things for us to do this year. Mondays are homeschooling day at the nearby zoo. Since we are studying God's Creation this year, I thought it would be more than fitting to add a few trips to the zoo. The special classes at the zoo are just $7 and look really fun! There is a new class each month, so we may pick some of our favorite topics and head north to join in the fun.

I also found a great program that is sponsored by the Biltmore House. It is in September, which is a busy month for us with Aidan's and Adam's birthdays, but we will probably look into doing that too. Having a place to stay will make it affordable! (Grandparents come in handy!)

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Aidan just had a birthday party at a bowling alley and he had a great time. He had a sleepover afterwards and of course he came home exhausted! Alora had a hard time with him being gone. She doesn't like for him to be gone, ever. She kept asking us where he was...we would just say, "Where is he" and she would answer. On the way home from church, she said, "Where is Aidan?". We said, "Where is Aidan?". She said, "I hear him!". It was really funny, cause she kept insisting that she could hear him! We'll have her in counseling if this continues! LOL

The good news, or the worse, which do you want first?

Well, I had my appointment with the surgeon today. We were thinking that he would either say, "Oh, that looks great, the rest of the mobility will come back in time and you can consider this your last visit to me! Congratulations!". That would have been the good news, since the only thing that would have made it any better would have been for him to tell me that the visit was free! Hahahaha

The bad news would have gone something like this, "Well, it looks like you don't have as much mobility as I would have hoped, so I think you should be referred to an occupational therapist to get back as much of it as possible. Here is your appointment card."

Well, the good news was that he didn't refer me to an occupational therapist.

But, he didn't give me bad news, he gave me worse news.

He asked me to show him how much I could bend my finger. It isn't much, but I think that it would be more when the last of my scabs fall off and the skin loosens up. he seemed slightly concerned with the fact that there wasn't much movement. That is until he saw that I can't straighten my finger either. It is just stuck in an arch that will not straighten. He even tried to see if he could straighten it some, to no avail. This apparently is not normal, and he seemed worried about it.

He gave me the-hands are important, especially index fingers, you will live a long time and you want your hands to be fully functional that whole time, if you live for just 40 more years then that is a long time to not have fully functional hands, better to do it now than to wait and it get worse or something like that-speech. He isn't a hand surgeon, I was just referred to him for the "skin" part of my injury and he doesn't really deal with tendons or bones or anything like that.

So, he refers me to the next town over to a hand surgeon there. However, they can't see me for about a month. And, since I have no insurance, I will need $200 in cash or credit for the initial consult, plus any surgery or other steps that he might want me to take.

Here go some prayers to God to help the situation. I am hoping that by the time the appointment comes around, we either have some form of payment, insurance, or that my finger just gets mobility back on its own.

As a side note, the kids were very good at his office since they had to go with me today...an hour in a boring office with 3 kids by myself. They weren't perfect, but they were much better than I expected!

Getting back to normal...

The whole issue with my finger has really slowed me down. It was of course nearly impossible for me to do much of anything with it the first few days. I slowly started adding more and more things to my capable list. I can now pretty much use that hand like normal, but the finger is really weak and there are things that it just won't do. It is hard for me to type in any of the top two rows of letters on the keyboard...so forgive the terrible mistakes. I also noticed the other day that I can't pick anything up with sides of my first two fingers on my left hand. The index finger doesn't have enough strength to hold anything. I also can't reach into the bottom of any kind of container to pick something up. That finger won't bend far enough for the other ones to grap with and it usually doesn't have enough strength or feeling to hold on to the item to get it out.
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In other news....

I finally ordered Aidan's homeschooling supplies today. I am still a bit nervous about whether or not I got the "right" things. I figure I can always order replacements if all else fails. But, I think that we will enjoy using what I decided on and it should be fun. He is most excited about learning about ants and having an ant farm. Should be interesting!

We got to spend some great family time last weekend at the lake. We were all able to go up there (Adam getting to come was really great!) and we had a blast. The kids loved boating and the two older ones loved getting to tube. I even got to tube with my splint...it was just a slow, easy ride. So nice to know that the person driving the boat is good enough to make for a fun ride without all the herky jerky parts.

We also got to stop by Adam's sister's house and spend some time with her family. Aidan and Alora and Aralyn don't get to spend nearly enough time with their cousins, so it was nice for them to get in a bit of playtime.

We are headed to Alabama this weekend. It will be a LONG trip. Hopefully a few DVDs and some soft toys for the car will make it go as fast as possible with 3 small children in the van!

We are going to be seeing some of Adam's side of the family. This will be a new experience for all of us, since his side of the family isn't nearly so close as mine. Adam's parents and his brother and his wife are going too, so we might make a caravan of it. It should at least be a memorable trip.

Here's a picture of my favorite people in the world. Night time reading is the best times for our family. Even Aralyn loves to read, even though from the picture she is just crawling all over the bed. I think she was trying to get to me, so don't think too poorly of her! hehe

I thank God for each and every one of them and for times like this!

This is what is called...BETTER!

June 15th, almost 4 weeks ago. After playgroup, I headed over to my in-laws to spend the afternoon letting the kids play with their cousin, Jacob who was down for the week. My in-laws had somewhere to be, so they left around 6 or so. Adam came over after work around 6:30. The kids had been playing outside in the water and so we started them on baths. The girls had their bath first. A friend of Adam's came by to borrow some keys. He would bring them back in about an hour or so. Alora got dressed and Aralyn got just her diaper. The kids were hungry, so I decided to start some dinner. Adam and I were talking over his day and I wasn't paying much attention. Adam's parents had some ham in a plastic baggie, that I decided would be good in slices for the kids. I didn't want to get out a cutting board, since I just needed a few pieces. I was cutting sideways with a pretty sharp knife and it slipped. I told Adam that I had cut my finger. He didn't see how bad it was, and told me, "Just rinse it off." I told him, after looking at it, "I can't. There is skin hanging off." We rushed around looking for a clean towel to wrap around it and trying to get my purse and the kids to take to the ER.

The boys just grabbed shoes and a shirt to put on with their wet trunks and Aralyn was dressed, but Alora's shoes weren't found, so they were left behind. We called Adam's parents to let them know what had happened, and not to come rushing back until we knew more. We also called Adam's friend to let him know where we had gone. We had left the house unlocked, there was food on the floor and large drops of blood from the kitchen, down the hall to the bathroom and a bloody knife somewhere in the kitchen. We didn't want him to worry when he showed back up to return the keys to Adam.

It was a bit crazy, with Adam getting the 4 kids unloaded and me being taken back to triage. I was thinking that I would mostly be by myself, but about 30 minutes in, Adam came back with me cause his friend came to watch the kids for us.

the doctor told me that I had cut some veins and an artery and nicked the tendon. It I had cut the tendon, then I would be looking at surgery. As it was, we could just clean it and stitch it up. They shot me up with lidocaine and while it was numbing, the nurse cleaned it up. That part made me feel really cold. I was freezing! Once I was numb they started trying to stop the bleeding.

The small handheld cauterizer wasn't working. Blood was spurting onto the wall. They got a bigger cauterizing machine from the OR and grounded me to it with a gel pad on my leg and he worked with it for a while. About an hour and a half in, he asked for the on call surgeon to be called in. He thought that the artery needed to be tied off, since he didn't seem to be making any headway with getting the bleeding to stop. About the time that the surgeon showed up, he was finally able to get the bleeding to stop. The surgeon was able to look at it and see and he okayed for the doctor to go ahead and stitch it up.

The stitching took the least amount of time. I had four stitches that would dissolve underneath to hold the fascia down, and then 13 on the top. We were there for almost 3 hours. It was a long long night. The kids ate junk food out of the vending machine and Alora gave Adam's friend an anatomy lesson about the difference between boys and girls. It had him and the receptionist laughing...since he doesn't have any kids he doesn't know the fine art of distraction!

I went to the ER four days in a row for them to check and re-check my finger, since it was bleeding more than they liked. I went back to have my stitches taken out and they thought that I might need to have some skin that hadn't survived cut off, so I was sent to the surgeon.

The surgeon said it didn't look like it would be necessary to take off the skin that wasn't surviving. He thought it would heal pretty well on it's own. He saw me again a few days later to check on it and he said he thought it looked great. He re-iterated the same thing that the doctor had said, which was, that it looked lots better than they thought it would look. Apparently because of the depth of the cut and the shape and all, they didn't think that the skin would survive at all, or at least just a small portion of it. Almost all the skin has survived, so that it good. I had several people praying for my recovery, and it has been great. I prayed a lot while in the ER, and God said yes to my prayers. He is a wonderful God.

I get to take the splint off soon and go back to see the surgeon for him to see if he would recommend me seeing an occupational therapist. I hope that that isn't necessary. No insurance and something like this, makes for a bit of financial strain. Not fun!