Happy 2025 - Starting off with Surgery!

Weeellll, Tyleigh's broken arm was a little worse than we thought. 

The hand specialist decided surgery was needed, 

but he was really hoping to be able

to just manually manipulate the bones from the outside and pin them in place. 

He put her under anesthesia and tried, but couldn't get the bones to move right. 

He had to make an incision in her arm. He found that there was tissue stuck in between the fractured bones, which was creating the same effect as having a piece of clothing stuck behind a drawer. It just wouldn't sit right or line up. 

He ended up moving the tissue, and putting a plate and eight screws in her wrist to hold it in place. 

She was such a trooper during the whole thing. The nerve block was rough - and she hated waking up to her fingers and arm being numb and useless, but hopefully that is better than the pain would have been.

Another cute surgery outfit!

Surgery #14 for this girl!

Getting her arm prepped.

We were both a little shocked by how bad the bruising was. 

They gave her Versed (which is like a short term amnesia drug) before they did the nerve block. 

It knocked her out once the nerve block was in place!

Annie and Rylan were great caretakers after surgery!

She tried to convince me she could go to class the morning after - 

but once our house was quiet, she crashed hard! Poor kid! 

Please don't really let this be the broken bone era! 🤞

2024 went out with a bang, and 2025 started with one. . .

Rod and I majorly failed as parents. 

We have lived in Utah our whole lives and have never taught our kids to ski or snowboard. Tyleigh has always wanted to learn, but her poor knees were injured for so long and soccer was always in the way, 

so she never got the chance. 

Cute Rylan surprised her and got her a pass for Christmas and took her to Brighton to learn. 

As with everything this girl does, it's go big or go home - so she did! 

She took a good fall and landed on her wrists. 

Her watch may have prevented one wrist from breaking, but her right wrist wasn't so lucky. 

She ended up with a comminuted wrist fracture (which means her bone broke in more than three places) in her distal radius bone, some ligament damage, and a break in her ulna. 

Like I said, go big or go home. 

I asked her to hold her arm up for a picture of the bruising . . .

It's not exactly a normal shape.

We went to a hand doctor since her first diagnosis was just at an urgent care. 

We were sure he would just cast it and send us on our way . . .

As soon as the doctor came in, he said "so, you're going to need surgery."

They put her arm in a splint to stabilize it better until we meet with the actual hand surgeon.

She was thrilled. 

Ty's quote was "just as we get out of the knee surgery era, we start the broken bone era!"

I hope not!

Wish us luck!

Bicep Surgery

Rod tore his bicep tendon back in July.  We took Adam and Vanessa and their cute girls boating and he was trying to crank the boat up onto the trailer. He felt and heard a loud pop - and may or may not have dropped some cuss words. He has lived with it like this for almost five months and it just isn't healing, so it was time for surgery! The surgeon cut the bicep tendon the rest of the way, drilled a hole in his bone and reattached the tendon. Rod was a great patient - 

and told all of the doctors and nurses his long list of dad jokes!

Today is day one of a year of healing!

He was really digging the shorts they gave him.

I told him that if I made the girls take pictures like this, 

he wasn't getting out of it. 

He came out of surgery quieter than I anticipated he would. He still threw out his dad jokes and proclaimed his love for me very loudly (which I'm flattered by), and asked the same questions over and over and over. Love you, Rod!

Let's just throw these in to sum up 2024, shall we??

January

June

June

June

July

December

Wisdom Teeth!

Guess who got her wisdom teeth removed???

She is so quiet and sweet under anesthesia that I didn't even record her. 

She just worries about everyone and wants to make sure they are okay!

At least she has great friends to come keep her company!

The swelling wasn't too bad  - and she is still just as beautiful as can be!

Ear Surgery!

This past summer, we went boating and while Tyleigh was surfing, she fell and hit the water hard. She got in the boat and was complaining about feeling like she had water in her ears. We put some drops in them and it burned so bad that it brought her to tears - which is pretty rare for her!

We took her to the ENT to get checked.  He confirmed that she had blown her ear drum.  It was a pretty significant hole, but she didn't want to miss out on boating more and he thought there might be a small chance the hole would close on it's own. 

It didn't. She essentially failed her hearing test and it was decided that surgery was the only way to fix it. 

She had to have a graft put over the hole and the doctor told us that 

she had blown more than 40% of her eardrum. 

Her poor ear had to stay packed like this forever. 

We had to make sure no water got in her ear, so we had her use this awesome shower cap! :)