He's out!

Joel was discharged today and will be at his mothers until the 8th of April if all goes well and his doctor will let him fly home then,
I told some people I would relate what recovery will entail. Here goes.
Joel can not use his arms to lift himself from a chair or brace himself if he losses his footing. He is not to push, pull or lift anything heavier or that exerts more than 5 pounds of pressure. He is not to open car doors or the refrigerator. He is to sit and stand and even cough a certain way. He should not be jarred, especially up and down.
For 6 weeks from discharge!
His sternum can still shift up and down far too easily. If that were to happen, he would have to go back for two more surgerys. They would have to open him back up and scrape off any infection on the bone and then leave him open for two days to make sure they got all of the infection. Then they would perform a plastic surgery procedure involving a muscle over the sternum, close him up and the healing process would have to start all over again. 1 out of every 25 people who have open chest surgery, return to have these other two procedures done. Instinct would be to lock the healing person away from everything, but this is detrimental to healing. So, we just have to be as careful as possible. He is more fragile at the begining of the 6 weeks but perhaps even more likely to hurt himself at the end as he starts to feel better and forgets to be careful.
Fun!

More on Joel

Today was a good day. We got to the hospital right around 10:00. To sum up the day, Joel spent most of it in a chair instead of in bed. He is eating solid food but not much of it (not a priority now but may be before they will release him!) He took to walking the halls today too. The first two times he only made it 25 feet. But by the third time he went 50 and the fourth he made it almost 75 feet. He also got a shower today which was not that pleasant of an experience since the water doesn't get as hot as he likes (too hot for me) so he shivered quite a bit before I could get him all clean. He went back to the bed and we left at 9:00 when they asked the guests to leave. He was watching t.v. and had been cutting up with one of the nurses every time she would come in. The normal Joel is emerging! His voice is strong but I still have his phone. I hope he will sleep better tonight than last night, especially since he was awake for pretty much the whole day. It's looking as though he will not get released before I return home and I'm not liking it but I am not as uncomfortable about that as I thought I would be. Perhaps our prayers will help with that like they have with his progress!

Joel update

I called the hospital at 11:00 last night to get an update before bed and was asked if I could call back because they were just taking out his breathing tube! I hung up and jumped up and down a few times with my hands in the air. He still had a slight fever but everything else looked normal and his tube was out. I knew I would sleep better knowing that he didn't have to battle that anymore and thought he would do better too.
When we got to him this morning around 10:00 he was in a reclining chair with most of his tubing removed. He could still only whisper and most movement was just too painful to bother with. We were allowed a 30 minute visit and planned to return for the next one at 5:00 that evening!? But at just after 11:00 we were called and told that he would be transferring to a regular room. (More jumping up and down with hands raised above my head.) We got back to him right around 4:00 (I had a much needed nap to try to catch up on sleep) and as we walked in the door I heard a sound from him. He had been talking to his brother Micah. We stayed until just after he had been given medication and was begining to fall asleep. Which was just after 8:00. He had been doing his breathing exercises every hour and did well. He still can't talk on the phone, but we will see how he is doing tommorrow. If he is up to phone talking, I will give it to him and leave it with him. If not, I will keep it. So if you are itching to talk with him, call his cell some time after 12:00pm Central time and you might get him. If not, it will be me and you don't have to talk to me, but you will have to try again later!!
Thank you for your continued prayers! They are still helping.

Good news

Everything went well with Joel's surgery. His valve was able to be repaired instead of replaced which will make life a lot easier. The surgeon said that everything went exactly as they would have wanted and that it works as they wanted it to. The surgery took a total of three and a half hours from the time he entered the operating room. He came out of anesthesia in a shorter amount of time than many heart patients and was responding to questions appropriately just as they would like. The next step to get past is that he has a tube in the throat going to his lungs that helps him breathe. His body has to stop depending on the machine before they will remove the tube. Unfortunately it is uncomfortable at best and his instinct is to want to pull it out every time he wakes. So, his hands are restrained. This really bugs him. He has to experience a certain amount of pain in order to stimulate the body to work the way it usually does. It will be a long, painful night for him.
Thank you everyone for your thoughts and prayers. I have been calm and optimistic and I know to give credit to all of you. He could still use your prayers to be able to endure the pain that is inevitable. The girls are still anxious too though relieved by what I was able to tell them today. And the Wilsons should be truly blessed for their sacrifice of taking the girls in. (The girls are giving them a run for their money! I fear that Sunday will not come soon enough for them!) I will post when Joel is released from ICU and any other progress you may want to know about.
I love you

Egg Hunting

We always go to the back of our neighborhood for our hunt. Unfortunately they took the gate that surrounds the area down so anyone and their dog can get back there. And everyone's dogs are the problem. Joel said he had to clean up quite a bit of dog "stuff" before hiding the girls eggs. This neighborhood is rediculous. People let their dogs do their business on other peoples lawns and and not everyone even cleans it up!

Anyway, we enjoyed our time even though this activity gets shorter every year.

I didn't get a picture of Keddi because I didn't want a blurred one of the back of her head. I could'nt get a good shot (she was always ten steps ahead of me!) and she was the first one done. I suppose I could have staged one and probably should have

Mardi got tagged

Mardi got tagged by Sarah, so here are her six random things.
1)I like the color red. I always have. But I don't get to wear read because I always get Tersa's hand-me-downs and red has never been one of her favorites!
2)I like vanilla ice cream and the smell of the vanilla that you use to bake with. But I don't like the scent of vanilla in candles, lotion, chapstick....
3)I am horrible at drawing. I like to do it, but I am not very good at it. (She gets better and better.)
4)My favorite month is June. When I hear that word I think of bees, butterflies, flowers and lots of sun.
5)I hate getting my hair cut because it makes me look different. I like looking the same. (Too bad! It's almost time for summer hair cuts!)
6)My favorite animal is a dog. I spend a lot of time reading, but it seems that most of the books I read are about cats.
I tag Emmy, Rachel and Garron
(Just list 6 things not generally known about you and tag three people.)

Secrets

Shinara crawled into bed with us this morning. Our conversation led to her sharing a secret with me. I would say I am a pretty good person to confide in but I am going to divulge her secret and hope she will find it easy to forgive me.

She had been watching Saturday morning t.v. and started talking about the new "My friends Tigger and Pooh" show. They try to figure out clues to mysteries or problems their friends have. She told me about something that they tried, which was ineffective and she found it amusing that Tigger would bother. She said he always does silly things. "Tigger is silly." Then came the secret. She cupped her hand to her mouth, told me she was going to tell me a secret, and whispered in my ear..."Pooh is a genius." Then she referred to a book that we have in which Pooh is trying to find his friends and has to "think, think, think" of how to accomplish that. Pooh was never my favorite. I always liked Tigger and was drawn to Eyore too. I don't know who Shinara would pick as her favorite, but just so you know.....she thinks Pooh is a genius!

Easter Eggs

Egg dying time! We don't hunt real eggs, so we only dye one dozen. Unfortunately that means only three eggs/ child. If eggs weren't so expensive this year and if we weren't going to be gone all next week, I might consider doing two dozen eggs.

Anyway, here is one of Shinara's. We didn't do anything to the eggs before dying them but I did do it the old fashioned way with boiling water, vinegar and food coloring. Anyway, Shinara's orange egg ended up getting concentrations of the red dye on it and it turned out like this. We thought it was cool!

Tersa and Keddi like their dark so they left theirs in for longer periods of time. Keddi's is the green and I don't think you can see that the end went darker than the sides and kind of sprayed out from the bottom. The purple one is hers too. Don't know why it has stripes! Tersa make the dark orange and the turquoise (Which came out nice and she was quite proud of) and also the almost rose colored one at the bottom. The orange and pink is the one of Shinara's that I showed at the top and the greyish one to the left is Mardi's and is posted below.Mardi dipped hers in several colors until she came to this. It's actually quite pretty though I am not sure the picture does it justice. Her others were similar to the other girls. This is the one that came out really unique.

Thoughtfulness?

This last Thursday, Joel came home a bit early because he had started to get feverish and chilled, congested....(what the girls had the week before.) That night I had a Relief Society activity and when I got home I found half a sandwich on the table. I was told that Shinara had made it and offered it to Joel because he was sick and he needed to eat. I opened it to see what she had made since she has never done anything like this before. It had just a squirt of honey on the bottom.
When I asked her about it the next morning and told her what a sweet girl she had been, she smiled and then told me that she had wanted a sandwich before bed too but she didn't get to. I realized then that her thoughtfulness wasn't completely unselfish. Still, I suppose she could simply have asked if she could make one for herself. That's what she did the next night. Growth spurt?!

Quirks

When I took Shinara to pre-school yesturday she got out and started running ahead of me. We sometimes race. This time though, I didn't make a sound, I just picked up speed and thought I would run up behind her and scare her good. But she checked to see if I had joined her in running and squeeled when she saw I had. She ran on for a bit more and then turned and ran at me. It got me thinking.
I've watched children start to zig-zag to keep away from someone playfully chasing them. I've watched them stop and cower or simply give up because they know they will get caught. She turned and ran right at me. I wonder if we react in play the same as we will react when threatened.
I don't remember what kind of child I was.

Family Fun

Don't you just so appreciate it when you plan and do something fun for the family and when you get there, something bigger and better is in the parking lot?

We took the girls to see the Spiderwick Chronicles yesturday and when we arrived, the parking lot had a carnival in it! It wasn't just little kid rides either! It was too much and when we came out of the theatre, Joel broke down and we went over for a couple of rides. (And me without my camera.) So, I took pictures with Joel's i-phone. (He loves this thing. And the pictures were't too bad for a phone!) Tersa wasn't interested in riding. She knew it would upset her stomach so we watched everyone else. Shinara enjoyed this ride the most of anyone by far! She held up her hands and whooped and hollered! It was adorable. The ride went forward first and by the time it was almost done, I realized that Keddi was crying. I told her she would be fine when she came around but after two more passes, the ride slowed and the operator let Keddi and Mardi out. I guess he had noticed her too. I thought he should have let Mardi finish out the ride but didn't even ask her if she wanted to. Then he fired it back up and everyone rode backward. (I think Keddi would have actually liked it better backward. ) I asked why she had been upset and she said it was just too fast and too high! She told Joel that she had felt like she was going to slip out a couple of times. Well, Tersa hadn't ridden anything so I took her over to a spinning ride and Mardi and Shinara joined her. After the ride started it looked as though Tersa was not so sure about this ride either, but she got into it and quite enjoyed it. Mardi however, got tired of it eventually and wanted off. She stuck it out. Shinara loved it! Hands up the whole time, screaming and getting after the other two when the spinning slowed. Joel took Keddi to the airplanes. (Joel said she still looked unhappy at first but eventually had a smile on her face. (Much more her speed I guess!)

Barber Boys

We just found out yesturday that Joel's youngest brother Mitchel broke his clavical while playing Ultimate Frisbee Football with some friends. The military won't get around to his surgery until this Thurs. when they will be putting in a metal plate! Also, Joel's brother Jamin is going to need surgery on his nose. Deviated septum. Not fun. We will be including them in our prayers and purpose for fasting this weekend.
Thanks to everyone who will be praying and fasting for us this weekend! Joel's surgery will take place either March 24th or 25th or not until April 3rd or 4th. We will know for sure by Tues. We appreciate everyones offers to help us out and will get around to arranging all of that after we know when the surgery will be. Have a great weekend.