The chaos

I've been meaning to write a post for sometime now. I have not documented this pregnancy nearly as much as I've wanted. Nor have I kept up with all the things that Kaiewa is doing and learning. Nor the comings and goings of our family. Now, with baby #2 due in about a week or so I feel like I need to get as much done as I can before my time is occupied with a cute new baby.

Honestly, I don't even know where to start-the good or the bad...

As most of you know our New Year's was a bit hectic to say the least. The day after Christmas (Thursday) Tyler went to play basketball with some friends while we were down in California for the holidays. We had gone out to dinner as a family, and then he took one car to go play. Kaiewa had gotten a cold and had croup, so on our way home we stopped to get him some medicine. We got home and I put Kaiewa down for the night, then sat down to relax a bit. Around 9:30 my mother in-law got a phone call from Tyler. He said that he had hurt his knee and needed me to look up somewhere he could go. We all thought that he was joking. Tyler does that alllllll the time. It wasn't until after he had gone to an Urgent Care and they said he needed to go to the E.R. that I finally took things seriously.

To make a long story a little shorter I'll sum up the next few events. I went to the E.R. They ordered X-rays on Tyler's knee. The doctor came to tell us that after looking at the X-rays that he had ruptured his patellar tendon and his knee cap was now sitting on top of his femur. He would have to have surgery. We explained that we were from out of town. The doctor told us that we had 7 days to get home and the surgery done. They put Tyler's leg in an immobilizer and handed him a pair of crutches and sent us on our way.

We got to my in-laws and decided to get some rest since it was nearly 2:00am, and that we'd make the necessary calls and decisions in the morning.

       

We ended up leaving the next day, Friday to head home. We decided that we'd break the trip up into two segments-hoping it would be easier for Kaiewa and for Tyler. We left at around 6:00pm California time so that Kaiewa (who still has a cold) would fall asleep for most of the drive. So we loaded up the car and packed Tyler in the back seat with tons of pillows and blankets to support his leg since his knee cap was still just floating around inside his leg. My mother in-law was able to come with us and help out. We drove half way to St. George where our friends the Warmsley's let us stay the night.

We got up Saturday morning excited that we had only 3.5ish hours left to drive. We got about 80 miles from home and our car breaks down. It had run out of oil. We had oil brought to us. We put it in, the car needed a jump, and then we were back on the road. We made it another 10 miles and the car broke down again. And it won't start. So we call our insurance, who gets us in touch with a tow company that will come rescue us (a sick 18-month old boy, an injured unable to walk/move man, and a 34 week pregnant woman) in a few hours. Luckily we broke down right outside an exit. So my mother in-law and I took Kaiewa and started to walk to the gas station near by. A kind man picked us up not long after, and poor Tyler just had to stay in the car the whole time. The tow truck arrived, and he only had room for Kaiewa and I in the cab. Tyler and his mom got to sit in the car while it was on the bed. Talk about bumpy ride for Tyler...

Needless to say we were just happy to finally make it home at 7:00pm that night.

At least Kaiewa was having fun at the doctors

Tyler had his appointment Monday morning with a surgeon, who told us that he would have surgery the next day to repair his leg. We talked to the mechanics where we had our car towed and they said we would need to replace the engine of our car.

Yes I felt like my whole world had just crashed in.

Now about 5 weeks later things have gotten a little better. Tyler is doing much better, but his recovery is a lot longer than most people know. As his physical therapist explained, when the initial injury happened his brain automatically shut down all connection to his leg, specifically his quad. The tendon would heal in 6 weeks, but to rebuild strength and coordination fully with his leg would take 9-12 months. If you know Tyler, you know how detrimental that news was to receive. Sports, activity, and movement in general are his life. He has done well with staying positive and motivated. His biggest goal has been to walk without a brace by the time the baby comes-and he may just get there.

As far as our car, well, that hasn't been as good. We waited to get Tyler through his surgery and some of the recovery before we even thought about what we wanted to do. After a week or so, we finally decided to have the engine replaced. As always with cars, it has been one thing after another. The mechanic ordered an engine, got it put in, and found out that it was a bad engine. So he took that one out, found another, and put it in. Then he couldn't get the car to stay on, so he replaced the alternator and battery. Those were only the big things. Of course there were several little things along the way as well.

Finally after a few weeks of work, he said we could come pick it up. He stayed until 7:30pm on Jan 30th to finish the car and return it to us. Kaiewa and I had gone to get it and started driving home. We made about 10 miles from our exit, and the car broke down again. For the second time in a month I was stuck on the side of the road.

We have yet to get our car back.

The blessing with the car has been that Tyler's assistant principal has an extra car that we have been borrowing. I really don't know what we would have done without it.

Well I guess that was the bad. For my next post-the good!! Kaiewa updates and baby #2!!!!!!!!!!