More April happenings...surgery and twimpathy

I can't believe April is almost over! It's flown by and I have still so many happenings that went on in April that I need to blog about. So look for new blogs over the next week or so.

Hands down, one of the biggest things that happened in April was Jonathan's knee surgery. Over 2 years ago we noticed that Jonathan had an osteochondroma (the fancy medical name for "bony thing-y") growing on his knee. The pediatric orthopedic dr. we went to didn't want to remove the growth while Jonathan's knee was still growing, as long as it wasn't hurting Jonathan. A few months ago, Jonathan started consistently saying that his knee was hurting, especially after basketball games and practice. I made an appt. with the dr. on Wednesday and after x-rays deteremined that the growth plate was pretty much fused, we decided to do surgery on Monday.
Jonathan was glad to have the surgery planned so he didn't have a lot of time to think about it. Just get'er done!

(Ok, in your mind and as you are reading this blog...put this picture down below when I 'm talking about "twimpathy". Can't get it to move where I want it to!)

Here's the "before". Don't know if you can really tell, but the bony thing-y was getting really large. And notice that scrape on his knee, complements of tough basketball defense by Jeremy on the driveway! That scrape was nearly a "deal breaker" for the surgery. Michael said that the dr. was very concerned that the scrape was so near where the incision was going to need to be. Now THAT would have been a bummer to go through all the rigamaroll from the week before, get up at 5 a.m. to drive to the hospital for surgery only to find that you have to go home b/c your brother played too rough!! Thankfully, the surgery went ahead as planned!!

Jonathan said that he doesn't remember much of anything from the surgery. He did remember that the nurse doing the IV missed on the first try! And then another nurse came and gave Jonathan "happy juice" (gotta love being at a Children's Hospital!) and then he remembers waking up in recovery. Jonathan said that Michael told him that he was awake when he was wheeled back into surgery, but Jonathan doesn't remember any of it. The funny thing was the first thing he remembers from recovery was hearing the "beep...beep...beep" from the heart monitor. He remembers looking around to find it, b/c he thought it was so cool. (It was also one of the first things that Jeremy asked about... "Did you hear the beep beep machine?!") Thankfully, Jonathan woke up very quickly and within an hour was on his way home.

Here's a blurry picture of the bony thing-y. Michael said it was almost as big as the palm of his hand. The part that we could see bulging on the side of Jonathan's knee was just the top part. I couldn't believe how big it was! Jonathan and Jeffrey were both VERY bummed that Jonathan couldn't bring the tumor home! Truthfully, I was thinking it would have been a cool specimen to have in a jar...I mean I'm teaching biology next year! But you know those hospital folks...gotta send it off to the lab.

So now, Jonathan's knee looks like this....

He's got to wear a knee immobilizer whenever he moves around for the next couple of weeks. He's supposed to bend and straighten his knee just to keep skin from growing over his stitches and keep range of motion in his knee. He's feeling very well now, but is growing increasingly bored with reading books and watching tv!

And then as if one injured boy wasn't enough, I was on my way home from a dr. appt. on Tuesday when Michael called and said "You'll probably need to take Jeremy to get an x-ray for his ankle, he thinks he may have broken it". Lovely! Jeremy was doing some jump training for basketball and was doing a move where you jump on and off a chair one foot at a time. According to Michael, Jeremy heard it snap when he landed wrong on it. And after an hour or so, Jeremy was reporting not dull pain, but sharp pains in two places, one being the spot where he broke his ankle last fall. When I got home, Michael had to leave to have dinner with a supplier. I left Jonathan, Jeffrey, Josiah and the Wii to take Jeremy to an urgent care center in Castroville. Two hours later, we find out that Jeremy's ankle is just severly sprained and not broken. His ankle was put into a splint and he was told not to bear weight on it for 3-5 days.

This whole experience caused me to coin a new word "twimpathy". Jeremy's right ankle, Jonthan's right knee....conicidence?? Nope...twin sympathy...twimpathy. So for three nights now, Jeffrey and Josiah have been sleeping up on the bunk beds while Jonathan and Jeremy (and their crutches and splints) have been sleeping in Jeffrey and Josiah's room.

Jeremy is able today to walk around, but still wearing the splint. I'm really ready for those guys to be up and around! I knew they were helpful, but I'm realizing even more and more just HOW helpful they are! Makes me thankful in a large way that this is not normal!