Big Decision

Today I had my recheck appointment with my doctor. Good news, my fracture is basically healed. You can still see a small part of it, but he says not enough to be concerned with. Then we had to discuss the other issue, my knee cap. I have three choices: Live with the pain, which will eventually get worse, have a surgery involving screws or get a 2nd opinion.

I cannot live with the pain. I do not want to have to slow my life down because my knee hurts. I also don;t want to end up in a wheel chair because I over extend my knee and it goes out on me.

The surgery is a major one. It is called a Tibial Tubicle Transfer or a Fulkerson Osteotomy. They have to take part of the bone out and move my knee cIp back in place. If you look at the pictures above my doctor drew on my knee. The dark line is what my knee does. The light line is what it should do. There is a Q angle every one has that relates to how your knee cap tracks. Most women's is 12-16, mine is 40.

The downside to this surgery is: 35% complication rate including amputation. He has had great success with the surgery. He has had 2 patients that have had complications and they were due to a car accidents (so unrelated to the surgery) and the other due to a 17 year old going back to play football before being released to.

I would have to be in the hospital for 3 days with drainage tubes, antibiotics, etc. 8 weeks of crutches and a brace immobilizing my leg (no bending of the knee) it would take 9 months before I could run (not that I really do that now) or strenuous activity involving my knee.

The other option is to get a 2nd opinion. Well, I have my aunt Kay getting info from the doctor she works for, I have done ALOT of online research. The doctor I see is one of the top surgeons in orthopaedic surgery in the country. He really doesn't want to jump to do the surgery due to the high complication rate.

So, I have an appointment on February 11 at 2:45pm. I will need to have a decision by then. Right now I am leaning toward the surgery. Now is the best time for me to do it. I don't have anything coming up that I will miss. I am taking the semester off because I had a feeling I would be having surgery. My trip to California isn;t until August, so thats not an issue. I probably would miss the Vera Bradley sale, that will make me sad.

There are still so many pros and cons I have to weigh. I have read so many different things in regards to this surgery. But, all in all, I think this is the only way I am going to be able to get my knee back to some symbalance of normal.

So, please keep me in your prayers are I have quite a decision to make. As you all know I am quite the worrier, so pray that I will "Be Anxious for nothing".

January Snow!!!!

WE GOT SNOW!!!!!

Yup, we had another snow day! Last week we were closed on Wednesday, but today we got alot more than we had. We still have a winter storm warning, but we haven't gotten any more snow. More than likely we will be back at school tomorrow. :(

The kids enjoyed what we had though. They went sledding down the driveway and the front yard. Well, Kyle and Aly did, Jonelle stayed in cause she's like me....we don;t do cold.

Of course it is early in the snow season. i am sure we will get more before winter ends...we've seen hail in May, anything is possible.

Our Weekend: January 17 2009

This weekend was non-stop busy, busy, busy! The girls had a game first thing Saturday morning, as usual. They did great and won, 19-2. They had pictures an hour later, so we were running around all morning.

At 2pm I had a "surprise" housewarming for my brother and sister in law........don't ask. Had a good time visiting with Sammy, who is quite taken with Papa.

Kyle had basketball pictures too, but I missed them, and Phillip took him. His game was later in the evening. His team is quite interesting. This has been a rough year. The first coach we had got kicked out due to coming to practices drunk.....I kid you not. Then we have several boys on the team with really bad attitudes. Last night at the game one kid got spoken to directly several times by one ref. He just rolled his eyes. THen the kids brothers were playing behind one of the goals and the ref told them to move to the sides 4 times. The parents just laughed. It was ridiculous. So, it is really no fun to go to Kyle's games due to these few kids. The coach tries hard, but he was kind of thrown into this, so needless to say, it;s been a mess....lol.

Tomorrow Pauline is going to try out for Survivor!!!! Please pray that she gets on. This has been a dream of hers to do. She keeps talking about her and I going on Amazing Race, which would be a comedy show in itself with me involved, so I am really hoping she is able to get on Survivor and do what she loves!!!!!

We have a winter weather advisory for tonight, tomorrow and Tuesday until 7pm. They are calling for lots of snow, at least 1-3 inches and of course, more for higher elevations. Tomorrow is not a school day for the kids, but is a daycare day (unless it snows, then I will close too). The kids already missed one day due to snow, so hopefully they won't miss many more because it cuts into their Spring Break. I hope we get enough snow to do something in. They got sleds last year when it snowed quite a bit, but it really hasn;t been enough to sled good in.

I hope every one had a great weekend and have a great week!!!!

Christmas in January!

The kids got their Christmas presents from Aunt Pauline and had a blast opening them. Jonelle loved her monkey robe and PJ's....Kyle got a really cool "Dad's Little Hunting Buddy " hat and robe and air plane. (he was really excited that the robe was flame retardant) and Aly got Dog stuff: picutre fram, dog bowl, dog ornament and a Mary Moo Moo with a weiner dog. THANKS AUNT PAULINE!!!

Phillip went to the doctor with his finger hurting. He thought he might have broken it, but they are testing to see if it is the gout. We'll see. We started back to the gym today, so hopefully we'll both see some positive changes. My knee is extremely weak, so I found that it was difficult to use the Eliptical for a long period of time. I could only go 20 minutes, which is double the time I was doing at PT, so I guess that is progress.

This is a pretty boring week for us. Nothing exciting planned, but that dosn't mean something won't come up! I am hoping to finish painting in the livingroom this weekend. I'll post new pictures when we do :)

Weekend Project

This weekend we decided to do a little home improvement. I have been wanting to paint our bedroom and bathroom. Phillip wanted to re paint the whole house! We started small and painted the dining room. The color is called Green Fiddlehead. I have looked at so many colors and names it is unbelievable. I think I had about 50 paint chips for the last two days looking through them for colors for all the room except the kids rooms and the den. The kitchen will be Brillant White, the Livingroom will be Green Cloth, our bedroom will be Morning Breeze, our bathroom will be Soothing Aloe, Our sitting room will be Moon Dance and the kids bathroom will be Ship's Ahoy. Are those not the strangest names you have ever heard? I think that will be my next job : paint chip namer.Other names I saw were : Sun Glint, Hidden Spring, Home Song, Dried Palm, Spa, and Jungle Trail.

So, anyway, The living room is next, but that may be a week or two away. I may do the kids bathroom one day next week if I have some spare time....(LOL what's that?)

Butner Hunting Trip

Phillip went to Camp Butner Christmas afternoon to hunt. He shot a deer on Saturday (Dec 27). I left the daycare on Tuesday and went to Raleigh to have dinner with some friends and then drove to deer camp around 8:30 pm. I was all prepared to camp out, but he got a hotel room, knowing I am not a camper. :)

Wednesday morning we got into the woods around 8:30am.....I sat in a ladder stand (I can't use a climber due to my knee) and he was in a climber about 8 feet away in another tree. It was incredibly windy and there I sat 15' in the air, swaying back and forth. We didn't see any deer, so we got down and headed back to camp. Because it was so windy, the tarp had blown loose on one side, so Phillip had to fix that, then we drove into the next town to have lunch.

We drove back to camp to get ready to go hunting for the afternoon/evening on base. We were going to sit in a blind on the edge of a field. On the way to the field Phillip was complaining that he didn't think we would see any deer. Not a minute after that, three deer walked across the road we were walking on...lol....Once we got to the spot Phillip sat up the blind while I watched for deer. The gun he expected me to use was HUGE. It was a muzzleloader and very heavy. Once we got in the blind he showed me how to hold it. We sat for 45 minutes before we saw a small deer (in picture above). I asked Phillip if I should shoot it. He told me if I wanted to, so I aimed at it, but I was nervous and was shaking, so couldn't get a good shot, so I didn't shoot. The deer looked up suddenly, and we saw a huge buck, too far away to shoot. The wind was blowing toward him, so we are sure he smelled us, and ran/limped off. We think it had been shot at or in a fight and was injured. A short while after anothe small deer came out and I decided I would shoot this time. I aimed and shot. not 5 minutes later ANOTHER deer came out. Phillip shot at that one. We waited about ten minutes before going to see if we had hit them. We didn't find any blood or signs we had hit them. Phillip then told me that he hadn't sighted the gun, so there was a good reason why I had missed. I still felt bad I had missed. THe game warden knew we were out in the field so he gave us a ride back to the truck. We dropped off stuff and headed back to the hotel.

We got up at 5:30am and was in the woods at 6:30am. It was SOOOOOO cold! I wore three pairs of pants, a wool shirt, wool sweater, Columbia fleece jacket, Camo fleece jacket, down jacket and camo coveralls, 2 pairs of socks, ear muffs, hat, face mask and tobogan, gloves. I WAS STILL COLD!!!!!! We sat up in the tree stands again. We heard deer but never saw them. We got down at 9:30 am and had to take the ladder stand apart and carry it out...we got back to camp around 10:15am and started taking camp down. We deceided to go ahead and go home since it was too cold and we had seen deer and shot at two.

All in all it was a good trip and I have a whole new appreciation for hunting and I think I enjoy it. I don't think I would do it as often as Phillip does it, but I will definately go more often that I have. I have pictures off of Phillip's camera of me looking like a sumo wrestler in all my clothes I will post later when I download them.