Tomorrow is Friday, November 2nd, and if all goes well, will be the sixth and hopefully FINAL surgery for Joshua (at least for this year…maybe one more in a year or so). Yes,  the rods and pins and hardware screwed into his shinbone are to come out! So if you chance to see this post on or before Friday, send good thoughts toward Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, where he will be in surgery to remove the pins, a screw from the rod in his femur (thigh bone), and some bone growth that shouldn’t be there near the screw. Hopefully the last two items will help alleviate the pain when he rolls over on that bone-y, lanky hip! (I don’t think I EVER had that problem…..sigh….)

I’ll post an update at some point over the weekend.

Someone asked off list, so I thought I’d post here that Joshua, who had the horrific accident this summer when he got hit by a car… well, more like he hit the car while on his bike (the brakes failed and he couldn’t crank around the 90 degree turn at the bottom of the hill at that speed without crossing just over the line, and slammed into the front quarter panel of a Jeep going 35 mph). Here’s the boy on Sept. 23, with freshly washed hair:

Anyway, after five surgeries, two transfusions, two fasciotomies (slices up the side of his leg to alleviate swelling and save the leg), about 10 days on morphine, two skin grafts to close up the fasciotomies, and 21 days (!!!!) in the regional trauma center up in Bangor (90 minutes away…. we took turns spending the night up there, then coming home and walking dogs, cleaning litter box, etc), he came home with a rod the length of his thigh hammered into the center of the bone and an erector set screwed into his shinbones with six long screws/rods. After 3 days he decided the walker was a pain in the tush, so switched to crutches. Here’s a photo of his lower leg, with most of the hardware still in place and one of two scars. He was getting annoyed with me (so must be feeling like himself, a 13 year old boy!) so I didn’t get a pic of the other scar on the inside, which is a bit larger and “z” shaped).

By the time school began after labor day, he was able to attend an away-camp for 8th graders (he couldn’t do the cool stuff like climbing up a tree or going in the harness on the squirrel walk…a line 50 feet up in the trees …. he tried the latter, but the harness rubbed on a bolt at the top of his thigh that holds the rod in place and it hurt too much). While there, he decided the crutches were too much of a nuisance during the cafeteria line, so he just walked! A week later, the x-rays / c heck-up showed bone growth and enough improvement that the doctor took off one of the 3 vertical rods on the erector set, and said he things Joshua will be able to have the hardware removed in mid-to-late October (a sixth surgery). At that point they’ll take the pin at the top of his hip out, too, since it hurts him when he has to walk a lot.

About 10 days ago, he quit using the crutches entirely! And, most amazing of all (I think), the orthopaedic surgeon thinks Joshua will be ready to wrestle when the season starts in February! We’re planning on keeping the hardware (I am thinking wind chimes… perhaps hung from part of the mangled bike LOL!). And, he’s now a smidge taller than I am (he actually grew while he was in the hospital I think!), and I expect by Christmas may be taller than his dad!

And oh yeah: thank heavens for insurance! Through some angel’s hand, we switched from our previous 80/20 policy in January to the slightly more expensive Blue Cross federal (Paul as a federal retiree gets health insurance). Durned good thing. All the bills aren’t in yet, and there is one more surgery, but so far–since it was an accident–of the $150,000+ in bills (EEEEEK!) we have had a total of $200 in co-payments. If we hadn’t switched, we’d be taking out a second mortgage…..

In other words, it’s the first day of school! Moms across Maine are celebrating today. Jan and I are extending that to tomorrow when we are finally going to meet for coffee in downtown Camden at Zoot–we’ve been trying to get together since school let out. Hah!

Of course, since it is the first day of school, there are the requisite back-to-school photos. First, Joshua was up at 6 to be at school by 7:15 (starts at 7:35) to go off to Camp Kieve for four-plus days (they come home Saturday), an 8th grade ritual. How did he get to be in 8th grade already? Anyway, here he is:

Then, Eli’s school starts an hour later (he’s in 4th this year…next year for 5th on he’ll be up early, too!). While I was dropping off Joshua, his sleeping bag, and box of bandages and meds for the week, Eli got up and dressed. At 7:52, out we went to the bus, with the dog-beasts in tow. Eli, of course, had to hold (Pig)widgeon for his pics:

And here is Widgeon doing his Stitch impersonation (as in Lilo and Stitch….there is no way the animators for that movie didn’t have a pug.. I mean color him blue and add a couple extra legs and he’s Stitch!):

While out, I snapped a picture of something that isn’t too rare this year:

Yes, it seems fall is coming early. I have high hopes, since they say the best fall colors come from warm days and nippy nights, and that is what we are having. We still have the fan on in the room, but are sleeping under sheet, quilt and duvet.

And then you find odd stuff in the notch of the trees when you go to snap a close up of the reddest low-down leaf around:

Gee….wonder how that got there?

And if you don’t hear from me for a couple of days…guess why? I’ll be in my STUDIO! What a miracle! Time for art (and in this specific instance, getting my journal quilt done before it is due!). WOOOOOHOOOOO!

Toodles, and I’ll be back….eventually <grin!!!!!>

Sigh…. art and quilting seem far, far away as summer winds down. I’m REALLY looking forward to six days from now when the boys will be IN SCHOOL! In the meantime, Eli has begun soccer and found a moth (way back in June) that we wanted to ask if anyone knows what it is. We got slightly distracted by Joshua’s accident and hospitalization, then Paul’s surgery (they are all on the mend… in three months Joshua will be fine and Paul will still be mending….). Anyway, does anyone know what kind of moth this is?

And here is Eli in his very first soccer games–this is during the second game up in Hampden on Sunday; Eli is on the far right in light blue shirt:

and here he is, the kid in the foreground just left of center:

and on the far right, sorta behind the boy in purple and to theleft of the dad with the red backpack:

and he also got to play goalie, and had a couple of great saves, and only let through one goal:

Now…off to the last SeaDogs game of the summer.  I miss making art and sewing!  SOON……

Joshua’s girlfriend Kristina comes from a lobstering family, and at least one day a week during summer works on the boat. As a major treat she brought us FOUR lobster. Now, I haven’t had a whole lobster since I was on a vacation in about the mid 80s, and haven’t fixed one since I was in grad school in 1982 (and then I just took them home from Boston to California and Mom cooked them). Well. My squeamishness about raw meat products (I won’t touch raw chicken, and Paul has to do the turkey until it is at least half-cooked) did me in. Here’s what happened:

We set the bag of lobsters (they spent the night inside a bag in the fridge…Paul said when he opened the door in the middle of the night to get something to drink the bag moved….) into the sink since it was drippy:

Joshua picked up a lobster for us to see:

I couldn’t bring myself to pick one up, even wearing rubber gloves. Somehow, awkwardly, I managed to use tongs while wearing gloves to pick one up and transfer it:

Into the pot—fortunately no banging on the sides of the pot (which I have heard…shudder) or screaming/hissing:

The look of the steam/vapor, however is totally cool. I don’t know that I can ever use these photos for a quilt tho…too traumatic.
By the second round of boiling (pot fit 2 at a time), I couldn’t even manage with gloves and tongs, so Eli did the courageous honors (or is it dastardly deed?):

Then, he decided to be cute:

Here are two of the lobsters, truly dead and red, in the sink:

We had to call Kristina and ask her how to get them open. Answer: pull off legs and claws. Grab head and tail in hands and twist apart. Gut. Shell. Eat. That’s when I lost it. I couldn’t do it. Joshua was able to pull off the claws and legs from one, but wouldn’t gut them. I couldn’t. Paul’s shoulder is bad and he only has one hand these days (the rotator cuff surgery thing), so he isn’t able to do it, though he would if he could. So we now have a king’s ransom in the fridge, boiled bright red, intact…. if I can get someone to gut them for me, I think I can get the meat out, but who…… I know. I’m a wuss. I don’t care. I can’t kill and dismember and gut. Sigh. I may have eaten the last lobster tail of my life nearly 25 years ago.  And I feel guilty about such a wonderful gift, and not being able to live up to it.  Anyone wanna come gut my lobsters?  I’ll be more than happy to share  the meat….