Post-Op Update

Thank you, everyone, for your prayers. The news is good as we wait for Will to wake up: The tendon was only nicked and though the sheath around it had some damage they were able to make the needed repairs. Apparently, he will not need a splint and they want us to keep his finger covered only in Band-Aids in order to encourage movement. This news is far better than what we'd hoped and certainly far better than what we'd feared, so I appreciate your prayers.

I'll let you know more later today.

The Lord is good; his love endures forever.

An Update on Will

Will will be in surgery, or going into surgery, early tomorrow morning. He needs to be at Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem at 6 a.m. for anesthesia consultation and for warming chairs for later patients. We suspect he'll be in surgery between 7 and 8 a.m.

If you would, pray for him while you're brushing your teeth, getting dressed and driving into work. We'd appreciate it greatly. He was quite traumatized by the shots and stitches on Sunday night and is deathly afraid of having to be "poked" again. (Though he will be under general anesthesia, which only makes sense, but is a great relief knowing anyhow.)

Yesterday, we had a consultation with the hand surgeon. Before the doctor arrived I unwrapped Will's bandage, and Will wouldn't even look at his finger. He didn't want to see it. (I can't say that I blame him; it looks like something out of Frankenstein.) The hand surgeon told me that he would be opening up the finger to see what kind of internal damage has been done (nerves and tendons). He said sometimes, if the tendons have been crushed rather than sliced, fingers never regain full mobility. This scenario is a possibility in Will's case since everything happened in the door of a truck.

Anyway, as it stands, Will is wanting Mommy to be with him tomorrow, so there will be a very anxious daddy at home with the rest of the brood.

Will's doing fine, but he is scared. It comes out in little ways that perhaps only my wife and I would recognize, but it's difficult to watch, and difficult to communicate comfort in anything more than a hug, a kiss, and being close. Maybe that physical expression of our nearness and love is the best sort of comfort we have to offer anyway.

I'll let you know what we find out tomorrow. Thank you for all your prayers; keeping a three-year-old boy's finger somewhat immobile and dry and bandaged takes a good bit of Providence.

Pray for Us

I opened the truck door (he must have been holding the hinge) on my son's finger yesterday afternoon and just about took it off. I wish I were exaggerating. He needed a million stitches to close it up (I don't know the exact number, but it was a lot) and will probably be going in on Friday to have his finger operated on in order to reattach the tendon. I have never experienced so much pain, holding my son for twenty to thirty minutes while he screamed and cried and begged the doctor No, no, no. It was as if he were being tortured, and I couldn't do anything to ease or take away his pain. The finger was anesthetized, which was extremely painful (so many shots directly into the wounds), but the anesthesia was insufficient to keep the pain from him during the stitches.

He seems himself now, but my heart is going to take a while to heal. And his finger will take about four to six weeks until it's wriggling properly again.

Please pray.

Stuff Happens

So much has happened in October, our heads are still spinning.

Here's the latest: We got a new vehicle - a 2004 Ford Expedition. Our phat minivan was on its last leg: It smoked constantly and refused to start O so often. I had taken to calling it the Old White Dragon for all its smoking and stinking. It needed to go. We've put a couple thousand into it for the past two years just to keep it running and there was no way it was going to make it through all our traveling during the holidays - especially through the Virginias on the way to Michigan.

Now, the Expedition is sweet and I never thought I'd own one due to its price tag, but we had to have something to meet the needs of our family. I'm still unsure whether we'll be able to afford it, but I can eat ramen noodles and potatoes for a while. The minivan was packed like sardines with five kids in it - not to mention luggage and what not. The Expedition is roomy for our family and still has an extra seat just in case our gracious Lord blesses us with another child. We considered going to a 15-passenger van, but thought this would be a nice compromise until we absolutely had to go Mammoth. The gas mileage isn't great, but then it's not much different than our minivan was running and would be comparable to a 15-passenger van.

Laura suggested that it was somewhat of a status symbol, which if you knew our "status" is a knee-slapper. I said it might be a status symbol if we had only two children. Since we fill up the thing, it's a symbol only of our fecundity and not our finances.

The vehicle was not in our lava-stone driveway for 15 minutes before Will had succeeded in falling out of the back of the truck onto his head. A rock gashed him nicely and earned him an all-expenses-paid trip to the ER. He received two staples in his head. Such is life with small monkeys and curious raccoons.

He is doing quite well and seems, if possible, more rambunctious than usual - causing my heart to flutter into spasms and yet even more of my hair to shock into white.

I've considered shaving that patch of his head and making the staples visible for Halloween - then we could go in the direction of zombie or Frankenstein's monster quite nicely. But I suppose the hair does protect the wound and I probably ought to leave it alone. Man, that would be a sweet costume though. It might be worth an infection or two.

Anyway, that is my News of the past three days - October has been full with days like that. The good news is that fall temperatures have finally reached us and we even had a week of rain. I may need to mow that lawn yet.

Enjoy your Halloween celebrations. We'll be spending a good chunk of our day crafting and eating candy. I think I'll have to make up some "ghoul-ash" for supper tonight.