Ben's Follow Up/Update and First Day of School

Three weeks after Ben's surgery he had another seizure.  He seemed to be in pain again afterward so I was instructed to take him in for xrays.  Initially, the doctor said it all looked fine and they would see us a few days later for his originally scheduled follow up.

Dr Huntley, our surgeon was out of town so we saw a colleague, Dr Stotts.

He was awesome!  He really took time and seemed to care.

When he showed us the xrays, he had a concern that the ends of the screws seemed much closer to the top of the bone then in the original xrays.  He suggested a CT scan to make sure, from a different view, they hadn't actually punctured through.  If that was the case they would need to go back in and fix it.

They were able to almost immediately get us in for a scan which was amazing and, they told us, almost unheard of.  Dr Stotts also wanted us to get some blood drawn to check Ben's Vit D levels since low Vit D/soft bones could explain the movement of the screws.  Another possibility was that the bone was dying/deteriorating and that was why the screws had shifted.

Ben handled the scan so well! 

The blood draw on the other hand was not executed very well and Andy was pretty sure the phlebotomist hit a nerve instead of a vein on the first attempt.  Poor Ben was crying big old tears, which we know from experience, takes a whole lot of pain.  The second attempt was much easier.

We were in and out of that hospital, having had an appointment, a spur of the moment CT scan and blood draw, all in 2ish hours.  It was incredible!  To add to the amazingness of the day, Dr Stotts called us not 15 minutes after we  had left with the results of the scan.  He said it looked really good, the screws had not gone through and he could see that the bone looked very healthy and his guess was the Vit D level was going to come back low and we would just need to add a supplement.

When I was getting Ben out of the car to go into the appointment, I was telling Andy that we may need to get some F-R-I-E-S for him after.  Ben somehow knew what I had spelled and immediately started asking for fries :)  So, while waiting to see the Dr. we googled "good fries" in the area and decided on Burly Burgers.

It was a hit all around!

Super good fries!

School started the next week...

Matt was actually pretty excited for his Senior year to begin!

So crazy that Matt is a Senior!

(with his very sophisticated backpack)

And then here is my Sophomore

...but let me give you some more of the story for Ben starting school...

About 8 or 9 days before school started I alerted his teacher to the situation.  It ended up being a much more complicated process to arrange for him to go to school than I expected!  They needed to have meetings and to adjust his IEP and have training and all kinds of things.  So, to put it shortly, he was not able to start school with everyone else.  He missed the first two days completely and then we met and I was able to show the team, even though I had already communicated and gotten a note from the doctor, that there were really no concerns...that he just couldn't put weight on his hip.  I know they were just being careful and wanting to do things the right way, but honestly, it was a bit frustrating.  There was a whole thing with the bus too {eye roll}.  The bus driver asked for a pic of his chair and got back to me the night before school started and told me they would be able to transport him.  However, certain members of the team did not believe it was okay.  They agreed to have Ben come for half a day for the time being.  They would get him out of his chair after two hours to make sure he wasn't developing pressure sores (even though I had told them he had tolerated 4 hours at a time for a month just fine).  So, I took him in the morning, dropped him off at the seminary and then 4 hours later I picked him up.  After a couple of days his teacher told me they had heard back that the bus would be okay to take his wheelchair.  Thank you...even though I had already told you that.  Then, a day or so later, I was told that he was changing rooms and teachers (they have two head teachers at the school since there are so many kids in the class)  Ben had been in the second room with the additional teacher that had been hired the year before.  A brand new teacher,  freshly graduated from USU, was hired for the new year.  She was super sweet and I was excited to have Ben in her class.  When I reached out and thanked her for being so good to us for the first few days (and secretly hoped she would explain the change) she told me their supervisors had had to shift some students because they had lost a couple in the other class and they had been told Ben would be the one to move.  I was glad it hadn't anything to do with Ben and it was just part of a domino effect.

This is his scar after about 4 or 5 weeks

The second to last day of August we had our 6ish week xrays scheduled.

After they were done, the nurse got back to us and said Dr Huntley was happy with them but still no weight bearing until the Dr had been able to see him in person...which he wasn't able to do for another 1.5 weeks :(  I was pretty disappointed since, for some reason, I had expected to be told he could start weight bearing right then because the xray looked great.  Okay, I could be patient and wait another week and a half.  At least Ben hadn't had any expectations :)

I think I will stop here for now since this is the end of the story in August.

I will pick up the narrative with a Ben update in September.

Here are a few pics of Ben and Bapa on a Sunday evening in August...