Three weeks down...

Sorry for the lack of updates.  It's a bit crazy around here.

Micah saw his orthopedic surgeon last Monday (5/9) for x-rays and checkup.  I'm no expert, but the bone still looked very broken to me (I should have taken a photo).  With a fracture like his and his age, the surgeon had to "reduce" the bone length by about 1cm because it is going to grow faster than the other bone with all of the blood flowing there to heal the bone.  I trust the surgeon (he's the pediatric lower-extremity expert here in the Cities), but it still looked yucky to me.

Micah's sleeping took a turn for the worse after my last post.  He was waking up about 8 times each night for a while.  Ugh.  It was difficult to know the cause, so I asked his pediatrician for a Rx for reflux.  It seems to be helping.  Micah now has most of his sleep issues before midnight and then sleeps until 5:30ish before needing some more help to get back to sleep again.  It's much better.  So maybe it was reflux after all.  Or maybe he is finally getting used to not rolling over at night.

My dad was here visiting this past weekend and we had a nice time.  But to go on an outing as a family, we had to take two cars because Micah takes up so much room in the car.  We have him laid out in the second row of the minivan.  He has a harness that goes around him (with seven adjustments) and we run two seatbelts through that.  He has a pillow under his head and one under his legs.  He's fallen asleep there a few times, as evidenced below.

We have very much appreciated the love and support we are receiving from family and friends.  We sadly had to say goodbye (just for the summer!) to our wonderful babysitter/PCA last Friday.  We have two other PCA's for the summer, one of whom started today.  He's great!  I hope this hasn't been too crazy for him!  He'll be working with us for 3 weeks.  After that, we have a recently-minted master's in SLP who will be spending the summer working with Micah.  Yay!

Micah is continuing to go to therapy (except PT, but more on that in a minute).  Here's a pic of him with one of his SLP's, Lindsay.

Micah is going to speech/feeding twice a week and OT once a week.  We had dropped PT.  But... at Micah's last speech session, his therapists asked me how long he had been biting his arms and hands.  Um... I don't know.  It's new, I think.  The day before, I had seen what I thought was a red spotty rash on Micah's arms and wrote it off to heat rash (yeah, right, I live in MN, but it was 86 degrees one day... nevermind it was 40 a couple of days later).  Anyway, they feel that Micah is providing himself with sensory stimulation since he's missing out on all of his mobility.  I am so sad about that.  My child is biting himself.  Any thoughts?  We're adding PT back to give him some more stimulation.  And hopefully by having a PCA here almost all day, he will be too occuppied to bite anymore.

But just to show that he's not horribly depressed or something, here's a pic of Micah with his cheese face:

Oh, I forgot to mention... Micah's cast will come off on June 8th.  He will be in a leg immobilizer brace for a few weeks.  He will be able to bear weight and bend at the waist.  But it will be a few weeks before he's allowed to bend that leg.  Maybe it will be better that way because he will HAVE to walk because he won't be able to crawl.

On a separate note... say something like this happened in your family.  And maybe prior to this happening, your family was considering a decision on a separate topic.  Would you view Micah's injury as a reason NOT to proceed with that decision because it was a sign from God that your life is a bit too crazy right now?  Or would you view Micah's injury as confirmation that you were headed in the right direction because the "opposition" (devil) didn't want you to make that decision?  Please discuss. :-)