Haborview Appointment #2

So we returned to Harborview a month later. I had my standing cat scan done. It was really wired how they do the standing cat scan. If you know anything about a cat scan machine you can't actually stand up, instead they have this strange contraption that they put on the machine table where you would normally lay down and it simulates you standing on your feet. 

Once we finished the CT scan we went upstairs to see the Doctor and find out what the results of the CT Scan. 

This visit was a lot different than our first visit. First of all the Doctor was on time and he did a complete 180. He was polite and actually tired to get to know me as a person instead of just a patient needing his help. He then said that based on the CT results that my ankle was clasping in on itself. He then proceeded to give us three options.

The first option was doing nothing and continue bracing. We took this option off the table very quickly because we knew this would not be a long term option because of the amount of pain I was in before I started wearing my boot again and using crutches.

The second option was ankle fusion. Which would mean that they would fuse my ankle and I would have limited mobility up and down. They prefer to do an ankle fusion because of my having a bad knee.

The third option was an ankle allograft. Which is where they usually take bone from other parts of your body or cadaver parts and rebuild your ankle. 

After the options were presented, we decided that we needed to discuss the different options and do some research, so that we had a better understanding of what the options were.     

Continuing on my ankle journey

As I posted in an earlier post I broke my ankle and had to have everything repaired. Well the ankle journey is still an on going process.

I am now at 8 months of dealing with this problem. I was doing pretty well until I had my screw removal surgery in October and that is when everything changed.

After I had my screws removed I was allowed to start weight barring and getting back to my normal activities. I was doing very well and then I went to a physical therapy appointment and that is when everything changed. I moved on to the balance portion of physical therapy and after the new exercise I really started to hurt. I just figured it was something I hadn't done in several months and that my muscles and tendons were just getting used to working again. However, the pain continued to get worse. My ankle started to hurt worse than when I originally broke it. I went back to using my crutches and back to wearing my boot to help with the pain. I called the doctor and told him what was going on and he said that wasn't normal. So I was sent for x-rays. I found out that something had shifted in my ankle and that was what was causing the pain. I had reached the end of the amount of help that my orthopedist could help me. He sent my to another orthopedist in Kirkland. Brandon and I made the trip over there and the doctor took one look at my x-rays and said that everything had moved a quarter of an inch. He said that the ankle can handle a little bit of shifting but not as much as mine had done. He had only done one of the surgeries required to fix my ankle and thought it would be best to go to UW at Harborview.

We made an appointment and made the trip over to Harborview. It was an awful first experience there. They didn't give me a chance to finish filling out the new patient paperwork. Brandon tired his best to fill out what he could which wasn't much. I also was told that I needed x-rays which was fine but the way that the nurse explained them made both Brandon and I think that I was already supposed to have come with them and that they needed to be standing x-rays. Which concerned me a little bit because I had been told that I wasn't supposed to put any weight on my ankle unless I was in my boot. I had the x-rays and then we sat in the room for almost two hours past my appointment time. Finally the resident came in and talked with us and then she went to talk to the Dr. Well they came back and the doctor was a real grump and asked why we were there. He didn't have a clear picture of what was going on and was more concerned about my A1C than my ankle. He said that I needed to have a standing CT scan and then we would have a follow-up appointment with him to discuss the next steps that needed to be taken. We scheduled the appointment for a month later.

Coming tomorrow will be the 2nd appointment blog entry!

Broken Ankle

Well I know that I said I was going to turn this blog into my knee saga but the knee is off the table at the moment because over the Fourth of July I fell and broke my fibula and my ankle. The fibula is not that big of a deal, my ankle on the other hand is a really big deal.


My ankle was partially dislocated, jammed up into my leg bones, and I tore all the tendons and ligaments. I also had to have surgery to fix everything.

The continuing knee journey

I know that it has been awhile since I have updated the blog but I am going to give it a try again. This time it is going to focus on my knee. Things with my knee have gone from being stable to having serious issues again.

As I'm sure most of you know I have problems with my knees. I had surgery on the left knee but the surgery didn't fix the problem. I had surgery 9/11/07 and the following October the issue that the doctor had fixed unfixed itself and I was told that another surgery could not be done to fix it again. So the plan of attack was to live with it the way it was.

Well, my knee had other plans. In April, I started making a clicking noise and was in a lot more pain and more swollen than normal. I had already planned to go see the orthopedic doctor in May but apparently my knee had other ideas. I went and saw my primary care doctor because I couldn't get in any sooner to the orthopedic doctor. My primary care doctor ordered x-rays but the x-rays didn't show anything other than more arthritis. The doctor did note that I was more swollen than normal and that I shouldn't be making the clicking noise.

I went to the orthopedic doctor two weeks later and he took one look at the x-rays and said that I didn't have cartilage left in my knee which is why I was in more pain and more swollen than normal. He started to talk about removing my knee cap and then decided that I was outside of his realm of expertise and wanted to send me to UW.

I have run into a hiccup into going to the UW. My insurance won't pay for me to go to UW until I have seen one of their orthopedic doctors first. My original orthopedic doctor was a contract doctor with the insurance company and the insurance company won't accept his diagnosis and I have to see one of their providers first.

On Tuesday Brandon and I are making a trip to Bellevue on Tuesday and then will go from there. I have already decided to go in with the attitude that the doctor has to have a plan of attack before they touch my knee. The last time I had surgery the doctor didn't have a plan of attack and this time that is not going to happen even if it means having an exploratory surgery first.

I have been praying that I will still be able to go to UW because we have done some research and have discovered that at UW they are doing cartilage grafts. I'll update after my appointment on Tuesday.   

Blessings of paying tithing

We are feeling incredibly blessed this past week.  I have come to believe that it is because we paid our tithing.  Now Brandon and I are not very good at paying our tithing on the regular basis's.  However, we felt that we needed to pay it for the month of April.  I am really glad that we did.

The week after we paid our tithing I lost my job.  Which was a big blow to both of us because we did not see it coming.  I had never really taken the time to figure out how important it was for me to be working.  Well I sat down to figure out all of our expenses.  Lets just say my job was more important than I thought.

I applied for unemployment but found out that I was 32 hours short.  So no unemployment. 

Well, did we get a surprise on Thursday evening.  It was the day before pay day for and in addition to Brandon's pay stub was an additional pay stub.  Inside of the other pay stub was a bonus and that bonus was almost my entire salary for one month.

I know that this happened because we paid our tithing.  I couldn't be happier to know that we will be okay for another month.

The Craziness of the Past two Weeks

S
orry, this post turned into a novel. Well now that I have had a week to process everything, I figured that it was time to put hand to computer and get all of my thoughts out.

It all started the week of June 5th, Brandon's Grandmother had to be admitted to the hospital because she was unresponsive when the nursing home staff came to wake her up. She was out of the hospital a couple of days later, so we thought that we were out of the woods, but I made sure that we had a sub for primary just in case. Grandma Sparks returned to the hospital Thursday night which is when she decided that she did not want any heroic measures taken to save her life. We were unsure if we needed to go over to Olympia because were not getting a start answer out of Brandon's mom. I kept getting the promoting that we needed to go over, but Brandon said that we would play it by ear.

So, we made plans to go to Toppinish and go to the Yakima Nation Cultural Center Restaurant for their once of month all-you-can-eat seafood buffet. We made it through dinner and ran our errands around Yakima, and we were getting ready to head back to Ellensburg, when we got a text message, saying that Grandma wasn't doing very well and that she would be returning to her the nursing home on Saturday and that they would be meeting with the hospice nurse to setup hospice. So, we decided that it was best to head to Olympia, so that we could say goodbye to Grandma. We didn't leave Ellensburg until 11:30pm and we arrived in Olympia at 2am but didn't actually go to bed until 3:30am.

The next day (Saturday June 11th), we got up at 9:30 because we had to drive down to Chehalis to where Grandma's nursing home was to meet the hospice nurse at noon. We got down their and the hospice nurse was running late so we had a few minutes to spend some time with Grandma. She did not look good at all. This really hit me hard because I had lost my Grandma not even a month before. I had not had the opportunity to see my grandma go down hill because I said goodbye to her at Christmas and never got to see her again. All of the emotions that I had regarding my Grandma's death a month earlier came flooding to the surface. So, while Brandon, his mom and aunt went to meet with the hospice nurse. It was really sad to be in Grandma's room and realize I was doing the exact same thing in December with my Grandma, just sitting there with my sewing.

Brandon and his family finished meeting with the hospice nurse, they all returned to Grandma's room. As a family, we just kind of sat/stood there not really knowing what to do. Brandon's aunt asked if she could offer up a prayer which we were fine with. Then Brandon decided to ask Grandma if he could give her a blessing. She immediately nodded her head yes. Brandon gave her the blessing and it was a very powerful experince for him. At the beginning of the blessing there was a flash of light, then he saw a person he had never seen before, we are guessing that it was his grandfather who died before Brandon was born, then at the end of the blessing there was another flash of light. We believe this is when Grandma's spirit left the earth because she was not with it at all. We were very surprised that she made it through the night.

After that we went to get some food because none of us had any food that day. We went to our favorite restuarent Country Cousin. It was a good meal but very different at the same time. We returned to Olympia for some down time before heading over to his aunt and uncle's apartment for dinner. We stayed there until 1am and didn't go to bed until 2am. Needless to say we were all running on little sleep.

Then, the next morning we were getting up around 10am to go see grandma again. Then we got the phone call at 10:45 that grandma had passed. This was a great shock to us but not a huge surprise. We finished getting ready and went down to say our goodbyes to grandma. This was really hard for me because I had never seen a dead body before. We stayed for awhile to say our goodbyes and it just seemed like the perfect time to play the hymn, God be with you until we meet again. It brought us all comfort and made us realize that we will be reunited with Grandma in heaven.

After we said our goodbyes, it was time to start making funeral arrangements. Lets just say this is when things went from bad to awful. The family went into all out war.

First, of all the funeral director failed to mention that there was a $200 fee for meeting with him on Sunday. If Brandon's aunt hadn't been with Brandon and his mom would have just walked and found someone else to do the funeral. The other problem was that Brandon's Aunt and Unvle are declairing bankruptcy for the third time and cannot incure any new debts until after the 10th of July. Which means that Brandon's mom had to pay for everything.

Then we started actually talking about what we wanted to do for the funeral, which made things even worse. Because one side of the family is LDS while the other side of the family isn't. We simply requested that Brandon bless the grave and play the song God be with until we meet again. This was unaccepatable to Brandon's aunt and uncle because we were blocking grandma was getting into heaven. Things just got worse. I stayed out of it and just focused on putting grandma to rest. I think that the worse thing that was said was when Brandon's uncle compared Brandon's mom to his ex-wife.

We are all trying to heal, it is still unknown how long it will take to repair the family relationships but hopefull with time everything will be alright.

A less than perfect Valentine's Day but still a good one

The day started out kind of rough, I had been sick the day before so I was still kind of recovering. We also didn't fall asleep until 4 am, so that didn't help matters. The one exciting thing that morning was knowing that it was the last Monday that Brandon would be waking up and going to work for SignDog/CopyDog. We couldn't be more thrilled. I guess I should update you on what the heck I am talking about.

Lets back up a little bit: So about a week ago Brandon had an interview with Calaway Trading, a hay export company here in Ellensburg for an IT Manager position. This couldn't have come at a better time, things have been getting worse at SignDog/CopDog. We believe that it was divine intervention that led Brandon to this job. I noticed it in the Daily Record and was going to mention it to Brandon but before I had the chance we had our institute marriage class and the teacher told Brandon about it and that he should apply for it.

Brandon was hymning and hahaing about applying for it. Then on Sunday we were a little slow getting out of the building and ended up meeting Jeff Calaway in the entry way and we were able to introduce ourselves and Brandon was able to ask about the job. From there Brandon applied for the job. He found out last Friday that he had been hired. We are supper excited because it is a full time job and comes with benefits.

So I guess you can say that our Valentine's Day started on Friday because we went out to dinner to celebrate Brandon's new job. I love the Road House's Happy Hour. We were able to eat dinner for two and it was only $20. Which is really cheap when eating out at a nice restaurant.

On Valentine's Day, things did not go as planned. I took Brandon to work, so that I could go to the grocery store and get the final ingredient for our dinner. First, I went to Safeway and ended up finding lamb on clearance, so I was standing in the busy check out line and of course Brandon's debit card decides not to work. He needs a new one really badly and because of my name not being the same as his, they wouldn't go the over ride. So I had to walk out of the store without the lamb. Now by this time it is 5:30 and I need to get home to drop Millie off and feed her and get to my weight loss class by 6:30. I had to run to Fred Meyer and Fred Meyer was even crazier than Safeway but the customer service was far better. Brandon's debit card worked but by this time it is 5:45, so I race home and feed Millie and was rushing around trying to get everything together that I need to. I ended up forgetting my notebook, and didn't have time to change my clothes, so I ended up going in my jeans and slippers which doesn't work very well when you are learning how to do Pilates, which doesn't work very well for me when you are stiff because of your arthritis.

We didn't get home until 8 and we were both exhausted. So we sat down on the couch and snuggles for awhile. While we were snuggling Millie took it upon herself to pee in the house. She is not happy about my being alpha female, so she is acting out. Today, I discovered that she had pooped in the office. I ended up having to clean up after the dog.

I finally started dinner around 9:30. We had lamb with honey mustard and rosemary crust with satiated asparagus, with french onion roasted potatoes, and satiated onion with mushrooms. It tasted delicious and it was romantic, even though we didn't eat until almost 11 last night.

I had a lot of fun cooking dinner and I felt like it was so much better than going out. I got Brandon the movie Up and Brandon got me chocolate truffles and a handmade coupon book. I am excited to us my coupons.