Family and friends are THE most important things in our lives. We wanted to start a blog as a way to keep in touch with family and friends. We will try our very best to keep you updated on our lives, and we would love to hear from you as well. Please feel free to post comments and let us know what is going on in your life as well. We are fortunate to have so many people who we love and love us in return. However, unfortunately you all don't live as near as we'd like. We hope this is a way to make you feel closer to us.

Friday, December 2, 2011

Giving In

**Please click on the hyperlinks if you want to read more about the specific medical terms I use**

I've been experiencing pain in my right shoulder for a couple years and I've known that I would need surgery to address the problem, but I've been avoiding it for as long as I can. Earlier this year I went to physical therapy, yes people I WENT to P.T..  I'm not good enough at pushing myself and frankly I don't specialize in shoulder disorders.  However, my shoulder never got better, so I decided to have an MRI. The MRI showed that I had a SLAP lesion.  This was bad news because I knew I would have to be off work for a minimum of 6-8 weeks if I had surgery to repair this. I didn't have the Paid Time Off (PTO) to in order to do this so I just kept putting it off. I went to see Dr. John Edwards in Bountiful, who happens to be LaVell Edwards son. LaVell was the head coach of the BYU football team and a good friend of my Grandpa Ernie Wilkinson.

After examining my shoulder, Dr. Edwards felt that the MRI may be a false positive . He decided to inject my shoulder with cortisone to see if that would help. It worked and I experienced pain relief for about 5 weeks but then it wore off so I returned and had another shot, which worked for another 6 months. The pain returned though and I decided to go in for a 3rd injection. Typically doctors will only do a maximum of 3 injections in a year because of the potential side effects of the cortisone. Dr. Edwards felt that since the injections were helping that was an indication that surgery would help. He proposed doing arthroscopic shoulder surgery including a subacromial decompression and distal clavicle resection. He said I would only be in a sling for 2 days and I could go back to work in 7-10 days. Wow, that was a lot less than the 6-8 weeks for the SLAP repair, so I gave it some thought and decided I just needed to have the surgery done and over with. Christy felt the same way because she was sick and tired of hearing me complain about it. 

The surgery was performed on Monday Nov. 28, 2011.Thankfully it was a false positive and I did not have a SLAP lesion. However Dr. Edwards said I may have suffered an injury to my clavicle at sometime as he removed an "old" piece of bone that was floating around.  It's now 4 days after surgery and I'm feeling pretty good. I only wore the sling for a day or 2, intermittently, and I start formal P.T. today. However, I got a jumpstart on the P.T. the day of surgery, as Ryley acted as my own personal P.T.  Watch the following video to see her at work. She's got one great imagination. 



Groupon Family Photo

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it in the past or not but I'm addicted to shopping online and I love a "good deal" as much as the next person. This past year I've been sucked into purchasing various deals from Groupon and Living Social including but not limited to 30 days of bootcamp (twice), a night at the Hard Rock Hotel in Vegas, three 16x20 Canvas photos (one was purchased for a gift), a Shutterfly photo book, a night stay at the Park Plaza hotel in Park City, a detailed carwash, etc.  I purchased a Groupon in May good for a photo session from Jolley photography and either an 11x14 or 8x10 and three 4x6 photos. It was my intention to have a family photo taken outside during the Fall to capture the beautiful colors. Well, life happened and things got crazy and the expiration date for the Groupon approached quickly. I scheduled an appointment and what do you know, it was on the only day of the week that was FREEZING and WINDY. It's a good thing the couple was able to shoot our photos in a studio in the basement of their home.

The photos turned out great. We were able to get an 8x10 pic of just the kids, a 4x6 of Easton, a 4x6 of Ryley, a 4x6 of the 4 of us and for ONLY (insert sarcasm here) $50 more, ONE digital print on CD so we could do whatever we wanted with it (I already had a Groupon for a 16x20 canvas photo). The photo below is the one digital photo we purchased. I'm so happy to get a good shot of the 4 of us. The lady who was editing the photo called to ask if we wanted her to touch up Easton's forehead. She wasn't sure if that spot was a mole or scratch. After talking about it with Christy, we decided to have her leave it. It's the remnants of Easton's first stitches he received about 4 days earlier. It was one of things we thought we would want to remember.