Ouch!

Chapter 1- The ER

Yesterday around 11:30AM I got a call from Ben asking me to bring his wallet to Reston Hospital (he had left it at home). I said sure and then he dropped the oh-by-the-way comment of, "I broke both my wrists." So after my initial shocked feeling settled down I headed to the Hospital.

At P/T yesterday morning Ben was doing a cross-fit workout with the other firefighters. He had a barbell totaling in weight of 205lbs held straight over his head doing "push and jerks." I am not quite sure exactly what that exercise entails, but anyways, he had the barbell over his head and was told to keep his weight more on his heels. He somehow lost his balance, fell straight backwards and landed on the ground in a bench press position (elbows back on the floor with his forearms straight upwards). All the weight was absorbed by his wrists.

After many x-rays and hours in the ER trauma, we found that his left wrist was definitely broken but in more of a clean break. His right wrist, however, was completely dislocated and broken with "wafers" of bone shattered off. Needless to say, the right wrist was worse off. They put Ben out so they could "reduce" his right wrist. Both wrists were splinted up past his elbows.

Today, Monday, we went to see the Orthopedic Surgeon, Dr Miller, who will be operating on Ben's right wrist. He determined that his left wrist should heal well in a cast after about 5-6 weeks. So he removed Ben's splint and casted his left wrist up to his elbow so he now has mobility of his elbow. Dr Miller said that based on the x-rays he would need to either pin or plate (or both) Ben's right wrist back together. But in order to determine what he needs to do, the Doctor ordered a CAT scan of the wrist.

So tentatively, the CAT scan should be tomorrow, the pre-operation consultation will be Wednesday and his surgery will be Thursday. Although nothing is completely set in stone, this is the ideal schedule.

The Doctor doesn't think Ben will be back to work until February or March. But it is too soon to tell. We will have to see how surgery goes. I will try and keep this blog as updated as possible.

Thank you to everyone for all your thoughts and prayers. :)

(*The photo above is of Ben on his "cocktail" of pain meds* :) )

Just for Giggles...

Dad's attempt at giving birth.

Lol.

Surprise Weekend

The weekend is over. The family is back in Ohio. But here is a look back on the surprise weekend.

Mom and Dad arrived on Saturday. We mostly relaxed and made a dinner stop to Mighty Midgets BBQ. On Sunday, Ben had to work :( but I decided to put Mom and Dad to work. We took Aida to Bark N Bubbles to give her a bath. I helped a little bit, but Mom and Dad did most of the dirty work. It was a lot of fun. After Aida's bath, we quickly learned of Dad's low blood sugar. So we got him some food for lunch and just hung out for the rest of the evening.

Monday we headed for Great Falls National Park. It seemed that Mom and Dad enjoyed the break from the busy traffic and concrete buildings. The weather was beautiful and we had a great time walking around.

After the park, Ben gave us a tour of huge houses in the area. Seeing these houses made us all question what in the heck these people do for a living.

On the departure day, Ben and Dad went into Herndon to a bread shop to pick up some yummy honey whole wheat bread while Mom and I got ready to go. After breakfast we headed up to Baltimore's Inner Harbor to spend a few hours before their flight. The traffic wasn't too bad driving up to Baltimore after we took a detour around I-495 (it was a parking lot!). We ended up taking the George Washington Parkway thru DC, which turned out to be a really fun. We could see Georgetown, the Washington Monument, The Capitol Building, and some other monuments from the Parkway.

Once we got to Baltimore we had a heck of a time finding a parking spot. Ben ended up getting focused and making a u-turn very illegally. We parked in a lot that ended up costing us $26!!!! We ate at Phillips seafood restaurant that was supposed to have Baltimore's best crab cakes. The experience was not a good one. The service was very very slow, the food was not good (except Dad's crab cake and Ben's mashed potatoes), and we were left with only like fifteen minutes to walk around. Despite the bad restaurant experience, the company was good.

We walked around for a bit and called it a teaser for Mom and Dad encouraging them to come back for a longer stay so we could take them to Baltimore for an entire day.

On a side note, we ended up being gone for around 6 and a half hours with Aida being home alone the entire time. She behaved herself wonderfully with no accidents or problems. This morning when Aida and I got up, she quickly ran out into the living room apparently looking for her grandma and grandpa. It was cute, but we were both bummed that they weren't still here.

Overall our visit was a lot of fun. And we are looking forward to more fun come October 10th!

!!!SURPRISE!!!

As many of you probably have already heard, Mom and Dad came down to Virginia to surprise me for the weekend!!! The surprise was a complete success as i had no idea that something was up. Ben had told me that one of his fellow firefighters wanted to go into DC on Saturday to see some of the sights because he and his wife hadn't been into the city in years. So believing my husband, we headed into DC to meet his friend at a restaurant for an early lunch at 11 am. Once we showed up (40 minutes late) we walked into the restaurant and as the hostess was asking if she could help us, I spotted Mom and Dad in the corner booth. I just stood there with my mouth open and was speechless. The hostess asked me again if she could seat us, and all i could stammer was, "my my my parents. My parents are over there! They're over there!" And i pointed them out and she looked at me like i definitely had some screws loose and said, "ok..."

So, needless to say, i was surprised. It was a great surprise. A great weekend. We are both sad they're gone, but we are looking forward to another visit in two weeks and three days!!!

I have more pictures from our fun weekend and I will probably post them tomorrow. I just thought I would post my initial "Surprise!" photo. :)

It was a really great weekend.

O-H-I-O!

On our most recent trip back to Ohio we were able to help Daniel move into his dorm. Our initial plan was to leave on Saturday so that Ben would have a day to relax before going back to work. But Ben decided on Saturday morning that we should stay and help Dan (and mom and Nathan) move down to Columbus. It was really nice being able to see Daniel's dorm room. While Nathan and Ben were racing down the hall in the University supplied moving bins, Mom and I helped Daniel unpack some of his things. However, Dan wanted to unpack things once we left (it would give him something to do). So I made his bed and we unpacked a few things, said our good byes, and headed back to good ol' Cuyahoga Falls.


Earlier in the week we picked Ben's parents up from the airport and went to dinner at Blue Canyon restaurant in Twinsburg. The food was great, except I had bitten into a stone or something in my mashed potatoes. They apologized profusely and gave us all dessert "on the house," and replaced my mashed potatoes. We celebrated Ben's mom's birthday with dessert. It was a nice time had by all.
I must have decided to go backwards with this posting, because this photo is from even earlier in the week. Aida's poor little paws had a serious allergic reaction to what we can only assume was seasonal allergies. She chewed on her back paws so much that she had raw spots. So we tried to help alleviate some of the irritation by pulling out her swimming pool. That dog could play in the water for hours on end. Her favorite part was to attack the hose spray. It was pretty humorous to watch.

And last but not least, Aida took a nap on her grandpa and grandma's couch and on uncle Dan's lap. How cute is this picture? It is hard to resist Aida's adorable face plopped down on whatever piece of furniture she wants to get invited up on. Even grandpa can't resist letting his grandpuppy up on his previously off limits to animals furniture.

I would like to make a special note to inform you that during a rousing game of Pictionary we all learned that Aunt Martha is a very talented artist. I mean, her rendition of a tongue depressor was down right inspiring....And during a game of Cranium, Uncle Larry gave an award winning charade's performance of Tyra Banks. The critics are raving about our talented family members...perhaps an encore is in the future? :)

Overall, we had a very fun visit. Unfortunately, we probably won't be back in Ohio for awhile. But we are looking forward to our guests in October: Mom, Dad, Aunt Martha and Uncle Larry. We're counting down: 4 weeks from today!

As always, we miss everyone! Love you all.

The Lost Post

I have finally gotten around to posting on the blog. As you may notice, the photos on this post are not from our most recent visit to Ohio. I didn't want to just skip over this visit all together, so before i post photos from our most recent visit, here is a quick recap on the August visit.

We went to the Akron Aeros game on the first day we arrived. It was a lot of fun, though the weather was a bit chilly. I couldn't tell you if the Aeros actually won or not, but i can tell you that the fireworks at the end of the game were spectacular! I wish i would have gotten pictures from the fireworks show, but unfortunately i was too busy watching.

One of the main reasons we came back was to go to Sean and Lynsey's wedding. They had a beautiful day for a wedding, and a beautiful wedding all around. We had lots of fun with Matt, Cat and Brett at the reception (and Nathan). I got to see a lot of people i went to school with that i hadn't seen in years.

That visit Dad also had his veins stripped in his one leg (fun times). So that was another reason we came back, we wanted to help out as much as we could.

Once i get my photos off the camera, i will post from our most recent visit. I hope everyone is doing well, we miss you all.