Family and Surgery Update

Wow! I am so good at updating my blog (not)! I am starting to enjoy reading everyone else's blogs and so I really want to start doing this myself as well!

The Taylor family is all doing good. Both Jeff and I are trying to finish up this semester at school. I am so proud of Jeff because he has done such a good job of keeping up with his homework. I claim to do well under pressure and I guess I will be testing that theory since there is a week left and I still have about 5 papers to write.

The kids are off track and Savannah is the most excited about it. I don't know if I am a big fan of year round school or not, but Savannah definitely looks forward to having a three week break every other month. I don't know if she will feel the same way once all of her friends are out of school and she has to attend all through the month of June. I am so glad to have Jeff home with me. He does such a good job taking care of the kids. There isn't anyone in the world who could do a better job taking care of our family. I love him.

My surgery went well on Tuesday. I had my husband and parents with me at the hospital for the much needed moral support. Jeff's mom and family cared for our kids. It was a huge responsibility to care for those monkeys and I am so grateful that we didn't need to worry about them. They had a lot of fun. Lorissa was also gracious enough to take Savannah and Jaden for two days. It was a special treat for them and it helped us out a lot with trying to adjust to being home.

I will still need a few days to recover. Surprisingly enough, the surgery wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. The reason for the surgery is that I had a herniated disk between my c4 and c5 vertebrate that was causing a bone spur to push into my spinal chord. This had symptoms like arm and leg numbness and crazy involuntary reflex movements. This is the reason we decided to get an MRI to see what was going on. Anyway, the doctor made a small incision at the front of my neck to somehow use a microscope to go befind my neck and take out the bad disk and fuse it with a new bone. More neck fusion? Yep....my neck will be even stiffer....but things could always be much worse. Anyway, I don't have much pain from the incision. The only thing that is causing me pain is from the intubation tube from the surgery. Since my neck had been fused previously(and they couldn't really lean my head back to open my airway), it was extremely difficult to navigate the breathing tube down my airway. They used some fiber optic camera to help, but there was still quite a bit of unavoidable damage to my throat and airways. One bonus of having previous neck fusion surgeries is that I don't really have to wear a neck brace this time around. My neck is already pretty stable. Remember the days of the halo brace....I'm definitely glad that I don't have to do that again. :) Of course I have plenty of good drugs to help me through this....and so if this post is rather long and sounds weird....I'll blame it on the drugs. Anyway, thanks to everyone who offered their words of encouragement. It really felt good to hear them and I love you guys.

It should be just a few weeks before I am able to go back to work. Until then...I guess I'll enjoy a little more trashy daytime tv...and I guess I should work a bit on homework too.....