In Which I Talk About Something Other Than The House

I got so involved in my ramp planning yesterday (Now I'm thinking about living wall panels-- wouldn't that be cool on the side of a ramp wall? Totally impractical and hard to maintain, so I probably wouldn't actually do it, but very cool.) that I forgot to give you the update on Jer! Sorry about that.

There's Jeremy hanging out with our son, No-Pants boy, yesterday morning. Connor will wear a shirt to bed but he draws the line at pants. He's signing "Daddy" in this picture-- isn't he cute?

So Jer went in for a hearing test yesterday, because he's been having some trouble with loud sounds setting off a "static" sort of noise in his ear; it's rather uncomfortable and certainly distracting. They tested his hearing and he doesn't have any hearing loss, which is good. Basically they said that it's likely the concussion wave from the blast injured his middle ear and there's not really anything they can do to fix the problem, but it should get better over time. In the meantime I'm going to have to figure out how to moderate my voice a little better-- I tend to get really loud when I'm excited about a topic, and with the whole house buying thing I've been excited a lot recently, so now I get "shushed" a whole bunch. Oh well.

Jer also went down to the casting room, where they removed a staple in his graft that had been accidentally left in and also pulled out the wire sticking out of the top of his foot. This was the wire holding the navicular bone in place while it healed, and it's been a little over two months since it was put in. It stuck out about 3/4 in out of the surface of his foot, and was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. He was having a difficult time doing all of his physical therapy exercises because the wire went through either a muscle or tendon involved with the movement of his big toe, so it made his range-of-motion exercises kind of painful. Also whenever he had his air cast on the cast was essentially sitting on the wire and pressing it down into his foot. Ow.

Jeremy was a little bit nervous about them taking the wire out, and I can't say that I blame him. They don't use any anesthesia or anything, and while they tell you it won't hurt at all the fact that they're pulling 3 in long wire out of a bone in your foot makes you tend to think they're lying. Additionally exciting was the fact that it was a resident who obviously hadn't done this before taking it out of Jer's foot, so we got to hear the instructions. "You just twist it around like a corkscrew and yank it out," the orthopedic surgeon told him. Whee.

But as it turns out, it really doesn't hurt-- the guy took a hold of the wire, twisted it around for a second, and then pulled it out, and Jer didn't feel a thing. Weird. He now has a band aid over a rather large hole in his foot, and he's much more comfortable both moving his toe and wearing the cast. He's also a little less anxious about getting all the wires sticking out of the sides of his feet pulled, which they'll be doing on Wednesday. I think he's rather looking forward to it-- those all push against the cast too.

Jer can feel sensation just about everywhere except for a couple spots on the side and top of his left foot and his graft area, where the skin is totally numb. This is great because it means that for the most part the nerves are all working correctly! I was under the impression that he'd get sensation back in the graft area eventually, but Jer's PT said it was likely he never will feel anything there again because he lost so much tissue and the graft is so large.

We'll just have to see; the body is a pretty amazing thing!

~Jess