Soon there will be none left!

Dallin lost another tooth tonight. That's just 2 weeks after the last one. We're going to have to start calling him "Toothless Joe" pretty soon! 

It was so cute. The other 3 kids wanted in on the photo action and I just couldn't resist posting their photos too. Dallin was so proud to pose with each one of them. :-)

Yay for Albertsons Sale!!!

After pouring over ads and getting a crash coarse from a friend, I was able to get over $570 worth of groceries...

...for only $265!!! 

Oh yeah, I'm a mom... I get excited over groceries. :-)

Another visit with another surgeon

First of all, I would like to thank you all for the fasting and prayers on our behalf. We have truly felt them and really appreciate all that our family and friends are doing for us.

We met with another surgeon today, Dr. Murdock, and had a very interesting conversation with him. He walked into the office saying, "wow, how in the world did you do this?" Yup, Drostan is the 'freak of the week'. :-P We had brought the MRI with us so he had not had a chance to go over that yet but he had the x-rays and the radiologists notes. Immediately, we could feel that this was the guy we needed to be seeing. He really put himself on Drostan's chair and was working very hard to figure out what would be best for a fellow professional who needs his hands in order to work. We really felt his empathy for the situation. He started by going over multiple options from least aggressive to most/surgery. Because he has been functioning very well for years with this, there is the thought of treating the symptoms, or the pain. They could do a "steroid" type shot in the area every 4ish months or they could go in and remove or deaden a nerve in the area. I asked him about that being a masking of the symptoms and he agreed and said, since we know about the issue, that would be ok but of course, that wouldn't be a long term fix but depending on what the MRI showed, it could be something we do for now. Moving on to more invasive things, there are surgeries with bone grafts and re-vascularization but once you cut into that wrist, there is no going back. There will always be a more limited range of motion after. Best case, it's only a few degrees less than normal but it still will never be the same. Of course, if the bone is dying and causing other problems in there like cysts and spurs and such, surgery and a small loss of range of motion is better than everything falling apart and having to be fused in a few years.

He said there are about 6 hand specialist guys in the area and they meet every couple of months to go over interesting or challenging cases and he asked our permission to bring this up with them. He also talked about several hand surgeons across the country who "have more grey hair than he does" who would be great to consult with or possibly have Drostan go visit and get the most information we can about what is the best course of action. For now, he'd like Drostan to take an anti-inflammatory type drug (like Celebrex but I can't remember the name of it) for a month while he goes over the MRI and meets with his colleagues. That way he will have all the information he needs and we can see how this drug works for Drostan. So, right now, we are meeting with him again on Feb. 3rd and then we'll go from there. If surgery is needed, we'll determine what type and if they'll tackle both wrists or do one at a time. He did mention that on vascularized bone grafts, he likes to have them casted for 3 months at a time but also put the possibility out there of doing them at the same time. I guess we'll see.

So no definitive answers yet, other than we feel we're headed in the right direction with the right people on our side. We may have to reevaluate our plans a bit but we know in the end, it will all work out the way it is supposed to.

Hilarious update to Dallin's birthday

So here are a few pics of him blowing out candles and opening presents. 

He told me he didn't want a whole cake, just cup cakes so that's what we did. Also, at first he said he wanted an "oreo" cake but then changed it to carrot cake. Seriously, this is my fruit and veggie kid! I told him he could have anything he wanted for dinner and he chose taco salad and shrimp! lol 

He got a big fat workbook to help him with his writing. He was actually really excited about it and did about 40 pages already today.

And then he got a big nurf type bow and arrow set. He was thrilled because he knows Daddy hunts with a bow so he wanted to learn.

He decided to line up some of his stuffed animals to try and see if he could hit them. Jaron and Megan ended up sitting next to them to help with the target practice. We were laughing so hard.