Where did this adventure train of pain begin? When he decided that he wanted to learn to play guitar. I loved the little bandages he so carefully cut out and then applied in just the rights position to provide enough padding to continue playing. He quickly discovered that they didn't really stay on very well and it made trying to hit the notes even more difficult. Every time he would get a few chords down he would eagerly show me how much progress he was making in the song and the pain in his fingers. He is learning what "love is pain" really means.
Jared was unfortunate enough to inherit my toes. He, however, did not inherit his flat feet from me - at least not that I'll admit to. We've been trying to figure out the best time to fix him up. I didn't want him to suffer through the pain until into his late 30's like I did. So we made an appointment with a super fab foot dr. Have a look at those unfortunate toes. He also needed an implant to correct his hyper mobilization in his foot.
Ok, the below picture doesn't reflect any pain other than the dog hogging the guest air mattress. While my friend and her family were here visiting we had beds all over the house. The boys decided to have some fun since the dog was hogging the bed. Is that not the most adorable picture ever?
The night before the surgery, Jared and his friend Josh decided that they needed to have some intense fun. This little plan for fun started with good intentions - the rest of Jared's summer was going to be ruined because of the surgery. Good judgement quickly flew out the window and a good idea escalated into a bad one.
We had only been joking the day before how whenever Josh comes to visit, Jared ends up with stitches. Last time they went shooting and jared got his hand in the way while cocking the gun and ended up getting stitches on the first day of their visit which led to no swimming the entire time Josh was here. This time they decided to ride scooters and skateboards as fast as they could down the pretty step hill that makes up our street.
The kids came in the house first to warn me that something had happened before Jared walked in. Luckily he hadn't broken any bones but I was concerned about the cut on his chin. Every time something like this happens I am extra grateful to be married to a surgeon. I called up Nate and asked him if he wanted me to bring Jared to him or just hit up urgent care.
Luckily Nate had time in his schedule to see Jared and clean him up. I brought along the cohorts in adventures to support Jared in his time of need. I would have been bawling like a baby if I had been banged up as bad as Jared. Road rash is a seriously painful - I know from experience. We concluded that not only did Jared get his feet from me, but his inability to stay away from dumb decisions.
I told him about the time I learned to ride my bike with no hands. I was so cocky and void of rational thought that I said to myself "if I can ride no hands, I can stop no hands!" This led to me flying over the handlebars and loosing a good portion of skin over my entire body.
I also told him of the time I was showing off in front of my male cousins. I've always had the affliction of wanting to prove that I was man enough to hang with the boys - mostly because I hated hanging out with girls. They were riding skateboards and so I was too.....until I hit a bump at the end of the driveway and the skateboard flew out from under me and I landed on my tush - which caused me to black out and the fall compressed my spine and cracked 3 of my vertebrae.
Next dumb decision I made was when I put my roller-skates on in the house. The major problem with that logic was that our living room was upstairs -which meant that the front door was downstairs- which meant that I needed to go down the stairs with the skates on. My Mom warned me of the potential dangers - to which I gave some snarky reply and made my way down the stairs to prove her wrong! I didn't even make it 2 steps before falling down the stairs.
What was Jared's downfall in the glorious idea of speeding downhill on a scooter? A darn rock which knocked him off course and right for a crack in the road which then threw him and he rolled and skidded down the hill with his body. Poor kid.
The next day was surgery day. I think Nate was more nervous to perform the surgery than Jared was to have it. When I had my toes done Nate wouldn't even consider doing it. At the time there was a dr in town that he trusted so he sent me off to him. Well, that dr retired and he didn't want to trust Jared's feet to anyone else. The funniest thing was that everyone kept asking Jared what happened and assuming that he broke something and that was why he was there for surgery. We had another great perk in that the anesthesiologist is in our ward and one of the best. He took good care of Jared and gave him a fair amount of teasing about his injuries.
After surgery Jared did not want to wake up from anesthesia. It took him an hour to wake up and when I finally got to go back he still wasn't very coherent. I tried to take a couple of videos but I kept missing the best parts and the nurse kept giving me dirty looks. I don't think she liked that I was laughing and taking video. I couldn't help it, he was freakin hilarious. I asked him if he knew who I was and in typical scholarly (yet very slurry drunk) fashion Jared replied "Yes, you are Heather Ivey. My mother." No "you're my mom, or mommy." Nope the formal answer was what I got. He kept talking about time being weird and kept telling me and asking me the same thing over and over again and I just kept answering like it was the first time. He was also very disappointed that he didn't get to see if the operating room was like on "House." When his mumbles got a little more recognizable as words he started singing "is this the real life, or is this fantasy, caught in a landslide, no escape from reality...." Oh my goodness, I lost it there and tried desperately to get my phone turned on in time to capture it. I knew he was out of it because he didn't care that I had my camera phone pointed right at him while I was asking him questions. When Jared became a little more coherent I told him about the song he sang. He told me it was his "go to song" his "zen song" and he said "it's good to know I've got my priorities straight. First thing when I wake up is bohemian rhapsody."
Jared is 5 days out now and doing pretty good. I keep making him come out to the family room where it is light to hang out with us instead of living in the dark cave (the theater). In a couple of months we will be back to do the right foot. In the meantime Nate said that I was probably going to be jealous because he got Jared's toes straighter than mine are. We'll have to post comparison photos in a few months when he's all done.
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