Chips off the Old Block

During Trace's birthday celebrations, I had a fair amount of pain going on. I didn't think it was anything to be concerned about, but it kept getting worse. Finally, I had decided I should do something. I had a hair appointment the early morning of the 28th and I barely made it through it. I was sitting in the chair silently while my hair stylist tried to work as fast a possible, and another customer stopped at our section and said; "I'm sorry, but I'm a nurse and you really don't look good. You need to go to the hospital." I thought that was amazing! Instead, I went to work planning to work the whole day, but the moment I got off the elevator, my assistant, Kim Keisker took one look at me and said; "Come on, we're going to the hospital." She grabbed my keys and drove me in my car to the nearest hospital. After a few hours in the ER, the doctor on call came in and said; "Well, I've been in the ER for 15 years and I've never seen this before. You seem to have TWO kidney stones that are blocking each ureter and making it so you've had little to no kidney functions for what appears to be several days". Unbelievable! The funny thing is, that when he told me that, I imagined that these two stones both left the kidneys at the same time and parallelly blocked each ureter in the same spot. In reality, one turned out to be almost into my bladder and one was close to my kidney. Basically, I was in full kidney failure due to the blockages. I called Kevin from the ER and he said; "Are you headed home?", to which I replied; "No, I'm heading in to emergency surgery." They needed to place stents in each ureter and they removed one of the kidney stones. The funny thing is that the surgeon that was on call, happened to be Kevin's urologist, Dr. Peter Caputo. He decided that we needed to put in the two stents and leave them in the entire time I was on our upcoming cruise. I did a lot of investigating and researching and some people said that the stents weren't uncomfortable at all. I was the exact opposite! I almost would have rather had the kidney stone pain rather than the stents.....almost. As soon as I took 5 steps, I was in extreme pain. It seemed to take a mental toll on me as well, it had been a long time since I'd been that depressed and hopeless feeling. I think I just have a sensitivity to foreign objects in my body. Ugh. It was no fun. The day after we got back from the cruise, I went in for another surgery to switch the stents and remove the other, higher kidney stone. Then, one week after that, I went in for office removal of the stents. I had stents in my ureters for about 4.5 weeks! I was grateful that the kidney failure was found before I left the country, but it was quite the ordeal and I was so thankful when it was over.

10th Birthday Party

With Trace's birthday this year being on a weekend, it made things so much easier! We were able to have his school celebration on Friday, his friend birthday party ON his actual birthday, Saturday and the family get together on Sunday. His 10th birthday was no different than the others in the fact that he got spoiled rotten! He's just such a good kid, it's hard not to give him everything his heart desires!

Tamara always gives him the "bad idea" presents

His friend birthday party was at "Airborne" trampoline park. They have quite a few areas with different types of trampoline and jump pits, but the favorite by far was the "dodge ball area". I just liked the fact they provided us with a party room with pizza and cake supplies. "Avengers" was the theme this year. 

Attendees of the party were as follows; 

Aidan Clark

Matthew Palmer

Wesley Nichols

Logan Nichols

Reid Williams

David Fairbanks

Kaleb Kresser

Fischer James (Cousin)

Boston Carrell (Cousin)

Cam Carrell (Cousin)

Kaleb "helping" David

Fischer just hanging around

Logan is in our Primary Class

Kaleb showing me his wicked karate moves!

Back to the party room for presents! The pizza was an hour late, so we switched up the order we did things a lot. You think a bunch of little boys cared? Nope!

Wesley and Logn got him a cool Lego and Black Panther claw

Minecraft Lego from Fischer

Reid gave him a game...these two are crazy!

And the best of friends!

Aidan always gives Trace great stuff!

David gave Trace a light saber, big mistake!

Super cool books from Kaleb

Cam and Boston gave Trace a HUGE bag of candy

Look at that loot! Haven't even opened up Mom and Dad gifts yet!

Daddy splurged and got him the Lego Millennium Falcon!