Tessa Jean's Operation

The Return of the Petunias

The petunias are back now that the backyard is fenced!!!

(Susan): Tonight we puttered. For the first time in a while, we have had several days of just the regular ol' routine which is actually plenty of business none-the-less. It feels good to slow down. Tessa had not needed any pain medicines for almost a week now, a new record of sorts! She is active with her exercises and is working on her accelerated reading program for the summer. Ruth Ann takes the kids to the library and Tessa reads and then goes down to school to take computer tests on the books she reads.

Sam is being three. No luck on the potty. I played hookie from childcare tonight except for feeding, watering, and cleaning up after them, again plenty. I disappeared to my quilting room and worked on my triangles all evening and it felt good. Rob and the kids watched Peter Pan and now Rob has disappeared to play guitar. So, I guess we are all working on healing. . . .

Streeeetching the achilles

Reading Dad's magazine

Summer daisy returning in a rabbit free environment!!

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• Daily Obscure Song Lyric:
"Girl, you're looking, fine tonight,
and every guy has got you in his sights.
What you're doing, with a clown like me,
Is surely one of life's little, mysteries"

-- Monday's answer: "And It Stoned Me" (1970)

(No correct guesses)

• Daily Movie Quote:
"I said, uh, the great thing about M.J. is when you look in her eyes, and she's looking back in yours, everything feels not quite normal, because you feel stronger, and weaker at the same time. You feel excited, and at the same time, terrified. The truth is you don't know what you feel, except you know what kind of man you want to be. It's as if you've reached the unreachable, and you weren't ready for it."

-- Monday's answer: "Silent Running" (1972)

(No correct guesses)

Moving Day

(Rob:) Another action-packed day at Smith Manor: Cody and I packed and loaded his whole apartment into a 26 ft. U-Haul truck this afternoon! Amy and Jude had to go on ahead and take care of some business back in Des Moines. Cody decided to stay over here tonight and drive the truck to the new house tomorrow. We'll sure miss them, but we look forward to visiting them at their new house soon.

Tessa, Sam and Uncle Cody:

Tessa Jean had a pretty good day at rehab today. Our goal is to keep hoing to Children's Mercy for the next six weeks until school starts up again, and by then hopefully we can do her exercises at home and not have to miss any more school. She lost a little bit of mobility this past week while recovering from her operation but with some hard work she should get it back soon.

Here's a clip of her walking with crutches today at rehab:
Click HERE for clip

This is Tessa with one of her therapists, Jen O., working on measuring her range of motion today:

Here they are working on knee flexion on the stationary bike:

Jen O. is usually there on Mondays when I take her to therapy and does a great job with Tessa Jean. As I've said before here, I have to admire physical therapists who work with children. It would be so tough if every day doing a good job meant making a kid hurt and cry. The good ones are able to mix toughness with compassion and are good at distraction and keeping the exercises fresh and interesting. We've been blessed to be involved with some very skilled and talented people here and in Baltimore, and much of the good result we have now is attributable to their good work. Thanks!

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• Daily Obscure Song Lyric:
"Half a mile from the county fair
And the rain keep pourin' down
Me and Billy standin' there
With a silver half a crown
Hands are full of a fishin' rod
And the tackle on our backs
We just stood there gettin' wet
With our backs against the fence"

-- Saturday's answer: "Sunday Morning Comin' Down" by Johnny Cash - written by Kris Kristofferson (1970)

(No correct guesses)

• Daily Movie Quote:
"It calls back a time when there were flowers all over the Earth... and there were valleys. And there were plains of tall green grass that you could lie down in -- you could go to sleep in. And there were blue skies, and there was fresh air... and there were things growing all over the place, not just in some domed enclosures blasted some millions of miles out in to space."

-- Saturday's answer:
"Knute Rockne, All-American" (1940)

(No correct guesses)

Family and Friends

(Rob:) Whew! You would not believe the day we've had, even if I were to type up a description of it, illustrate it with digital still photos and movie clips, and then publish it on a website. Well, maybe you would, so I'll at least give it a try:

The day began, as many do, with breakfast. Tessa Jean (with a little help from her mom) whipped up a breakfast of breakfasts, complete with scrambled eggs, bacon, pancakes and a heaping mound of toast. Here Grampa Smith and longtime family friend Guffey make their blog debut at the feast:

Grampa and Guffey were in town for the weekend along with 25,000 other Cardinal fans for the 3-game series with the Royals. This was on the heels of another road trip to St. Louis to see the Cardinals play the Cubs (these guys are hardcore). Today it rained all morning and it looked like the game might be rained out, so they decided to head home instead of get soaked at the stadium. As so often happens, as soon as they left it stopped raining and the game got played after a 1 hour delay (the Royals got trounced again.)

Grampa and the Peach

Later this afternoon my brother Cody, Amy and Jude came back from Iowa to get their stuff moved out of the apartment over the garage and into their new house in Des Moines. They've had a tough week with a lot of uncertainty about whether the house deal was going to happen, but it looks like things have worked out well in the end and they will be able to move in tomorrow after all. Tonight they came over for takeout Chinese food, which is a Smith tradition on rainy Sunday nights. Here's the happy Smiths on the eve of moving in to Smith Manor North:

As a brief interlude, here's Tessa Jean in front of the flowers outside the kitchen door:

Finally, we took a trip to visit some friends in Lawrence, KS this evening. Among all of the other activities this weekend, there was a reunion of urologists who trained at the Kansas University Medical Center (like me!) I wasn't able to attend any of the meetings or festivities because of everything else that was going on, but we were able to go visit our friends Kevin and Nicoel and their kids Ellen, Alex and Emma, here from Colorado for the weekend. They are staying in Lawrence with friends Jon and Barb and their kids Rachel and Harrison. Jon and Kevin and I all trained as KU urology residents at about the same time 7 or 8 years ago.

Rob, Jon and Kevin
(I apologize for not having a picture with our wives, which would have made for far more pleasant viewing)

We had a great time catching up and reminiscing, and the kids all got along well. Here's Tessa Jean with Rachel and Ellen:

Just as we were getting ready to head home, an impromptu children's parade broke out:
Click HERE for parade

All-in-all, quite a full day, made rich by the presence of our friends and family, for whom we are truly thankful.

Surprise!

(Rob:) It's been quite a whirlwind day for us here at stately Smith Manor. Our good friend and frequent blog gueststar Beth (see yesterday's post for some pictures of her beautiful flower garden) turned 40 this week, and her husband Bill decided to throw a surprise party! He conspired with the manager of a restaurant down on the Plaza to have a room set up for a large group of Beth's friends and family, some coming in from Topeka, her hometown. Susan and Beth were already planning to go out for dinner and a movie, and while they were enjoying some guacamole dip the rest of us filed in to her great surprise!

Here's the guest of honor surrounded by her admirers:

Tessa Jean decorated with some "40" confetti:

After the bash, we went back to Beth's house and let the kids play. Here's Sam with the biggest red ball ever:

Abbey, Kathleen and Tessa Jean

Tessa seems to be doing well with her leg, maybe TOO well, as we keep reminding her to use her crutches like her doctor ordered. All along since January she's gradually become more mobile and less encumbered in going from wheelchair- to walker- to crutches- to one crutch-, to finally NO crutches. This is the first time she's had to regress a little bit and go back to using crutches. It's important because she has five holes in her femur where the pins used to be drilled in, and any one of them could potentially be a site of fracture if she twisted the wrong way or suffered some external impact.

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• Daily Obscure Song Lyric (from guest trivia host Grampa Smith, in town to watch the Cardinals repeatedly beat the K.C. Royals)

"In the park I saw a daddy
With a laughing little girl that he was swinging.
And I stopped beside a Sunday school
And listened to the songs they were singing.
Then I headed down the street,
And somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringing,
And it echoed through the canyon
Like the disappearing dreams of yesterday."

-- Wednesday's answer: "Ramblin' Man" by Waylon Jennings (1974)

No-prize to Buck Owens (who was also at the party tonight!)

• Daily Movie Quote:
"And the last thing he said to me, "Rock," he said, "sometime when the team is up against it and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go out there with all they've got and win just one for the Gipper. I don't know where I'll be then, Rock," he said, "but I'll know about it and I'll be happy." "

-- Wednesday's answer: "Rio Bravo" (1959)

(No correct guesses)

She Did It!!!!

(Susan:) We are sorry for not blogging last night. We all literally collapsed. Our "mini-vacation" was not very vacation-y after all. For both flights, we got to our gate just as the plane was loading. I have been fighting bronchitis and the air time, antibiotics, and lack of sleep made for some bad vertigo. We forgot some important things like the cord for the camera, clean underwear for Tessa, and all phone numbers for the Herzberg family as the majority of them were on vacation.

We did have some fun the first night going back to our old home. The seafood restaurant nearby was actually a very nice crab shack. The patrons were ordering steamed crabs by the dozen and the tables were covered with brown paper. Each person was given a wooden mallet for smashing open the crabs and there were big pails by the tables for shucking the shells. Our children were aghast at the insanity of it all. They opted for their standard fare of chicken fingers and grilled cheese. I forgot to eat dinner tonight and am really wishing I had some crab dip about now.

Tessa was an All-Star for her surgery. She waited and waited and waited for it to start and maintained her good spirits despite her fear and empty tummy. She and Rob made a fun game out of a styrofoam cup and a guitar pick and we watched for yellow cars to drive into the hospital parking lot so we could all shout Cheese Whiz. What a relief it was to get it going and over with!!! We had another nice dinner (how many kids could devour five honey butter rolls and a half a steak with mashed potatoes so soon after a surgery?), and were off to bed only to get up and rush home.

I have no idea how to summarize from our experience. Even being in the medical profession could not have prepared me for our adventure. I talk to people every day about tough stuff in a hospital setting, but put me in the recovery room with my daughter hooked up to monitors with an epidural and a Foley like we had for the first two surgeries and I could not stop the tears. Our new blog category starting today is called healing, for all of us.

For those of you addicted to the blog (and I am one of them--first thing I do when I get to work in the morning is make a cup of coffee and check the blog for comments), we will continue. Hooray!!!!!! Afterall, it is far from over for Tessa who must continue her quest for a normal leg. Who knows what zanny things we will do next in rehab or around the house. Rob is talking about changing the format some, but never fear, we are still here!!

Back to the Inner Harbor

Jazz Man

Goofing outside our old apartment

On our way to the hospital for surgery

Last picture with the brace

Checking out the new leg

Playing some Battle Ship with Abbey tonight

Climbing Abbey's tree

Beth's Wild Rose

Beth's Lantana

Beth's Cosmos courtesy of Visitation School!
(Happy Happy Birthday Bethie and thanks for the much needed Mudslide!)

Braceless!

(Rob:) Tessa Jean's operation to remove the brace went great! The case was delayed for three hours, but when she finally went back to the operating room things went well- the brace came off easily in only about 30 minutes. It's been a very long day- nothing to eat or drink for nearly 18 hours! In the recovery room she was crying some, but she said she wasn't having any pain. We finally decided that it was just sort of a cathartic release of emotion following this long 5 month ordeal.

She will need some time to adjust to living without the brace (actually called the "external fixator"). Her natural action of changing from a sitting to a standing position is to grab the brace with her hand to help lift her leg. She was laughing at herself when we went to the restaurant tonight for a long-awaited dinner because she still keeps grabbing for the brace even though it's not there anymore!

She will need to go back to using crutches again for a while and take a break from very strenuous rehabilitation for a while. We will send Dr. Herzenberg an X-ray next week and then come back out to Baltimore in a month for a follow-up visit.

Tomorrow, back home to K.C.!

I left the cord that connects the camera to the computer at home, but here's a shot from my cellphone camera of Tessa Jean sans brace:

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• Daily Obscure Song Lyric:
"You'd better move away,
You're standin' too close to the flame.
Once I mess with your mind,
Your little heart won't beat the same."

-- Yesterday's answer: "Devil Woman" by Cliff Richard (1976)

(No correct guesses)

• Daily Movie Quote:
Dude: Is he as good as I used to be?
John T. Chance: It'd be close. I'd hate to have to live on the difference.

-- Yesterday's answer: "Back to the Future": (1985)

(No correct guesses)

Baltimore Revisited

(Rob:) We made it back to Baltimore today without much hassle. The city looks much greener and more flowery in the summer (as most cities do, I guess.) We went for a walk down by the harborside near where we lived for the month after her first operation. There was a harborside restaurant called Bo Brooks just a few yards from our old apartment that we never tried that whole month we lived here, so we went there for dinner tonight. My two goals for the trip were to help Tessa through her operation and also have some tasty crab cakes. After tonight, let me tell you: one down, one to go!

Tessa Jean is in a pretty good state of mind about the operation tomorrow: a little scared but overall very excited. She was reading the comments from well-wishers tonight and she thought it was funny that Aunt Zanny said to say "goodbye and thank you" to the brace. We usually just think of it as a nuisance and a burden, but of course it was essential in getting the outcome she has now. She did give it a little pat and a "'bye", but there were no Casablanca-type tearful goodbye scenes.

Tomorrow will be a long morning without food or water for Tessa, but hopefully the anticipation and excitement will carry her through. We're planning to go a little early so we can go and visit our friends at Kennedy Krieger Rehab Center before surgery.

Thanks for all of your thoughts and prayers!

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• Daily Movie Quote:
"Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads."

-- Saturday's answer: "Return of the Jedi" (1983)

(No correct guesses)

• Daily Obscure Song Lyric:

"If you're out on a moonlit night
Be careful of the neighbourhood strays
Of a lady with long black hair
Tryin' to win you with her feminine ways
Crystal ball on the table
Showing the future, the past
Same cat with them evil eyes
You'd better get out of there fast"

-- Saturday's answer: "How Sweet it Is (To Be Loved By You)"
We were looking for either Marvin Gaye (1965):

...or (my favorite version) Jr. Walker and the All-Stars (1967)

...but, since it's almost her birthday, we will allow a no-prize to Beth for guessing the James Taylor version.
(Happy Birthday, Beth!!)

Holy Barfing Batman!

(Susan): With 52 minutes left in this day, I am tasked with the nightly blog entry, finding the Game Boy somewhere in this house, and packing for four. Good luck, I say to myself as there is no one awake to hear me. Tessa made a list yesterday of 20 things she will be able to do after Wednesday's hardware removal. High on the list is cross her legs, something we haven't probably missed in our own lives, but Tessa has. Also making the list is jumping rope, riding her bike, jumping jacks, sitting, failure to set off metal detectors and freak out airport security people, wearing regular clothes, and no more pin site care! (I just went to the kitchen to find her list to make sure I didn't miss anything important and happened to look in the black carry on bag next to the Rob's desk for no good reason and guess what I found. . . . the Game Boy!!! Who is the best finder??? MOM, MOM, MOM!!! Actually I just don't suffer from Superficial Looker's Disease carried dominately on the Y chromosome. And I still have 26 minutes left in the day!!¡)

Tomorrow we depart for Baltimore bright and early. We are so excited to have a mini-vacation and for Tessa to finally be free of her cage. Tessa looks at this with a little mix of emotion. She has a routine which will change. She worries about not being special anymore and whether or not her leg will work normally again. But, I think she also wants to shout for joy from every roof top at being brace free!!! Her surgery is on Wednesday at 1:00 p.m. (noon KC time) so set your watches and celebrate with us!!!

Relaxing with Lady Luck

Climbing trees

Roasting marshmallows

Bath time with Barfing Batman foaming soap

Tessa making Rob's Father's Day breakfast

Some flower I don't know the name of

Dad Rocks!

(Rob:) Happy Father's Day to all the dads out here in blogland. I hope yours was half as cool as mine was! The kids and Susan made me a cheese omelet for breakfast-in-bed:

(Here I am with the two greatest Father's Day gifts any father could ask for)

Then I got to open my homemade cards and gifts, as well as the coolest Batmobile you've ever seen!

Let's take a few moments for a virtual tour of the Batmobile:

Exterior

Passenger close-up

Trunk open (note extra costumes and Batarangs)

Under the hood (appears to be a V-8, probably a turbocharged hemi)

Bat-spinners for extra bling

Cockpit (with navigation system)

Anyway, after breakfast we ALL went to church (a rare event) and Tessa got a round of applause from the congregation when it was announced that she was going to have her brace removed next week. Ordinarily she doesn't like being the center of attention, but she seemed very pleased with the show of support.

After church I took Tessa Jean to the Baptist Hospital pool for some aquatherapy. This evening our friends Beth, Bill and Abbey came over for croquet and S'mores in the chiminea:

All in all a day to remember!
Tomorrow, we pack for our triumphant return to Charm City!

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You all get another day on the pop culture trivia- tune in tomorrow: same Bat-time, same Bat-URL!

"Hi" in the Middle

(Rob:) It's Saturday night and Susan is putting the kids to bed after a raucus dinner outing to the Rainforest Cafe. If you've never been, its great for a nice, relaxing evening of dinner and conversation, punctuated periodically by stampeding robot elephants and torrential indoor thunderstorms. The kids opted for a brownie-ice cream dessert called "The Volcano", which I know because whenever someone has one delivered to their table it comes accompanied by twelve waiter-types screaming "VOLCANO! VOLCANO! VOLCANO!"

We had some excitement last night in the form of visitors from the east! Susan's Uncle Bob (not to be confused with my Uncle Bob, or my nieces' and nephews' Uncle Rob) and his family came in from Ohio to stay overnight on their way out to a Colorado dude ranch. Bob was here with his wife Joan, thier daughter Patty, her husband Brad, and their three kids Katie, Michael and Missy (see group shot below)

We had a nice time with them and were able to finally learn some of the rules of croquet, which regular readers will recognize as our new recreational passion.

Today we had even more excitement in the form of raw sewage coming up through a drain in the basement floor. Luckily, someone was able to come out to fix the problem pretty promptly. Just take my advice and mark "Roto-Rooter Guy" down on the list of jobs you really don't want to have, O.K.?

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• Daily Obscure Song Lyric:
"I needed the shelter of someone's arms
And there you were
I needed someone
To understand my ups and downs
And there you were
With sweet love and devotion
Deeply touching my emotion
I want to stop and thank you baby
I just want to stop and thank you baby"

-- Thursday's answer: "Happy" by the Rolling Stones (1972)

New reader "Mr. Haines" comes through with the no-prize today!

• Daily Movie Quote:
"I think my eyes are getting better. Instead of a big dark blur, I see a big light blur."
"There's nothing to see. I used to live here, you know."
"You're going to die here you know. Convenient. "

--Thursday's answer: "Unforgiven" (1992)

No-prize goes to Uncle Tom on this western classic