Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Baby Sykes Gets a Gift

I don't know if you remember this photo that I printed in June last year:

This was Ned's wedding and in the June entry I talked about how their gift to all the guys in the wedding party were Converse high top shoes. The girls got colored high tops.

Ned still wears high tops. It is his trademark.

When we got the message that Tom and Laurel are having a girl in April, this is what Ned & Marta had sent to them:

Tom was thrilled. He says they aren't too much "into pink," but how can you not love these shoes? I told Ned that trumped the gift I have for them, which I hope to give them at Thanksgiving.

In other news, we spent about 6 hours at Kaiser yesterday (yesterday's video was about trying to park there!) It was Walt's first routine exam following his accident and we had to get there around 9:30 so he could get x-rays before his 10:30 appointment. Knowing how parking is at that facility (abominable), I let him off while I drove around and around trying to find a place to leave the car.

He was in the doctor's office for a long time and finally came out to tell me we were going to be there a lot longer, that the doctor didn't think his wrist was healing properly, and that she wanted him to meet with an orthopedic surgeon. He looked very glum.

We left my hard-sought parking place and went to a Waffle place, since Walt just wanted some comfort food and I figured that it looked like a good "home cookin'" kinda place. It was. He had a salad and grilled cheese sandwich and I, because I need the extra calories, decided that since it was a waffle place, I'd actually have a waffle (it was delicious).

Back we went to Kaiser. I sat in the waiting room waiting for Walt for so long that I was getting upset because I was certain they were doing the procedure and they had forgotten to tell me.

But no. After about 2 hrs, Walt came out and said he had decided not to have it done.

Apparently the problem is that without the insertion of pins and a metal plate (and a second operation to have them removed after the wrist heals), he will have decreased range of motion in the up/down movement. It shouldn't affect most of what he does.

Walt weighed how many more years he may live against his real resistance to having surgery and decided he would just live with what the doctor refers to as a "deformity."

I'm kind of sorry that I wasn't in the exam room with him to know exactly what the doctor told him, but the decision has been made and he goes back in a couple of weeks for his next regular check-up. He is hoping to get the cast off in December but I don't know. Given my mother's very lengthy recovery time for her ankle, I'm not counting on anything until they actually tell him they are removing the cast!

Fingers, Day 2 - Fingers, Day 7

Things are going crazy for me this week, with a big article due tomorrow (for which I need to transcribe tapes--and my transcription unit isn't working right, so I'm having to do it using the hand-held machine), Michele's slide show, organizing things (food, pick-up of Jeri, meeting Tom, etc.) for the memorial, Rupert's return tomorrow, and just all sorts of things. Makes me feel overwhelmed and out of control.

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