I haven't updated this blog since Halloween and for good reason.  We have had a lot of not so fun things going on around here.  How can one family who rarely goes to the doctor, now have more appointments and doctors than we can keep track of?  I'll tell you.

First, we'll start with me.  The weekend before Halloween my shoulder started hurting.  It progressively got worse until about a week after Halloween I woke up in extreme pain.  I was having severe muscle spasms and it felt like I was in labor in my shoulder.  Ha ha.  I could also no longer raise my arm more than an inch.  I couldn't get dressed or do my hair or hold my kids.  I was miserable.  I went to the doctor and they diagnosed me with adhesive capsulitis.  It basically means "frozen shoulder".  They referred me to an orothopaedic surgeon and physical therapy and told me they don't know what causes it and it can take up to three years to heal.  Great!!  I also couldn't take any pain medication besides ibuprofen because I have a nursing baby, and sadly that didn't help at all.  I went to the orthopaedic surgeon and luckily they didn't think I needed surgery.  They did x-rays and didn't find a cause for my problem.  They said that this is very common in overweight, 40 year olds (none of which I am) so I just got lucky.  I have now been in physical therapy for seven weeks.  I go three times a week for 2 hours and I am slowly improving.  Yesterday, I was able to dress myself, which is huge.  I felt so independent.  Ha ha.  But now we just discovered that our insurance company thinks I have met my limit for physical therapy so they will no longer pay, even though I am only about 50% recovered.  So now get to fight them and hopefully they will agree that paying the small amount for physical therapy is much better than paying for surgery.  We shall see.

Next, is Jeff.  The Friday before Halloween he was rear ended on the freeway on his way to work.  Initially he had some back pain but it progressively got worse.  A few weeks ago he had an MRI and it was discovered that he has two herniated discs from the accident.  He has been absolutely miserable.  He can't sit, stand, walk or sleep comfortably.  He goes to physical therapy twice a week and he is also seeing a pain specialist.  He will most likely need cortisone shots in his spine within the next few weeks to help him be more functional.

These injuries are pretty bad by themselves but having both parents injured at the same time has been a nightmare.  Luckily Jeff's mom came down for a week to help us and my mom had a few days off of work when Camron came home from his mission so she was able to help us.  Our new ward has also been great.  They brought us dinners for several weeks and helped us out at church with the kids and also babysat when we needed it. 

McKinley is also still in physical therapy for her torticollis.  She is doing really well especially now that she is crawling.  She is slightly behind in her motor skills because of her torticollis and crawling was a huge accomplishment for her.  McKinley and I have also been fighting several occurences of thrush this past month.  Not fun!   So between all of us we have a minimum of 6 doctors appointments each week and many times it's more.  Luckily I am much more functional now and hopefully we'll get Jeff feeling better soon but it has been a long few months.

10 Months Old!

She has finally started crawling and is into everything but she is still the sweetest most easy going baby.  She loves to play with Brycen and Leah and follow them around the house and they have so much fun together.

Merry Christmas

Family Pictures 2010

I thought these turned out pretty good considering it was raining and we had to hurry.