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Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Taylor's Surgery


Monday, Taylor once again had surgery on his arm. I know some of you don’t know the reason why he has had 4 surgeries on his left arm, so I’ll give you a “short” account of the problem.
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When Taylor was just a young wiper-snapper at the age of 7 he was playing tag at church, tripped and fell into a post and broke his arm. After a frustrating ER experience we discovered he had a cyst in his left humerus bone that had hollowed out about a third of his bone. Naturally, since the bone was so weak he broke it a couple of other times so consequently the Dr. referred us to Shriners. Since then he has had 4 surgeries and many other check ups. After his last procedure in 2002 we continued to watch it to see if the bone marrow that is taken from his hip and injected into the cyst would begin to grow and fill the cyst area. Well, it didn’t, but we opted out of more surgeries until now since it has been so long and has not healed.
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Monday, mom started her day at 2:40am to get to Salem to pick up Mrs. A, who was so gracious to offer to go with them, and then get to Portland before 6am. The biggest thing about the surgeries for Taylor is the fact that he can’t eat from 2am that morning till after procedure is done. For a growing boy that can be pure torture! They did say he could have clear liquids such as juice. Basically, they sat and waited most of the morning, had 3 different nurses check his vitals, and answered the same questions several times. The people at Shriners are exceptionally nice, so it was a pleasant day.
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Taylor had to take a shower with special soap and the nurse was kind enough to give him scrubs to put on instead of the revealing gown, since he still had 1 ½ hrs to wait. Well, when the orderly, a little tiny gal, came in with the gurney to take him to surgery, she looked several times around the room, not seeing her patient. She thought he was one of them!! Then, she gave him one of those “special” gowns to put on. About 10 min. later he came out of the bathroom looking rather catty wampus. The gown had snaps all over the place and he couldn’t figure out how to put the thing on!! Like a guy, he didn’t ask directions!
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Taylor didn’t get prepped for surgery till about 11:30am. He came out of surgery about an hour later. Like normal, it took him a while to wake up and when he did he was feeling okay and ready to eat! But this time, since people were praying for this, he wasn’t TOO hungry but that doesn’t mean he didn’t eat a lot! They didn’t get out of Shriners till 5 pm and then there was the 1 hour and 45 minute drive home. Needless to say it was a very long day for all three of them.
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Taylor is hurting today. This last surgery they went in through his muscle, which we think is causing most of the pain. The other three he hardly felt anything after but this time it was done in a different spot. Poor guy. He has either been lying down on the couch or sleeping all day.
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We are still praying that this procedure will be effective and the bone marrow will grow and fill in his hollow bone. It hasn’t been a huge issue to deal with this the last 7 1/2 years but it would be good to be able to not worry about him breaking his arm.
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Thank you all for your prayers! They were and are much appreciated!
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(Thank you Mrs. Anderson for taking the picture!)

4 comments:

Heather said...

I'll be praying for him, poor guy!

Miss Ellie said...

The poor guy !
Please tell him we are praying!
Ellie for the Sniders

Amber D.M. said...

Aww. I didn't realize he was going to have surgery again. Hope it does "the trick" this time and more surgeries won't be necessary in the future.

Hope you have a speedy recovery, Taylor. We'll be praying for you.

~ Amber's "long-lost twin"

Family said...

We've been praying for Taylor. I'm glad everything went smoothly during the surgery, but we'll continue to pray that this will be the last of the surgeries!!!