What A Day!

Where do I even begin?

Me & Ryder were going to have a busy day today, which I was prepared for, but what I was NOT prepared for was to show up to Nana’s house and see my baby with a big huge fat lip!  I know that he’s a boy, and he just learned how to walk, and I know that he is going to have accidents, and I thought I was prepared for all of that…but reality hit me today that I am not.  I’m not ready!  What am I going to do??  Truthfully, I’m glad I wasn’t there when it happened because I probably would have panicked and made the situation way worse than what it was, but Ryder came running across the kitchen floor, slipped and fell face forward into the living room, and smashed his face into the wooden handle on the recliner.  There were tears, and blood.  When I picked him up he looked like Bubba Gump, seriously!  The bottom left side of his lip was sticking out so far and his cheek was swollen.  This picture was taken tonight after most of the swelling has gone down, but you can still see where he hit his lip.  The inside of his lip is all cut up, poor baby.

As you can see it affected me way more than it affected him!  I’m a mess.

So after I decided against taking him to get stitches (thankfully my husband is a manly man and can talk me down …) we just continued on with our busy day.

First stop was to see a new Doctor!  He was a Physiatrist which is basically a rehab doctor.  He is going to facilitate Ryder’s recovery from his stroke now, which takes a lot of weight off of my shoulders.  Me & Google have done a pretty good job so far, but we are a dangerous team, so I’m happy to pass the baton to someone who actually knows what they are talking about!  Ryder was out of sorts, but Dr. Dillard was still very impressed with him and said that we have been doing all of the right things.  He wants him back in Occupational Therapy ASAP (that’s a whole other paragraph that I don’t feel like typing tonight) and to continue with our weekly Physical Therapy visits.  He was happy to hear that Ryder will have his orthotics next week and also that he has gotten a referral to see an Ophthalmologist.  He will be seeing Ryder back in 3 months to check his progress and adjust anything as needed.  We talked about some possible treatments for Ryder in the future, such as botox and constraint therapy, and both agreed to let some time go by and revisit the discussion.  Overall it was a great appointment, and I’m so happy to have him on our team!

Next stop…physical therapy.  We didn’t actually have to stop anywhere since we were already there…the convenience of being at Children’s Hospital!  Ryder had a great therapy appointment today, even considering all of the drama his day had already brought about.  I don’t know if I mention it enough but I absolutely love his Phsyical Therapist.  She has helped Ryder work through so many things and by far gets the best results out of him.  Today, she taped noodles (like the kind in the pool) to the ground and had him walking and stepping over the noodles as he got to them.  Of course he tripped over every single one (all I could picture was another fat lip) but she was persistent in guiding him to step over them and telling him to watch his step, so by the end of the session he was finally walking carefully, getting to the noodle, lifting his leg dramatically and stepping OVER the noodle without falling, it was really impressive.  When he accomplishes tasks like these that come so naturally to most but are SO difficult for him, I couldn’t be more proud. 

And thennnn…we went to Carter’s house so Ryder could stay and play with Carter, Denise, & Carl, while me & Angela went to meet the blog girls for dinner.  I meant to leave my camera so Denise could take some pictures of the boys playing (would have been some great blog material…if only Ryder wouldn’t have gotten that fat lip and threw my day all off!) but we did manage to get a picture of all the ladies who made it out tonight (Nicki, Jen, Lindsay, Me, Jelena, Angela, and Patty):

I love these girls.  Of course I had to get out my story first about how traumatic my day was and they all had so much compassion, each of them knowing darn well how over-dramatic I was being.  Haha, thanks for always understanding girls!

And now it’s time for bed…after I go on a manhunt for a ridiculous amount of paperwork that Medicaid is asking me for now…so glad tomorrow is Friday!