Home sweet home.

Driving back home from the air port was such a crazy deal. It seemed like such a distant time ago that I drove down that road last. I can't even remember the last time I actually drove our car.
Seeing our kids for the first time in "forever" was so wonderful. I missed their hugs and kisses so much.

I had to arrive in a wheelchair because it hurt too much to walk.
It was kind of funny.
I left Fresno with a headache and came back in a wheelchair!

The last procedure that I had done was another blood patch. Which was targeted at the leak in the spinal fluid at the bottom of my spinal column. The immense pressure that was put on the nerves on my lower back to the back of my calves was unbearable. But they got the blood in the area they needed it to go. It takes a while to recover from this. Since my body went through a bunch of other things it was already kind of beat up. So the next couple days, week, is all about recovery.

Today has been a good day. I've been able to sit and walk around.

Sometimes when I get up I feel fine.

Other times I get shooting pain that comes from my lower back all the way up to my brain and all I can do is sit back down.

Baby steps, baby steps.

Here are a bunch of pictures for your enjoyment:

MEET SPINEY:
(please, I know what you are thinking, "What in the world is that?!" Well, I blame it all on my childish sense of humor. I thought that since I was going to have this grand adventure of doctor visits -and spinal fluid- that I might as well take a friend along for the ride...thus, Spiney was born.)

SPINEY IN ARIZONA TAKING A BREAK IN THE COOL SHADOW OF A CACTUS

GREAT PIZZA PLACE:

did you see Spiney?

The doctors beat me up a bit. A guy injected a dye 2 weeks ago into my arm before a scan and didn't put enough pressure on it this is what it looked like a couple days after, bruises all up and down my arm (it looked worse in person):
Here's what it looks like today:
I just told everybody that Andrew was misbehaving so I put him in a choke hold and this is what happened to my arm....nobody seemed to believe me though. I don't know why not.

SPINEY'S FAVORITE ICE CREAM JUST SO HAPPENS TO BE OUR FAVORITE ALSO:
Oh, you'll love this story:

The "schedulers" had me come in at 7am to get pledgets put up my nose. This was for a radiation scan to see if any spinal fluid was leaking out my nose (I had this done in my home town but they messed up on the tests so we had to do them over again).
I say "schedulers" because all they do is schedule people coming in and out. They don't know what tests are what.
The doctor wasn't going to scan my body until 12:45pm. That's over 5 1/2 hours after these pledgets went in. I couldn't understand how they would stay in that long, but oh well.
11:30am came very slowly. I can't explain what it is like having three cotton sticks stuffed up each side of my nose. It felt like they were touching my brain. My snot could only go into them or down my throat. Unfortunately after 4 hours they were full of snot and my nose didn't want them in there any longer. I began sneezing uncontrollably.
They were coming loose.
We had to go back to the ENT doctor and have new ones put in.
Can I just pop a little detail in at this point. Putting those little buggers in there IS VERY PAINFUL.
Then I went back to the doctors and was injected with the radiation...painful.
Then I rolled onto a stretcher and was taken to the scanners where I laid for a half an hour choking on my snot, trying to hold still.
Then I was rolled to a waiting area and was laid out for another 1 1/2 hours until I got scanned again. 1/2 hour of holding still choking.

Here I am trying my best to not look dead:

SPINEY WAS MY PAL
Then I finally gave the scanner guy the wonderful priviledge of pulling the cotton goobers out. It was so lovely...and SO PAINFUL!
But I've never loved blowing my nose so much until then.


SPINEY WAS SUCH A TROOPER THAT WE TREATED HIM TO SUSHI IN ARIZONA WHEN HE WAS FEELING OKAY: