Recent Pictures of Ryder

Ryder hiding under his crib eating chocolate that he stole from his dad

Ryder's new toddler bed, he loves it, he sleeps in it

but he does sneak in to our bed in the middle of

the night. Sometimes I wake up at night and find him

sleeping next to me, I never know when he jumps

in bed with us.

time out spot, j/k

Before Surgery                                                                         
 

After

Ryder and I slept in this hospital crib all night, 

not very comfortable, but it made him happy

He had a draining tube for a couple of days, it was gross.

Ryder's surgery

Ryder had his surgery 1 week ago today. We woke up early that day and arrived at the hospital at 8:00 am like they asked us to. We waited for about 45 min, they gave us a room, and we changed ryder into hospital pjs, which were really cute! Well, I guess Ryder found his sippy cup that morning and had a sip before I was able to stop him, so the Dr. said he couldn't do the surgery because of the risk of aspiration while in surgery ( he could aspirate the milk into his lungs during surgery) So he rescheduled the surgery for that same afternoon at 4pm. Ryder was to only drink clear liquids until noon and then nothing to eat or drink after that. He did pretty good until about 3 pm, my poor child brought me a bowl and started saying "pees" (please) , he was so hungry and thirsty, he cried for 20 minutes and it was so hard for both him and me. I couldn't wait until 4 so I put him in the car and drove around until he fell asleep until 4pm. They checked him in again and we changed his clothes. I thought they were going to let me go with him until they put him to sleep, but they told us we couldn't go and had to give him to a nurse, he got so sad and it broke my heart. It was really hard to let him go with a stranger while he was crying "mom! mom!' He was in surgery for 2 hours! He did very good and the Dr. told us he removed every node that was infected and even the ones that were questionable, and was able to stay away from his facial nerve and major arteries. That was such a relief. The only thing that the Dr. didn't like was that he seemed to be coming down with a cold, so he ordered for Ryder to stay at the hospital overnight to watch his oxygen level and breathing. So far all the results have come back normal, but I guess it takes a few weeks for them to find out what bacteria was in his lymph nodes. We do know that it wasn't TB or cancer! He is taking 2 different kinds of antibiotics for a few months and his scar is healing very well. Our son is a fighter. We thought he was going to be in a lot of pain after the surgery but he did great, they only had to give him lortab at the hospital once and then just regular tylenol, he also started jumping on the hospital bed the next morning and was running up and down the halls. He is acting completely normal and hasn't complained once about his neck, he is also eating so well. We are very happy with the outcome and are so proud of him for being so brave, he really made this a lot easier than we thought it would be. Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers, we couldn't have gotten through this without them. We love you all! I will post his surgery pics later.

Bad news

Well, here we go again. Ryder will probably have to have surgery this coming thursday. I noticed that his right lymph node (under his jaw) was swollen about 2 weeks ago. I thought it was only an infection and so I took him to the Dr. They did a strep test which came back negative and the Dr. seemed concerned. He said it could be a staph infection and put him on antibiotics, he told me that if the gland didn't get smaller after a few days to bring him back. I waited for a week and noticed that his lymph node had gotten bigger and harder and so I took him back to the Dr. The Dr. was really concerned now and put him on stronger antibiotics and made him an appointment with a pediatric surgeon. We saw the surgeon yesterday and he think it's an atypical bacterial infection and he cannot drain it because his node is really hard. He also said it could be tuberculosis or leukemia! yeah , scary. He told me not to worry and that he would run all kinds of tests to make sure it wasn't cancer or TB. So this Monday Ryder will have a TB test, then he will go get a CT scan of his neck, and they will have to put him out for the CT since he is so little. After that we have an appointment with an Infectious Diseases dr. and they will draw some blood. Please pray for my little boy. We are really hoping he just has that bacterial infection and nothing else. So if everything goes well, he will have surgery on thursday to remove the lymph node that's affected and that should be the end of it. This has made me realize how much I love Ryder and how special he is. He makes us laugh so much. We will keep you all posted.

Family Tradition?

So I've been really busy taking care of Marc and Ryder, unfortunately, Ryder got sick a few days after Marc broke his leg. It was extra tough for me to take care of both of them and work a full time job! I am exhausted. Last week at work my sister leech and my other co-workers were talking to me about Ryder being life flighted and now Marc being life flighted, they were telling me that it is my turn now, and well that day we had chinese food brought in by a drug rep and had fortune cookies, so while we were talking about me being next to be life flighted I opened my fortune cookie and guess what it said? You will travel by air in the near future. Coincidence? I hope so. Now I have to be really careful. I kept my fortune so I will have to scan it in and post it on our blog.
Well i thought I would share that scary experience with you, just pray for me so i don't get hurt!

I Got On The NEWS!!! And I Only Had To Break My Leg To Do It!

For about five seconds anyway. At the end of the clip it shows them taking me out of the ambulance and putting me in the Air Med helicopter. I know it was me cause I recognize the people helping me out of the ambulance and it was almost dark when they were taking me out. Plus the news anchor announced that the person had a broken leg. Just a coinsidence... I don' t think so. I finally got on TV! Wa Hoo! Check it out here is the link below ......... http://www.abc4.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=c5986727-751c-40ba-bbc5-9ecad843026d

Easter Weekend

Marc and I went to the sand dunes with the Rombergs for Easter. Ryder stayed home with my mom and dad. We got there thursday night very late, we slept in a trailer in subzero temperatures. It was so cold, we didn't get any sleep! Friday morning we had breakfast with the Rombergs and went riding for a little bit. We played UNO run, a game where you collect UNO cards and follow each other on the 4-wheelers through trails at the dunes. Everyone went, it was kind of fun except Brandi (kevin's wife) and i got lost for a while. After lunch we all decided to ride thru the sand dunes to sand mountain, it's about 8 miles away. There were about ten of us, 3 girls including me. I can ride 4-wheelers but i'm not a very confident rider. I was kind of scared but didn't say anything, just went along with it. Well it turns out I did very well, I kept up with all the boys, and they didn't have to wait for me and I never got stuck! Actually I was going so fast I almost fell off my quad. Marc and I were so tired, our whole bodies hurt! We got back to camp and set up our tent and started preparing our dinner, we put some potatoes in tin foil with butter , salt, and pepper. We also wrapped some whole green beans in tin foil as well, and got our ribeyes ready for the grill. I was really tired so I decided to take a nap in the tent, Marc decided to go for a last ride with Chris Van skyndall (Marc's brother's best friend) before dinner. In Marc's words this is what happened next;
First of all I just want to say that I LOVE MY LTR 450!!! It is so awesome and fast and ... Ya it rocks!!! Anyway, So I had been hitting this jump all day and off to the left of the jump was a tree stump that stood about four feet tall. Everytime i hit the jump and came back for another jump I would ride off to the side of the tree stump but for some reason I misjudged where I was after I had hit the jump for about the 50th time and I found myself headed straight for the tree. So I hit the brakes and the sand was super deep and of course the front brakes locked up and I did a sweet front flip over the handlebars and landed right in front of the stump. Before I had a chance to move the quad landed on my head pinching me to the ground and the wheely bar came down on my leg it was a good thing too cause my quad might have hit the tree and got all banged up but i blocked the quad sacrificing my body and broke my leg instead. I would take a bullet for that thing. So Chris ran down and pushed my quad off of me and he went to get help. Kevin and his wife Brandi came back to the rescue with a cardboard box and some electrical tape. Brandi rips off her shirt (easy... she had another one on underneath) and wraps it around my leg to stop the bleeding. And they made a splint to put on my leg. Shortly after a state trooper came over and pretty much did a whole lot of nothing and called for the Sand Rail ambulance with an L6 corvette engine to come pick me up. It drove me over to a real ambulance which drove me over to the air med helicopter that flew me to Utah Valley Hospital. I got surgery and now I have a cast on my leg and lots of pain pills. So that is all I have to say about that... well that and I have the world's greatest wife. She has been taking super good care of me and gets me whatever I want and gives me sponge baths :)

Little Ryder

So Ryder's bronchitis developed into pneumonia and asthma! geez, I know, poor kid, he was wheezing a lot for a couple of days and I decided to take him to an instacare( afterhours clinic) and they took xrays of his chest. The doctor said he had a little pneumonia and they gave him a breathing treatment and antibiotics to take. He is feeling a lot better, but the poor little guy had been home for 3 days and yesterday he wouldn't stop crying and saying "outside" and looking at the window, so we felt bad for him and took him miniature golfing. He was really happy, and so was I. I took 2 days off work to stay home and take care of him. Today we had to drop him off at my moms so we could go to church since we didn't go last sunday because he had bronchitis! It was kind of nice to go and not worry about him being all over the place :> Well that's it for now, I will write soon.

Nissan Patrol hill climb

Friday

Well, I finally had a friday off from work! except I spent most most of the day running errands and taking ryder to dr's appointments. He's had a bad cough this week, and something told me that he had bronchitis, I don't like to take him to see the dr cause most of the time it's just a virus and all he needs is tylenol, but my motherly instincts told me to just take him anyway. Well, Ryder has bronchitis! the dr. gave him antibiotics and cough syrup. I think he's feeling better already. I'm sick too, in fact, I have the same symptoms Ryder has, so I probably have bronchitis too, but i'll tough it out. Well after taking him to the dr. , I had to take him to American Fork Hospital for an EKG (heart test) just for his upcoming check up with his cardiologist. I had the worst memories come to my mind as soon as we walked in! This is the hospital where I took Ryder when he was sick and had to be life flighted to Primary Childrens Hospital a year and a half ago. I felt uneasy. Anyway we finally got in to get his EKG, I didn't think he would stay still because he was just off the walls all day today, but the tech that did the test was this really big guy, with a shaved head, and was very intimidating. Ryder was able to sit still for 10 seconds, which was enough to get a decent reading. I asked to look at the results because I've done EKGs on people before when I worked at a clinic a year ago, his results looked really good, so now we just have to wait for his cardiologist to read them and compare them to his last one. So anyway, it's been an exhausting day! At least I got to spend the whole day with my little guy, I really did enjoy his company, I miss hanging out with him all day :