Worst Birthday Ever

Damon turned 5 years old on Tuesday! 

I took his birthday pictures a couple weeks ago, and got some great ones! He is such a handsome, happy, smiley kid. 

Damon loves loves loves to make people laugh, and is so good at it. He brings a lot of fun and laughter to our family. He is crazy and we have to tell him to settle down about 20 times a day, but we all love his fun and happy personality.

Damon loves to play Minecraft and has gotten really good at it. He enjoys watching tv and still quotes movies and shows all the time. He loves to play outside, work outside, and play pretend with Tessa. He is pretty happy to do anything Rockwell and Tessa are doing, he just likes to be with people. 

Damon is such a sweet kid. He hugs Paul and me and tells us, "You're the best!" all day long. We love it. He loves to share and is sweet and complimentary to Tessa and Rockwell. 

We sure love love love our Damon boy!!!

Tuesday morning started out great. Paul made crepes for breakfast.

Then Damon wanted to open his presents.

He was excited with everything he got. Tessa picked out a stuffed bunny for him, and wrote him a song. 

He was excited about his new gun and golf set.

Rockwell put together his golf set and then we went outside to play with it while Tessa and Paul baked Damon's cake.

After that, Tessa, Damon and I went in the backyard to play with his new bubble blower. They were jumping in the bubbles on the trampoline, and Damon took a bad bounce and landed with his right wrist between him and the trampoline bar. He started screaming and as soon as I looked at his wrist I knew there was something wrong with it. I took him inside and we put some ice on it and called his pediatrician. (I was so sad.)

They said one parent could come with him, so Paul took him in to the office. They wrapped his wrist in a splint and sent him over to get some x-rays.

The x-ray tech can't give any diagnosis, but she told Paul to make sure to call the pediatrician in one hour to get results. That let Paul know it was probably a pretty bad break. We called the pediatrician and she said his break was 7 millimeters of separation and referred us to a pediatric orthopedic surgeon, who said he wanted to see Damon on Thursday. 

The broken wrist really put a damper on his birthday celebrations, to say the least. :) Paul stopped at Swig on the way home from the x-rays and got Damon a drink and a cookie, and also picked up Toy Story 4 from Redbox.

Damon requested a dog cake for his birthday, and Paul took that on. He worked on building the cake while the kids and I watched the movie. It was very frustrating for him, but the cake turned out awesome!! I was so impressed.

After dinner, Paul gave Damon a priesthood blessing and then we had dessert. Damon said he didn't want any cake, he wanted the gummy bears that Rockwell had given him for a present. (Damon doesn't like cake, which is why I wasn't willing to make a dog cake for him. But luckily the rest of us thought it was delicious. Paul knew there was a chance he wouldn't eat much, but still wanted to make it for him.)

I took Damon to his Ortho appointment on Thursday. They took more x-rays and scheduled him to have surgery at Utah Valley Hospital the next day. Dr Machen said that he would move the bone back into place under an x-ray machine, and hoped that putting a pin in would make it stable enough. But if there was any sort of muscle or tendon or anything that had moved into the space where the bone was separated, then he would need to cut into the wrist and move that out of the way and then put a pin or a plate in, depending on how stable he felt it was. 

We checked into the hospital Friday morning at 8:30. 

He got all dressed, and then we waited for almost 3 hours. He was so brave, but would have moments of sadness where he would ask to just go home. We hung out, and talked about what was going to happen, and watched funny marco polos that Al's kids had sent him. 

There was a tv in the room so he got to watch some cartoons.

They finally took him back to surgery, and he looked so tiny in the bed as they were wheeling him out of the room. They estimated about 2 hours for the surgery and recovery in the back. I grabbed some food from the cafeteria and brought it back to the room. I hadn't even finished my lunch when Dr. Machen came to let me know everything had gone well. It had only taken 45 minutes, and Damon came back a couple minutes after that. He had woken up just fine, and they brought him in to recover with me for the next hour. I was so so so relieved to see him again and hear that everything had gone smoothly and that they were able to put the pin in without cutting. He was so sad and uncomfortable when they brought him back in.

His throat was hurting from the anesthesia tube and he wanted all the monitors and iv taken off. He drank juice and that helped his throat feel better. The nurse agreed to take a couple of the monitors off and then he settled down and nodded off to sleep for a minute.

When he woke up again, he was really unhappy. He was crying really hard and kept trying to get out of bed to go home. I called a nurse in because all of his wires were getting wrapped around everything and he was trying to put pressure on his arm to get out of bed and would not stop thrashing around. The nurse took the rest of his monitors and iv out and that really settled him down. He stayed calm the rest of the time, and was so excited as soon as they said it was time for him to go home.

His recovery has gone so well so far. He's been in less pain than the doctors anticipated. He is supposed to sit still as much as possible and have his arm elevated. The hardest part has been getting him to sit still as much as he's supposed to. He did start complaining of pain Saturday afternoon, so we've been keeping medicine in him since then. He's really doing so great. He's already playing Minecraft with just his left hand and is able to do everything he needs to on there. I'm glad, because that can keep his attention for quite some time while his arm is elevated.

We are all so disappointed that this is how Damon's 5th birthday turned out for him. Every birthday should be better than this one though!
Happy birthday Damon Doyle! We love love love you!!