Hello!

Can I say I prefer the cold temps over the snow? You don't have to shovel cold air... Just throwing that out there.

Things are going fine for me. I'm back to work part-time so that feels good! I know I mentioned this before but I have increased my hours some. Not to full-time yet, but I am feeling plenty busy between trying to get work hours in, get to appointments on time,  and to the boys wrestling matches! Wes is old enough to be in the high school wrestling program (8th grade) and Keegan is in the K-6th grade program so we are running all over and trying to keep their schedules from conflicting the best we can. Wes gets to wrestle on the varsity team a little bit so that is pretty cool and exciting. Especially since Waconia is rank #3 in the state in AAA. It's a big step up from wrestling kids your same age & weight to kids who might be the same weight but 4 years older. Kids change a lot from 8th grade to senior senior year!

I had elbow surgery about a month ago. This was my 8th surgery this year, 4th on my elbow, specifically. Can I get frequent flyer miles or something out of this? They freed up some of the the elbow movement by removing some scar tissue, screws,  and some excess bone growth that were randomly growing in there for no good reason. Not sure what else they did, I know I was there but I dont have the best memory of the surgery. ha! It was early in the morning so I was tired and slept right through it! ;)

Arm/Hand therapy continues and will continue for awhile. Movement is improving but nerves repair slowly. I met with a few of my ortho and nerve doctors this past week, the one who is leading the nerve investigation says things are going well. It's just not going as fast as I would hope. A nerve transplant surgery is off the table at this point. We are still hoping range of moving at my shoulder and radial nerve continue to heal. These two key areas are of biggest deficit, still. The one thing about nerve healing is it doesn't have to just heal where it was damaged. It heals from that point all the way to the brain and back! At least that is how one person explained it to me so it might not be fully accurate but either way it's a longer path that needs to be healed than just a small cut like you might get on your finger or something. 

Im some ways I'm a bit jealous of people who "just break a bone". Recovery times are very well known and easy to understand. When I broke my leg in high school there were set milestones that you knew you were going to hit.  Full weight bearing after say 8 weeks then rehab to get strength, balance, flexibility back.  With this nerve damage it seems like so much is unknown. They say MAYBE 2 years for nerve repair. Then will your brain still remember to send a signal to the path that hasn't worked for two years? Part of Arm Therapy is to continue to use the nerve path that's damaged so your brain doesn't forget that the "road" is still there. 

Well that's the majority of it. Sorry its a little longer than I lead-on in the title. I hope to get out ice fishing this winter a bit! Some friends have nice fish houses so I hope they save a spot for me in them!