Month: September 2013

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English Patient – The Sequel

Two weeks after the ankle operation it was time for the next stage in fixing Tracy! Today we were back up to the Highlands to have the “soft” cast taken off and replaced with a hard cast. First things first, the soft cast needed to come off and we had our first look at Tracy’s disappearing calf muscle:

calf

And then a close up of the ankle:

Gollum's foot

Which looks a bit like Gollum’s foot from the Hobbit movie! This is all that remained of the soft cast:

old dressing

Next it was time for another x-ray to check everything was progressing as we hoped:

x-ray

In amongst the glare of the over head lights you can make out the titanium plate with 4 screws in it. The wonky screw is not bad workmanship – that is the one that goes directly through the fracture to hold it all together.

The next part was the most fun Tracy has had in the last few weeks – choosing the color of her cast – so many options:

cast color

With the color chosen it was time to whip the stitches out:

waiting for the stitches to come out

Tracy wasn’t very happy about this but luckily she didn’t faint and it didn’t hurt! The next stage was to put the cast undercoat on:

cast under coat

And then it was time for the beautifully colored cast to go on and isn’t it a lovely one!

gunners cast

And that was that! This cast has to stay on for 4 weeks and then it’s back into the original boot. Not too much longer now and then she’ll be back and better than ever!!

After reviewing the page Tracy wasn’t happy that I hadn’t included the best scar picture, so here you go:

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Back to School!

After about 87 days of summer vacation including baseball camp, soccer camps, soccer tournaments, goals, winners medals, surfing, sunshine, swimming in the lakes, play dates, trips to Red Robin, trips to the cinema, a visit to Mt Rainier, a holiday in San Diego and Vancouver Island, bears, whales and eagles, ice-creams and pizzas it was time to go back to school for a rest!

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Both boys had got the teachers they wanted. Harry was going into fifth grade with Mrs Cooley and Toby into first grade with Mrs Malek. We had to go into school early on the first day (and every day that first week) because Harry was on school patrol which meant helping the parents and children get across the roads safely.

Here is Toby waiting in line for school to start, just before the thunderstorms and rain began:

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Here is the first grade boy settling down at his table for his first exercise.

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And this is Harry helping people cross the road!

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So there we go, Harry is starting his third full year in school in the US and Toby his second – hopefully they are as good as they have been in the first few!