Graduation and a Broken Jaw

Susanna got off her braces! She's excited to be done with that chapter in her life and I think her teeth look really good.

Everett graduated from seminary and from high school! He enjoyed high school but is glad to be done with getting to class and sitting through boring lectures.

His good friend gave him the flower lei. I had trouble finding him because I didn't know about the lei.

Garrett broke his jaw. Not so fun. The real complication was...

...that graduation and the broken jaw happened at the same time. Garrett called me as I was getting ready to go to seminary graduation. He had been a little overzealous in an intramurals Ultimate Frisbee game and had hit his jaw on someone's head. He had trouble closing his jaw so he had a friend take him to a nearby Urgent Care.

I went to the Urgent Care and sent him to the emergency room with his brother while I went to seminary graduation.

They did a CT scan and discovered his jaw was broken. After I got there, the surgeon splinted his jaw together and then told us to come back the next day for a surgery to fix it.

Scott came home the next day from a business trip and was able to take Garrett to his surgery while I went to the high school graduation. The surgery started late and Scott missed almost all of the graduation but was able to be there for pictures at the end. We had our son Jan and his wife Sallie come stay with Garrett during recovery.

We headed back to the hospital after pictures. Garrett looked pretty miserable and hurt a lot. Two metal plates were installed in his jaw and will be there permanently. His teeth are rubberbanded shut and he can't open them at all, even for a straw. He feeds himself with a syringe stuck in his cheek and the liquid getting through the teeth. No chewing for the next six weeks. We've been feeding him lots of high-calorie smoothies so he doesn't lose too much weight. He's lost some feeling in his chin--hopefully that will come back. He also has a loose tooth which might need a root canal when this is all over.

He stayed at our house from Wednesday night to Tuesday and then went back to his apartment. He's taking classes right now and needs to be close to campus. He's remarkably cheerful considering what an ordeal this seems like.

Comments

Visiting Susquehanna: The Priesthood Restoration Site

On our way home from Palmyra, we decided to go a couple of hours out of our way to visit the recently opened Priesthood Restoration Site along the Susquehanna River. This is where we believe that Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery received the keys of the Aaronic Priesthood from John the Baptist which gave them the authority to baptize. This site also has the restored Isaac and Elizabeth Hale home where Joseph and Emma lived for a year as well as the home where Joseph and Emma lived on their own. We spent a couple of hours there and I wouldn't have minded a few more minutes but we had a long way to go that night. It's a beautiful setting, very much in rural Pennsylvania. However, on the day we were there, cars at a racetrack nearby were detracting from the peace and quiet. I'm guessing that's not as big of a problem on weekdays. The Hale Family was quite well-off for their day so their home was probably nicely decorated with wallpaper and carpet. ...

Book Review: Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper

This is a juvenile fiction book about a young girl named Melody with severe cerebral palsy. Her body doesn't allow her to feed herself, speak, or do much at all. She's very intelligent with a photographic memory but she can't really communicate. Finally, in 5th grade, she gets a "Medi-Talker" which is a computer that speaks what she types in. Finally she has a voice. This book explores what it is like to be severely physically disabled but not mentally disabled. It seems like one of the most frustrating of all scenarios. She is completely aware of all the cruelty (subtle and otherwise) that her classmates inflict on her because they don't really want to include her in their activities. One of the saddest moments in the book comes when she realizes that every one of her special ed classmates is kind, where the "normal" ones are not. Who really has the worse disability? The book was a quick read and fairly enjoyable. Wha...

Hansen Family Plot in the Provo Cemetery

On Memorial Day this year, our family went to the Provo Cemetery, as we do almost every year. We spent some time at the Hansen Family plot which contains the grave of my 2nd great-grandparents, Peter and Mary Hansen. They both emigrated from Denmark with their spouses to Utah. My grandfather lost his first wife Ane to cholera on the plains outside of St. Joseph, Missouri, along with three of his little boys within a very short time--about one month. It's a sad story but it's also one of admirable resilience. He brought his one surviving son, Jorgen, to Utah. He married his second wife Maren (Anglicized to Mary) some 9 years later in Utah She had been married before but lost her first husband at an unknown date. I wish I knew more about her but she left very few records, although I could do more research! Peter and Maren had 6 more children together. The youngest two were twins, Enoch and Ephraim. Ephraim is my great-grandfather and is buried in California. He is the father of ...

Search This Blog