What the ???

Okay, I must admit this might be one of those posts that embarrasses Ethan when he is older and I won't be including any pictures with it either.

I'm going to start by saying that when Ethan was born, I was surprised at how many crevasses a boy can have in the diapering area.  I thought it would be easier than it was with Lorelei...but boy was I wrong!  Add to that he had an inguinal hernia repair when he was really little on the right hand side and I figured the worst of it was done with...(I'm going to totally overlook puberty because that scares me right now).  Well, we just got home about 1/2 an hour ago from a 6.5 hour visit to the ER.  Ethan had developed some strange symptoms which prompted our visit and he came home with a diagnosis of hydrocele.  To limit his embarrassment, I will just tell you that it is similar to a hernia.  What it does mean for him is that we're to consult with surgery in the next two weeks and this puts a whole new surgery in his future to repair the hydrocele.  On a plus side, it doesn't require emergency surgery and allowed us to come home again tonight. 

During the imaging they did to confirm the diagnosis, they captured part of his spine in an x-ray...boy does it look bad without the brace on!  We meet the orthopedic surgeon next Friday to see how he feels things are progressing...

August Outing

This is quite late in coming...and I must admit mom has been very patient waiting for this update.  She knew that Ethan got a sun burn and it had something to do with something we'd done with him on a weekend.  But that was the extent of what she knew...she did ask a couple times about the update but I think has resigned herself that these things sometimes take time.  ;)

Honestly, I've been excited to blog this post but things have been quite busy here and I never seem to get enough time to sit down and write.  As it is this took several tries to complete.

The end of August we took the kids to a safari park a couple hours away.  You read that right, we actually took Ethan somewhere that didn't involve medical care, therapy or something else local!!  I must admit I was a bit nervous to bring him...but my main concern was more how he would tolerate being in his wheelchair and car seat for so long.  A lot was hinging on his success...if it failed, Clayton would get to say "I told you so!" and we would likely not try to take him elsewhere.  If we succeeded...that would open up more doors for him!  I won't keep you in suspense, he did GREAT!!!  I think he had a wonderful time and only got frustrated at the end of the day, but I think that was mainly because the sun was shining right in his eyes and he couldn't see the elephant attraction we were watching.  After that we packed up and went home.  He even tolerated having his brace on for a good while.  He did sweat in it, but didn't complain!  You may notice the canopy on his wheelchair is a bit low, we have since fixed it to be a better fit...but we did not want to leave him uncovered.

We started the day with a bit of a negative...that in my mind ended okay.  While walking by a little girl (likely around Lorelei's age) I heard her say to her father, "Look at that funny looking boy."  (Or something to that effect, my memory has not fully retained this slight against my boy.)  But Lorelei turned around and said, "He has special needs, and he's my brother!"  She said it as proud as could be and almost moved me to tears.  I told her how proud I was of her to have said that and stood up for her brother!  :)  We did get many more stares but that was the only time something was said loud enough for us to hear.  It got me thinking...really, are wheelchairs that uncommon?  It wasn't just the kids who stared but adults too.

When we arrived, Lorelei headed straight for the water park to cool off a bit and as she said it would allow her time to dry up before we left.



We then watched the elephants make one of their daily trips to the watering hole to cool off.  Unfortunately, I'm not sure Ethan got to see much of them since we were so far back and there were a lot of people blocking the way.

Next we boarded the bus for a tour of the grounds.  It was neat to see his wheelchair tied down on the bus, we'd never done that before.  He enjoyed watching people move around on the bus to try to get pictures, but I'm not sure how many animals he actually saw.  Every time we would try to point one out, he would look at us instead.

If you notice, there was an ostrich that came right to his window and hung out there...I think he saw it make its way to his window but when Clayton tried to point it out he turned away and did not look back before the bus had moved on.  :(

We took in all the different shows they had to offer.

And I grabbed some candid shots...

 

It was pretty neat at the one attraction, there were a couple birds that ran into a pen that Ethan saw and he kept watching the pen for them to come out again (as seen above).  I was so happy he noticed them.

 

 

Lorelei went into the petting enclosure and pet goats, llamas and deer.