Huntsville High Prom 2014!

Anna and a group of 7 or 8 other couples (I lost count - ha) had a great time this past Saturday night at Huntsville High's prom.  She went with a friend, Zach Wadzinski, and a group that included her good friends Allison and Lexi.  The group met up at Meghan's grandparent's house over in the historic district on Holmes Avenue.  Her grandparents have a beautiful home there and were gracious enough to host the whole group for pictures and dinner.   It was quite a scene outside their house with the 8 couples and all of the parents running around with cameras trying to capture the moment.  ;-)  Crazy...   But they had dinner catered by Steak-Out, then went to prom for the night and apparently that was really fun.  Then we saw Anna briefly back at the house when she ran in to change clothes before going to a midnight breakfast over at one of the boy's houses. Somewhere around 2:00am she and Allison and Lexi came back here to spend the rest of the night...  :)

This is how Zach asked Anna to prom.  It's a little hard to see, but his dog's cape says "Will you go to prom with Zach?"  It was a pretty cute way to pop the question.  :)

This was a funny moment:  It took 3 generations to figure out how to get Zach's boutonniere on.  :)

It's a little hard to see, but Meghan's grandparent's house where they took pictures and had dinner is designated in the Historic District as the 'Steele' house.  So since Mackenzie is going to be a 'Steele' here in less than 3 months (ahhhh!!!!!), she just had to take a picture with Anna in front of the sign to send to Andrew. 

 



And I guess that about wraps up the prom pictures... 

 

In other news, it's nice to have Mackenzie home for a couple of weeks before she heads back to Nashville for the summer.  We are doing a lot of wedding decoration planning and preparing and it's mostly fun - a little stressful.  ;-)   My feet are tired from shopping for 7 hours yesterday.  haha.... And then I realized that this is the last time she'll be home to stay for any length of time before she is a married woman and that brings on a lot of mixed emotions.  Mostly it's just crazy how time flies!  And even as I write this, I'm going to be heading out in a little while to a meeting at the high school for 'parents of rising seniors' and I can't believe that is for Anna.  :`(   BUT, it's all good... circle of life and all that stuff...  just glad that they are growing up and loving life.  :)

 



TMJ Surgery

Yesterday morning I was in the middle of my doing my physical therapy for my jaw when I realized that at some point in the night I had dreamed about being able to chew something.  That just made me laugh because, really, how sad is it to miss chewing so much that you dream about it?  haha....

So I had surgery a week ago last Wednesday to correct an anteriorly displaced disc in my right temporomandibular joint. (I keep wanting to call it the 'turbo'mandibular joint for some reason....weird)  I've been having pain in that side of my jaw for a very long time now - on and off for a couple of years I guess.  I think it might have all begun back when I smacked the side of my face into a metal pole on the boat dock at the lake house.  Don't ask me how I did that - in too big of a hurry and unaware of my surroundings!  Anyway, I didn't think much of it at the time other than it hurt!  But looking back, maybe that is what started the downhill spiral for that joint.  I finally started hurting enough a few months ago to get an MRI and a consultation from a surgeon.  My dentist sent me to Birmingham to see the guy she calls the "Guru of TMJ disorders."  :)   And it's funny, because I remember saying a prayer on the way down that it would be extremely clear what I needed to do about this.  I was afraid that this might be one more case with me of something where the doctor says, "Well, we can't find anything on your xrays or MRI that indicates anything is wrong, but...."   (that has happened to me with some other aches and pains in recent years)  Well, he took a look at my MRI, asked me what I was feeling, poked around for a second on my jaw and in my mouth and then sat in his chair and sad, "You need surgery... no way around it."  OK, well, I guess that was pretty plain.  :)   Of course, as plain as it was, it still wasn't really all that good news to hear I needed surgery, except that he felt confident that he could fix the problem. 

 

So here's a little diagram.  That disc is supposed to be on top of the Condyle where the Retrodiscal Tissues are so that it cushions things when you open your mouth and bite down on something.  Well, it's not doing such a good job when it's 'fallen off' like that and out of place.  And it makes it quite painful to chew!  So...  that's what needed to be fixed.  The surgery was supposed to be 'arthroscopic.'  He described it to me like it was no big deal.... two little 'poke holes' on my cheek up near my ear, go in and move the disc back in to place, clean things up, and out.  20 to 30 minutes at most.  He did add that if they got in there and things were worse than they could see on the MRI, that they might have to make a small incision just in front of my ear so they could do more work.  I told him if they were going to do that, could he go ahead and add a little nip and tuck and get rid of some wrinkles and my double chin?  :)   I'm not sure he thought that was funny, but anyways -- he said that recovery time would not be bad except that I would have to be on a soft diet with no chewing for 3 MONTHS.   Um.... excuse me?  How long?  That's a long time to not chew anything!  I guess for obvious reasons he didn't want to dwell on that bit of information and I was done and out the door, left to think about what it was going to be like not to eat normally again until summer...  blah.

 

Well, that was that and I started getting ready for surgery - mostly by starting to learn how to make and drink healthy shakes in place of meals a couple of times a day.  That really wasn't too bad, but by dinner time I was ready to eat something!  But I'm glad I at least got a head start on that before the surgery because it's been a big help in the aftermath.  And I've learned a lot of cool things about creative ways to get fruits and vegetables into shakes and really enjoy them!  :)

 



So it would be my luck that, not only did they have to cut a little bit of my hair in prepping me for surgery (don't mess with my hair!!!  haha), but they also ended up finding a lot more damage to my jaw than they expected.  The disc was out of place and there was cartilage that was all messed up, and bone scraping bone, and inflammation, etc...   It was kind-of a nasty scene.  So they did have to do the larger incision and a good bit more work to clean out all the mess.  But it still only took him 30 minutes and I was awake and out and back in Huntsville by mid afternoon.  Not too bad. 

I wish I could say that recovery has been that easy.  It hasn't. I came home with some pretty heavy pain medication and that was great for my jaw, but not so good for my stomach with all of it's sensitivities.  So surgery was on Wednesday and by Sunday I got really sick to my stomach and ended up in the ER for most of the afternoon dealing with that.  I won't go into detail, but it was BY FAR the worst part of this whole experience.  I will definitely be much more careful with pain meds and side effects in the future...

But since then, I have been steadily getting better.  At my follow-up appointment last week, I found out that instead of 3 months without chewing, if I do my physical therapy and am really strict with my soft diet, then I might be able to start chewing after my next appointment on April 10th.  That has me highly motivated to be good!!! :)  So here is a little collage of all the interesting foods I've found that are healthy and that I'm trying to incorporate into my eating these days...
.

It's definitely an adventure.  A lot of these things I hadn't even heard of a month ago.  :)

So as of today, my stiches are out (yay!), I'm still numb around the incision site so that feels a little weird, and the side of my head above my ear feels like it is bruised, but apparently that is normal.  And I have this weird little green bruise near my chin that just won't go away...  strange.  The 'jaw stretching' exercises that I have to do 5 times a day don't feel too good, but they are critical to keep the scar tissue from forming, so I'm keeping at it.   And aside from a little bit of aching now and then, I think it's slowly getting better day by day.  I can definitely open my mouth wider than I could before.  I'll let others be the judge of whether I need to be more of a 'big mouth' than I already am.  :)  I'm anxious to be able to start eating normally again because that will be the real test of how well this has worked.  Time will tell...   :)

Well, if you've read all the way to here, you are a trouper.  I didn't think I was going to go this much into detail, but who knows, I might want to remember some of this stuff one day...   or not.  ha. 

Too much to catch up on....

There really isn't much that I'm all that 'OCD' about, but this blog tends to be one of those things.  And by that I mean this...  I hate to just pick up and start with life where it is right now when so much time has gone by and so many things have happened.  I have a hard time not 'recapping' so that I haven't left things out.  The problem is, that gets overwhelming and I just keep putting it off until it gets to be this mountain in my head.  BUT, here I am.  And I am going to attempt a quick catch-up.  And then move on.  :)

December was quite the eventful month:

Jack and I celebrated our 26th Wedding Anniversary.  When you have been married for this long, you take all your kids out for dinner.  ha   We ate at Papou's Greek Restaurant on the square in downtown Huntsville with Anna, Mackenzie, Andrew, Becca and Jessica!   It was very good!  :) 

 

Then we had this little event that really should have had its own blog post - Mackenzie and Andrew got engaged!  This was a big surprise that he pulled off on Christmas morning.  Mackenzie thought he had left to go be with his family on Christmas Eve, but in reality, he had just traveled a little ways away to his friend Seth's house to hide until he could come back Christmas morning and propose.  He rang the doorbell at about 9:30 on Christmas morning in the midst of all the Christmas present opening.  My whole family was there, along with Aunt Carolyn.  He bravely came in to the center of the room and the look of surprise on Mackenzie's face was priceless.  (along with the looks of wonder and fairy-tale awe on the faces of my young nieces! ha)  He got down on one knee and there was so much commotion I'm not quite sure what he said, but she said YES!  :)  

 

 

So since then, we've been in the business of wedding dress shopping (DONE! - but I'm not allowed to post that on-line), setting a date (DONE - Aug 2nd!), arranging for a venue (DONE! - Grace Valley Farms in Shelbyville - Barn Wedding!!), getting a photographer (DONE! - so excited that Jenna is available that weekend and is going to be doing the photos!!!!), Bridesmaids dress shopping.....  (DONE! - such a fun day!). 

 



And I spoke to a caterer this week and got phone numbers for a Wedding Cake decorator and flower shop.  So far I'm not too overwhelmed, but it's only February.  :)

In other news, Anna has been very busy with school and discovering her artistic talents.  She is the Communications Officer for the Art Honor Society at HHS and is looking into Art Schools for college.  She was recently honored at the American Native Arts Awards for a drawing she did on leather...  I think it's pretty awesome.  :)

 

Lots of school and a couple of nagging injuries have kept Anna from competitive gymnastics this year.  She is still training because she just loves being in the gym, but it's been a little weird this winter being out of the competition scene.  We did make it to one meet in Georgia and had such a good time reconnecting with our gym family.

 



Let's see... we also had a fun trip to Winterfest with the teens at church a couple of weeks ago.  Made me realize how much I miss these kids!!!!!

Oh.... and we had some beautiful snow days and a little time off from school....

 

Well, that catches up the major events of late.  In the midst of that, I've been preparing for some upcoming surgery on my jaw for TMJ problems.   I'll write more about that later because I've done about all that I can for now.  :) 

Wow it feels to good to be caught up!