Hello everyone. As many of you may know our life the past two weeks has been turned upside down with an accident Jeff had recently leaving him hospitalized for a week. On Sept 18th we decided to go to Grandma and Grandpa Herbert's to enjoy some family time with the horses. Gage had been begging to go ride the horses with Daddy for a while. Jeff had been gone for two weeks to Alaska on a moose hunt (a successful moose hunt at that!). Anyhow, upon saddling the horse Jeff decided to get on him first since he seemed to be acting a little skittish. As soon as he threw his leg over the saddle the horse began to run and buck throwing Jeff to the ground. He landed in just the right way to cause his arm to hyper extend and his elbow became completely dislocated and the humerus (the bone in the upper part of the arm) broke through the skin completely severing his artery as well. As you can imagine blood was spewing out of his arm like a fire hydrant and Jeff became hysterical. Thanks to Rick's quick thinking he was able to get the blood mostly stopped by tying his own shirt around his elbow and holding Jeff's arm upright. The ambulance came and transported him to the Park City Hospital where they put his elbow back in place, but were very concerned because they could not find a pulse in his wrist. This meant that he was on the verge of loosing his hand or even possibly his arm. The decision was made to get him to the University of Utah Hospital where they performed emergency surgery to fix his severed artery. A vein graft was performed and luckily that surgery was successful. Jeff spent a day in the IMCU where they closely monitored the vein graft, if it were to fail they would have to rush into surgery again or risk loosing the hand. Luckily everything went well and he was able to be moved to a floor that wasn't considered high risk. The following Thursday he had another surgery to remove a rod that was placed in his elbow during the first surgery (the rod helped to stabilize his arm so the vein graft could be performed). During this second surgery they also explored the elbow joint expecting to do major reconstruction. By some miracle as well as a few blessings they found that no reconstruction was necessary. He did severely overextend and tear all the tendons, ligaments, and muscle tissue but nothing was completely torn. We were able to take him home Friday and he's spent the last week at home recuperating and beginning physical therapy. It will be a long while before he has full use of the arm and he will be doing a lot of physical therapy in order to get him to that point, but we are grateful he is alive and has his arm.
We would like to thank everyone who called, visited, all the prayers, dinners, babysitting help, and love that has been given to us during the past two weeks. We feel very blessed to have so many wonderful people in our lives. It has been a very scary time but was made easier by the love and support of so many.
Jeff spent his first real day back at work today, he made it to about noon and had to stop. It takes a lot out of him to exert too much energy and his arm gets very swollen and sore from all the movement. If you know Jeff then you know how difficult it is for him to sit still and relax. We rented a bunch of movies tonight to keep him busy tomorrow and we hope that we can get him to rest enough to properly heal.
We are focused on staying positive and appreciate the blessings we have gained because of this accident. We realize that things can always be worse and that we should be grateful for the trials we have in our lives. They help make us stronger and allow us to build greater relationships with each other and our families.
We are thankful for our families, without their love and support we couldn't have gotten through this. We love you so much!
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| Incision from the first surgery |
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| This is the rod that was placed in his elbow. It's about the diameter of a 1 carat diamond |
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Gage and his Daddy watching hunting movies to pass the time in the hospital
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