it seems like forever since i last wrote a letter to my boys. i took a break for a while as i let life distract me from writing these letters. but i have joined up with a great group of moms who happen to be photographers as well to write letters to our children. please be sure to follow along below to read the letters written…
dear nicholas –
i am writing this letter as i sit here waiting for you to come back from surgery, the anesthesiologist just wheeled you away. you had a smile on your face but i could tell you were a little nervous. i have been praying for you all day today- in fact you have many people praying for you today. always remember the power of prayer is nothing short of amazing. mommy prayed for guidance and skilled hands for the doctors, for your comfort and healing as well as for God to send a guardian angel to watch over you during your surgery. you will hopefully wake up with a new blue cast (the color you wanted), with minimal pain and good memories of anything that happened.
you may not remember how you even hurt your arm the next time you read this letter, but you were playing soccer with some of your friends in class and you had your feet kicked out from under you. you said you landed weird on your arm. you complained a little about it being sore, i could tell you tried not to cry- but it hurt! it turns out you broke your left ulna bone – actually you bent your bone. the orthopedic doctor explained to mommy that young children’s bones do not break like adults, but they bend. who knew! your daddy was the one that took you to the urgent care to get an x-ray, so i did not see it. the urgent care doctor put a splint on your arm and told us to follow up with an orthopedic specialist. the doctor did tell me that your bone was not fractured but that it was ‘bowing’, but i had no idea what it was going to look like. we saw the orthopedic specialist a week later – when he removed your splint i was amazed at how bent your arm looked. your left arm was shaped like a banana. you said it didn’t hurt any- thankfully, because it didn’t look the least bit comfortable. my first comment to dr. beavers was that something needed to be done to make your arm straight again. after the initial shock wore off that your arm was bent – i then clarified with dr. beavers that fixing your bone was in fact the best course of action. thankfully you had no understanding of just how extremely painful it is to straighten out a bone. mommy cringes every time i think about it. i explained to you that the doctor would give you some medicine to make you sleepy, and give you a mask to breathe special air that would keep you asleep. your biggest concern was how the doctors would get you to fall asleep if you weren’t sleepy! mommy and daddy answered all your questions and walked you through everything that was going to happen to calm your fears. your daddy, trying to be funny, said that someday you would love the fact that a dr. beavers made your bone straight (sorry buddy, he is your dad).
i woke you up this morning to let you eat a popsicle for breakfast as your couldn’t eat anything solid. you loved the fact that you had dessert for breakfast! i wanted to document this day for you, but didn’t bring my big camera to the hospital. i took my phone and was able to capture a few photographs of you. i am hoping this will be the last time we have to do this! God knew what he was doing by giving me boys – he knew i would be strong enough to handle the bumps and bruises – but i don’t like to see you or your brothers get hurt.
after about an hour they finally came to tell me that you were out of surgery – that was one of the longest hours ever! dr. beavers come to get me and told me you did great. he explained what he did to your arm, and showed me an x-ray of your now straight bone. he was very confident that your arm would heal and be perfectly normal. thank God.
dr. beavers brought me to you – where you had yet to wake up. i was so thankful to find you still out of it because i made a promise to you that i would be the first face you would see when you woke up from surgery. when you did finally wake up you asked me when you could go home, and when was the doctor going to fix your arm. i was thankful to know that you were oblivious to the fact that your surgery was over! we were able to bring you home just a short time later. you have done amazingly well – no pain or discomfort. i think you are a little excited to have a cast for the next 6 weeks as it comes with lots of extra attention from your teachers as well as the girls in your class!
i am so very thankful that everything went well and you are doing great. i am thankful to have so many family members and friends praying for you during your surgery. i love you little man!
mommy
please be sure to follow along and read Kristy McCaleb’s letter to her children.
