Memorial Weekend

What a weekend!  We were watching Barb's cat for her while she went on a weekend trip.  He comes to our house often, so the cats are use to each other.  The last couple of times they have been a little territorial though.  Zac came down Sunday morning and both of the cats were growling/hissing at each other and were about to fight.  Zac grabbed both of them by the back of the neck.  Our cat stopped immediately.  Barb's cat was able to turn his head and bite Zac in the hand.  It was a deep bite.  You could see the "meat" in Zac's hand from the bite.  He also punctured a tendon in his hand.  Zac refused to go to Instacare because of the higher co-pay.  He said he was fine to wait until Monday to go to the doctor.  Later that night his hand was swollen really bad.  He was still refusing to go.  I called the on-call nurse to ask her if he would be fine to wait in the morning, or if he needed to go to the E.R.  She talked to Zac and he said she told him he needed to go to the E.R. right then.  Zac STILL didn't go.  We went to bed at 8:30ish to watch tv and about 9:00 he finally got up and said he was going to the E.R.  Now his arm was hurting. 

They put his arm in a splint/cast.  They also left a pic line in his right arm.  They gave him IV antibiotics.  Apparently there are 2 different kinds of infections you can get from a cat, and Zac got the rare one.  He couldn't even move his fingers, they were so tender and swollen.  He went back to the E.R. on Monday and Tuesday for more IV antibiotics.  On Tuesday, we were told his infection was spreading.  So we got home health care to come and give us all the antibiotics for Zac to inject himself every 8 hours.

 They told him if the infection spreads by Friday, he will need surgery.  All of this for a cat bite?!!  Luckily, on Friday, they said the infection is starting to recede, so they took the IV pic line out of his arm, and have him on pill antibiotics now.

Monday afternoon we headed down to Mom's grave to decorate it with flowers.  The girls were really good at cleaning her headstone.

Dad gave each of the kids 1 rose at a time to put in the vase.

All the grandkids that could come.  Jennifer would not sit down - Tucker is in the background, but Jennifer is blocking him.

Justin was in Arizona, so he couldn't make it this year.

After the cemetery, we all headed back to Dad and Diane's for a BBQ and some kickball and baseball.  After we ate, we went to the nearby elementary school.  We played 9 innings of kickball.  The kids had a great time and did really well!  Then we pulled out the bats and gloves and were playing baseball.  I was really surprised at how well the kids did playing with the adults.  Amy's boy, Josh, was an amazing pitcher!  One of the innings, Dad was playing outfield, and a pop fly came out his way.  Dad started running for it and got dizzy and fell down.  (He has an inner-ear problem.)  When he stood up we knew he broke his wrist.  Dad just smiled and said that he was going to the hospital.  He will see everyone later.  I headed down to the E.R. later that night just in time to see them set his bone.  He completely crushed his bones.  He had surgery on his wrist/hand on Thursday night.  The 2 hour surgery turned into a 5 hour surgery.  He really broke his wrist bad.  They put in a plate, 4 screws, and 9 pins.  OUCH!  The x-rays made my wrist hurt.  Some of his bones were broken so badly, that they couldn't repair them and took them out during surgery.  (They were small, less then 2 mm in size.)  The surgeon came out after 2 1/2 hours in surgery and told us that they needed to take a break.  They had to release the tourniquet for a 1/2 hour to bring back blood flow, before they started again.  They had 3 different options of how his surgery could go, one being a bar sticking out of his arm for a couple months, but the surgeon was able to do the best option - no bar, and an anticipated recovery of 2 1/2 months.