An update....it's not short!

Well it has been a month since I blogged and most of you know how Joe has been doing and all the chaos that went along with his injury just in case you haven't heard the news this is the latest and greatest. July 8th Joe had reconstructive surgery to repair all of the damage that was done. Before the surgery the plan was to put two titanium plates in his face to hold the bones together -one on his orbital bone (above the eye) through a cut just above his eyeborw and one on the zygoma (below the eye) by going in through the lower eyelid (not fun) and to make an incision at his hairline on the left of his head to repair the cheekbone. The day before surgery the doc told us the front of Joe's cheekbone looked like cornflakes so they were probably going to go in through the mouth and explore the area to see if it needed a plate also. After surgery he ended up with three plates and incisions above his eyebrow, in his eyelid and in his mouth between the gums and his lip. The removed some loose pieces of bone that were just "floating around" in there (ew!) and put in the three plates. The surgery went very well. The worst part was that they had sewed his left eye shut so the lower eyelid wouldn't droop and to prevent infection. When Joe came around he couldn't open his right eye either -it was too hard to do that without wanting to open the left one which caused him pain when his eye was moving all around SO they patched his right eye which meant he was blind. Very unexpected and so disorienting for him. I had my hands full those next couple of days. Haylee got really sick too. She was running a fever of 103 pretty much the entire day of his surgery and a couple of days after. There was no way I could let her get Joe sick so she lived upstairs and he lived downstairs. The night of his surgery I was running up and down getting her what she needed and taking care of Joe on one of my trips upstairs Haylee said "Mom, I have been trying not to call you a lot because I know it must be hard taking care of TWO people especially when one of them is upstairs and one of them is downstairs." she was so cute and SO GOOD to just rest and watch TV while I took care of Joe. 2 days after surgery Joe got the stitch out of his eyelid and was able to see again pretty well, he had some double vision which was normal but that cleared up in a couple of days. Besides the follow up doctors visits which all went well, that brings us to now. He is STILL on a soft foods diet!!! Until the 22nd of August so three more weeks, SO NOT FUN!! He is so tired of eating the same food all the time we are trying to find new things he can eat but it is pretty limiting since he cannot chew AT ALL per the doctors instructions that even micro movment of his bones can cause the healing to take longer/not go exactly right. His face gets sore if he talks and/or laughs too much but all in all he has done well. It was very, very hard for him to be blind. Joe is a mover and a do-er and HATES sitting still he is also extremely independent and hates relying on anyone, even me. We made it through and I am so grateful to our friends who are like family to us. I have never felt more supported in my life. The guys Joe works with and their wives are some of the awesomest people I know. They were here every day when he was so laid up just chatting and keeping him in good spirits, they went to the store for me and offered to do anything else they could think of. I am so, so, so grateful to them.
Tomorrow we leave on a quick trip to South Carolina. We are going to meet some friends at a lake there for some fun in the sun and relaxing. I can't wait!!! It has been both the longest and quickest summer I can ever remember! Hope you are all having a wonderful summer too! Happy August!!!