Manwaring Family: This is what we've been doing lately . . .

I've taken a hiatus from blogging this summer, if you've been checking my blog at all you will have noticed. We've been a little busy in our family lately. Mike has been recovering from back surgery and I've been run ragged trying to take care of my "two" babies. : )

Mike had hurt his back several times over the last 6 months hauling sheet rock, moving people, digging in the yard, but he finally really hurt himself in May when he kayaked up the river pulling all 3 kids in their tubes behind him. He progressively got worse over the next few weeks to the point where he could hardly walk and was in shooting pain if he stood up for more than 5 minutes. I finally made him go to the Dr. and at first he was just on some strong pain killers and muscle relaxers for pulled muscles. But after 2 weeks of that not helping, he finally got a MRI and found out that he had 2 ruptured disks in his back and one that had broken off and was pushing on the nerve, hence the excruciating pain. He was also losing function in his left leg by this point and we were worried he would suffer some permanent damage to his leg. Luckily, we were able to get into a neurosurgeon the next day and scheduled surgery for the next week. We felt so blessed to be in the right place at the right time in our lives to know the right people to find a state of the art surgeon so quickly who was one of few Drs. who does the microdiskectomy surgery to remove the broken piece of disk through a tiny incision.

The surgery went very well, but we had a scare with Mike not coming out of surgery as well as was expected. What was supposed to be a out-patient surgery, turned into us staying in the hospital all weekend. Mike was having an elevated hematocrit level and his heart kept racing. They became worried that he had some internal bleeding and sent him for an emergency ct of his belly. When they ruled that out, they started doing tests. They had him do a colonoscopy, an EKG and echo of his heart, and multiple blood tests. I was so worried that something else was seriously wrong with him. But after a very hard weekend, they didn't really find anything seriously wrong. He was sent home with some medicine for colitis and the news that his thyroid levels are messed up.

Since the surgery, Mike is doing so much better. The pain is completely gone, but it has been a slow road to recovery. He did suffer some muscle damage to his leg and lost some function in his foot. He came out of surgery walking very slowly and with a limp. He still walks with a slight limp but is getting better every day. He has not been able to lift anything over 10 lbs., which has been killing him to not do anything, and me since that means he hasn't been able to lift Luke for 3 months. He is still waiting on the results of some more blood work to see why his red count has been elevated, but we feel very blessed that he is almost back to normal. I know the Lord has had a hand in Mike's recovery and I am so grateful for Mike and for all of our friends who have helped us so much this summer to do the things that Mike hasn't been able to do. We are lucky to have such amazing friends that are our Texas family!