Keeping up with the Clavicle Part 3

Hello friends!

We have arrived home after a successful surgery! First of all, we want to say thank you so very much for your prayers & good wishes. That means a lot to both of us, and especially Kyle. He is sleeping right now, and I anticipate he'll be that way for the rest of the day.

Surgery was scheduled for 9am, and we were there by 7:45, but they didn't actually wheel him into the OR until a little after 10. Added to that, the surgery took about 2.5 hours, one hour longer than we were told, and his recovery time was longer than expected, so we didn't get out of the office until about 2:30pm. However, those times don't really mean much because the surgeon said the operation was a success!

Kyle now has a plate & screws holding together his clavicle which was broken into 4 pieces. (I don't know if I had mentioned the # of bone pieces.) I haven't seen it of course, but he has a pretty nicely sized incision to go along with the new metal insides. His shoulder is all wrapped up in a sweet bandage, and he's got this nifty little ice-water thingy for the area... I've never seen one before, but I'm also new to this surgery thing. It's essentially a wrap that we can fix on his shoulder, which attaches through hoses to a small cooler filled with ice & water. The whole contraption is run by electricity and cycles ice water through the wrap on his shoulder, acting as an ice pack. The advances in technology these days! :) Haha

He's hurting, quite a lot actually. He said he hurts more now than ever, which makes sense. His bone is still broken, but now he has been cut on, an manipulated, and drilled into... so he's entitled to complain more.

I took off from work today and will do the same tomorrow. My employers have been so understanding about this situation, it's a blessing. I was able to work from home this weekend and last night to make up some of the hours I will miss in the office. One good thing about architecture is that can indeed be a mobile profession if the need arises.

Anyhow... so here's the deal. I have LOTS of pictures to post and LOTS of things to tell you about, that don't all pertain to broken husbands. So tomorrow I hope to post again, as I will have more free time than I am used to!

Until then,
take care, and thanks for thinking about us!
-Jill

Keeping up with the Clavicle Part 2

Surgery - July 29th, 9:00am.

Dude, totally too far away.

Keeping up with the Clavicle...

Well ladies and gentlemen.. we've seen lots of doctors in the past 4 days, but we really aren't closer to any medical aid for Mr. Modell & his cracked clavicle. I am past due for my bedtime, so I'm going to keep this quick and informative.

Saturday & Sunday were spent on the couch. He had lots of visitors on Saturday, which was amazing. We've met & made lots of friends here in Dover, and so many people came by to check on him, it was really touching!

Monday I took off of work to help him out around the house & drive him to the base clinic. I spent a L-O-N-G time on the phone that morning coordinating between a) Tricare, b) the Flight Doc, c) the referring doctor's office, & d) the surgeon's office. In the meantime he laid around, trying not to move.

This morning we had a consultation with the trauma surgeon who is going to perform surgery on his collarbone. After leaving his office we are no further along than where we were Saturday. We left the ER knowing he would have surgery, and we left the surgeon's office knowing we would have surgery. But when? That is still up in the air.

They've said it could be anytime between now and the beginning of next week. SO FRUSTRATING!!!! For me at least. Kyle is being so chill about everything... he is very understanding, and I'm just irritated. I'm glad he's there to balance me out. And really, it's his shoulder, so I should go with how he feels, but I'm just tired of watching him hurt (although he doesn't complain at all).

We will be sure to let you know when the surgery is scheduled. Please continue to pray - for the wisdom and talent of the surgeon (Dr. Brady), for the healing of Kyle's bone, & for the peace to realize this whole ordeal will play out how God intends it to.

And on another note... today is the 8th month anniversary of the death of my sweet mother, Sue Ellen Atkinson. Today has been hard (-er than normal). I miss her.


..... We have a lot of things to tell you, and lots of pictures to post, and I will do that at the first available opportunity. Hope you are all well.

Take care,
Jill & Kyle

A Prayer Request...

Hello guys & gals...

It's been a busy morning in the Modell household... to make a long story short, we need your prayers if you have a second or two. We spent a good bit of the day in an emergency room for my darling husband. :) This morning he was playing ultimate frisbee, went for the disc, fell, and instead of face planting took the fall on his left shoulder. This was an uh-oh moment. I got a call to come take Kyle to the hospital, because he & the guys he was playing with thought he had dislocated his shoulder. Actually, he broke his clavicle. In summary, he broke his left clavicle into 4 pieces and it's the worst collarbone injury the general dr or the orthopedic doctor have seen in 30 years of practice. It's something they are more likely to see from a motorcycle accident or a car crash. As Kyle said.. go big or go home. :) They want to send him to an orthopedic specialist for a possible/very, very likely surgery, and that won't happen until Monday. So, we are at home right now, he is on the couch drugged up, and we're waiting to see what they tell us to do.

He is worried about it, for a variety of reasons, and we need him to be repaired and returned to his perfectly healthy self as soon as possible and reasonable. Please pray for his poor bone and that everything will turn out okay.

Thanks guys!
-Jill

Pictures!

Hello again!

I now have some pictures to post for your viewing pleasure. They are from before we received our household goods, so the rooms are quite bare & quite white. (I'm only posting the lr & kitchen for now.) I bought some paint yesterday.. but when we got home and painted a little patch in the living room, the color looked all wrong. So, we're still rocking the white walls, and we're still in the middle of settling in. Everything is unpacked, but nothing looks put together. (I'll make sure to put up some new pictures whenever that feat is accomplished.)



Our new home is one half of a duplex, which we share with a couple named Tim & Crista. (We are on the left.) They have the CUTEST little girl named Adilyn, and someone pointed out that by the time we part ways after our stay in Dover, we will have watched this little one year old grow into a kindergartener! This strikes me as significant. We should be in this little state for 4 years, and we think (at the moment) that we want to stay in this house the whole time... that would be the longest I have lived in one location since leaving home in 2001. I moved around every two years in college... so staying in one place could be very nice!

The front door/entryway

The living room + Kyle

My kitchen!! So much better than the 1960s galley kitchen at Laughlin

But, we'll see about that staying in this house part... we've had some maintenance issues since arriving only 13 days ago. We've had to call in a maintenance request THREE times for our air conditioner. We find that quite ridiculous, for a new ac unit in a brand new house. The first time we called was our first night here... we turned on the ac and suddenly our back yard was filled with this outrageously loud "thwack, thwack, thwack" noise as the fan hit the shroud of the unit. So, we had to turn it off then, to wait for the maintenance guy to show up the next day. So, he came, he repaired, he left. Not 2 days later, the temp in our house shot up to 83 degrees & it was miserable! Another fellow came out, decided there was a coolant leak somewhere in the unit, and that someone else would come out the next day (or the next, or the next, or the next) and repair. So he recharged us, and the temp came down and we were comfortable for about a week. Then last night, Kyle and I both noticed that the air was suddenly becoming very uncomfortable again.. humid, sticky, not cool! (Literally & figuratively.) So, we called again, yet another repair guy came out last night, and we learned our unit had not been repaired as promised. Boo!! He recharged the coolant again, and we have been promised another repair man will come out and fix the issue. They could save themselves quite a bit of cost & effort if they just took care of the problem the first time! Needless to say, Kyle and I are pretty exasperated with this situation.

But, we are thankful this didn't happen in Texas! It is warm up here, but it's not 100 degrees as it would be in Del Rio. One thing we've discovered though is the humidity! It feels like we're back in College Station again, the air is just saturated with moisture. 94% humidity today. Bleh!

We have started "church shopping". This morning we attended the traditional Protestant service on base at the chapel. Next week I think we'll try the contemporary service, and then after that we will venture off base. There are several Baptist churches in the area, which is great! So, please pray that God will lead us to the right church home for the us. We want to get plugged into a good one!

We just returned from lunch with our friends the Houcks. Jack was in UPT at Laughlin with Kyle, and Lori his wife did double duty as a Civil Engineer at Laughlin and as a student pilot spouse. She and Jack were able to be reassigned together, so it's great that they are both here! They moved into a house that is only two duplexes over, so I am very happy about that. For lunch we tried this place called La Tonalteca, and it was actually pretty good. One of the concerns most important to me in this move was "Is there good Mexican food?" And happily, there is! This place had really good food, better than most places we ate at in Del Rio. Ironic huh? We move half way across the country, away from a bordertown, and the Mexican food is better. Go figure. :)

We also shared in our 4th of July festivities with the Houcks, as well as several other couples from the base, some of which we already knew (they're Aggies), and some new friends as well. We attended the town's parade, which was fun but also one big political advertisement. Every other parade entry was someone running for some type of political office, and it was really obnoxious! I did see Joe Biden though (a Congressman whose name is thrown around on the telly a lot), and that was interesting.

After the parade, we hit up the concession stands - hot dogs, funnel cakes, cotton candy, and SWEET TEA!!! Hahaha, I was very excited about that cup of sweet yummy goodness. :) Then we settled onto the town green, which ran in front of the capitol building. There was live music and a C-5 flyover for our enjoyment, although it was so much a flyover as a fly-in-the-vicinity. The plane didn't even come close to going over heads, but it was okay because I'm biased... a C-17 would've been better anyway. :)

The fireworks were scheduled to begin at 9:20, but at around 8:00 o'clock a light, but steady rain began to fall. It slowly, very slowly kept getting heavier, until the girls took shelter under blankets, while all of the guys stood around getting soaked. They started the fireworks early, and at 9:00 the show started. It was a really nice display, I just think it would've been better if we weren't hiding from the elements. Here are a few pics... they're kinda blurry, but you get the idea.

Us + the Houcks

Well.... I think that's all I have to say today. I hope you enjoy the pictures, and as always, thanks for keeping up with the Modells. We'll report back in later!

-Jill

Hello from a far away land... the land of Delaware, the First State! Dela-where you ask? A little nubbin of a state south of Pennsylvania, east of Maryland, and hanging out on the Atlantic Ocean. The new home of the Modells!!

I am sorry for the delay in posting... we have been so busy over the past few weeks, and this is the first time I feel like I have time to breathe!! I want to give you a quick update, but I'll have to keep it short... there is so much unpacking/settling in that needs to be done!

Okay.. we said goodbyes to our families. That was tough! But we said goodbye to Kyle's family in the airport, so we didn't get too emotional, and then well... my dad and brothers aren't really emotional, so that wasn't a problem. I started to get teary eyed saying goodbye to my brothers, and Bryan just looked at me like I was nuts and reminded me I'll see him in just a few months. Hint hint, don't cry sister. :)

We took off on our merry way on the 20th of June. Drove to Nashville, TN the first night, but stopped in Memphis to have some ribs at a place called Rendevouz, at the suggestion of our friend Rachel. On Saturday we made it to Dayton, Ohio where we stayed 'till Monday with our good friends Ben & Renee. We had so much fun! We hadn't seen them since our wedding, so it was really great to catch up with them over a year later!

Monday we stayed in Hagerstown, Maryland and then arrived in Dover on Tuesday!! And happily, we were able to move into our house the very same day. Guys, it's amazing! I don't have pictures to post as of yet, but those will come soon. This house is wonderful, so much more than two people need. A big kitchen, 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, a garage... we are so happy with it. And even better, we have friends everywhere around here... we are so thrilled with this location.

Kyle hasn't begun working yet. He was on permissive leave until today, but he'll start inprocessing on Monday. He is very much looking forward to getting the proverbial show on the road. A new plane (C-17) arrived at the base on Tuesday, and there was a celebration of sorts, and he was able to meet quite a few of his squadron mates. We are both very much looking forward to his first flight out of Dover.

I began work on Monday. In short - the commute is going to kill me, but the work is totally worth it. It takes me about an hour 15 to make it to work in the morning, and an hour 30 to get home. Boo!!! So that is sucky, but I wanted this job really badly, so I will just deal with it. The firm is a dream come true, and I feel very lucky to be working there. I like the project I'm dealing with now, and I'll tell y'all more about that later!

Okay.. other items of interest..... the movers broke our dining table and our washing machine. Total decimation. But our new w&d arrived this afternoon, so we are able to catch up on the backlog of laundry. A dining table is next on the list.

The weather is amazing. A little humid down here, but when I drive an hour north, it's perfect! All in all, we are very happy here. I think it will be a good fit for us.

Now, I need to fold that same laundry, and then I need to crash... I am sleepy! I will write more soon, promise, complete with pictures!

Take care,
Jill