My sweet Taylor

I don't even know where to start about this weekend. I'll start with Ashley's weekend.

There was a trip planned for us to take Ashley's cousin Lance down to Austin to see sister Amber and other cousin Brooke (Lance's sister) and go to a G-love concert. With all the traveling I have been doing for work, the last thing I wanted to do was leave town again, so Ash told me it was cool if I stayed home. I jumped at that offer as I needed a weekend to just re-group. They got down to Austin fine and then Saturday afternoon I get a text saying that one of my favorite singers, Tritan Prettyman, was opening for G-Love. I was disappointed that I would miss out on that, but knew it was better that I was home. Little did I know what was in store for my weekend...more on that in a minute. So later Saturday evening I get an email from Ashley that has a picture of him and said favorite singer....SUPER jealous needless to say.

NOT the best pic of Ash....but she looks gorgeous and he said she is super nice. Too bad I missed out.

Now for my weekend. I woke up and cooked breakfast for me and a friend of mine, whom I've known since 1st grade. Breakfast came out pretty good, which is unusual....should have known then. Ran a couple of errands with my mom and then got a call at about 4 from dad that Taylor had fallen and hurt herself, and he though it was pretty bad. Anyone that knows her knows she is a major drama queen, so we have to be careful about how we handle injuries until we know she's not playing it up. By the time me and mom got back to the house, and my mom saw her, she knew immediately this was something big. All we knew was that Taylor was walking along, went to step over a log, and her toe caught the log so she fell forward and caught herself. Anyways, me, my mom and Taylor load up and head to Arlington Memorial, as it's closer than Cooks. The ER doc looked at her and immediately said something is broken with the way fluid was filling up her elbow, but we had to do x-rays to know exactly what. This picture is pre x-rays....

And walking to get x-rays...
The x-rays were a fiasco. Being at Arlington Memorial, these people don't know the best way to deal with kids. She was in so much pain and obviously didn't want to move as any movement hurt her even more. She stepped up and finally just sucked up the pain to get the x-rays donw, but not without a large amount of tears shed and "I can't"-s. An hour later we have x-rays, and are waiting on the doc to take a look. He initially says he'll put her in a splint, and to call the pediatrician monday for further instruction, as AM does not really deal with children. Then about 10 minutes later, he pulls us back out and says he only had one of the x-rays initially, but in looking at the other two he just received, it's much more serious and they're transferring us to Cooks as AM can't do anything. This obviously freaked out Taylor as she heard the word "surgery" being thrown around.

Right before leaving to go to Cooks...all splinted up:
What felts like 8 hours later we finally get out of AM and head to Cooks. We get to Cooks and go right in since AM had called ahead and filled them in on everything. By this point she had gotten some pain medication in her so she was pretty chill. We get to Cooks, get settled into a room and then they take her for more x-rays as the others didn't give them a clear enough view. Now the doc at AM told us that it looked like there was bone floating around and all this horrible stuff...so we were prepared for the worst. Well, there was NO bone floating around, it was only a break, but it was broken in such a way where they needed to put her down to set it. She broke her humerus (the bone above the elbow), just a little bit above the elbow as the bone gets really skinny. Apparently this is a very common break, but there are only 3 hospitals in the area with doctors to treat it. Again an answer to prayer that we had one so close.

Waiting in the ER at Cooks:
She heard "surgery" and immediately went into hysteria. In the middle of crying, she even tried to negotiate with the surgeon to do the surgery Thursday as it was better than at that point in time. (The doctor's got a pretty big kick out of this one) It's natural for most people to hear that word and think they are being cut open. We explained they weren't cutting anything, and she wasn't going to bleed. I'm not going to go into any details, but my sweet niece has had an EXTREMELY difficult childhood as a result of her mom and dad. As a result of this and a combination of the hard drugs they had her on, and the lack of food or water since they had to do surgery, she was FREAKING out. I'm not talking just some crying, but crying, screaming, going into hysteria. It took all three of us (my parents and me) to calm her down, but anytime another doctor or nurse walked in, she would lose it again. She was just so scared and didn't understand why God would choose her for this kind of pain. It truly was heart-breaking and it was all I could do to not lose it in front of her.
One major answered prayer in all of this is that while we were waiting, the Worship Leader and Children's Minister from church came to visit Taylor. My dad is tight with the Worship Leader, Sean Paul, so he sent him a text just asking for prayer requests. About an hour later, they show up at the hospital which was a HUGE blessing. We were able to keep Taylor's mind off of things for about another hour. These people are amazing and we're truly blessed to be surrounded by these people that care so much to change out of their pj's and come to the hospital at 9 on a Saturday night.
As I said before, this all started around 3:45, well she finally went into surgery at about 1 and was done by 1:30, up in a room by about 2:30 after recovery and everything. I could draw this out even more, but I think you get the picture. It was by far the worst thing to ever have to go through. I have had my share of surgeries and I told my mom, after we cried and hugged in the waiting room after Taylor went to the OR, that I don't know how she's done this so many times. This wasn't even my child but seeing those pleading eyes looking up through tears, begging for us to not make her do this....it makes me tear up just writing this. She has such a big heart and and is such an amazing kid, and of course we all want to know why. It's hard not to have that answer. She is so strong in her faith and she knows God is there and he will give her the strength to get through this. She is stronger than all of us put together because of the stuff she has been through.
I don't have any updated pictures, as she wasn't too keen on the idea yesterday :) Please keep my precious girl in your prayers. She is right-handed and this all happened on her right elbow, so she is really stressed about school and how she is going to function.
She ended up with a cast for about 6 weeks, but they put 2 pins in to keep things where they need to be. *graphic surgery talk warning* They put the pins through the skin and into the bone . However, they are covered by the cast so she doesn't know they are there. We are purposely not talking about it because we know it would freak her out beyond belief, so she will find out about them just in time for them to come out. I think she gets those out in about 4 weeks or something, and they just take them out in the doctor's office, so pray for that day as it will not be an easy one.
I know I said I was wrapping up....so sue me. I can truly say I never want to go through what we went through on Saturday. Seeing the pain she was in...it broke my heart. I know she's a fighter and each day is a step towards getting back to normal for her. There were many answered prayers and that's something we can ALWAYS rely on.

Specific things to pray for:
1. Perfect healing for the arm
2. Taylor's heart--knowing God did not "do" this to her, but it was part of His plan for her life.
3. My mom as she stays home with Taylor this next week...it will be the endurance trial of the year.
4. Pain--that it will begin subsiding so she doesn't have to be doped up all the time.
5. The day the pins come out--pray for peace for Taylor once she finds out what is going on and strength for my mom who will be taking her.

I could go on and on...but I won't.

I appreciate your prayers and will keep you updated on the progress.