Lord, I will Follow Thee

Its been so long since I have blogged, that I knew it was time to update. Where to start?
I guess the best place to start is that in 2016 my son Tyler was called to serve a mission in the Tallahassee Florida mission. He was to enter the MTC on July 20th 2016. He was ecstatic, and we were as completely ready as we could be for him to go the week before the 20th. We decided to go to Lake Powell as a family 1 more time before he left. When we got home he would leave 2 days later. Tyler decided to really be careful not to do any extreme sports so that he was safe and healthy to leave. He really took an easy, so we thought. Sometimes freak things happen!
 We were taking an very easy hike through one of the canyons, when Tyler took a small leap to land onto another boulder. Well, apparently he landed just right, or wrong depending on how you look at it. Tyler was in excruciating pain! we managed to help get him out of the canyon and back into the boat. His foot was already so swollen and bruised. We new we would need to have him seem at the urgent care there in bullfrog. We were quite a ways away from the marina, and the water was super choppy. It was going to be a long drive. Tyler's pain was increasing, we did what we could to stabilize his foot, and gave him some Advil, and we took off! My poor boy couldn't handle the rough waters, and the pain was so bad that he passed out from the pain. When he would pass out, we would go full throttle as fast as we could, he would wake up and then we would have to slow way down, to a rate that it would take us hours to reach the clinic. If I remember correctly Tyler passed out close to a dozen times during the journey to the marina. A good friend of ours boated in front of us to try and smooth out the water as much as possible for us.
After what seemed an eternity, we finally reached the marina, but had no way of getting Tyler from the boat to the clinic, so an ambulance was called. a short mile ride, and wee finally made it. The took some X-rays, and told us that it just looked like a bad sprain. That didn't feel right to any of us, but we took their word for it. It was late in the evening by then so we stayed at the hotel there in the marina, and left at first light to head back to camp. Tyler left for home with some family the next day, and we followed him home the following day.


 This is where everything changed. After seeing the mission president and telling him that he had sprained his ankle, President Hollingshead told us that he wanted him to see a orthopedic. My though was " we already had seen a Dr, so why", but we took him in anyway. The Doc looked at him and took some more x-rays and determined that it did appear to be a bad sprain, but there was just a tiny little something showing on the x-ray, that bothered him a little. He told Tyler, we will keep you home for a couple weeks, put on this brace, and start doing squats, and that he thought it would heal up fine. The look on Tyler's face right then assured me that something was more wrong that that. After sharing my concerns with he dr. we decided to have Tyler get a MRI! This was a game changer!
 A week later he was able to get the MRI. That same night at 10:00pm, I received a call straight from TYlers orthopedic. He told me that Tyler had completely shattered his ankle, and that it was going to immediate, and exrtensive surgery.This would require matereials to act as tendons, tying to put pieces of bones back together, at least what they could salvage, and then clean out all the remaining pieces of bone that couldn't be saved. He said be ready first thing in the morning as he was going to put tyler first on his schedule. After telling my son the news, he became very emotional. He knew this would push his mission back way longer than he would have ever wanted. He struggled understanding why this happened to him at this time. He had never had a broken bone or major injury in his life.





At his follow up appt. the DR. said it would be a long recovery. He would need months of healing, and lots of physical therapy to regain the strength in his foot and leg. His already skinny leg had turned into the smallest little atrified leg, I had ever seen. He had a little old man leg.
 After a 6 month delay, Tyler was finally feeling 'good enough" to get out in the mission field. On January 4th 2017 he left for the provo MTC. I might add we had a 2 day notice! AHHHH! We scrambled to get him ready again, but it was so worth it. Tyler now understands what he needed to learn from this experience, and why the Lord needed him to wait. He has had so many experiences that there is no denying that the our Heavenly Father knows what we need and when we need it. I am proud of my boy, and that throughout all of this that he exemplified " Lord I will follow thee."






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