September 10th, 2025, was my six week anniversary of my surgery for my skull and nose repair. The pain has mostly subsided, although I'll get a painful twinge from time to time. The bridge of my nose feels a little off at times, hard to describe, but almost like the feeling you get before you need to sneeze. Uncomfortable, but not a big deal. The skin on my forehead is still a bit numb and my right eyebrow is a bit droopy. Hoping it "wakes up" or something eventually.
I took a series of pictures each week. The first was just after my injury, then before my surgery when I buzzed my hair. Next is the day I got home from the hospital after surgery. The following pics in the second and third rows are all one week apart, so weeks 1 through 6. I still get a little surprised when I see myself in a mirror with my buzzed hair. The scar is mostly covered now and isn't nearly so noticeable.
I worked out, did the elliptical, and went on some long walks with Millie Mae. I have an appointment with the plastic surgery department in the morning, hopefully they agree that I'm healed enough to resume all the normal things I like to do.
Looking forwards to playing tennis this weekend for the first time in a couple of months.
Paige is a pretty independent woman, and too often we hardly see her when she's up in her room. We jokingly refer to it as her apartment since it's huge and she has pretty much everything she could want or need upstairs. With school in session, she has been doing well in her classes, although she did need a little help the other day with Chemistry homework. We went through significant figures and some other concepts together. Andrea caught Paige "resting" her eyes and "visualizing" the concepts while I was reading it to her. Millie was very helpful too and also studied with her eyes closed.
Andrea and Paige went to Orlando with some of Paige's high school friends. Andrea rented a Honda van to haul everyone and they left on Saturday morning. The resort was awesome for a big group and even though they had four bedrooms in their villa, all the girls ended up sleeping in the fun bunk room that slept five which was perfect.
At the resort, the girls played volleyball, pickleball, swam, and did stand-up paddleboarding. They made friends with a couple of high school age boys and played soccer and manhunt throughout the resort.
For Labor Day this year, Shawn flew to Chicago to visit with his brother and family.
We'd been planning to travel there a few weeks ago, however after falling and fracturing my skull, those plans had to be canceled. I was determined to make the trip out this year and Alex didn't have any plans for Labor Day, although Laura was on call and had to work for most of the weekend.
We didn't have any complex plans for the visit, my goal was just to experience their life in Chicago and hang out with my good friend Charlie. He has such an active imagination and the most energy of any little boy I've ever met. So, it was always and adventure, whatever we did.
Saturday morning, we had a quick breakfast at a nearby bakery and then drove over to the Field Museum. I hadn't been since I was young, and there were all kinds of new exhibits. Charlie is familiar with all the museums and they're like his own playground.
In the kid's area, Charlie and I put on matching skunk outfits while we played with blocks and dinosaur bones.
My favorite exhibit was the gigantic flying dinosaur Quetzalcoatlus statue, and I got a pic with Charlie between its huge wings. We looked at all the dino bones as well, including the famous T-Rex Sue.
In the evening, we played some Minecraft together and then watched K-Pop Demon Hunters while we had pizza.
Sunday morning, we ate breakfast at a nearby restaurant and then decided to go to the beach. There were quite a few things going on during the weekend, so we weren't sure if parking would be possible or easy. We decided that Alex and Charlie would ride their E-Bike and I rented an E-Bike through Lyft. I was a little nervous to ride a bike with my healing surgical issues, but I wore a helmet, and the route to the beach was through some quiet residential areas so it was fairly safe.
The beach was quite a bit different than our ocean beaches we're used to in Florida. Charlie jumped right into the cool water, and we swam for a while and he "surfed" on the waves.
We spent most of our time building sand castles, sand villages, and battling our communities. Charlie liked for his town to win and take the property of the others, and we worked a long time moving sand and then crushing it all. There was also a huge shark sculpture on the beach that we admired.
After the beach, we cleaned up and went to a local Mexican restaurant, before playing some minecraft and watching Aladdin. One of the most memorable moments for me, was after the movie finished I asked Charlie if he enjoyed the movie. He agreed that it was great, and then wanted to play pretend where he was the evil sorcerer from the movie, and pretended to transform into a giant snake so he could bite me. He is certainly one of a kind, that was not the reaction or game I was expecting, but it was classic Charlie.
I had a wonderful time in Chicago and thankful that I was finally able to visit them in their community and their environment.
It's been four weeks since surgery, so I updated my before/after photo set with some new pics. I feel pretty good lately, and have stopped taking pain medicine. Nerves still feel weird on the left side, and a bit of pain at times, but so far so good. Still wearing the nose splint at night, but no longer need to during the day which is nice.
This past weekend was the first football game of the year for Paige's high school. They played their big local rival, and Paige went along with a bunch of her buddies. After the game, they came back to our house and Paige hosted a sleepover in her big new room.
On August 16th, we started our official moving process. The movers came on Saturday and spent the entire day packing things up. They had a crew of six and they worked all day wrapping furniture, boxing up junk, and putting clothes in to garment boxes. Our family spent the day making trips over to the rental house with odds and ends, valuables and breakable things, etc.
Sunday was the big moving day. It was a bit overwhelming as we got started, especially when we saw the mess that was left behind some of the furniture. Connor's desk had an open back and he liked to prop his dirty feet up on the wall, which was horrible looking once the furniture was removed. Paige had a similar issue with the wall behind her desk, but wasn't quite so unsightly. We had planned to have our handyman work on that kind of thing when he came out the following week, but Grandpa Rick had been asking if he could help, so we asked if he'd be willing to come out and work on it. He drove out with his painting supplies, I dug out our spare paint cans, and he got to work.
The movers worked fairly quickly and completely filled two large trucks. The hardest part of the day came when it was time to take the ping pong table downstairs. They realized how tricky it was going to be to disassemble it, and I suggested they consider lowering it off the balcony. They loved the idea, and I was too stressed out to watch most of it, but I did get a picture of them and a short snippet of video as they finished the process.
Finally, it was all moved out. All the rooms were bare, and all that was left in the house was Grandpa Rick, painting the walls and touching up the holes.
At the rental, we started the process of unloading and unpacking. It was faster than loading, but as we filled up the rooms and ran out of space, it was stressful. Eventually, many boxes just got shoved in to corners, and it was a hectic mess.
The movers finished up as the sun was going down, and we snapped a pic with the team before they departed. The Movebright team were hard workers, and the best part were their friendly attitudes. They were all eager to help with whatever we asked, and they were all cheerful and joking with each other. Great guys, and we will certainly use them again in the future if they're available.
Monday, I had planned to work, but realized that was not going to be realistic so I took the day to unpack. Andrea and I spent all day long unpacking, organizing, and working hard. Tuesday I worked all day and then in the evening spent the entire late afternoon and evening unpacking. Wednesday was another long day from sunup to sundown, but as it got late, we realized we were close.
I noticed our neighbors had their trach out, and after meeting our next door neighbor, I confirmed the Thursday was trash day. I spent the evening breaking down the last of the boxes, and then I got our hand cart dolly and hauled everything around to the curb. It was past midnight when I finished, but it felt good to be done. The house wasn't perfect, but we were able to park in the garage, and all the rooms were uncluttered and comfortable.
So far we have enjoyed living in our new house, and on the 21st we closed on the sale of our house and were officially finished with the process. What a relief!
