A Summary of January Events

I am going to try and give a brief summary of January 2012. We (Cody and his dad mostly) were making great progress on our family room addition that also included a large storage room (5 ft x 25 ft), laundry room and pantry. The addition was framed, the siding was put on and Cody and I had installed the roofing on Friday. On Saturday, January 7^th, the two boys and I were outside helping Cody with some of the finishing trim work. I was holding one end of a long piece of trim that we were cutting using the table saw. Cooper was right next to me, playing with a stick and Max was in the stroller about ten feet away, facing us. Cody cut the piece, turned off the table saw then reached across to pick up the cut piece. The table saw had not stopped yet and it cut off his right thumb just above the middle knuckle and his pointer finger at the middle knuckle. We were very blessed that two of our neighbors were outside and heard the screams and ran to help. We were also very blessed that I was outside when it happened.

After a quick ride in the ambulance, we were admitted at the John C. Lincoln hospital. We had an amazing hand surgeon (Dr. Schaub) and some great nurses. Cody went in for surgery just a few hours later, but they were unable to reattach the fingers. We stayed in the hospital for a few more days because they were unable to control the pain and Cody kept vomiting.

Just a week after this happened, Cody returned to teaching and began his master’s in administration. Cody has been extremely positive and optimistic from the very beginning. We have had some good laughs and enjoyed the jokes from others.

Through all this, we have realized our blessings. We have amazing family and friends that don’t wait to be asked. Within an hour of the accident, several people from the ward came and cleaned up the yard and put away the tools. Our ward fasted for Cody the next day. His name was put on the prayer roll of fifteen temples.

Our good friend, a surgeon at Good Samaritan hospital, interrupted a surgery to ask that hand surgeon if he could come do Cody's surgery at John C Lincoln hospital. Dr. Reed, instead called his partner (Dr. Schaub) who was in a surgery at our hospital and asked him to make our surgery a priority. Because of this, we moved ahead of four other surgeries.