Tuesday July 7th, 2009

Hello everyone,

This is Jon, Doran's son, and Amy's younger (can't say little) brother.
Amy and Pepper left today to go back home in southern Colorado, so since I am still near the hospital and at home I am probably going to be taking over the nearly daily blog responsibilities.

Today was a good day for Doran Whitaker. His broken arm and leg are now in a position to begin healing. He went into surgery this morning for about 4 hours.
In his arm they put some plates and screws and that surgeon said everything went great. Very little blood loss, and his bones fit together very good. They even used "bone cream" which is this gel that stimulate bone growth, so they put that between the bones. Pretty nifty.
His leg was more broken up so it took longer to fix. He now has this AMAZING thing around his leg called an External Fixator. It is composed of 4 loops that go around his leg, bars that the loops are attached to, and a big thing that makes his foot look a little like a bumper car. From each of the loops there are pins or wires that go into the bone that align them together.
The surgery on his leg was minimally invasive, so there were just small cuts made where the pins/wires enter the bone. And the device is very strong. Ironically, it is made out of the same stuff his bike is made out of: titanium and carbon fiber.
Overall, both surgeons said that it went splendidly and his bones should start healing. If anything needs shifting on the leg they don't need to do another surgery since the device is on the outside.

Yesterday was not so much fun. A doctor came a spoke to us and just told us best case scenarios (he recovers) and worst case scenarios (this is it). She is not a neurologist and didn't know what was going to happen, but it is always hard to hear worst case scenarios. Sure we have all thought about it, but hear someone say that this is it is just hard. We continue to put our faith in God. We feel that he survived the accident for a reason, and that reason is not to be like this for the rest of his life. He has continued to make small steps this whole time, and we expect that trend to continue.
On a good note, yesterday he did smile for the first time. He was looking at my mom, so that was really a treasured memory. And since it is something we have not seen before, it is a sign of recovery.

In all, we are still in good spirits, and hope that each of you are also.