William's Recovery

Above is a picture of me holding William on Mother's Day, the day after the Ironman. William was feeling very sore from lying on his back too long, but he couldn't get on his stomach because of his colarbone. We found that I could hold him like this without it hurting him and we both got some much needed sleep.

The first couple of days after the accident, William was terribly sore. He could not move around very easily. He would get bed sores and required being moved every half hour. Moving him was not an easy task for every appendage was covered in abrasions and to top it off, we had to be mindful of his left arm and shoulder. He spent a lot of time just sitting with the Pillow Pet my mom had given him, watching a movie or having his cousin Addison tend to his every need and want.
We had to feed him because he couldn't move his arms without feeling pain. We had to carry him everywhere. After the first day, Todd wanted me to try to get him walking a couple of steps every day, this was much easier said than done, and quite easy for Todd to say since he went home Sunday and we weren't returning home until Tuesday. His poor legs were too sore an too scraped up for him to straighten them or put any weight upon them. But he did feed himself with a spoon, so I was seeing progress.
Since my dad realized that me flying home by myself and the four boys, one of which was injured, he got LeNae a ticket on our flight. She was a life-saver, I don't know if I would have been able to do it with her. William had to be carried, very carefully so not to hit his body on anything around us (which can be difficult while trying to go down the aisle of an airplane) and to not hold him in a position that caused him more pain.
Because he was not yet walking, William slept with me in my bed; luckily Todd was working night shifts. He has been having nightmares for the last couple of months, but now he was terrified to go to sleep, afraid of more nightmares. One evening he cried out "Help!" in his sleep, then later said something about his shoulder, all while remaining asleep. It broke my heart to realize what he was dreaming about.
I wanted to talk to William about the accident, make sure that he wasn't too traumatized. Each time I would talk about it to him, it seemed that he would give me just a little more information but then would declare while turning his face away, "I don't want to talk about it".
From what I was able to gather from him, I think he opened the door on accident, and after he fell out he ran off of the road for he "didn't wanna be run-d over by a car".
A couple of days after the accident he told me, "Nexst time you have a race...I don't want to do the kid race....because I don't want to fall out of the car". This broke my heart for after the race he was so proud of himself, and to think that he felt that running the race was the reason for his accident!
A week after the accident William still wasn't walking. We had tried to get him to walk, but with little progress. We went to church, Stake Confrenece, pushing him in a stroller. We found a row and put the stroller at the end of it. Half-way through the meeting I looked over and not only had William gotten out of his stroller, he was walking! We sure did celebrate.