Maggie was determined to seriously injure herself today. Bryan had to leave early this morning, so I took advantage of being up early to get ready for the zoo. Maggie only finally woke up as I was all ready, so I got her dressed and had her drink her shake in the car. We still only got there at 9:00, which is when they open to the public anyway. We headed to the elephants (as always requested) and then to the farm animals. Maggie had to wait to pet the goats until Carter woke up, so we busied ourselves with the cows, turkeys, chickens, sheep, horses, and the playground. Everyone always gets a kick out of how Maggie interacts with the goats. She insists on getting a curry comb and a few visits ago, she watched an older boy slide his hand through the strap on the top, so now that's how she uses it, too, even though it's way too big for her hand. Then she marches around the yard and takes a swipe at each goat's rear-end. Today she actually looked one of the goats in the eye and laughed as if he told her a funny joke. That's when she decided to get down to their level and got down on the ground, tummy-time style! From the barn, we headed toward the monkeys by the splash caverns. Maggie caught sight of the water play and didn't want anything to do with the monkeys. It was a pretty hot day, so I decided to keep her clothes on figuring they'd dry out before we left, especially since she hardly got wet the last time. She hates water that splashes on her, so she avoided the spouts and only played in the stream. Not this time! She braved the spouts and climbed the stairs to the short slide. After balking a bit and asking me to help her (I was feeding Carter) she finally went down feet first on her tummy (at my suggestion). She only needed help once more to get back out (she had to go under the waterfall.) Well, that was it. Over and over she went up the stairs, down the slide, and out under the waterfall! She finally came over and told me she wanted to eat, so we got some food and drinks and sat down for a break. I thought we'd get back to seeing the animals after lunch, but Maggie tripped and fell in the gravel and was covered from tummy to toes with sand and dirt. I suggested she go back in the splash caverns to rinse off before we headed out again. She ran off to the slide, and I sat down to feed Carter. After making a few loops, I heard her start crying inside the caverns. I rushed in there to find one of the other mothers helping her up and putting on her shoe. Right away I knew it was pretty bad. I could already see the goose egg welling up on her forehead. One of the maintenance people called the ranger who brought ice (which we never used) and had me fill out an incident report. I figure she must have flipped around and landed off the slide head first. Poor baby! It took her quite awhile to recover. She did, though, and wanted to finish seeing the animals before we went home. We did the quick version of the Africa trail, only stopping to feed the giraffes. She fell asleep in the stroller after the zebras, but woke again when I tried to put ice on her head in the car. She fell asleep five minutes before we got to my folks' house and again, woke up when I put her in the bed. I tried for an hour to put her down, but she is pretty stubborn. Later, as we were helping Rosie exercise on the treadmill, Maggie fell onto it. Somehow, magically, Rosie stepped over her, I dropped the phone (I was talking to Bryan about dinner), put Carter on the floor, and grabbed her off before she could get hurt. Egads! She was really testing my parental fortitude today.

Dec.2009-In this pictuure we were just about to fly out again from Georgia back to Canada for my appointment at a Spine Clinic for surgical constultation. Since that summer (2009) I began to experiance an alarming rate of NEW pain and NEW symptoms in my extremeties and back! My hands and feet were constantly swollen, bright red and purple, burning and numb with pins and needles. My arms and legs would also experiance pins and needles as well as shooting pains. These symptoms were NEW and NOT due to my previous SIJD! I had been recovering well from SIJD after my 2009 corrective SI surgery. Yet, I still battled residual pain due to the damage sustained from the original bad SI surgery I had in 2008. To make matters worse, during my post-op rehab I had become to aggressive with my exercises. In my enthusiasm (at actually being able to work out at the gym, go on a treadmill and eliptical) at the gym working on muscle rehab and strengthening, I injured my discs further :( This trip to back to Canada for my spine surgery was a painful the medical neglect we suffered, specific to my health and circumstances, because of our socialiezed health care system, Canada runs RATIONED HEALTH CARE. After a pathetic consult with this GP (who ridiculed me for having SI surgery)It was decided that I should be put on a "expedited"12 MONTH WAITING LIST to see a Neurosurgeon for surgical CONSULT, this doesn't even account for the additional time spent on the waiting list for the actually SURGERY!!!! The GP hardly just glanced at my medical records and moved on!(I had brought the test results proving the bad condition of the affected discs in my Cervical spine and my Lumbar spine. Including the fact that MY SPINAL CORD WAS COMPRESSED by the two bad discs in my neck!!!!!) I was assured that 12 months was a "short wait time", typically a consult with a Neurosurgeon in Alberta, Canada is 18-24 months