Injury Update on Jerah

As I've mentioned before, my daughter Jerah broke her leg on February 26 in a freak accident during a judo tournament. She had surgery that same day and the surgeon implanted an intramedullary titanium rod in her right femur. But thankfully, although her femur was shattered, her growth plates were unhurt and her prognosis was very good.

Jerah used either a wheelchair or a walker for most of the first 10 days after coming home from the hospital, but then she transitioned to crutches, which she used up until five days ago when her surgeon officially gave her permissoin to walk unassisted.

Although this experience has been painful for Jerah at times, we've all spent a great deal of time laughing and joking about what happened.

So last weekend, when my other children attended the first judo tourmanet since that fateful tournament in February, it was only fitting that Jerah wore this special shirt I made for her. The shirt, which also had the words "Bionic Girl" emblazoned across the back, was the source of a great many laughs at the tournament.

What was especially exciting about this weekend's tournament was that Jerah got to spend some time with the girl that broke her leg. It was awesome to see that Jerah harbors absolutely no hard feelings about the accident and is, in fact, very excited about cultivating a relationship with the girl.

I want to say thank you to everyone who has prayed for Jerah during this time. It's been amazing to see how quickly she has recovered and how incredibly resilient she is. Except for those first couple of days in the hospital (or when she couldn't get out on the judo mat to participate because she didn't have her doctor's permission) she hasn't been depressed or frustrated about breaking her leg at all. In fact, she's milked the situation for all it's worth!

Jerah will probably be having one more surgery at the beginning of next year to remove the rod, but we haven't made a final decision about that yet. Either way, I expect that she will be completely back to normal, running around and fully back to judo, in just a couple more months. God is good!

(By the way, if you're interested in seeing a larger view of Jerah's xrays, you can view them here. It's amazing how much her bone has healed in this short time…and how it was pretty much only the rod holding up her leg at first!)