Overcoming Obstacles Vicki Bluum wasn’t always a cake decorator at Hy-Vee. She started in the bakery, then took classes and was trained through Hy-Vee, and has now been decorating cakes for 15 years. However; not too long ago it seemed like Vicki might not be able to do the job she loved so much. Five years ago, Vicki was helping her boyfriend in a pasture near Parkston. She was on a 4-wheeler and went to move the 4-wheeler. She wasn’t going fast; she was just going to move it, but the next thing she knew the 4-wheeler had flipped and it was on top of her. She was rushed to the Parkston hospital where they then rushed her to Sioux Falls and Vicki was immediately taken into surgery. She had broken her right wrist and her elbow. They had to put a plate in both her wrist and elbow. After recovering from her surgery, Vicki went into therapy at the Orthopedic Institute in Sioux Falls. She had to loosen her elbow and fingers, as they wouldn’t bend with the flexibility she once had and needed to get back to decorating cakes. Vicki is a widow, so she needed to get back to work, and she wanted to get back to work. The therapy was helping but she wasn’t healed or flexible enough, still, to get back to the work she loved so much. Her doctors made the decision to put her to sleep so they could manually manipulate her fingers and arm. Vicki said they worked them so much that she’d wake up with a “sausage arm.” This process is called Manipulation under 18vHERVOICEvSEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2017