Wednesday, April 22, 2009

To gamble or not to gamble?

On Good Friday, Dutch "decided" to add yet another bit of excitement to our lives. After a wonderful breakfast with friends he wanted to go to bed as soon as we got home because he wasn't feeling too well. I thought nothing of it and tucked him in. An hour later, he woke up with: "I still don't feel so well" and my mind went over the instructions from doctors that I could remember. What do I see the nurses do? Take his blood sugar in case that's out of whack, and take his blood pressure. His blood pressure was fine but his pulse was 156. Well THAT didn't sound right and I proceeded to silent prayers and mental checklists and, OK, NOW what do I do?

The nurse who comes to do wound care was just a few minutes away from coming for her biweekly visit, so I met Vicky at the door with: "his pulse is 156". She took it again and came up with basically the same number and told me to call the doctor. Laura from the Doctor's office said to bring him in and the question was, do I take him the 45 minutes to Scripps or the 25 minutes to Mission Hospital? After a check on traffic with the help of our daughter, we decided to head for Scripps. With Vicky helping me get Dutch ready and Niqua on the phone with the traffic report, we got out the door in just a few minutes and hoped there weren't too many cops on the road to San Diego. During the Urgent Care visit, his pulse went down again on its own and didn't require any intervention. PTL!!!

Turns out he was in Arterial Fibrillation which put us on another roller coaster ride, just in case we didn't already have enough fun with his other issues. Since he can't have the standard treatments for this, the idea now is to prevent any further occurrences. So he has to take meds to prevent it and I have to get him to a hospital quickly in case he does have another episode.

So the question is: Scripps or Mission?
Today he is trying to make plans to visit the kids in Kansas City sometime or go on some other trip. Now how do you do that when the question on the table is Scripps or Mission? 25 minutes or 45 minutes away from a hospital? Or to put it another way: Stress out or trust God?
Stay tuned........

The irony is that he looks and sounds and feels better than he has.....

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Happy Easter!!













It's Easter! A time when we can look to an empty cross and a risen Saviour and know that our debt is paid and the seperation between God and man has been bridged and all we need to do is to accept this free gift!




We are excited to be celebrating that and to look back on a week or more of recovery for Dutch and a time of feeling much better and regaining some of his strength. He just went to bed for his nap and as usual we completed for each other the wish to "sleep tight, dream something beautiful, Praise the Lord!" and he said: why don't you write about that?


He reached his goal to make it to our anniversary! Praise the Lord! We had a lovely day and went out for dinner that evening. No nothing fancy at all- we didn't even get dresssed up. It was all about the mile stone and having a Blooming Onion!!! Truth be told, we ordered garlic mashed potatoes as one of the side dishes and couldn't eat it because it was soooooooo salty!! Being on a salt reduced diet sure makes everything taste salty! But we had a good time and will carry that memory with us.


Then we had a wonderful surprise: Dutch's cousin Marvin came for a visit from Forest City, Iowa. Marvin sometimes delivers Winnebago motorhomes to dealers and found himself in California and swung down for this visit. We had a wonderful time together. What a gift of love to make time in his life to spend with us!










Today I have an announcement to make. It seems that we have found a buyer for our store! The paperwork isn't signed yet, so I'm ever cautiously saying it seems..... but hopefully it's all true and Yarn Lady will go on to new heights and continue to be a place where everyone knows your name. It is bitter sweet for us of course. An era has come to an end and God is prying yet another finger loose from the things I grasp tightly. I will share with our friends on the Yarn Lady Buzz blog now so you can go there to read more.