And the 2021 story continues...

Thanks for coming back to read the rest of the story. Click here to read the first part.

On May 12th, my husband went into the hospital for outpatient inguinal hernia surgery. As I said yesterday, this was the good ol' fashioned cut-him-open type. The surgeon found a congenital hernia larger than expected. Subsequently, my husband bled more than expected. They finished, closed him up, and 3 hours later, sent him on his way with instructions to have someone (me) with him for the next 24 to 48 hours. They didn't issue any warnings about dehydration or being light-headed. They didn't tell me not to leave his side. As it was, he was feeling good by the time we got home. We had lunch and then, since it had been an early day, I went upstairs to take a quick nap after he settled onto the couch to watch some TV. A couple of hours later (my nap took longer than planned), I awoke to hear a horrible crash. I jumped up and ran to the top of the stairs, yelling his name. No answer. I bolted down the steps and turned left. That's when I discovered my husband sprawled across the ceramic bathroom floor. His eyes were wide-open and he was completely unresponsive. I screamed his name over and over and then ran for the phone. The voice on the other end of the 911 call let me know they were experiencing higher than normal call volume. No! No, no no! I continued to try to rouse my husband to no avail. Let's face it. At this point I thought... no, I knew, he was dead. After about 3 minutes or so, the operator came on the phone and said, "911. What is your emergency?" 

At the same time, my husband did something... I don't remember what it was exactly... that let me know he was still alive. I was almost incoherent as I practically yelled into the receiver, "My husband's had a massive stroke." After all, if he wasn't dead, a stroke was the only answer. His eyes were still wide open and he still wasn't moving. Those moments were right up there with the worst moments of my life. The absolute worse. The PTSD over my first husband's death in 1989 washed over me and I was hysterical. The 911 operator kept trying to calm me down so she could understand what I was saying. 

Finally, my husband started to come to. He asked me who I was talking to and wondered why I would call 911. He did not want an ambulance. Too bad. It was on its way. 

By the time the EMTs arrived, my husband was sitting up. They helped him to his feet and walked him to a dining room chair where he sat and answered questions. Despite his resistance, we were able to talk him into heading back to the hospital, where he stayed for two nights. Of course, my thoughts were that if they'd admitted him to begin with, none of this would have happened, right? Tests revealed he was not only anemic from the loss of blood, but he was also dehydrated. Dehydrated! Again, my thoughts were that they never should have sent him home without hydrating him after surgery. He is in his 70s and has a heart condition. Plus he was suffering from post-Covid. He should have been admitted for observation following the surgery. Thank you, insurance companies.

Naturally, when he collapsed, he did damage to the surgical site. While the bleeding didn't start right away, it did start a couple of weeks later and lasted 7 weeks! That's right. We dealt with 7 weeks of dressing changes, trips to the ER, another overnight hospital stay, and multiple visits with the surgeon. A CT scan revealed that the bleeding was deeper than they thought. 

In the midst of this, his PMR (polymyalgia rheumatica), brought on by Covid-19 in February, continued to worsen. No one had answers for us. By the time we saw the rheumatologist in June, my husband had lost the ability to care for himself and I became a full-time caregiver. I went from running a team of caregivers for Dignity Home Care Professionals to being a care provider. And let me tell you, I do a much better job of being the boss than actually doing the dirty work. At times, my husband was so bad, he couldn't even feed himself. His dignity was gone. My hope was gone. We both were served a major dose of depression. 

One day, I remember looking at his frail body (he'd lost a lot of weight and his muscle tone was nearly gone) as he sat in the recliner, his too-large sweatshirt crooked on his shoulders, and I thought, "When did my husband turn into a 90-year-old man?" I wept with the realization that my marriage, as I'd known it, was over. It was despair as I'd never experienced... the darkest of times.

Fast forward to today. Light came again, first from a doctor who had a diagnosis and treatment plan. Then from the eventual healing of the surgical wound. I have my husband back again.

Thirty years ago, the two of us eloped. We were blending families and found it easier to just skip a wedding and go off and get married. But after all we'd been this year, we decided to go ahead and have that wedding this month, surrounded by friends and family. The plans were in action, the invitations sent. And then the Delta variant started taking over and infecting so.many.people -- vaccinated and unvaccinated. So, realizing it would be selfish on our part to gather a bunch of people together to celebrate with us, we canceled the wedding. Another blow. Another reason for tears. 

On August 18th, the two of us will celebrate the miracle of thirty years together anyway. And that weekend, our kids and grandkids will join us for a small garden party to celebrate as a family. 

And Green Grandma is committed to not using any disposables for the party. As you can see, some things never change. 

Thank you for reading and caring. Tomorrow, I'll share some lessons we've gleaned from this dark, dark time in our lives. Lessons about where to find the light.

P.S. The photo above is of the place my husband collapsed. Two things saved him from breaking his nose, losing some teeth, and/or having a serious head injury. One, based on the HUGE bruise that developed on his side, he obviously hit the doorknob of the bathroom door on his way down, slowing the momentum. It took us a few days to figure that one out. And two, see that rounded shelf in the corner? He must have hit the bottom shelf with his face before it hit the floor. The bruises on the left side of his face confirmed that. Placement of furniture is everything, right? Well, maybe not, but I sure am thankful for that little white shelf!

I'm back! And do I have a story to tell you...

 

Hello again.

It's been a long time since I've posted anything. But I'm hoping that will change and I'll be providing you with lots of helpful info, great giveaways, and pieces of my heart. The latter is what I want to address today.

What a year it's been. Last I "spoke" with you, I was running a senior in-home care company and was simply too busy to blog on a regular basis. Well, that changed. In December of 2020, the owner and I decided it was time to close our business for good. Let's just say the pandemic wore us out. It wasn't that we didn't have clients... we did. We just couldn't find employees to fill the shifts. By the time we were done, we had an 85% no-show rate for interviews. It was beyond discouraging. 

January rolled around and, honestly, it was a really good month. I was enjoying having time off and not being on call 24/7, as I had been for the previous 4 years. Life was good. 

And then... Covid. My husband started getting sick on February 1st. I kept telling him it wasn't Covid. Then my eyes began to burn. And my glutes ached big-time. He had chills and couldn't get warm. His head hurt. Five days later, he woke up with no sense of smell or taste. We knew then, and a rapid test confirmed our self-diagnosis. For 3 weeks, we suffered. Covid morphs into something new nearly every day when you're in the midst of it. Anyone else out there know what I'm talking about? For me, I experienced the gastrointestinal version over everything else. For a good 10 days or so, I felt like I was in labor, yet no delivery of a baby came along as relief. It.was.hell.

Even though I'm asthmatic and diabetic, the virus never took root in my lungs, so I was able to stay out of the hospital. I credit that with the 10,000 IUs of Vitamin D I was taking for months, hoping to ward off this insidious disease. It didn't prevent me from getting Covid, but I do believe it kept it out of my lungs. I coughed from time to time and I watched my pulse ox readings faithfully, but like I said, I was never hospitalized. 

Eating was something I forced myself to do. It's hard to want to put food in your body when you can't even taste it and you know it's going to send you right back into the bathroom for another round of "let's pretend we're having a baby." I lost 20 pounds that month. Unfortunately, once the appetite returned, so did the weight. It was nice while it lasted. By the end of February, it was over... for the most part. Today, I'm still feeling the effects of the brain fog it brought my way. I search for words, say the wrong ones, and lose my train of thought in an instant. And I suffer from night sweats, so my sleep is always disturbed. But at least I can breathe and I don't seem to have any other symptoms many of the long-haulers have.

My husband, on the other hand, did not fare so well. A couple of weeks after our "recovery," he started to experience some pretty brutal pain. It started in his shoulders, then his hips, his thighs, down his arms, and eventually attacked his hands... so much so that he lost the use of them at times. This continued until the beginning of June when we finally found a doctor with answers. Up until then, we simply heard the same thing: "It's post-Covid and we really don't know what to do about it." That day, we had a name for his pain: polymyalgia rheumatica or PMR for short. And there was hope. But there was another issue to deal with.

As if the pain wasn't enough, he also had to go into the hospital for a scheduled inguinal hernia operation. Since he is a heart patient, he couldn't have laparoscopic surgery. Nope. They had to cut him open. And that's when the new problem began. 

Stop on back tomorrow for part 2 of story of 2021. It gets worse before it gets better. But it does get better.

Sharing my story,

To Mask or Not To Mask... That is the Question

It's been a heavy time across our nation and world. I haven't shared my words with you since the beginning of April when we were a few weeks into a pandemic in the states and stay-at-home orders were in place here in Pittsburgh. The world had changed.

It's been a challenging time, as I continued to work as Operations Manager of Dignity Home Care Professionals, a senior in-home care company in Pittsburgh. My job was deemed essential so I continued on with the day-to-day business of providing caregivers to families in need. Sometimes, I ventured in to my lonely office in Bellevue and other times, I forwarded the phones and worked from home. We lost some clients (none from COVID-19) and we gained new ones. We kept our employees busy and we added new faces to the team. My heroes... those willing to brave the risk and offer their care to housebound elderly clients. 

It's been a sad time. The murder of George Floyd caused more than just rage and protest. It caused a deep sadness inside of me. It also awakened a need in me to push aside my comfortable silence and to speak out. I undoubtedly lost friends in the process, but that's okay. If you are a racist, you don't deserve my friendship. Not at all.

It's also been an infuriating and frustrating time. And this is the focus of this post: to mask or not to mask. It really shouldn't be a question. I continually hide 'friends' from my Facebook feed over this issue... those proudly proclaiming their "constitutional right" not to cover their faces. GIVE ME A BREAK! Those who take this stand continue to hide behind their excuses of "liberty." Sadly, most of the ones I've heard bemoan the masks also proclaim their status as "Christians." Again, give me a break. Where, pray tell, in Scripture does it instruct us to hold our rights and liberty above the good of others? Where? Show it to me. 

No, rather, the Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the church at Philippi: 

"Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others." (Phillipians 2:3-4 NASB)

Let me paraphrase: 

"Do nothing from selfishness or a desire for your own liberty, but humble yourself, realizing that you could be an asymptomatic carrier of COVID-19, which puts others at risk for a disease that, while it may be mild, could also KILL that person or cause lifelong problems for them."

As Christians, and, yes, I count myself as a devout follower of Christ, we have a moral obligation to do what we can to protect others from harm. Whether that means standing up for the rights of people of other races, seeking justice, socially distancing ourselves, fighting against the evils of Bayer/Monsanto and other companies who are poisoning us, or wearing a danged mask while in public and honoring the request of businesses and churches who ask this of us, that's what we have to do. It is NOT about liberty and constitutional rights... it's about kindness. It's "regarding one another as more important" than ourselves.

And for those of you buying into the myth of the dangers of breathing in your own CO2, read up on the facts. You would have to breathe in extremely high levels of the gas... more than say, a surgeon or their surgical team who are masked for hours during an operation -- how would you feel as a patient if they decided it was their "right" not to wear a mask?

I, personally, hate wearing masks. But, because I care about you, you better believe I'll be donning mine. I can only hope you care enough about me to do the same.

Sharing my heart,

My Favorite Things -- The View

This is my second post in a new series featuring things I love -- my favorite things. Today's is a bit odd. It's not about a product, but about a place. My work office. This is the view outside my window when I'm seated at my desk. I love watching as the world goes by.

Usually, it's bustling with activity. Busy Lincoln Avenue in Bellevue boasts restaurants, a brewery, pharmacy, doctors' offices, insurance and law offices, variety shops, and more. Sadly, we lost a once-thriving flower shop (of which my office sits above), a children's theater company, and Happy Baby Company, which let go of their brick and mortar space months ago (but you can still shop online here and I highly recommend it).

Today, there are fewer cars and next to no pedestrians. The ones passing by are often donning masks. It is a strange sight indeed.


While many of you are quarantined in your homes, I am here in my office watching less of the world pass by and feeling an isolation of my own. As Operations Manager of Dignity Home Care Professionals, I have to work. It is essential. Yes, I can do almost all of my work from home, but I often discover the need for a file or info I can't access there. So I come in to my office, sensing an incredible emptiness here. For the past several weeks, I'm the only one working here. I miss the other voices. The looks we exchange. The feel of our office dog crawling onto my lap. 


I am being vigilant about sanitizing, wearing gloves while retrieving and opening the mail, and washing, washing, washing my hands. At times, I've had to go to peoples' homes and be in the presence of our precious elderly clients. My fear, of course, is not that I'll catch something from them. No, my greatest fear is that I, or one of our team of caregivers, will carry the virus (you know the one I'm talking about) into them. It's the stuff nightmares are made of, and believe me, I've been losing sleep over it.

And I, am only one. Only one person managing a team on the front lines. I'm mostly cocooned in my office or my home while they, my team of heroes, ventures out to care for those who cannot care for themselves. At night, when I cannot sleep, I pray for them. And for the other managers trying to navigate this new world of home care amidst daily fear that the virus will reach their people. Once competitors, now comrades in a battle against an invisible enemy.

Yes, this is my view and I love it. But I long for the day when the hustle and bustle returns and the noise rises to my window and Petey, the office pup, comes running through the door and onto to my lap. 

My favorite things . . . an office I love, a view that will be fluid again someday . . . soon.

Greg Landry Homeschool to the Rescue!

This post is sponsored by College Prep Science. 

Now, more than ever, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, homeschooling has been front and center. Whether it's been thrust upon unprepared parents trying to navigate working from home while overseeing the education of their children, or a shifting of focus for those parents already educating their kids at home who no longer can be part of the homeschooling network they've relied upon for years, due to social distancing. 

Greg Landry homeschool has pioneered science classes and labs for homeschooling families. He offers online classes (for science leaning students and “non-science” students), science labs, ACT prep, homeschool student-produced print publications, and a podcast for homeschool moms. He has a heart for students and a passion for science... but more specifically a passion for teaching students to see God's hand in every aspect of His creation that surrounds us. His goal is to help them see that God's creation didn't just happen by chance - it wasn't an accident, a fluke of nature.

Greg Landry has spent the past 20+ years teaching science. He taught at a university, taught thousands of homeschooled students, has mentored students planning to pursue science/pre-med degrees, has designed and directed a university anatomy and physiology/biology/cadaver lab, has published and presented scientific research, has academically counseled hundreds of college pre-professional (pre-med, pre-dental, pre-physical therapy, etc.) sophomores and juniors, has designed science labs for homeschooled students and has written science lab manuals. Ten years ago he originated the "pre" classes (Pre-Biology, Pre-Anatomy & Physiology, Pre-Chemistry, and Pre-Physics) as a means of minimizing the intimidation of high school level science and preparing middle school age students for specific high school level classes. As one homeschool mom described it, "Greg has a unique ability to pull out the most important information and present it in a way that's interesting and easy to understand." 

The thrust of Greg Landry homeschool science is to give homeschooled students access to Christian Worldview science that is focused on scientific inquiry, critical thinking, process reasoning, data collection, and the graphical and written representation of research. Greg says, "We want to prepare competent, confident students for their remaining high school years, their college years, and life. 

Greg and his wife live near Nashville, TN. His desire is to follow the Lord's leading in teaching students to illuminate the incredible creation the Lord has put all around us. It reveals His glory! ​Homeschool dad, scientist, and former college professor, Greg Landry, offers live, online homeschool science classes, Homeschool ACT Prep Bootcamp, the Homeschool Mom’s Science Podcast, in-person two-day science lab intensives nationwide, freebies for homeschool moms, and student-produced homeschool print publications.