Another Step Forward

Before my alarm even went off this morning Grandma Dee was up pacing around and all worked up about bringing Grandpa home. She was concerned that she wouldn't be able to care for him on her own. We all tried to calm her down and assured her that we wouldn't agree to do anything that she isn't comfortable with. After we talked with the doctor and verified that YES Grandpa will be discharged tomorrow, we asked to speak with the hospital social worker about his options. We all decided (G&G included) it would be best for both Grandma and Grandpa if Grandpa went to a rehab facility for a few weeks to regain his strength before going home. The social worker gave us a whole list of local rehabs to check out today. Grandpa's only request was that he would prefer a private room but other than that he gave us complete discretion to choose a place for him. The first place we walked into was gorgeous. The rooms were big and bright, the therapy rooms were filled with top of the line equipment and the staff was incredibly friendly and helpful. The next place was a total opposite of the first complete with a strong pee smell and shady looking employees smoking out front. My aunt and I took one look at each other and knew that this was NOT the place for Grandpa. Granted, it was a rehab and long term care facility combined but I just couldn't see him improving in such an environment, and really even if we were looking for a long term care facility this still would not be the place for him. It was so sad to walk past the wheelchair lined hallways and know that these people will never leave and reclaim the lives they left behind. I also noticed a complete lack of family presence, like many of these people had been left to die. I know that sounds harsh but during my short run as a nursing assistant in a nursing home before the girls were born, I know the reality that people are left at these sorts of places all the time. The third place was newly remodeled and clean although I was not impressed that the rehab patients eat all of their meals in their rooms instead of congregating in a dining hall, but he would have a private room. The fourth and final place was out of the running when the admissions director said they only have shared rooms. So we put in our request for the first and third facilities with high hopes that the first one will have an opening come tomorrow afternoon. Either way I'm glad that we all had a chance to go through these places and make a decision together as a family. Not a fun task but a necessary one.

Once we arrived back at the hospital we told Grandpa about our findings without mentioning the places we didn't like and trying to steer clear of the words "nursing home". He was a little irritated that he would have to do actual therapy or aerobics as he insisted calling it for 2 hours every day but we reminded him that if he wants to go home and start playing his banjo again, he needs to do the work and regain his strength. Grandpa isn't much into physical activity if it doesn't include dancing or playing his banjo. Just getting him to walk around the grocery store is a small victory for us. The oxygen was removed today and the IV is out but he's still using a walker to keep himself stable while walking around. After hanging out at the hospital and making sure that the nurses take him for a walk (we've really had to keep on them about that), we said our goodbyes for the evening and we all took Grandma out to play Bingo at one of the local parks. We didn't win a damn thing, but we had fun and it took Grandma's weary mind off of Grandpa for a short time, a success in my book. Tomorrow will be a busy day but another step forward.

Improving!

Internet access has been quite elusive here in AZ so I have been writing in word and waiting until I have a minute of stolen wifi to post. I wrote this Sunday night but wasn't able to publish it until now.

I arrived here in sunny and warm cloudy and cool Phoenix right on schedule this afternoon and was promptly picked up by my Uncle Mike and we drove straight to the hospital to see my grandfather. Besides being happy to have his family here supporting him, and thrilled that I remembered to bring not only one but two jars of peaches, Grandpa Conrad looked GOOD. His condition is stabilizing thanks to some new medications, and we're told that he may even be able to go home as soon as Tuesday. He's now on just 2 liters of oxygen compared to the 5 that he was on yesterday and his blood pressure has returned to a normal level. His appetite is also improving and he is starting to get up and move about with the help of a walker. His heart function is still poor due to the severe blockage and is not expected to improve but these other improvements have bought him some time for now.

I had been preparing myself to say goodbye to my dear Grandpa Conrad all week but it seems that he has other plans. His spirits are great and his positive attitude has inspired us all. He's hopeful that he'll be able to come home this week and be well enough to start playing his banjo and singing with the band again. I hope so too but the rest of us need to remain realistic and focused on day to day goals. Both my mom and my aunt were here all day today and will be again tomorrow. We plan to talk with the doctors and the hospital social worker tomorrow to make some plans for the rest of the week and beyond. When he comes home he will likely be on oxygen and using a walker. Not sure how that's going to work out with the four steps going into their home (Once he's inside it's all one level), but I'm sure we'll work something out. Grandma Dee is very happy to have her girls (as she calls us) here to support her, but this hospitalization has been especially hard on her. Her stress level is through the roof and she has become quite flustered and forgetful. This morning she thought she misplaced her medications and frantically called my mom and aunt who were on another floor of the hospital. The pills were found safe and sound but stuff like this keeps happening. She becomes confused when discussing expectations for my grandfather and goes between thinking that he'll make a full recovery to questioning if the doctors are saying that he may be released so that he can die at home. Realistically it will be something in between, we just don't know yet.

My aunt will go home tomorrow night and will be back in time for me to leave next weekend and my Mom is flying back home Wednesday afternoon. I will be here until Saturday and have big plans to get the house organized for Grandpa's homecoming and for life without us around 24/7. Tomorrow I hope to plan a menu for the week ahead and buy all the groceries to make several ready to heat meals to put in the freezer so Grandma won't have to worry about food along with caring for Grandpa once we all go back home. Plus if he does come home on Tuesday, our outings will most likely be limited to just me running out to get the essentials, and Grandma's well deserved hair appointment Friday morning.

Tomorrow night the three of us girls have decided to take Grandma to play Bingo to help get her mind off of what's wrong and have a little fun. Speaking of fun, tonight after we got back from the hospital, we played cards and had a good old giggle fest laughing about the funny things Grandma says and joking around the way only a family as close as ours can. If this is really the last family get-together, I want to make the most of it with both my grandmother and grandfather.

Family Calls

Grandma Dee called Friday morning and said she wanted me to come out to Arizona and be with her and Grandpa along with my mom and my aunt. My Mom flew in late last night and the gardener will drive me to the airport at the ass crack of dawn early tomorrow morning and off to Phoenix I will go. From what I can tell, my grandfather is doing okay but certainly not well enough to go home quite yet. He remains very alert but his breathing is still labored even with the constant flow of oxygen and he isn't able to get around on his own yet although I did hear that he took a short walk today. The doctors still say his prognosis is poor but so far he is comfortable and still complaining about the hospital food. Can't be too bad if he's still complaining right? I promised to pack a few jars of peaches just for him and that made him happy. Tonight when I talked to him, he double checked to make sure that I remembered to pack them. And yes Mom, I wrapped the jars in towels and put them in plastic bags to make sure that no spillage occurs.

After several days of thinking about going down there, I decided to just do it especially after Grandma Dee requested my presence. I would regret it terribly if I didn't. Not sure how helpful I can be but even if my time there will help ease my Grandparents' minds, then I will consider this week's trip a success. This last minute trip of mine will cause a major shift in our regular schedule and leave the Gardener managing all of the day to day kid-wrangling, house keeping, bill paying, meal cooking, story reading, dog feeding and everything else that keeps this house from spontaneously combusting.

The Gardener and I spent all day today trying to get ready for the week ahead by grocery shopping, cleaning, preparing meals, washing clothes, setting out an entire week's worth of clothes for the girls so getting ready in the morning (supervised by my in-laws as the Gardener will try to work most of the week) will be (hopefully) less dramatic than when the girls need to pick out clothes themselves and and get ready. I even caved and bought several boxes of sugar cereal so that (hopefully) breakfast will go smoothly as well, or at least with less complaints of "I don't like that." I will be gone until next Saturday so they will be on their own all week. The gardener and I went through and inventoried the the freezer and cabinets so he is aware of what's in the house food wise. Sometime in the middle of the week Grandma N will be dropping off some ready made meals for them so that the Gardener won't have to cook more than a few times this week. I'm sure the waffle iron and the microwave will get lots of use as well.

Other than that I don't have much else going on. My brother once again lent me his laptop (Thanks K!) so I will be checking in periodically so long as I can get an Internet connection. The rest of the family has been great too. My dad very generously paid for my flight and the Gardener's family has agreed to help out at home making sure the girls get to school and will be here when they hop off the bus in the afternoon. Uncle B is staying here tonight so that we won't have to wake the girls and drag them down to the airport with us early tomorrow morning. I couldn't have asked for better cooperation from any of them and I just hope that all goes well this week while I'm gone. Crossing my fingers for no illnesses or other chaos! I will miss them all, but I feel good about my decision to be with my grandparents.

I'll check in here once I get settled and have my fill of hugs from the fam.

Thanksgiving Confessions

I started writing this post a few days ago before my grandfather's health started to decline, so while I do feel odd posting something so silly today, I have decided that sitting and crying about it won't do me any good, plus I'm still making a big honking Thanksgiving meal tomorrow so what the heck, here goes...

Before I even start blathering on about my own Thanksgiving traditions and tricks, you must read (if you haven't already) Helen's Thanksgiving Letter To The Family. After you wipe away the tears that will come from laughing so hard (and possibly a change of underpants for the mom crowd), read her letters from years past. You will not be disappointed. I especially love that she prefers to cook the meal entirely herself and if her guests bring something, let's say sub-par, she lets them know. In my husband's family, that sub-par item would have to be either the snotty looking green bean casserole or as I like to call it, how many cans of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup did you add to an otherwise tasty and healthy vegetable? Or the Snicker bar and apple salad (I use the term 'salad' very loosely for a dish whose main ingredients are 3 candy bars and 2 tubs of cool whip). That said I like to have the meal at my house and avoid another Holiday of this.

Once again I will be making a big meal on Thanksgiving day for my husband's parents and brother-in-law and possibly a few single men from my family, but I'm sure they won't actually respond to my offer until the night before or even call 20 minutes before we eat and nonchalantly ask what we're having for dinner. Which brings me to the topic of this very post. Although I'm sure my meal will be the best in Wisconsin great, I have a few confessions to make about this year's Thanksgiving.

1. I have decided not to make a turkey this year. *gasp* No I didn't pick up one of those weird Tofurkey things from Trader Joe's, I'm actually making an 11 pound happy chicken. Seriously, if you're going to not eat meat then don't eat meat. Why dress up tofu to make it look and taste like turkey? Plus chicken is way better than turkey, just sayin'.
   
2. Since I don't think that my in-laws will notice, much less give a shit, I plan to serve the less expensive wine (2-Buck Chuck to be exact) this year.
3. The pie crust will contain lard. Get over it now. (Not sounding so appetizing after all the talk of blocked arteries today though.)
   
4. I plan to spend all day cooking in the kitchen, what I won't divulge (to my guests) is the fact that I will open a good bottle of wine for sipping during food preparation. Gotta keep the cook happy right?
   
5. I may be very excited about cooking and serving a big meal but I really don't care for the post dinner clean-up, especially after several glasses of wine eating a huge meal. No one should be surprised if I ignore the mess in the kitchen or even fake a headache to get out of clean-up.
6. I will be adding lots of butter and sour cream to the mashed potatoes. Get over it now.
7. My green beans will resemble actual green beans.
8. Canned cranberry sauce (cranberry wiggle) is banned from this house. I will serve traditional cranberry sauce made from actual cranberries.
   
9. Just because it's deer hunting season doesn't mean that my guests may wear their blaze orange outerwear complete with doe vaginal secretion scent at the dinner table. You think I'm joking? Then you obviously have never eaten Thanksgiving with serious deer hunters.
10. No football. No one in this family are real football (or any kind of sport for that matter) fans anyway so I'm not really breaking any hearts with this one. We will instead be watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and the dog show (Perhaps a big, drooly Saint Bernard will win this year???).
    

Update on my Grandpa Conrad:
I called my grandmother this morning for an update and she broke down as she told me we were losing him. The situation didn't sound very promising at all. I then called my aunt, an RN and the voice of reason in our family and we talked about what she knew which was that the Cardiologist was planning to place a stint in one of the blocked/collapsed arteries this morning and get a better idea of treatment options. My Grandmother's friend B called me this afternoon to let me know what she knew after being at the hospital with my grandparents all day. She said the blockage and overall shape of the bad artery was too severe to even attempt the stint procedure. Grandpa does however have an extra artery that has been acting like a natural bypass for the blocked artery, taking over the load.

For now the doc wants to just adjust Grandpa's meds and do another Echocardiogram in a month to see if surgically placing a defibrillator would be an option. For a while this afternoon we were all worried that he only had a few days left but now his odds look better for an even longer and productive life as the doc said he could even go back to playing in jams and with the Arizona Banjo Band in the next few weeks, something our family can look forward to and certainly be thankful for this Thanksgiving!

I thought about going out to Arizona this weekend to be with them and help them in any way I can (cooking, driving them to doctor appointments, etc.) but for now I think that it would be premature to do so and plus my aunt will heading there on Friday after she returns to AZ from visiting her family. Once she gets there and fills me in, I'll make plans to fly out there and see them.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts and kind words! And don't forget to take time out tomorrow between Turkey, mashed potatoes and pie to give thanks for the ones you love, I know I will.

Wardrobe Wednesday

Being the last day of school for the week, the girls decided they wanted to look their best. Binny's vest (to match sister's) and Mae's boots came from one of their favorite clothing stores with a name that rhymes with mold and gravy.


Speaking of gravy... I'm working on a Thanksgiving post for later today, but first I need to bake some pies, make a run to the post office, cook the cranberry sauce and call my grandparents...

A Mixed Day

This cloudy, rainy Tuesday started with a dermatology appointment for me to have some more funky looking moles removed, 2 of which were on my face and neck. The looks on the way out of the doctor's office were ones I wasn't ready for. Granted this is no disability and is completely temporary, but I couldn't help but feel the stares from others as I walked out of the clinic with bandages covering my wounds and streaky, blotchy skin from the anesthetic.

Once I arrived back home I went out to the barn to feed the cat and found him lying on the floor not moving. Gator's gone. He was just a kitten when we found him hiding in one of our sheds crying for his mother 3 years ago. We decided to tame him and keep him around to help control the mice population in the barn. Binny named him, and most appropriately considering Gator was quite the wild kitty at first. He would hiss and hide when we came in the barn to feed him but warmed up to us fairly quickly. Lately he would run over when he heard the door of the barn open and rub up against our legs as we scooped food into his pan. Not sure what killed him but from our experience farm cats don't seem to live long very long lives.

As Mae bounded off the school bus she smiled so wide that I could see that she lost another tooth today. This time it was one that was ready to come out, not one that she thought should come out. The tooth Fairy has been notified and has a stop planned for later tonight.

Binny beat me at a game of checkers!

And lastly, Grandma Dee just called to let us know that Grandpa Conrad is in the hospital. He started feeling not so well Monday night and as my grandmother tried to help him to bed he said he would feel best if he went to the hospital instead. So off they went and he was admitted last evening. The culprit seems to be Congestive Heart Failure which is treatable (my grandmother has been hospitalized several times for this as well) but not fun in any case. He's on oxygen and has had several tests including an echocardiogram to check his heart. I spoke with him for a few a minutes before the nurse came in and he had to pass the phone back to Grandma Dee. Grandma says he's doing better but I'm almost positive she'd say that even if he wasn't. I guess I can't blame her for not wanting us to worry, and really we can't do much from two thousand miles away anyhow. He will likely remain in the hospital for another day but hopefully he'll be able to go home on Thanksgiving, which would be something to be thankful for.

So overall, my body hurts, our barn cat is gone, Mae lost a tooth, Binny was victorious at Checkers and Grandpa Conrad is on the mend. One hell of a day.

A Hair Raising Experience

First off, let's get one thing understood. This was not my idea. My kids know how I feel about Bump-its so when Grandma Dee asked Mae what she wanted for her Birthday, Mae conned Grandma Dee into buying a set because she knew I had no interest in buying her the unusual hair accessory.

Since acquiring Bump-its we have enacted a no bump-its at school rule (Our rule, not the school's.) so that leaves weekends and Holidays for my kids to heighten their hair. Saturday was our first round of family Thanksgiving so the girls of course wanted me to install these crazy things for them. Aaaaand since I already had the hair spray and teasing comb out, I decided to try one as well, you know just for fun. Mae used the regular Bump-it and Binny used the mini Bump-it, so I was left with the Hollywood Bump-it. Making me feel more ridiculous than Hollywood, I decided to take it out before dinner, but before I could do so, the girls insisted we all take a photo together with our big happy hair. All in the name of fun!