A Long Update . . . Though it Won't Be So Long

Hello, all!

I'm sorry it has been so long since I've written. In the last three months, we have undergone three tragedies . . .well, one is an actual tragedy while the other two were simply potential tragedies. One ended badly, while the other two ended somewhat miraculously.

First, and I hate talking about this, we lost Wesley. I had taken him to my running group with me a few weeks before Christmas and, when I opened the car door and took Wesley's leash in my hand, he burst through the air like a bullet, yanking the leash right out of my hand. From there, it was only a short time before he had found his way into the street and under the wheels of a car. We rushed him to animal emergency room, advised them to resuscitate if it came to that and, two or three resuscitation attempts later, they lost him. I was, and still am, heartbroken. I am in no position to get another dog, and won't be for at least a year or two. I'm very sad about this but, as you can see, there is nothing I can do now.

The day after Wesley died, I came home to hear that my dad had been hit by a car. I would have freaked out, except it was my dad who was telling me. Apparently, he had been crossing a street when a woman who was making a left turn but looking right, turned right into him. He rolled up on to the car and he smacked his ankle, but he was completely okay otherwise. The lady apologized and called him in a few minutes to see if he had gotten home okay, but that was all. My dad says that he is very grateful that the car was a Cadillac with a low hood: An SUV would have pulled him under the wheels. But, as it was, his only injury some mild ankle pain a week later. My mom made him go to the doctor, she revoked his walking-home-in-the-dark privileges for two days (which is as long as her influence would last) and he now has to wear a reflective vest when he goes out at night, but otherwise he is just fine. We are thanking our lucky stars, as I'm sure that lady is, too.

Our last potential tragedy happened on New Years Day this year. My grandpa has been suffering from Alzheimer's for several years and, up until now, he has lived with my grandma up in the mountains. On New Year's Eve, my grandpa got up while my grandma was sleeping, somehow disengaged the alarm that had been set for this purpose, and went out into the -3 degree weather in only his pajama bottoms and his T-shirt. Grandma woke up at about 5:30 the next morning and went crazy trying to look for him. She called the police and, before long, the sherriff's deputy had found him just a few feet from the cabin, unconscious in a snow bank, and suffering from severe hypothermia and frostbite. (Grandma had run right past him looking.) They called my parents at about 6 am and by 9:00 am they had life-flighted him to St. Alphonsus and six of us -- my parents, my cousin, Adam, my uncle Barney and Aunt Linda, and me, were all in the emergency room drinking coffee and trying to carry on polite conversation. Before long, it became clear that Grandpa was not going to live: his body temperature was so low that the hospital's instruments couldn't measure it. They started therapy, but told us that he would almost certainly die as soon as his body temperature hit about 90 degrees; It is at that temperature, they told us, that all the dead skin cells start to release toxins into the body, and those toxins kill the person. We waited. By four or five hours later, the entire family had shown up at the hospital, including Grandma, who had finally made it from Cascade. Grandpa's body temperature had made it to 98.6 and he was still alive. He was breathing with a ventilator, but he was still alive.

First hurdle done.

Now it was a matter of what he would lose: They told us there was a good chance that his hands and feet, his nose, and his ears would have to be amputated. We waited.

By the next morning, it had become clear that, somehow, the frostbite on his nose and ears seemed to be clearing up on its own. Wow!

One more day

They took out the ventilator and moved him from ICU to the surgery ward.

Hurdle #2 is crossed.

Now it's a question of how much of his hands and feet will have to go. Yesterday (Friday), I was there when they dressed his hands and when the Occupational Therapist checked the range of motion in his hands. According to her, he has almost all of his range of motion, which is good, she said. I have no idea what that means, but we can only hope!

It will be a couple of weeks before they will be able to tell how much of his hands and feet will have to go. In the meantime, he will be in St. Alphonsus and then in the Veterans hospital, which is not even a half-mile from where I live. I'll get to visit him after work! The only problem is that he doesn't recognize me. Every time I have seen him and told him who I was, he has expressed surprise that I'm so old. I guess in his mind, I am still a little girl. He doesn't think I'm almost 30. :) I don't mind. He says, "You're one of my sweethearts" when I tell him, "I love you, Grandpa!" After all, he's a gentleman and he wouldn't want to insult me by refusing to believe that he was my grandpa. He told the nurses yesterday that they fit right in with the family. They were flattered, but I think he meant that he couldn't tell who was in his family and who wasn't. :) The nurses are head-over-heels in love with Grandpa. His Alzheimer's self is nothing but sweetness.

But, that's not to say that good stuff hasn't happened too!

I recently discovered that I am only 5 credits away from a masters. I just signed up for two of those credits. Woo hoo! The only problem is that the cost of the classes (which I didn't anticipate until I made a casual check into how many credits I had left in the masters program I had already started a couple of weeks ago.) along with the cost of paying down my student loans as fast as possible has left me BROKE. But that's balanced out by the fact that I will get my student loans paid off in only a year-and-a-half or so. I think I can make it by then, when you figure in the raise I will get in the fall.

SO. That's everything. School is fun, but exasperating in so many ways! I worked all through the break but I'm still SO NOT READY!! AAAAA! :) But I'm a lot more ready than I would otherwise be!

More later!

Elisabeth