Home again

It's so good to be home. I was in PA from January 1 to January 25...that's a long visit! And it was a tough one, too, but I'm glad I was there.

While I was gone, Ken finished off my piano studio!! The problem was that our house is so open that there was no way to block out the rest of the house's activities for piano lessons. So a few years ago we (I helped!) started the project of turning our never-used-as-a-dining-room area into a studio. Now it's all done and I'm so excited and so glad to have a husband that would do something like that while I was away. Every time I go somewhere he does something. One time he bought a caravan (we'd only had a car and it was too small for our growing family.) Another time he bought a new washer and dryer. Another time he replaced our broken dishwasher. It almost makes me want to go away again to see what he'll do next!

It was so cold back east...seriously. Several days were down in the single digits with wind chills below zero. I, of course, don't even own a winter coat or even a jacket. The whole time I was gone, Phoenix (home) was at least 50 degrees, the week it was single digits in PA it was in the 80s in Phoenix. I know how to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

My Dad...

I went to PA to see my dad on January 1st. By the time I got to the hospital he had a breathing tube. He was in a coma, too. After a day or two, he started coming up out of the coma a bit and was "talking" to us with his feet, tapping his feet for "yes" and waving his feet for "no". If he was happy he'd clap his feet together and we called that his "happy feet". He was in ICU for 2 weeks after his stroke and they don't like a lot of visitors in there...sorry...but my dad had a steady stream of visitors, at times the room was "standing room only". We were loud at times, too. My gosh, I've never really watched nurses at work because I avoid hospitals at almost all costs...but those nurses were absolutely incredible. I'm sure one of the harder parts of their job is dealing with families...especially large, loud ones!

At first, he couldn't talk or use his right arm and he had a blank look in his eyes, which he really couldn't open anyway. By 2 weeks out, we were told the stroke had matured and there was a significant amount of new damage. He could no longer understand what was being said to him, so he was "trapped". He had also developed pneumonia and was in congestive heart failure, had an irregular heart beat, and many other problems. My mom made the decision to pull life support because that's what he had said he would want. We spent almost another week watching him "sleep" because he never really woke up again. Saturday, January 17 he died around 6 am.

Those are details of the end of his life, many ups and downs, shock, then hope, then sadness and finally loss. We'll have his funeral on Saturday, January 24 at 1:00 at the York Chapel for our church, 2100 Hollywood Drive, York, PA. There will be a viewing at 12:00, an hour prior to the funeral.

Enough sad talk now, it's been 3 weeks of this and I can't take much more. Many family members and friends are flying in and it will be a rough week and weekend. I miss my husband and kids, friends, dog, home, things, normal life, and my bedroom...but it has also been good to see old friends from when we lived back here. I'm sure Saturday we'll see a lot more and that will be so great.

Losing loved ones...or not....

Ok, so my dad's had a rough, rough week, but he's showing real improvements and we've got some hope now. Time will tell...the hardest hit is his ability to speak. Swallow comes next but he's already showing signs of being able to swallow better. His legs are ok but his right arm is really weak and he can't control much movement there. But his personality we all love him for still comes through; he can hear us and when we say something funny he claps his feet. For now he communicates with us through his feet, "yes" or "no" by tapping or waving his feet. He seems to understand everything we say and he has even heard some things we whispered from across the room. He is having a hard time opening his eyes and may not be able to see very well, but he can see us, we know that. So we'll see!